MCLC: shadow puppetry talk

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Melissa Dale <mdale3 at usfca.edu>
Subject: shadow puppetry talk
***********************************************************

The University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim welcomes you to
attend:

"Shadow Woman: The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton"
A Talk by Grant Hayter-Menzies, Author

Wednesday, Nov. 20, 5:00-6:30 p.m. | University of  San Francisco, Fromm
Hall, Xavier Room

In 1920s Beijing, Kansas-born Pauline Benton (1898-1974) discovered shadow
theatre (piyingxi), a performance art where translucent painted puppets
are manipulated by highly trained masters to cast colored shadows against
an illuminated screen. Mastering the male-dominated art form in China,
Benton believed she could save this thousand-year-old forerunner of motion
pictures by taking it to America. Enchanting audiences eager for the
exotic during the Great Depression, Pauline’s touring company, Red Gate
Shadow Theatre, was lauded by theatre and art critics alike and even
played the White House of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Grant Hayter-Menzies traces Benton's performance history and her efforts
to preserve shadow theatre as a global cultural treasure by drawing on her
unpublished writings, the recollections of her colleagues, the testimonies
of shadow masters who survived China's Cultural Revolution, as well as
young innovators who have carried on Benton's pioneering work.

FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.  For information please call 415.422.6357.

Melissa S. Dale, Ph.D.Executive Director & Assistant Professor
Center for the Pacific Rim
University of San Francisco
2130 Fulton St., KA-180A

San Francisco, CA  94117-1080
(415) 422-2590