Shadow theater: the process
Mar. 28th, 2023 01:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellerSo, shadow theater is a thing again! :D I haven't done this at all for over a year (and I never did this very often, anyway), so I'm seriously out of practice, but I got an invitation to an event (amazing this person remembered my existence at all), and I have kind of missed this, so... Yeah. I'm accepting though the conditions are not ideal. And, since a shadow theater performance like the one I'm going to do ideally looks spontaneous but is, in fact, very carefully prepared, I'm taking this opportunity to write down the process.
The story.
Obviously, any storytelling performance (and I'm talking about 'storytelling' in the widest sense possible; performances do not need to be verbal, even!) needs a story. In this case, I don't need to come up with one: the person on the organizing committee who invided me specifically asked "Can you do the wood veneer one, please?", and sure, I can do that. I have performed that one several times already; it was always quite successful (as in: entertaining the audience) - and that has to do with the specific story format.
The kind of story you can do (successfully, anyway) strongly depends on what you are planning to do with it, and the 'wood veneer story' would fall flat in many (most!) formats... "Two entitled young men fail at renovating a hallway" is, of course, not what a successful novel is made of. It's not even a short story. As the plot of anything, it's boring. The only way the concept can work is as a stage performance - if the audience can be compelled to care about the two young men in question and their misadventures involving wood veneer. (That's a big 'if', but a decent storyteller should be able to pull it off.)
Story structure.
Looking from the technical story-crafting side, you will probably notice that this is a minimalist prompt lacking structural elements like a beginning, a climax, or an ending - and this is quite intentional and specific to the performance format. I've been to 'readings' and 'storytelling events', and... The kind of literature reading that takes a written story and reads it to the audience usually falls flat in comparison. This has several reasons, one being that the story tempo of something that's read necessarily differs from something that's heard - it never feels quite natural otherwise. Another key reason is that, in storytelling, you can't ignore your audience. You have to adapt. Is there an unexpected bunch of young children in the audience? Are your listeners largely in a bad mood because the music event that was scheduled to happen, and which they actually bought the convention tickets for, has been spontaneously cancelled and they're only there because they have nothing better to do? Has some idiot set up your podium next to the restroom entrance so there's a lot of disruption?
Some things can be planned (always get a room plan of the whole venue, not just the room you're supposed to be in, beforehand!) but others can't. I'm dealing with this by having a lot of flexibility: I have an exact idea of characters, central conflict, and things that can reasonably happen, but I'm keeping the structure as flexible as possible - which is zero structure. I'm not claiming this will work for everyone, but I'm happiest when I can read my audience's mood, change the pacing accordingly, or spontaneously explore a side aspect of the story that seems to fascinate people in more detail...
Improvision.
The bad news is: I'm not all that good at complete improvision - I can't walk into a room without knowing what story I'm going to tell. Some storytellers can do that, but I'm not one of them. (The most impressive case I've ever seen is a very famous German writer who can chat with random people before a performance, then start with a reading from one of his books, and totally derail the thing by building the people he's just talked to as characters into the story which will then, of course, turn into something entirely else. It's amazing - and it doesn't just take superior storytelling skills but also extreme extraversion and people skills. There's no way in hell I'd ever be able to pull this off.) If I start performing without knowing even the genre I'm in, the only thing I could hope for is 'so bad it's good', but even that requires dumb luck.
Also, shadow theater needs some level of technical preparation, so it's inherently less flexible than, e.g., purely verbal storytelling. I do a lot of paper manipulation on stage (it's part of the fun!), but still, some papercuts (usually settings, key items, and characters) have to be prepared beforehand. I can't change who the story is about, and while I can have alternative settings, alternative endings and so on, I prefer not to. Lighting effects - especially the more difficult ones - are also practiced beforehand, to avoid unpleasant surprises. So... I improvise a lot less than you'd think. XD
Characters.
Unfortunately, I can't offer any advice on how to generate characters, they just appear - but I will say that the resulting stories are almost always the natural result of characters interacting with each other while being themselves. In this particular example... The characters are Dev and Arc. Dev is a character who already appeared in other stories; his baseline personality was fixed from the beginning. Arc, by now, also has his own stories, but this is actually the one in which he appeared for the first time, so, I'll try and describe that process...
I wasn't trying to add yet another character to the Kolthainn setting! It's just that my 'main characters', of course, don't exist in a vacuum. Dev lives in the student dorm at uni. Arc is the (unfortunate) guy who was assigned the room next door. He wasn't supposed to be 'special' in any way - no big secrets in his past, just a perfectly normal wealthy young man starting uni, getting an education so he can one day take over his father's business. He wasn't supposed to appear in the stories at all. Except... Even this clichéd and deliberately bland personality draft has consequences.
The thing is... Arc is a perfectly normal young man, who (based on his father's tales from his uni days) expected to take some classes in the day time, and otherwise... make friends his age, spend the nights in taverns, chat up some nice girls, maybe ill-advisedly experiment with some substances... You know. And then, he arrives at uni and is stuck next door to the 'creepy' autistic guy who not only is disinterested in socializing and visiting the local taverns (which is bad enough) but may or may not be a necromancer involved in sinister, scary stuff... Arc has his suspicions and opinions. Plus, of course, he has his own baggage to deal with. For example, uni classes are the first time he encounters math for math's sake, and he loves it (and, to everyone's including his own surprise, turns out to be a bit of a genius at it - who knew you could use math for more than accounting?), but convincing his parents to let him change his major is going to be difficult. All in all, Arc is not a 'bad guy' (I know having an 'unpopular' main character, which Dev certainly is, almost demands making the 'popular' character a dumb, mean bully, but I don't like that whole concept - it's an unfair prejudice), but he's certainly noticing the weird things going on next door (I mean... There are explosions!), and he's unhappy with the whole situation. (Heck, I would be more than just a bit unhappy if I suspected my rude, unsocial next-door neighbor of consorting with demons on top of everything. Arc's way of dealing with things is somewhat asshole-ish, but also, it's not as if he didn't have a point.)
...and that's enough to flavor the interactions between Dev and Arc. They're not going to agree on anything, including on the color of the sky. Also, there's no way they will just civilly ignore each other. In this case, a hallway incident leads to these guys having to re-panel the walls at their own cost. Money is not an issue. Agreeing on wood veneer is. (Dev has some sensory issues and will not agree to veneer that feels wrong. Arc is socially aware and will not agree to veneer that looks cheap and/or out-of-fashion, in case he invites friends - or, worse, family - over.) Having grown up wealthy and privileged, neither is very good at compromises. Or, for that matter, deescalation. So... Yeah. That story pretty much self-generated from basic character premises, and the fictional hallway suffered. (As you can probably tell, I'm a completely character-driven storyteller. It will work differently for other people!)
Arrangement.
There is, of course, the small matter of making an hour of wood veneer conflict interesting for an audience, and it's certainly not the plot that is going to do it. Also, I can't trust the audience to care about the characters right from the beginning: I have to assume most people don't know the characters (or, if they've been at one of my performances pre-pandemic, don't remember them), so if there's nothing that draws them in, they just won't give a fuck. Sure, the whole thing is funny, but that's not really enough to entertain people if the arrangement is bad...
...okay, actually, this story would not have been my first choice for a performance in front of a large audience at all, because it's seriously difficult to present. The first time I performed this, it was under ideal conditions: a very small group, which offered everybody a chance at interaction. For example... There were, unsurprisingly, large amounts of wood veneer for everybody to touch. Everybody was sitting close enough for nonverbal interactive storytelling techniques to work. In a large room, that's not an option, so the way the story is told will have to change as well. The last time I did this, it was in a room with, like, 20 people, and I could only directly interact with those sitting in the front. I did bring wood veneer, but people had to pass it around, which was not ideal. This time, the room will have a slightly elevated stage and rows of seats below, so... either I remove the haptic component altogether (which... sucks) or I somehow incorporate the audience members interacting with each other - which brings its own problems. (Not everyone may want to interact with their seat neighbors.) I have not quite decided yet.
The room has a large cinema screen, though! This is very cool, as it means I have a lot of space for visual effects. I have to bring my own light sources, but I'd do that anyway, so that's not an issue. The disadvantage is that the screen is behind me, so I'm between the light source and the screen... For 'classical' shadow theater, this would be bad. I could hide behind a dark screen... Or I could stay visible, in which case I'm inevitably part of what's watched. Both is possible (and I've done both!) but has a very different effect. I've decided to be invisible this time, in order to not distract from the papercuts.
Papercuts.
Papercuts are a lot of work. And also: they cannot really be recycled. The reason I'm not reusing the ones from the last performance of this story (which was so long ago no one would remember them and notice) is the specific lighting setup. I will have a light source on the ground, angling up, and project onto a screen that's mounted on the wall. This will distort anything I put in between. Which means: yes, I have to know the distance between light source and wall and the height of the screen. I then have to calculate how I have to distort my sketches so they'll look 'normal' on the screen. It's basic trigonometry, so, not difficult... but still a lot of work in those images, and venue-specific, so no, if you're an event organizer and you spontaneously ask your shadow theater performer to switch rooms, this performer will be pissed. Enough said. XD
A technical note: there is special papercut paper. This is very useful if cutting something is part of the performance - you'll get a lot of detail very quickly because you can reverse cutting order fast without accidentally ripping everything. I don't use this paper for the images I prepare beforehand, though: it's rather thin and wobbly, and better suited for artwork that's perpetually mounted on a background. I tend to prefer black construction paper. Also: this time, because of the unfortunate lighting angle, there will be zero cutting on stage. Ripping and folding, yes, but I don't trust myself to get the super detailed stuff right.
Sounds.
Ripping paper! Also, the last time I did this, I had a xylophone soundtrack, just for shits and giggles. I may actually recycle that. (I don't really have the time to make something new, anyway: I'm not a fucking composer.) Also, various sound effects of stuff that is happening in the story. It's not going to be a music performance, though, unless you're into the very avant-garde stuff. XD I'm not yet sure about how verbal this is going to be, but generally, a larger audience means more narration because your alternative options are quite limited. I may actually have dialogue this time.
Light.
In this case, the spotlight I use for photography otherwise. It's the only light source I have that's strong enough for a screen this size, and also, since the setting is very simple (...a hallway...), I don't have to get creative with flickering light sources or anything. I won't need any fancy artificial fire light. (I have that, but it's not very good...) I may need moving light in addition, but that's what flashlights and mirrors are for... So, minimalist lighting this time, but that's okay when the focus is on the images anyway. (The first time I did shadow theater, it was spontaneous and completely improvised, and I only had flashlights and a mirror. It worked anyway.) Like... I enjoy fancy light effects, I really do! (For example, I love explosion effects!) But also: if the concept won't work without them, it's very likely that the concept sucks...
....okay, wall of text again. Whatever. I expect no one to read this. LOL
The story.
Obviously, any storytelling performance (and I'm talking about 'storytelling' in the widest sense possible; performances do not need to be verbal, even!) needs a story. In this case, I don't need to come up with one: the person on the organizing committee who invided me specifically asked "Can you do the wood veneer one, please?", and sure, I can do that. I have performed that one several times already; it was always quite successful (as in: entertaining the audience) - and that has to do with the specific story format.
The kind of story you can do (successfully, anyway) strongly depends on what you are planning to do with it, and the 'wood veneer story' would fall flat in many (most!) formats... "Two entitled young men fail at renovating a hallway" is, of course, not what a successful novel is made of. It's not even a short story. As the plot of anything, it's boring. The only way the concept can work is as a stage performance - if the audience can be compelled to care about the two young men in question and their misadventures involving wood veneer. (That's a big 'if', but a decent storyteller should be able to pull it off.)
Story structure.
Looking from the technical story-crafting side, you will probably notice that this is a minimalist prompt lacking structural elements like a beginning, a climax, or an ending - and this is quite intentional and specific to the performance format. I've been to 'readings' and 'storytelling events', and... The kind of literature reading that takes a written story and reads it to the audience usually falls flat in comparison. This has several reasons, one being that the story tempo of something that's read necessarily differs from something that's heard - it never feels quite natural otherwise. Another key reason is that, in storytelling, you can't ignore your audience. You have to adapt. Is there an unexpected bunch of young children in the audience? Are your listeners largely in a bad mood because the music event that was scheduled to happen, and which they actually bought the convention tickets for, has been spontaneously cancelled and they're only there because they have nothing better to do? Has some idiot set up your podium next to the restroom entrance so there's a lot of disruption?
Some things can be planned (always get a room plan of the whole venue, not just the room you're supposed to be in, beforehand!) but others can't. I'm dealing with this by having a lot of flexibility: I have an exact idea of characters, central conflict, and things that can reasonably happen, but I'm keeping the structure as flexible as possible - which is zero structure. I'm not claiming this will work for everyone, but I'm happiest when I can read my audience's mood, change the pacing accordingly, or spontaneously explore a side aspect of the story that seems to fascinate people in more detail...
Improvision.
The bad news is: I'm not all that good at complete improvision - I can't walk into a room without knowing what story I'm going to tell. Some storytellers can do that, but I'm not one of them. (The most impressive case I've ever seen is a very famous German writer who can chat with random people before a performance, then start with a reading from one of his books, and totally derail the thing by building the people he's just talked to as characters into the story which will then, of course, turn into something entirely else. It's amazing - and it doesn't just take superior storytelling skills but also extreme extraversion and people skills. There's no way in hell I'd ever be able to pull this off.) If I start performing without knowing even the genre I'm in, the only thing I could hope for is 'so bad it's good', but even that requires dumb luck.
Also, shadow theater needs some level of technical preparation, so it's inherently less flexible than, e.g., purely verbal storytelling. I do a lot of paper manipulation on stage (it's part of the fun!), but still, some papercuts (usually settings, key items, and characters) have to be prepared beforehand. I can't change who the story is about, and while I can have alternative settings, alternative endings and so on, I prefer not to. Lighting effects - especially the more difficult ones - are also practiced beforehand, to avoid unpleasant surprises. So... I improvise a lot less than you'd think. XD
Characters.
Unfortunately, I can't offer any advice on how to generate characters, they just appear - but I will say that the resulting stories are almost always the natural result of characters interacting with each other while being themselves. In this particular example... The characters are Dev and Arc. Dev is a character who already appeared in other stories; his baseline personality was fixed from the beginning. Arc, by now, also has his own stories, but this is actually the one in which he appeared for the first time, so, I'll try and describe that process...
I wasn't trying to add yet another character to the Kolthainn setting! It's just that my 'main characters', of course, don't exist in a vacuum. Dev lives in the student dorm at uni. Arc is the (unfortunate) guy who was assigned the room next door. He wasn't supposed to be 'special' in any way - no big secrets in his past, just a perfectly normal wealthy young man starting uni, getting an education so he can one day take over his father's business. He wasn't supposed to appear in the stories at all. Except... Even this clichéd and deliberately bland personality draft has consequences.
The thing is... Arc is a perfectly normal young man, who (based on his father's tales from his uni days) expected to take some classes in the day time, and otherwise... make friends his age, spend the nights in taverns, chat up some nice girls, maybe ill-advisedly experiment with some substances... You know. And then, he arrives at uni and is stuck next door to the 'creepy' autistic guy who not only is disinterested in socializing and visiting the local taverns (which is bad enough) but may or may not be a necromancer involved in sinister, scary stuff... Arc has his suspicions and opinions. Plus, of course, he has his own baggage to deal with. For example, uni classes are the first time he encounters math for math's sake, and he loves it (and, to everyone's including his own surprise, turns out to be a bit of a genius at it - who knew you could use math for more than accounting?), but convincing his parents to let him change his major is going to be difficult. All in all, Arc is not a 'bad guy' (I know having an 'unpopular' main character, which Dev certainly is, almost demands making the 'popular' character a dumb, mean bully, but I don't like that whole concept - it's an unfair prejudice), but he's certainly noticing the weird things going on next door (I mean... There are explosions!), and he's unhappy with the whole situation. (Heck, I would be more than just a bit unhappy if I suspected my rude, unsocial next-door neighbor of consorting with demons on top of everything. Arc's way of dealing with things is somewhat asshole-ish, but also, it's not as if he didn't have a point.)
...and that's enough to flavor the interactions between Dev and Arc. They're not going to agree on anything, including on the color of the sky. Also, there's no way they will just civilly ignore each other. In this case, a hallway incident leads to these guys having to re-panel the walls at their own cost. Money is not an issue. Agreeing on wood veneer is. (Dev has some sensory issues and will not agree to veneer that feels wrong. Arc is socially aware and will not agree to veneer that looks cheap and/or out-of-fashion, in case he invites friends - or, worse, family - over.) Having grown up wealthy and privileged, neither is very good at compromises. Or, for that matter, deescalation. So... Yeah. That story pretty much self-generated from basic character premises, and the fictional hallway suffered. (As you can probably tell, I'm a completely character-driven storyteller. It will work differently for other people!)
Arrangement.
There is, of course, the small matter of making an hour of wood veneer conflict interesting for an audience, and it's certainly not the plot that is going to do it. Also, I can't trust the audience to care about the characters right from the beginning: I have to assume most people don't know the characters (or, if they've been at one of my performances pre-pandemic, don't remember them), so if there's nothing that draws them in, they just won't give a fuck. Sure, the whole thing is funny, but that's not really enough to entertain people if the arrangement is bad...
...okay, actually, this story would not have been my first choice for a performance in front of a large audience at all, because it's seriously difficult to present. The first time I performed this, it was under ideal conditions: a very small group, which offered everybody a chance at interaction. For example... There were, unsurprisingly, large amounts of wood veneer for everybody to touch. Everybody was sitting close enough for nonverbal interactive storytelling techniques to work. In a large room, that's not an option, so the way the story is told will have to change as well. The last time I did this, it was in a room with, like, 20 people, and I could only directly interact with those sitting in the front. I did bring wood veneer, but people had to pass it around, which was not ideal. This time, the room will have a slightly elevated stage and rows of seats below, so... either I remove the haptic component altogether (which... sucks) or I somehow incorporate the audience members interacting with each other - which brings its own problems. (Not everyone may want to interact with their seat neighbors.) I have not quite decided yet.
The room has a large cinema screen, though! This is very cool, as it means I have a lot of space for visual effects. I have to bring my own light sources, but I'd do that anyway, so that's not an issue. The disadvantage is that the screen is behind me, so I'm between the light source and the screen... For 'classical' shadow theater, this would be bad. I could hide behind a dark screen... Or I could stay visible, in which case I'm inevitably part of what's watched. Both is possible (and I've done both!) but has a very different effect. I've decided to be invisible this time, in order to not distract from the papercuts.
Papercuts.
Papercuts are a lot of work. And also: they cannot really be recycled. The reason I'm not reusing the ones from the last performance of this story (which was so long ago no one would remember them and notice) is the specific lighting setup. I will have a light source on the ground, angling up, and project onto a screen that's mounted on the wall. This will distort anything I put in between. Which means: yes, I have to know the distance between light source and wall and the height of the screen. I then have to calculate how I have to distort my sketches so they'll look 'normal' on the screen. It's basic trigonometry, so, not difficult... but still a lot of work in those images, and venue-specific, so no, if you're an event organizer and you spontaneously ask your shadow theater performer to switch rooms, this performer will be pissed. Enough said. XD
A technical note: there is special papercut paper. This is very useful if cutting something is part of the performance - you'll get a lot of detail very quickly because you can reverse cutting order fast without accidentally ripping everything. I don't use this paper for the images I prepare beforehand, though: it's rather thin and wobbly, and better suited for artwork that's perpetually mounted on a background. I tend to prefer black construction paper. Also: this time, because of the unfortunate lighting angle, there will be zero cutting on stage. Ripping and folding, yes, but I don't trust myself to get the super detailed stuff right.
Sounds.
Ripping paper! Also, the last time I did this, I had a xylophone soundtrack, just for shits and giggles. I may actually recycle that. (I don't really have the time to make something new, anyway: I'm not a fucking composer.) Also, various sound effects of stuff that is happening in the story. It's not going to be a music performance, though, unless you're into the very avant-garde stuff. XD I'm not yet sure about how verbal this is going to be, but generally, a larger audience means more narration because your alternative options are quite limited. I may actually have dialogue this time.
Light.
In this case, the spotlight I use for photography otherwise. It's the only light source I have that's strong enough for a screen this size, and also, since the setting is very simple (...a hallway...), I don't have to get creative with flickering light sources or anything. I won't need any fancy artificial fire light. (I have that, but it's not very good...) I may need moving light in addition, but that's what flashlights and mirrors are for... So, minimalist lighting this time, but that's okay when the focus is on the images anyway. (The first time I did shadow theater, it was spontaneous and completely improvised, and I only had flashlights and a mirror. It worked anyway.) Like... I enjoy fancy light effects, I really do! (For example, I love explosion effects!) But also: if the concept won't work without them, it's very likely that the concept sucks...
....okay, wall of text again. Whatever. I expect no one to read this. LOL
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 05:24 pm (UTC)I learned about Indonesian shadow puppetry in high school and have been pining after shadow theater ever after, although I've never been fortunate enough to see a performance live. :3 I think the closest was watching Princes et Princesses [YouTube] that someone had passed to me.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 05:43 pm (UTC)A local museum regularly had Javanese shadow theater performances; I grew up with them! (Same place where I also got to listen to gamelan.) I'm not really inspired to make anything in that style, though - I'm (obviously) culturally closer to German papercut art (Scherenschnitt; interestingly, Wikipedia manages to misspell the word, which is not supposed to be a plural word) traditions... (Do you know Lotte Reiniger? She was a pioneer of silhouette animation, using images in the classical style with influences from various other cultures. Amazing stuff.)
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 05:46 pm (UTC)So, the papercut traditions I learned about at an impressionable age (teens/college rather than childhood) were the Chinese one (I only later learned that there is a Korean one, although not a theatrical one, and honestly we probably...stole it from China) and Mexico's papel picado [Wikipedia]. :D
no subject
Date: 2023-03-28 05:59 pm (UTC)A recommendation: Reiniger's Cinderella (Youtube link), a genre classic. From 1922, with new music.