Future.com, Beijing, December 2 (Reporter Ling Meng) The average age of a group of people is 22 years old and the average height is 1At 26 meters, the "pocket" person with a child-like face and voice supports the non-genetic inheritance dream of a shadow puppet art troupe. At the 8th Beijing International Children's Extracurricular Quality Education and Products Exhibition, several "pocket" actors from the Beijing Dragon Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe (hereinafter referred to as the Dragon Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe) came to the scene and staged a unique visual feast for the audience.
Hello kids, guess who I am?I am a shadow puppeteer, you can call me Lin Daiyu by whatever I want, or you can call me Xiaohua. It's a lively place today, come and play with us...... okayIn the hands of the "pocket" actor Li Jingcheng, the shadow puppet made of cowhide seems to be endowed with vitality, vividly making gestures such as stretching out arms and swinging.
Beijing Dragon Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe performance scene. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee).
According to Wang Xi, head of the Dragon Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe, the art troupe was founded in 2007, and after more than ten years of development, it has become an important platform for professional shadow puppet stage performances, shadow puppet culture dissemination, and shadow puppet skill Xi, and has also made outstanding achievements in the development and innovation of children's shadow puppet art.
Since 2009, our art troupe has begun to enter the school, allowing more and more children to come into contact with shadow puppetry and understand the stories behind this thousand-year-old intangible cultural heritage. Wang Xi said that the Long Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe has performed shadow puppetry in more than 1,000 schools in Beijing, and has established shadow puppet clubs in more than 20 schools for children to participate in and learn Xi in their spare time, and also provide shadow puppet courses to schools in need.
At present, there are 38 shadow puppet actors in the Long Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe, of which 26 are "pocket" actors, accounting for nearly seventy percent. In addition to the head of the art troupe, Wang Xi also has another identity: the inheritor of "Jingxi Shadow Puppet". In Wang Xi's view, it is most of the "pocket" actors in the art troupe who help hold up her "non-genetic inheritance dream".
In the early days of its establishment, there were few young people to inherit the art of shadow puppetry, and the old artists were over 60 years old. In this awkward situation, we found a group of valuable people - 'pocket people'. They share the same love for shadow puppet culture and are committed to passing on this intangible cultural heritage to more people. Wang Xi said.
Since then, Wang Xi has invited old artists to train "pocket people" as apprentices, and after long-term training, he taught them shadow puppet skills. It is reported that for more than ten years, the Long Zaitian Shadow Puppet Art Troupe has trained more than 200 "pocket" shadow puppet actors at zero cost.
Nowadays, there are fewer and fewer young people engaged in shadow puppetry, and I feel a full sense of accomplishment and pride in the process of passing on shadow puppet culture to young people. Every shadow puppet performance is an important embodiment of the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage, and I want to pass on shadow puppet culture to more people in the future. Li Jingcheng told reporters.
Wang Xi believes that at present, young people have been affected by bad content in the Internet, games and other fields, and it is particularly important to create intangible cultural heritage products that young people like to see. "At present, we have developed a series of shadow puppet propaganda products, such as promoting the views of 'no throwing objects in the air' and 'walking the dog on a leash' through shadow puppetry, so as to convey correct values to young people, integrate shadow puppetry with modernization, and better tell the stories of intangible cultural heritage to young people. ”