Something that tickles me and might tickle you as well is a shadow puppet show based on one of the stories from 1,001 Nights. One of the lesser-known tales, it must be said. But the performers show an infectious enthusiasm for the material.
The image of an unlucky angler getting a shoe or boot on their fishing line is pretty widespread, at least enough to have its own TV Tropes page. I wonder if this tale was the origin.
2 comments:
As I watched it I couldn't help but think of my friend Belle who has worked with puppets frequently over the years. When she and Inger went to Sri Lanka with Belle's professional puppeteer friend David, she bought several shadow puppets from local craftsmen. The real ones are quite large, like 40 inches or more, and they're made from leather. I sent her the video you found and this was her reaction:
"I liked the way they created the buildings and bridge allowing just the right amount of light to be seen in their backdrop."
I liked the fact they were performing for the group of children you could hear shouting and laughing.
The story of finding a boot in the water rather than a fish may well be original to the 1001 Nights stories. We have the book, but I must admit I've never read all of them.
They have to be made of something durable, I would gather, if you don't want to have to make new ones every other performance. And bigness helps if you're making a show for a biggish crowd. Belle does seem like a good person to run things by in this field, since she has an eye for art (as did Inger) as well as a familiarity with shadow puppets.
Agree that it's cool to see them performing for children. Kids have sharp imaginations, although we seem to be trying to breed that out of them.
The 1001 Nights were widely influential. I haven't read nearly all of them either. Like the title tells you, there's a lot. They were also written by numerous hands over a number of centuries, so it took some clever editing to make them look like a consistent work.
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