It is very commonly difficult to raise awareness among Western audiences as to the importance shadow and puppet theatrical traditions may play in a civilisation given that they tend to assume that such are no more than performances for children. However, those same Western audiences easily accept the religious origins to theatre even without ever having read Nietzsche's "The Origins of Greek Theatre'. However, in almost all Asian civilisations, this religious character proves still fundamental as regards shadow theatre. Indeed, as happens with a large proportion of what gets termed popular art, shadow theatre is also intrinsically bound up with religion. Companies especially tend to perform either on the occasion of festivities with their presence proving a sacrifice to the divinities calling for their help and protection or on special occasions to offer up thanks for some particular gift of good fortune. The figures in leather hold sacred powers and are handled with corresponding respect. The representations take on a shamanistic dimension: representing the invocation of either the dead or the gods. Shadow theatre holds a unique sense of fascination. To a great extent than any other theatrical genre, this form proves able to convey the public into a magical universe. The Chinese have a saying that goes: 'only in shadow theatre do horses get to trot above the clouds'. The shadows form a type of duality with our world but a world in which contrary to our own anything might happen. The term 《shadow》 also holds the meaning of soul, spirit, death; we employ the expression 《kingdom of the shades》 to refer to the place where our departed ancestors remain. This theatre, better than any other, thus severs to invoke the presence of both the dead and of gods without, in the meanwhile, rendering them in human form. However, these ghosts may take on and do take on life.
The characters, projected onto the screen, are made from leather with the respective source animal varying from region to region. The leather is, to a greater or lesser extent, smoothened out with a scraper depending on the translucent nature of the respective character and enabling the colour of the inks to stand out with the final result a performance carried out in either black and white or in colours. They may not necessarily have moveable joints and in such cases may represent a character, a feature in the scenery as well as an entire scenario. When having moveable, articulated joints, each piece represents a particular character in the play. Such articulation may extend to the entire body, whenever the character is required to dance, for example, or may only extend to the arms, as happens in Indonesia. A single character may be portrayed from various different perspectives: we very commonly encounter the face in profile alongside a frontal, full-body portrayal. The shapes tend to remain traditional in almost all cases as, in order to produce a new figure, an already existing example is taken as the template overlaying the leather that is due for cutting and shaping. The outline set down in the leather is then traced and cut with razorblades and chisels. However, there has been a generalised evolution in the range of colours applied: previously natural, mineral or vegetable colours were in effect and had to be pre-prepared. However, nowadays, for practical reasons, industrial colours are preferred even while the tones are not the same and, unfortunately are less strikingly beautiful than their historical predecessors.
This theatrical technique was invented in Asia as its longest standing origins are found in this continent even while there is no reliable documentation enabling its foundation to be attributed to any culture in particular even while there are certain specialists, perhaps overly imbued with a nationalist spirits, who insist on affirming this or that country was its original inventor. In India, the Mahanataka play, which predates 850, would in all likelihood have been written for shadow theatre even if there is no absolute certainty. Documented Chinese sources referring to a true style of shadow theatre accompanied by storytellers reach back only to the Song Dynasty of the 12 century. However, this theatrical genre may very well have existed long before any surviving written record about it. We need to accept that, given the current state of our knowledge, all hypotheses are possible and that, in all truth, the origins of shadow theatre remain unknown.
The more primitive styles, in which the characters are highly stylised but without moveable joints are only to be found in India and, nowadays, only in Orissa and Karnataka. Should we assume Indian origins then this theatrical genre must have spread along the Silk Route to China on the one hand and (or) by sea to Southeast Asia on the other hand where the technique was absorbed in conjunction with its repertoire. Significantly later, it would have spread from China to the Mongols and moving from Southeast Asia onto the Middle East. In the late 18th century, the Jesuits brought the style to France where it got adopted by Séraphin. Goethe, be charmed by the magical side to this theatrical style, held a shadow theatre performance evoking the myth of Athena in order to commemorate one of his birthdays. However, what also proves surprising is that, beyond in tis lands of origin, this theatrical style has not come back into wider utilisation. In the West, the genre does not rise above a performance for children even while in the past, Paris hosted a short run of shadow cabaret theatre at the Chat Noire, in Montmartre, in the late 19th century. Only rare modern creations adopt the genre such as some of the performances put on by the French companies Thêatre à Bretelles and Jean-Pierre Lescot. In Japan, apart from a brief period of imitating Western style performances in the late 19th century, shadow theatre never existed beyond a style in which performers go behind screens to assume various positions and projecting their shadow to give the illusion of being a teapot, a fish or any other objects or animals and without any puppets or other theatrical input.