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Lan Su Chinese Garden, 220 NW 2nd Avenue, Suite 1050, Portland, Oregon 97209
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Join Grant Hayter-Menzies for a book reading of Shadow Woman: The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton at the Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland.
Kansas-born Pauline Benton (1898-1974) was encouraged by her father, one of America's earliest feminist male educators, to reach for the stars. Instead, she reached for shadows. In 1920s Beijing, she discovered shadow theatre (piyingxi), a performance art where translucent painted puppets are manipulated by highly trained masters to cast coloured shadows against an illuminated screen. Finding that this thousand-year-old forerunner of motion pictures was declining in China, Benton believed she could save the tradition by taking it to America.
In his new book, Shadow Woman: The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton (McGill-Queen’s University Press, October 2013), author Grant Hayter-Menzies tells for the first time the story of how Benton mastered the male-dominated art form in China and with her Red Gate Shadow Players troupe enchanted Depression-era audiences eager for the exotic across North America.
During the Portland launch of Shadow Woman, Hayter-Menzies will discuss Benton’s life and career and her efforts to preserve shadow theatre as a global cultural treasure. Along with a slide show presentation, Hayter-Menzies will screen a rare 10 minute film shot in New York City in 1947, showing Benton performing scenes from her favorite shadow play, The White Snake, and will play a brief excerpt of the sole surviving rehearsal tape from Benton’s career, recorded in Carmel, California in 1971, when she partnered with composer/musician Lou Harrison for what would be Benton’s final performances of this same play. In addition to Red Gate memorabilia, Hayter-Menzies will also display several classic shadow puppets from a collection bequeathed to him by the late Beijing shadow master, Cui Yongping.