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Since our recent publication of Shadow Woman, by Grant Hayter-Menzies, we’ve been seeing puppets everywhere!
We came across this fascinating article in the McGill News Alumni Magazine on Master of Puppets Jeffrey Achtem, AKA “Mr. Bunk”, a McGill grad who is now taking the world by storm with his cinematic puppet shows.
“Getting the silhouette just right is the only thing that matters to me,” he says. “The objects themselves are secondary and shouldn’t be revered. I want the audience to focus on the shadows on screen.”
Grant Hayter-Menzies’ Shadow Woman looks at the remarkable career of Pauline Benton, an American woman who became the world’s first female master of Chinese shadow theatre.
Mastering the male-dominated art form in China, Benton enchanted audiences eager for the exotic in Depression-era America. Her touring company, Red Gate Shadow Theatre, was lauded by theatre and art critics and even performed at Franklin Roosevelt’s White House. Grant Hayter-Menzies traces Benton’s performance history and her efforts to preserve shadow theatre as a global cultural treasure by drawing on her unpublished writings, the recollections of her colleagues, the testimonies of shadow masters who survived China’s Cultural Revolution, as well as young innovators who have carried on Benton’s pioneering work.
Read the author’s guest blog post
In March, Grant will be launching Shadow Woman at Montreal’s 9th annual Les trois jours de casteliers, an international festival devoted to the art of puppetry.
To learn more about this book, or to order it online, click here.
For media inquiries, contact MQUP publicist Jacqui Davis.
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