Artistic Research On Shadow Play In South Hebei Province

Shadow play in South Hebei Province as traditional inheritance of shadow play from ancient central plains area in Song Dynasty, possess unique artistic characteristics and profound historical and cultural significance. However, in terms of research on shadow play, academic circles at home and abroad mainly focus on several famous genres, and research on shadow play in South Hebei Province become less and less. Therefore, the author entered among the people for many times to conduct fieldwork to those villages where shadow play of South Heibei Province prevails in details and interviewed with several artists related to shadow play, learned how to control shadow people and operate shadow puppet, so as to understand its modeling and performance features directly and deeply. This paper will start from art, folklore, cultural anthropology and other perspectives based on research achievements of senior scholars by document analysis, field investigation, comparison analysis and other methods, to conduct analytic arrangement relatively.This paper is divided into five parts, the first part describes historical origin and existing conditions of shadow play in South Hebei Province; the second part describes modeling features and performing style; the third part conducts compassion between shadow play in South Heibei Province and representatives of western shadow play in Huaxian County, Shanxi, representatives of northern shadow play in Tangshan; the fourth part explores folk culture connotation of shadow play in South Hebei Province, and analyze why it can be so popular in south Hebei Province for a long time, which is associated with local folk art, custom and religious culture etc.; the fifth part discusses inheritance and protection based on current situation of fieldwork investigated in shadow play in South Hebei Province. Meanwhile, from perspectives of troupes of shadow play in South Hebei Province and existing current situation of older artists to analyze the reason why it will endanger extinction, and combine specific protective measures taken to shadow play in South Hebei Province by artists related to it and governments at all levels to put forward its own suggestions.