Shadow play

It's very often that you can feel, especially when I was living in a village, even though I wasn't living in Java, I was living in Sumatra.

But there were many occasions where people invited a puppet master, shadow puppet master to do some shows there.

So for a kid watching this shadow puppet, For me, it was very scary.

I don't know why I get that scary feeling every time I watch Shadow Puppet.

So I get nightmares about people being kidnapped and their skin turned into the Shadow Puppet.

And it was confirmed by my brother.

He said that Actually, there were shadow puppets that were made by human skins.

And they were actually, yes, it was true.

Yes.

One of my favorite series of work by you was, uh, kind of shadow puppets.

There's one called Swan from 2012, where you've got your hands and a light shining, um, onto a wall with a kind of shadow puppet, and it reminded me a lot of childhood, but also of the significance and importance of light to you within your work as a whole.

And it was that body of work that kind of made me look at your work again differently.

You know, I love it when you discover smaller bodies of work that you then can reanalyze somebody's whole, like, oeuvre in a way.

Can you speak a bit about those shadow puppets and how, how that body-

Yeah

... of work came to be?

Do you know what I mean? It, it does fit with the, the motif of it.

Um, h- honestly, it kind of fits with the Shadow Puppets before it as well, like that whole thing they were doing, like when they cover like, um, uh, what's the Leonard Cohen song they cover? Um, you know the-

Yeah

... you know what I mean, don't you?

I didn't know that was him until I did my research [laughs] for this podcast, but I went, "Oh, that song.

Okay." Um, so yes, I knew him from that.

And also, apparently, uh, he played bass on tour with The Last Shadow Puppets.

So I don't know if that, that's the first.

So he's leading you back down to the main floor.

um and it's in the top area of so on the map stage level um it is m10 but you don't have that number it's the big room in the middle towards the top that has all the rows of seats like a small theater yes yes that is that is the room that stage right is leading you to towards this is referred to as the shadow theater So do you all follow him? Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah,

exactly.

You make your way down to the shadow theater.

Maybe Broseph can talk to the puppet.

I come and introduce myself.

I hand you a business card and say, Scott Fang, Shadow Puppets.

Okay.

jesus christ that's

his profession scott fang shadow

puppeteer he's a bard he's clearly a bard yeah who performs at like kids parties and stuff and he's

using minor illusion magic to make the shadow puppets like pretty impressive no no no no he doesn't

they're just normal shadow puppets And when he goes to shake y'all's hand, he uses the shadows to like, yeah, just shake my hand.