[BCMA] Book Launch: SHADOW WOMAN The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

Saturday October 12th 2:00-4:00pm FREE event
Seating is limited. Please RSVP by October 11th 5:00pm, 604-658-8880, museum2 at cccvan.com (closed on Monday Oct. 7th)
Address: Chinese Cultural Centre Museum, 555 Columbia Street, Vancouver, BC
www.cccvan.com

The author will display eight antique shadow figures from the collection of the late Beijing shadow master Cui Yongping.

The Canadian Society for Asian Arts and the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver are excited to co-sponsor the launch of 

Shadow Woman: The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton by author Grant Hayter-Menzies. A reception will ensue following the launch. 




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 the 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 a Depression-era audience that became eager to see this exotic show.



During the Vancouver 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 of never-before-published photographs of Benton in performance, 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 play a brief excerpt of the sole surviving rehearsal tape from Benton’s career recorded in Carmel, California in 1971, when she partnered with renowned composer and musician Lou Harrison for what would be Benton’s final performances of this same play.





CCC Museum
Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver
555 Columbia Street, Vancouver, BC
604-658-8880, museum at cccvan.com
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