The origin and development of puppetry (I) The origin of puppetry Puppetry art has a long history of development in my country. The origin of puppetry is related to the funeral figurines of slave society (such as Han Dynasty pottery figurines, Qin Shihuang Terracotta Warriors, etc.). In 1978, the archaeological discovery of the Han Dynasty tomb in Laixi County, Shandong Province, allowed us to see the puppets made in the Han Dynasty that could sit, stand, kneel, and be flexibly manipulated. This also confirmed the possibility of the story of "Yanshi made magical puppets" recorded in "Liezi Tangwen" and "Chen Ping used puppet beauties to relieve Maodun from the siege of Liu Bang" recorded in "Yuefu Miscellaneous Records". According to Tang Duyou's "Tongdian", "Kuleizi, also known as Kuileizi, made puppets for play, good at singing and dancing, originally for funerals, and was used in banquets at the end of the Han Dynasty", which means that by the end of the Han Dynasty, there were puppets that were used for funerals and banquets and had performance functions. By the Sui Dynasty, puppet making was highly developed, and it had developed from performing a variety of plays, singing and dancing to performing story fragments, forming the prototype of puppetry. By the Tang Dynasty, puppet art had gradually matured. According to the "Miscellaneous Records of Emperor Minghuang", when Emperor Xuanzong of Tang was forced to move to the Western Palace by Li Fuguo, he wrote a poem about puppets: "I carved wood and pulled strings to make an old man, with chicken skin and crane hair just like the real man. After a moment of playing, there was nothing to do, as if life was just a dream." This vividly describes the realism of puppet shows at that time and the feelings of the audience. (II) Basic types of puppet shows Puppet shows are a form of performance in which actors manipulate puppets to perform stories. Chinese puppet shows originated in the Han Dynasty and developed and improved in the Tang Dynasty, with puppets being able to perform singing and dancing. The Song Dynasty was an important period in the development of Chinese puppet shows, and the production technology and manipulation skills of puppets became more mature. With the development of social economy, puppet shows became popular all over the country in the Ming Dynasty, and puppet shows were more prosperous in the economically developed southern region, so there is a saying that "the south is good at puppets". After the Qing Dynasty, puppetry entered its heyday. It was not only popular in a wide range, but also had more and more vocal styles. There were branches such as Liaoxi puppetry, Zhangzhou glove puppetry, Quanzhou string puppetry, Jinjiang glove puppetry, Shaoyang glove puppetry, Gaozhou puppetry, Chaozhou iron rod puppetry, northern Sichuan big puppetry, Shiqian puppetry, Pingyang string puppetry, Taishun medicine puppetry, and Lingao puppetry. In terms of performance form, it can be summarized into five types: string puppetry, rod puppetry, glove puppetry, iron rod puppetry, and medicine puppetry. The puppetry major of Shanghai Theatre Academy now covers four major types of puppetry popular in the Chinese puppet world: string puppetry, rod puppetry, glove puppetry, and shadow puppetry (formerly known as leather puppetry). Traditional puppetry and Shanghai-style puppetry (I) Definition of Shanghai-style puppetry There are written records of puppetry performances in Shanghai in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China. In the early 20th century, with the development of Shanghai's urban economy, string puppetry and glove puppetry, which are mainly based on traditional opera, came to Shanghai and were performed in entertainment venues such as Louwailou, Qichongtian, Xinshijie, and Xiuyuntian. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, left-wing cultural figures used modern creative concepts to bring adapted foreign children's literature works to the Chinese puppet stage for the first time, resulting in qualitative changes in content, form, creative mechanism, and service objects, laying a solid foundation for the formation of the "Shanghai-style puppetry" style and its future development. Over the past decades, Shanghai puppetry has absorbed the strengths of Chinese and foreign stage arts, inherited and developed the characteristics of various traditional Chinese puppets, and created many new varieties of puppets on the basis of rod puppets, such as: horizontal puppets, cloth iron rod puppets, Shanghai stunt rod puppets, origami rod puppets, rod rubber puppets, woolen puppets, line puppets, human-shaped puppets, giant puppets, etc., and created a large number of plays that are popular with the audience with its unique stage performance style. Shanghai puppetry uses traditional puppet performances to interpret some plays with modern creative concepts and suitable for children's aesthetic characteristics. They combine singing, singing, speaking and acting together, which not only strengthens the story of the play, but also conforms to the children's appreciation of story. With the efforts of several generations, Shanghai puppetry was included in the national intangible cultural heritage list in 2011. Although traditional Chinese puppetry pays more attention to manipulation techniques and emphasizes the high degree of simulation of performance, the greatest feature of Shanghai-style puppetry art is that its performance is not restricted by form, and is more artistically imaginative and expressive, that is, as long as it is needed, it can be used by us. (II) Content positioning of Shanghai-style puppetry The script selection of traditional Chinese puppetry is often evolved from some oral operas, mythological stories or model operas. For example, the mythological puppetry "Sun Wukong Three Fights the White Bone Demon" and "Huashan Prodigy" often highlight the traditional cultural background, which is also related to the performers' learning and education level. With the development of the times, song and dance creation was later added. Shanghai-style puppetry has shed the conventional storyline and is rich and diverse. All kinds of discoveries in life can be adapted into puppetry. For example, "Puppet New Fun" created by Shanghai Puppet Theater uses only a few pieces of colored cloth to depict a story about two chicks fighting for insects, and reveals simple life philosophy in humor. This unique creativity of "puppet" breaks the limitation of puppet performance in production, and is full of imagination. Its themes and plots clearly reflect the style of Shanghai-style puppet show. (III) Stage performance of Shanghai-style puppet show The traditional puppet show stage has inherited the characteristics of opera dance for a long time, and even the performance venue is integrated with opera. Its performance characteristics of "using objects to represent people" determine the function of the puppet stage, that is, to shield the manipulator and separate the viewing area. In recent decades, the multifunctional Shanghai-style puppet show with a frame structure has inherited the past and ushered in the future, drawing on the strengths of modern drama art, using new materials, integrating sound, light and electricity to create an atmosphere, and adding curtain positions and scenes, emphasizing the all-round effect of stage layout and highlighting the comprehensiveness of art. Since the 1970s and 1980s, puppet reforms have made rapid progress, and the characteristics of Shanghai-style puppet show have become more and more prominent. Highlighting "puppet nature" has become a major focus of concept renewal and exploration. It emphasizes the hypothetical nature of actions, breaks the frame structure, removes obstructions, and allows puppets to appear on the same stage or even walk out of the stage. In addition, the use of "black velvet puppets", the spatial arrangement of multiple scenic spots, and the use of large-scale stage methods are all deepening the independent character of puppet art, and at the same time greatly attracting the attention of the audience. In particular, the changes in stage, stunts, music and puppet modeling make today's Shanghai-style puppet shows more fun and more attractive than traditional puppet shows. For example, on December 31, 1988, the Tibetan-style drama "Charming Shoton Festival" premiered by the Shanghai Puppet Theater at the Xianle Theater was the first Shanghai-style puppet show that was influenced by Western concepts to break the conventional frame structure and use puppets on the same stage to perform, integrating music, drama, dance, etc. The play was performed 158 times in 1990, with an audience of 126,905. Another example: the puppet show "The Little Match Girl" boldly used the performance method of puppets on the same stage, and even let Andersen appear on the stage by real people to tell the story to everyone. This play won the highest award "Golden Lion Award" of the 2nd "National Puppet Shadow Play Competition", and won almost all the awards including director, performance, stage design, actor dubbing, etc. Unlike traditional puppet shows, "The Little Match Girl" has no curtains to block the puppets. The actors who manipulate the puppets are dressed in black clothes and black hats and hide in the dark. Due to the wonderful use of lighting, the audience can see the dim street lights, the flying snow, and the little girl in single clothes on the stage, but they can't see the actors in between. There are three actors behind each puppet to manipulate it. The seamless cooperation makes each puppet come alive. Whether it is a drunkard, a stray dog, a burning match, or a little girl, every character is lifelike. The most exciting scene is that the little girl puts on a beautiful skirt in her fantasy, dances on the clouds and moves her waist to dance ballet, which is fascinating. It can be seen that the fantasy created by the use of lighting and stage design in the play "Selling Matches" gives the audience great artistic enjoyment with rich imagination and exquisite stage effects. In general, compared with the traditional puppet show separated by a 1.7-meter stage (curtain), the Shanghai-style puppet show is more up-close and more diverse, especially the imagination displayed by the integration of animation elements, creating a feast for children that combines education and entertainment. (IV) The scalability and innovation of Shanghai-style puppet shows. Traditional puppet shows, due to the positioning of the script content of myths, fairy tales, model plays, etc., have not kept up with the aesthetic tastes of modern audiences, and their entertainment is not enough to meet the needs of contemporary audiences, especially its single stage form, which is also difficult to bring more satisfaction to the audience under the impact of animation, film and television. Mozart once said: "As long as you pay attention, you will find that the soul of the puppet is not only in the puppet, but also in the rich and humorous body language and smooth imagination space." It is precisely because Shanghai-style puppet shows have continuously expanded people's imagination, especially the continuous innovation in stage performance techniques, that is, the addition of sound, light, electricity and other elements, making the script creation more colorful and expanding the audience. This kind of innovation that caters to market demand without deviating from the fundamentals of puppet art allows Shanghai puppetry to keep up with the times, inherit and innovate, and have endless potential for sustainable development. The artistic value of Shanghai puppetry Shanghai puppetry has the characteristics of Shanghai culture, which is inclusive, good at discarding, pursuing excellence, and daring to innovate. Today, it has been on a diversified development path and has created new stage performance forms. For a long time, the service objects of Chinese puppetry have mostly been children, and what kind of information the artists behind the puppets want to convey to the children through the roles played by the puppets has always been a crucial issue. In my opinion, the best artistic companions for children should be these little puppets, so as the creators of puppet shows, they should first spread moral norms, social responsibilities, and cultural heritage to children through this artistic carrier. Because puppets have the attributes of toys, children have a natural affinity for them. The biggest difference between puppet performances and live performances is that the characters created by real people will affect the aesthetic sense of the characters as the actors grow older, while the "doll" image of puppets will always exist unchanged. Even if it is a puppet from thousands of years ago, as long as it is made up, its basic form will still exist, so the beauty entrusted to it can be preserved from generation to generation. The little puppet is a golden key to open the hearts of children. It can not only entertain children, but also undertake the function of children's art education. For example, "Sun Wukong Fights the White Bone Demon Three Times", "The Ugly Duckling", "Nezha Conquers the Dragon King", and "The Little Match Girl" can all be called "enlightenment teachers" for children. In terms of innovative value, I think it is also worth mentioning "Spring Fantasy", a musical prose drama. It has made all-round innovations in scriptwriting, directing, performance, music, modeling, stage design, etc., and for the first time broke through the concept that "puppets only act". "Spring Fantasy" completely eliminated the plot and had no dialogues. Instead, it took "Spring" as the theme and unfolded extremely rich imagination from an unusual perspective, showing "Spring's vitality", "Spring's reverie", "Spring's poetry" and "Spring's charm" vividly and interestingly. The entire creation and rehearsal process of the play is actually a process of artistic imagination, not only a fantasy of "Spring", but also a brand-new fantasy practice of puppet art from form to content. In order to fully reflect the "fantasy", the creators continued to explore and pioneered many new puppet art styles and varieties, which were integrated into "Spring Fantasy". For example, in the bursts of wind chimes, an innocent little girl expressed her heart with her sweet and tender voice. The bow on the girl's braids spread its wings and flew up lightly, pulling the word "Spring" into a green belt and dancing, and dancing out bursts of spring snow and wisps of spring rain. At this moment, crystal water drops moisten the earth, spring buds break out of the soil, cheering the arrival of spring; butterflies bring a silk scarf to cover the heads of spring buds, and the spring buds play the game of brides. Especially the silk scarf flies freely like a swallow. It is a swallow and a piece of cloth. However, it interprets vivid and interesting stories, turning into a flower umbrella game, a rooster playing the piano, a peacock dancing, a model performance, a girl playing "Spring River Moon Night", etc. Finally, it turns into a magnolia fairy dancing ballet in the white magnolia, thus ushering in the colorful 0. Its unique conception, novel style, and strange shape fully mobilize the vocabulary of music and dance, especially the intoxicating spring river moon night depicted by fabric art, which brings people a new visual enjoyment. Children and even adults did not expect that ordinary cloth in life can become magical and art on the stage of puppet show. After watching the play, Director Hu of Shanghai Theatre Academy applauded repeatedly and excitedly called on all students studying stage design to come and watch the play, saying that they would use it as a case study for aesthetic research. All this highlights the artistic value of Shanghai-style puppetry, which has made it a big step forward on the road of artistic exploration. Puppetry is one of the most important representatives of Chinese visual art. It has a profound history of more than 2,000 years and is also the ancestor of Chinese stage art. Puppetry is not only a companion for children to grow up, but in a deeper sense, Chinese puppet art also deeply contains China's traditional culture, and culture is both the blood of a nation and the spiritual home of a nation. Today, Shanghai-style puppetry is innovating in inheritance and integrating in development, fully reflecting the development concept of keeping pace with the times. Especially today when we are accelerating the great development and prosperity of socialist culture, Shanghai-style puppetry will be a new milestone in Chinese puppetry art.