SHADOWS

Excerpts from the work and feedback of students in L1 Performing Arts at the University Bordeaux Montaigne

“The spirit of exploration, omnipresent in contemporary shadow theater, made me feel, in general, in my personal artistic practice, that the importance in theatrical writing is not to have a pre-established story in mind; it is to always experiment with new things to tell a story from them. In other words, one should not be exclusively in reflection, one must be in action.”

“One must ask oneself, ‘What do I show?’ The shadow is an illusion that engages both the imagination of the one who shows and the one who sees, of the one who is an actor and the spectator. It is a discovery, an appropriation.”

“I have never devoted so much time to my shadow.”

"I would like to end with a phrase I discovered while reading documents on shadow theater: ‘Shadows teach us to explore the blind spots of vision and knowledge. They promote emotional vision, sensory and aesthetic reflection on ways of seeing and on the inevitable dialectic of light and shadow.’ In my opinion, William Kentridge perfectly describes what I can now feel and understand about shadows."

“The teacher turned the light back on. Then, I rushed towards the projector. My head appeared in close-up and the other people in the group crawled out of my mouth. Here, the identity of others is spat out.”

“In shadow theater, the light source is like a subjective camera, as if one is seeing through someone’s eyes.”

“I was impressed by such a satisfying artistic result in such a short training time, and that is what I like about contemporary shadow theater, that it is accessible to everyone because ultimately we see our shadow every day and we can create new things with objects too; we just need to have imagination.”