If the definition of a pioneer is one who goes before and prepares the way for others to follow, then Pauline Benton surely fits the bill. In our present age of glib cross-culturalization, its hard to imagine how radical it might have seemed in the 30’s and 40’s - to present a traditional Asian puppetry genre to American audiences, not as some sort of exotic ephemera, but as an art form worthy of inquiry and recognition in its own right. While other scholars of her era had made thorough investigations into Chinese shadow theater - Benjamin Marsh and Genevieve Wimsatt come to mind – no one else outside of Asia had ever devoted themselves with the same single mindedness to mastering its techniques in performance.

She was not an innovator and had no interest in reinterpreting or deconstructing the traditional forms. While the motive of her 50 year infatuation may in part have sprung from a somewhat romanticized idealization of a glorious lost Chinese culture, her dedication to conserving and preserving a vanishing, endangered art form is truly admirable. While her physical legacy may be slight - consisting of a few brief essays and articles, the unpublished manuscript of a book, a short 16mm film of excerpts from one of her most popular productions - she also left behind one of the largest private collection of Chinese shadow figures outside of China.

In many articles written about her career, Benton is referred to as “the shadow lady.” This seems particularly apt since most the details of her personal life are lost in a haze. She was born in 1898 in Baldwin, Kansas, that much can be garnered. But nowhere in her writings and manuscripts does she bother talking about her childhood or formative experiences. All that survives from her early years is a slim teenage travel diary, written while on a grand tour of prewar Europe, which hints at a strong attraction to the far off and foreign. Lucky for her, her family had the means to indulge this passion to the fullest. Her father became the president of the University of Philippines in Manila, which afforded her an opportunity to adventure off into the Orient.

But Benton’s love affair with the Far East seemed to have been fanned more directly by her aunt, Emma L. Konantz. She was a woman of formidable intellect and eccentric self direction - a professor of mathematics at Ohio Wesleyan University at a time when it was no small accomplishment for a female to penetrate the hide-bound, masculine enclaves of Academia. An avid interest in oriental art and culture prompted her to visit China, where she found a teaching position at Yenching University. Settling in the suburbs of Beijing, Konantz turned her small house and garden into “a shrine of beauty for all lovers of Chinese art” which soon became “a haven for students in need of counsel and sympathy.” Clearly “tante Emma” was a formative influence on the young Pauline. In 1921, after graduating from Miami University, she took the first available opportunity to visit her aunt in Beijing, the first of several trips. In all of Benton’s autobiographical writings, sketchy as they are, this is the point where she begins her narrative.

The year before her first China journey, the Field Museum in Chicago had mounted an exhibition of Bertold Lauffer’s collection of shadow figures (now residing at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City). Having heard of this exhibition, Benton was curious to see a genuine Chinese shadow performance once she got to Beijing. Unfortunately at that time, the traditional shadow theatre was in a period of serious decline. The civil chaos and economic depression which followed the fall of the last Imperial dynasty, along with competition from motion pictures (known as “electric shadows” in Mandarin,) had done in most of the shadow troupes in the city. But resourceful Aunt Emma managed to track down one of the few surviving companies still performing in the traditional “Luanchou” or “Eastern” style (Luanchou refers to the village in the vicinity of the capital that had been a center for the art of Chinese shadow theater for several centuries). The performance, in the courtyard garden of Konantz’s house, must have moved Benton deeply, for she described it breathlessly in a number of different articles and essays:

I cannot imagine any explorer having more thrilling adventures than I experienced on my journey of discovery into China’s rich and glamorous past through the medium of the shadow play. . . .

Our evening’s entertainment consisted of episodes from three plays, depicting exciting battles in which the victor was aided by breathtaking acrobatic and juggling feats, the mischievous pranks of the Monkey-god and the burning of a bamboo forest.

I watched the performance by teetering back and forth between the front and back sides of the stage in an effort to see the “cause” and “effect” all at the same time. It was difficult to tell whether the players or the audience were enjoying themselves more. At the end of the performance, the leader of the troupe looked at me, smiled, and said “Finish,” the only English word in his entire vocabulary!

[From “Turning a Gay Hobby Into a Full-Time Job” in The Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 2, 1941]

Seized by a desire to make her own shadow shows, Benton bought several figures in the antique markets and brought them back to New York City, where she was then living. Several years passed before the opportunity arose to actually use them in performance. A group of Chinese student friends requested that she do something for a variety program they were putting together. She complied, using a small paper screen and an outside narrator to explain the action. Although simply and crudely done, the audience responded enthusiastically to the beauty and agility of the figures themselves. Inspired by this first success, Benton went on to build herself a larger screen and search for play subjects in the available translations of Chinese literature. Thus began her obsession:

The statement has been made that “To know the Chinese theatre is to know in no small way the Chinese people.” How true I have found this to be! The secrets of Chinese costumes, arts, architecture, religion, history and mythology were all held in the quiet forms of the shadow figures. One thing led to another; there was no end of it all. Mr. Lee T’uo Chen, the shadow player with whom I later studied in Peking told me: “I have been doing this for more than 40 years and am still a student.”

[From the introduction to an unpublished manuscript on China’s Colored Shadow Plays 1941]

Benton was quite diligent in her studies. She collected as much primary source material as she could find, aided once more by Aunt Emma, who tracked down and translated traditional play scripts and other related articles and texts. A fruitful correspondence began with Mr. Lee. His family had been shadow performers for the Imperial Manchu household, regularly presenting their shows in the Forbidden City palace complex. When the last Emperor was deposed in 1912, they lost their prime patrons. Mr. Lee attended an American missionary school, where he became perhaps the only Chinese shadow master with any knowledge of the English language. Because of this, he was frequently called upon to do shows for visiting foreigners, and became a primary informant for both Marsh and Wimsatt.

By the late 20’s, Benton was already performing her shadows regularly in New York City. She began to collaborate with several artists to create new works: William Russell, an musician and specialist in comparative musicology, who composed and performed all the musical accompaniment on authentic Chinese instruments; and Lee Ruttle, an actor and former member of the original Provincetown Playhouse, who directed, adapted the translated Chinese play scripts for American audiences, and assisted in the manipulation of the figures. In 1932, the company was legally incorporated as “The Red Gate Shadow Theater,” which was amended in 1935 to “The Red Gate Players.”

In 1936 Aunt Emma died, victim of a fast moving cancer. Despite the rapid deterioration of her health, she managed to teach up until a month before her death, when student unrest caused by the Japanese invasion of Northern China closed down the universities. Her death deeply affected Benton. She returned to Beijing that year to help sort and sell off her aunt’s estate, but stayed on to study further with Mr. Lee. She took lessons in manipulation from him (social taboos forbid males touching females, so he had to correct her faulty efforts with sign language). She conducted interviews and pumped him for information about his life as a showman and particulars about his extensive repertoire (“If I asked him a question about one of his favorite plays, such as The White Snake, he would talk for 45 minutes without stopping!”) She also closely observed his performances, taking meticulously detailed notes on blocking, effects and stage business.

In addition to studying with Mr. Lee, Benton traveled about the north of China on expeditions arranged by one of her aunt’s colleagues at Yenching University, Dr. Ch’en Tsai-hsin. Dr. Ch’en, a true aficionado of the shadow theatre, brought her to see performances by some of the best traditional players still active in Northern China. During this period, she commissioned leading craftsman of the Lu family (see PI # 15) to make her a complete set of figures for several productions. She also collected additional figures, musical instruments and other necessary shadow paraphernalia. These were all put to good use when the worsening wartime conditions in China forced her back home to New York City.

Judging from existing programs and publicity materials dated between the mid 30’s through the late 50’s, the Red Gate Players’ repertoire consisted of about a dozen different short pieces adapted directly from traditional Chinese shadow texts (“Whitesnake,” “The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid,” “The Legend of the Willow Plate,” “The Legend of the Silk Goddess,” “The Burning of the Bamboo Garden” and “The Moon Lantern”). There were numerous short interludes, designed to highlight the figures themselves (Peking Street scenes, sword dances, etc). For the most part, the focus was on creating authentic Chinese shadow theatre programs, in English for general audience. She avoided a “pedantic approach, “opting instead to find a balance between authenticity and its interpretation for audiences that had little or no familiarity with the culture that the performances represented. This approach, coupled with their high level of artistic technique apparently moved audiences quite strongly and earned them a degree of critical acclaim.

During the late 30’s, American audiences had begun to take an active interest in Chinese culture. China was already being viewed as a potential ally against Japan, and the suffering of the Chinese people was being widely reported. The Red Gate Players played upon this sympathy to the fullest. Before and during the War years, they performed at numerous benefits for various China Relief Agencies.

The company remained quite active throughout the 40’s and 50’s, even after the Communist take over of the mainland instantly transformed China from a WWII ally into a Cold War foe. Benton relocated to Carmel, California and reconstituted the company with new members including Arvo Wirta, Andrea Ja and Marcina Karem. But by the late 50’s the old repertoire must have been becoming stale. She experimented with creating shadow figures out of a variety if plastic materials, with colorful designs painted with transparent dyes. She used them to present standard children’s fare such as “The Three Bears”, “Wynken, Blinken and Nod,” and adaptations of Chinese folk tales such as “How the Elephant got its Trunk”. But these western style productions really didn't cut any new ground. Moreover, the traditional style productions that were Red Gate’s bread and butter seem to become more nostalgia-drenched as the China which Benton had visited and loved was swept away by the hot swirl of political struggles.

By the 60’s Benton had pretty much retired from performing. She passed on the company to one of her students, Marcina Karem, who kept it going for some time. The hundreds of shadow figures were packed away into trunks and stored away in the garage of her home in Carmel. Benton’s health was failing. Although Karem prodded her to publish her writings, based largely on the notes she took in the 30’s while studying with Mr. Lee, the manuscript remained unfinished. She began to sell off portions of her vast collection to institutions such as the Minnesota Museum of Art in St. Paul. In 1970 the MMA put together an exhibition of some of the more spectacular figures and scenic elements in Benton’s collection. The exhibition sampled all the major styles of Chinese shadows and other Asian shadow traditions as well. Benton helped with the curating and also compiled the notes for the catalog. But it was her last major project. A brain cancer took her life in 1974.

Although Karem kept Red Gate’s name, the wind had gone out of its sails with its founder’s passing. When Karem herself died in the early 90’s, the several large wooden trunks containing hundreds of shadow figures, Chinese musical instruments and the old Red Gate shadow stage (with its beautiful antique embroidered hangings and curtains,) as well as boxes of scripts, photos and archival material, were bequeathed to Jo Humphrey and the Gold Mountain Institute for Traditional Shadow Theatre. Humphrey had seen Red Gate performances as a young girl. Later in life, while she was working at the Museum of Natural History, cataloging their extensive Lauffer Collection, she conceived (together with veteran puppeteer Shirley Roman) of the idea of creating traditional style performances, using exact replicas of the Lauffer figures. Together, they formed the Yueh Lung Shadow Theatre, which followed pretty much down the same paths explored by Benton. Humphrey changed the company’s name to GMI as she conceived a broader mission of preservation and scholarly research in addition to performances and workshops. As the only other company in North America dedicated to the art of Chinese shadow theatre, GMI was a natural repository for the Benton Collection.

After several decades in storage the shadow figures had become badly deteriorated. The antique figures had been coated with tung oil which, while it conditions and preserves the animal hide, never fully dries. Rather it remains sticky in humid conditions so that during the long years that they were packed inside their stuffy trunks, the oil extruded out as a gluey mess that fused the individual figures together into a solid mass. Humphrey spent years of painstaking labor, carefully prying the figures apart, drying out the tung oil by exposure to air and then stripping it off with turpentine soaked cotton swabs. There was little written on the subject shadow puppet preservation, so she had to figure out the process by trial and error. But her efforts resulted in the refurbishment of nearly half the collection, including many of the finest figures and scenic units. The cleaned and rejointed figures were either stored in wooden flat files, or mounted on stretched canvas screens for exhibition.

Since Humphrey’s retirement in 1998, custody of the Benton Collection has passed on to Chinese Theatre Works. CTW’s artistic director, Kuang-Yu Fong and I have begun using some of them again in performance. The first time we picked up the White Snake figures to begin rehearsals, there was a palpable feeling of serendipity, as though the figures themselves were overjoyed at once more being free to come to life. Later on we went through the boxes of old Red Gate black-and-white publicity photos, and there they were, the same figures dancing in Benton’s hands 65 years earlier.

Aside from the obvious direct impact that she has had on our own work, Benton’s Red Gate Players injected a strong Asian cultural influence into the heart of American puppetry. Her work in this regard has had wider repercussions than the original effect of her performances on the public at large. Her studied and respectful approach to traditional genres of non-western performance are echoed in the cross-cultural productions of contemporary artists like Larry Reed, Tamarra Fielding, Maria Bodman (all who have worked along similar lines using Indonesian wayang kulit as the inspiration) and the Carter Family (whose son, Dmitri has married into the family of a well known Chinese puppet master). These artists certainly owe a debt to “The Shadow Lady,” and to her grand obsession with traditional Asian puppetry forms.