A popular Chinese proverb says that wherever there are three women, there will be drama. In America however, there have been three women who have created many dramas out of their shared passion for Chinese culture and shadow theater. Beginning in the 1920s, these women, Pauline Benton, Jo Humphrey and Kuang-Yu Fong, have created three theater companies – the Red Gate Players, Yueh Lung Shadow Theater, and Chinese Theatre Works – which have performed Chinese shadow plays across the U.S. and around the world.

For the First International Shadow Theatre Festival in Tangshen, CTW’s artistic director, Ms. Fong has invited Yueh Lung’s founder and artistic director, Ms. Humphrey, to collaborate using some of the antique shadow figures from Ms. Benton’s collection in order to create a documentary shadow play telling the story of these figures’ emigration to America and their visit back to their place of origin in China. Framed in this rich historical presentation will be the legend of the Whitesnake, a staple of all three companies' artistic repertoire.

Ms. Benton, the first American shadow puppeteer to perform in the Chinese traditional style, learned her art directly from a shadow puppet master in Beijing, and then brought her experience to the U.S. to create the Red Gate Players. When she died, her collection of shadow figures was sealed in a trunk and forgotten. Twenty years later, this trunk was given to Ms. Humphrey, who had since 1975 directed the only Chinese-style shadow company in North America. Ms. Humphrey had taught herself the techniques of shadow theater by careful research and experimenting with figures she had made after four years of working on a shadow exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History. She began the laborious process of restoring the badly deteriorated Benton figures and carried on the Red Gate Players’ mission of bringing traditional Chinese shadow theater to English speaking audiences in America.

Upon her retirement in 1999, Ms. Humphrey passed her company’s materials, including the Benton collection, down to Ms. Fong. Ms. Fong majored in traditional Chinese Opera in Taiwan and then came to New York to work in different Western styles of performance and theater. She began working with Yueh Lung Theater in 1985. Her approach to Chinese shadow theater has been to merge the traditional forms with contemporary Western performance styles techniques and technologies.

Three Women, Many Plays mixes traditional Chinese shadow performance, overhead projection performance and video projection with live human shadow choreography, performed on both sides of a large, 8 x 12 foot rear-projection screen. It is accompanied by the remarkable musical team of Jenny Romaine and Susan Watts.