Shadow Woman: The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton by Grant Hayter-Menzies (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Shadow Woman: The Extraordinary Career of Pauline Benton. By Grant HayterMenzies . Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2013. xxi + 240 pp. 37 ill. Cloth C$29.95. A biographer of outstanding women, art and music critic Hayter-Menzies recently published Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (2008) and The Empress and Mrs. Conger (2011) with Hong Kong University Press. The book under review concerns Pauline Benton (1898–1974), an American woman who brought to the United States Chinese shadow puppetry (piying xi 皮影戲), an art form that UNESCO recognized in 2011 under its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The author has constructed a highly informative biography of an extraordinary pioneer artist from interviews, archives, newspapers, a short film, and monographs, all in English. His book is divided into eleven chapters, made more vivid with photographs mostly taken by Benton. Included in the appendix is the play script of White Snake, the love story of an immortal snake and a mortal man that Benton modified from a translation and made into the highlight of her repertoire. The biography is arranged chronologically. Benton was born in Texas to a middleclass family and exposed early on to worldly travels and global culture through her father, the president of the University of the Philippines, and her mother, a collector of antiques. It was in Chicago in 1922 that she first encountered shadow theater figures at an exhibition mounted by the anthropologist Berthold Laufer. The following year, she traveled to Beijing and learned about shadow puppetry through contacts made by her aunt, Emma Konantz, a mathematics professor and long-time resident of Beijing. Absolutely fascinated by the shadow theater performances held in Konantz’s courtyard garden, she took home to the U.S. sets of shadow figures and began lessons by correspondence with the eminent Beijing puppet master of the Luanzhou 灤州 tradition, Li Tuochen 李脫塵 (ca. 1880–1939). Not speaking or reading Chinese, Benton depended on play scripts translated into English by Konantz’s friends. Working with these translations, which left out the singing and arias of the original play scripts, Benton added a narrator and adjusted the terminology (replacing “pavilion” with “kiosk,” for instance) to make the scenes more attuned to a transplanted audience in the U.S. Benton’s father died in 1927, and Hayter-Menzies speculates that he might have left her an inheritance enabling her to pursue her passion in shadow puppetry. She landed her first job as activities advisor at the Rockefeller-funded International House in New York City’s Chinatown, where many students from China gathered. In 1930, it was at this location and under her direction that her friends improvised a CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34. 2 (December 2015): 174–178© The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2015 DOI 10.1080/01937774.2015.1096562 Chinese shadow play. The author thinks that she might have watched Mei Lanfang 梅蘭芳 (1894–1961), the greatest Beijing opera artist, perform that year when he was on tour. Her admiration for his art was reflected in her use of his recorded arias in her own performances. In 1932, Benton built a stage in New York City and formed the Red Gate Shadow Players with a small group of artists. While she was the chief manipulator of the shadow figures and provided the female voices, William Russell, the ethnomusicologist, composer, and jazz musician, played the Chinese instrumental accompaniment, and Lee Ruttle was in charge of public relations and publicity. In November 1933, the Red Gate Shadow Players first performed at an armory, followed by bookings at a charity ball, schools, community and art centers, museums, and universities. The troupe toured across the U.S. and eastern Canada, including a stop at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. In early 1936, Emma Konantz’s death brought Benton back to China for four months, this time with her mother. In Beijing, Benton took lessons from Li Tuochen, the puppet master with whom she had corresponded by mail. She also visited shadow theater troupes in cities and villages in north China and went south to Hangzhou, the birthplace of shadow theater. Returning to New York with sets...