ShadowLight Productions

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ShadowLight Productions

Shadow Theatre company founded in 1972 by theatre artist, filmmaker and shadow master, Larry Reed

09/03/2026

Can anyone help ID the song being played in this clip of Shadow Master (1979)? Looks like a local in Bali playing it through a bullhorn out of the back of a pickup truck:

09/02/2026

Saturday, September 19th, 2026
1:15-3:15 PM
The Roxie Theater
3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA
FREE RSVP Tickets linked in bio

Join us at the Roxie Theater for a special screening honoring the life and work of Larry Reed (1944–2026), master of Balinese shadow theater, theater and film director, and founder of ShadowLight Productions.
Drawn from a career spanning more than five decades, the works in this program offer just a glimpse of the breadth of Larry’s artistic life. His practice began with a deep immersion in Balinese wayang, which he studied for years before translating and performing traditional shadow plays for American audiences. Through ShadowLight Productions, he went on to develop cinematic shadow theater, bringing actors, puppets, projected imagery, music, and large-scale shadows together in a form for which the company became internationally renowned. Larry remained a deeply experimental artist throughout his life, continually pushing the possibilities of shadow theater and finding new ways for it to meet theater, film, and other visual forms. The three works presented here trace a small part of that trajectory, from his early years in Bali to one of his final experiments with the form.

Featuring Shadow Master (1979), excerpts from Ghosts: Out of the Shadows (2013) and Ghosts of the River (2009), and the short film In His Own Words: An Invocation (2025).

Film program approximately 90 mins followed by a Q&A with family, friends, and collaborators.

Please see roxie.com for details regarding accessibility, parking, and how to get there.

Shadow Master
Filmed in Bali in 1979 by Larry Reed and the late San Francisco cinematographer and director John Knoop, Shadow Master is a dramatic documentary about the family of I Nyoman Rajeg, the dalang with whom Larry lived and studied for two years. Told from the perspective of Rajeg’s daughter Suartini and performed by members of the family, the film grew out of their lives and experiences during the filming process. Made before mass tourism transformed Bali, Shadow Master offers an intimate portrait of the family and community in which Larry immersed himself as a young artist and student of Balinese

08/31/2026

More puppets used for ShadowLight Production’s short film, In His Own Words: An Invocation (2025) inspired by the early life of painter Marc Chagall.

Directed by Larry Reed with art direction by Naomie Kremer, this ShadowLight Productions film employs traditional hand-crafted, Chinese-style puppets alongside experimental visual layering. Multiple physical planes of shadows and puppets were manipulated in real time, capturing a painterly effect reminiscent of Chagall’s own artistic depth. The film is narrated by award-winning actor and voice artist Peter Coyote in the English version and acclaimed French actor Tchéky Karyo in the French version, enhancing the storytelling with their evocative performances.

08/29/2026

Opening shadow sequence from ShadowLight’s first cinematic shadow theater production, In Xanadu (1993).

08/25/2026

Video projections used for ShadowLight Productions’ The Good-For-Nothing Lover (2011).

The Good-for-Nothing Lover is a unique blend of shadow theatre, poetry reading, movement theatre and live music, inspired by a folk love song cycle of the same title from the Ming Dynasty (16th century China) translated in the late fifties by the Bay Area beat poets C. H. Kwock and Vincent McHugh. Driven by the dual origin of these poems, the project will pay homage to both the Beat era and the Ming Dynasty incorporating a stand up bass and a guqin (traditional Chinese 7-string fretless zither), low-tech shadow theatre technique and high-tech video projection as well as singing and spoken words in Chinese and English. The Good-for-Nothing Lover will examine states of love and human relations, which are as true today as when the words were first written centuries ago.

The Good-for-Nothing Lover has gathered border-crossing experimentalists, rebels and risk-takers from around the nation and the world; shadow master Larry Reed, who is constantly challenging the conventions of film and theatre; a NY downtown theatre giant, Karen Kandel, who continues to explore the possibilities of her body and voice as organic parts of storytelling; guqin player from Beijing, Wu Na, a fastidious keeper of the tradition who has unquenchable thirst for avant-garde, jazz, and other styles of music; Shanghai jazz singer, Coco Zhao, often called “Boy Billie Holiday,” whose distinct style mixes Mandarin vocals with contemporary jazz sounds as well as the SF Bay Area’s own, Wan-Chao Chang, Lydia K. Greer, Caryl Kientz (performers), Safa Shokrai (bassist), Gregory T. Kuhn (sound), ZeJie Zheng (calligraphy) and Mark Palmer (video projection).

Performers/Collaborators: Larry Reed, Karen Kandel, Wu Na, Coco Zhao, Safa Shokrai, Caryl Kientz, Lydia Greer, Wan-Chao Chang, Gregory T. Kuhn, Mark Palmer, and ZeJie Zheng.

08/11/2026

In Xanadu (1993) scenes from the live production with their handheld puppets for reference.

“A stunning example of a new kind of visual theater, where a character can be six inches high one moment and fifteen feet tall the next. In Xanadu was awarded the UNIMA-USA Citation for Excellence, puppetry’s highest award. It has been performed in San Francisco at Theater Artaud, and the Cowell Theater. In New York it was featured at the Public Theater during the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater. A video tape of the performance is available through ShadowLight.”

In Xanadu was featured in the 1993 National Puppetry Festival in San Francisco, the 1994 Henson International Puppetry Festival, at the Public Theater in New York, and in 1997 at the Spoleto/USA Festival in Charleston SC.

All ShadowLight films are available to watch FREE through our website www.shadowlight.org.

08/05/2026

It’s 12 o’clock. Do you know where your puppets are?

08/03/2026

From the archives: Lou Harrison’s Coyote Stories (1998).

Coyote, a troublemaker, prankster, and creator, comes to life in a series of four American Indian Creation Myths, narrated to the audience and accompanied by Gamelan music, a contemporary composition by Lou Harrison. Wendy Morton is the director/designer, combining reflections and shadow and light puppets that overlap to create the predicaments that Coyote finds himself in. Creators/puppeteers Ramon Abad and Art Grueneberger invent magical images.

World Premiere: Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, England, November 1997.

Produced by ShadowLight Productions. Directed and designed by Wendy Morton with music by the iconoclastic, innovative composer Lou Harrison. Co-created and performed by Ramon Abad, Art Grueneberger, and Wendy Morton.

07/31/2026

Traveling through the world of wayangs...

“Aficionados know that the word ‘puppeteer’ doesn’t do a dalang justice. The puppets in question, mounted on sticks and fully jointed like GI Joe, are made of paper-thin, translucent leather—hence the word kulit, or skin, in the Balinese name for puppet theater, wayang kulit. Performing stories from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, a dalang manipulates up to thirty puppets at a time, maintaining different voices, gestures, and ‘walks’ for each character. In some parts of Indonesia, a wayang kulit show can go on for fourteen hours at a stretch.”

ArtsBeat, Dalang and Short of It. April 22. 1994

07/28/2026

Puppets, headwear, and behind the scenes shots from Ambrosia of Immortality (1998).

Ambrosia of Immortality documents a shadow theatre production of a Balinese version of Churning the Milky Ocean where gods and demons join forces to create ambrosia and then fight over possession of it. Created with dalang, I Wayan Wija, and fifteen shadow casters and musicians from Bali and San Francisco, the story was chosen by dalang Wija precisely because it lends itself to the immense scale and intense visuals that ShadowLight has developed with its cinematic approach to the use of shadows.

“Indra, If you are right I want to be wrong.
If you are a God I am an Antigod!”

The King of the Gods and the King of the Demons are in a daily battle for control of the heavens. Like day and night both are essential to life, but sometimes things get out of control, and the God of All must intervene. He asks them to move a mountain to churn the ocean to make ambrosia. They do and then the trouble starts.

Composed by Miguel Frasconi and I Dewa Brata, Ambrosia was featured at the 1998 Henson International Puppet Festival and toured for eight weeks throughout the US. It is the culmination of the twenty-year friendship between shadow master Larry Reed and the renowned Balinese Dalang I Wayan Wija.

Directed by Larry Reed
Edited from live performances, 1998
Running Time: 36 min

Address

22 Chattanooga Street
San Francisco, CA
94114

Telephone

+14156484461

Website

http://www.shadowlight.org/

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