Originally premiered at Lincoln Center Education in NYC, Magic Pearl is a shadow puppet play with original music that tells a story about collaboration, friendship, and transformation, based on a Chinese folktale.

I joined the project as a director and designer, with the goal of taking the beautiful existing elements—musical score, script, characters, and story arc—and building out a fuller visual language that could support longer scenes and character arcs.

I expanded the design to include new textures and three-dimensional objects, including water, ink, paint, feathers, glass, and stone. The new materials create a more dimensional world and nod to the association of dragons with water in Chinese folklore.

We gave a showing and feedback session at Puppet Showplace on October 14, 2019 for fellow artists, young audience members, and the larger Boston community. The impromptu hands-on shadow puppet session that followed was a big hit:

The Magic Pearl, by Pinwheel

Created by Bo Lee and Maggie Gayford
Music by Christopher Vu
Directed by Veronica Barron
Puppeteers: Nick Wickstrom, Amy West, and Veronica Barron
Character design by Bo Lee and Maggie Gayford

For more on this project, visit Pinwheel: https://www.pinwheelworks.com/

15 Oct This entry was published on October 15, 2019 at 8:30 am. It’s filed under My Work, Pictures, Puppetry, Video and tagged Bo Lee, Christopher Vu, Margaret Gayford, Pinwheel Collaborative, Puppet Showplace Theater, The Magic Pearl, young audiences. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.