B3

Of the characters in chapter four, I found the demon spirits of Lizard and Centipede from The Chaos Box to be particularly interesting because they are trickster characters rooted in legend. I also really like the Taoist and Buddhist elements. In addition, I love their bright vibrant colors. It's something I am unused to in shadow puppet theater, and it adds that extra oomph to the visible characterization; the demons in human form wear brightly colored bold garments, prominently featuring the color red, whereas most other characters are primarily brown or neutral colors.  

The Chaos Box is a Chinese shadow play. The style intrigued me greatly so I decided to research it a bit further. In this art form which has been commonly practiced in China, India, and Indonesia for over a millennium, thin puppets are cut out from translucent rawhide and painted elaborately. The puppets are placed against a cloth screen, light coming from behind the screen and passing through the rawhides, showing the vivid colorings of the puppets. They're manipulated with metal rods that attach to the hands and neck, cotton cords functioning as joints between the many rawhide pieces of the puppet.  Loud music often accompanies the show. However, Chaos Box is one of the only known shadow plays of this variety with such a large cast of characters.

Centipede is in the center and another evil spirit, Scorpion, is above left, as well as Red Snake in his true form underneath him.

In Chaos Box, Taoist and Buddhist deities fight the evils of the Five Noxious Creatures, supernatural creatures - Centipede, Lizard, Red Snake, Toad, and Scorpion - who shifted into human form in an attempt to capture T'ien Shih, the Heavenly Master.  The spirits use a healthy dose of trickery throughout the play, successfully masquerading as humans for some time. When they discover T'ien Shih, the creatures revert to their original forms, allowing the deities employ the Chaos Box - essentially a reverse of Pandora's Box - to defeat the creatures, opening it to suck their evil spirits in forever.

I enjoy these characters because even without seeing the play itself, I feel like I can get a strong sense of their personalities just from their appearance. They wear bold bright robes, which indicates that they themselves are quite bold. Plus, the primary color of red is traditionally sinister, indicating their villainry. And, if that wasn't enough, the animal of their true form is incorporated into their headpiece, giving the audience the big hint as to the nature of the characters.