Title
Kami Shibai Paper Theater with Tara McGowan
Abstract
In addition to her lecture, Tara McGowan also staged a presentation of Kamishibai, a traditional Japanese storytelling method that combines illustrations with narration.
The campus community was able to experience this rare and unique paper theater in action.
Biography
McGowan is an artist, storyteller, and Japan scholar, who has spent the last two decades studying the visual techniques involved in kamishibai (Japanese “paper theater”). She is the author of The Kamishibai Classroom: Engaging Multiple Literacies through the Art of ‘Paper Theater’ (2010) and Performing Kamishibai: An Emerging New Literacy for a Global Audience (2015). Tara is co-founder with Walter Ritter and Donna Tamaki of the World Kamishibai Forum, an online and in-person series of events focusing on various aspects of kamishibai. She has been invited to present kamishibai workshops and storytelling events in Mexico, Peru, France, Slovenia, and Japan and, in 2017, was awarded the Horio Seishi Award from the Center for Research on Japanese Children’s Culture (子供の文化研究所) in Tokyo for her international work with kamishibai.