Larry Reed, who died on January 30, was a member of our class for only two years, but that was more than enough to make a profound impression on everyone.
“He and I roomed together freshman and sophomore years,” says John Griswold. “He left school after sophomore year and went into the Peace Corps and served in Bali, where he began his career in theatrical production that eventually made him an internationally known expert in Balinese shadow puppetry. After the Peace Corps he lived in San Francisco with his wife Jane and their family and became a legend among alternative theatre groups. Dick Fates and I visited him there many times over the years.”
In 1972 Larry founded ShadowLight Productions and managed it out of his home for the next forty years, introducing shadow theater to a wider audience by integrating traditional shadow theatre techniques with a modern theatre style.
In the 1990s he developed a method of casting shadows that incorporated techniques from cinema, modern theater, and dance. Using live music and a crew of actors, his shows featured unique masks that looked different from various angles, allowing for a single, unchanging mask to appear dynamic.
In 2019 Abby Chen, curator and head of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, commissioned a performance by ShadowLight in the museum’s newly constructed pavilion. It played for a full house of 200 two nights running. “I see him as a culture translator and amplifier, not just for Asian culture, but Mexican and Indigenous cultures, too,” Chen told the San Francisco Chronicle. “He had a kind and gentle soul that allowed him to understand culture from a very human level. He was super kind, and I can’t say how rare that is these days.”
