Larry Reed Archives find a home at the Center for Puppetry Arts

The Larry Reed Archives will join the Center for Puppetry Arts’ Nancy Lohman Staub Puppetry Research Library, preserving more than five decades of work by one of puppetry’s most innovative artists. Reed, who passed away in March 2026, was a pioneer of shadow theater who studied Balinese wayang for 15 years and was one of the first non-Balinese artists to perform the tradition. Through ShadowLight Productions, which he founded in San Francisco in 1972, he introduced wayang to Western audiences and went on to create cinematic shadow theater, a style that blended the ancient art form with film and modern stagecraft and influenced shadow puppetry around the world.

Learn more about this acquisition at: http://puppet.org/abou.../announcing-the-larry-reed-archives