Short answers, pulled from the story.
Shadow play, also known as shadow puppetry, is an ancient form of storytelling that uses flat articulated cut-out figures held between a light source and a translucent screen. A skilled puppeteer manipulates the figures and sometimes the light to make shadows appear to walk, dance, fight, nod, and laugh. Various effects can be achieved by moving both the puppets and the light source.
Shadow puppet theatre likely originated either in Central Asia and China or in India during the 1st millennium BCE. By around 200 BCE, Indian shows called tholu bommalata were already using flat jointed puppets made of colourfully painted transparent leather. The most significant early historical centres were China, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Wayang kulit is an Indonesian style of shadow puppet theatre that is particularly popular in Java and Bali. The word wayang means "shadow" or "imagination" in Javanese, while kulit means "skin," referring to thin perforated buffalo-skin puppets. On the 7th of November 2003, UNESCO designated wayang kulit as one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
Karagöz was a bawdy comedy tradition of shadow play widespread throughout the Ottoman Empire, possibly since the late 14th century. It centred on the contrasting characters of Karagöz, an unprincipled peasant, and Hacivat, his fussy educated companion, who together represented all the major social groups in Ottoman society. Performances took place in coffee houses, private homes, and even before the sultan.
According to Stephen Herbert, popular shadow theatre evolved nonlinearly into projected slides and ultimately into cinematography, sharing with cinema the creative use of light, images, and a projection screen. Olive Cook notes parallels including the use of music, voice, attempts to introduce colour, and mass popularity. In the 1910s, German animator Lotte Reiniger also pioneered silhouette animation by filming shadow-play-like puppets frame by frame.
More than 20 countries are known to have shadow show troupes today. Shadow play is listed as a Syrian intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO and has long traditions in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Nepal, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Germany, France, and the United States, among others.