Light & Shadow: A Javanese Puppet Show

By Tania LaCaria

My eyes did not know where to settle while walking through the artistically charged town of Yogyakartain Java, Indonesia. Brightly painted batiks hung from the rafters of poorly erected tents amidst tables with rows upon rows of terracotta vases, bronze jewelry and wood sculptures along the long stretch of sidewalk on Maliboro road.

Yogyakarta (pronounced “Jog-ja-karta” or “jog-ja” for short) is the epicenter of Javanese art, especially known for its batiks, poetry, music and drama. I shuffled along the sidewalk with the rest of the locals, clearly more interested in the goods for sale than most others, until I arrived at a beautifully display table of paintings.

I finally rested my gaze on an intricately decorated, 2D silhouette of a mythical figure. I stared at the unusual character for less than a millisecond before the vendor noticed and shuffled over to tell me I was looking at a traditionally hand-crafted Wayang shadow puppet (for sale at a “good price”). I stared at the puppet’s long, lanky limbs that somehow appeared more elegant and less gangly than one would expect and noticed that the carefully crafted puppet had butterfly pins along its joints – an indication that it could gesticulate in an exaggerated manner with the flick of a puppeteer’s wrist. A closer look confirmed my suspicions; the puppet was beautifully crafted and inviting to look at, but the character’s “exotic” face was not the prettiest of visages. A large nose, googly eyes and an awkwardly angular neck upon which a blob of a head sat, made for an unusual appearance. I’d never seen such a weird looking androgynous character, but I loved it nonetheless.

I asked the shop owner what the name for the puppet was and after experiencing my very own scene from Lost In Translation, I discovered that the traditional puppet was used for telling the tale of the Ramayana (an ancient Sanskrit epic) in a Wayang puppet show. I should probably mention that the word Wayang loosely means “theatre” (though it literally translates to “shadow”). This vague term has also become the word given to the style of a traditional puppet artistry, and can be used to mean the word “puppet” in different contexts (how’s that for a confusing term to learn?).

The long-armed, short-legged Wayung puppets are used in Wayang Kulit; a type of theatre involving the play of light and shadow. The ghastly puppet that I had become smitten with was one of the evil monster characters used to tell the story of the Ramayana. No wonder he wasn’t a “looker”.  I had to see this puppet (along with other characters) in action, and what better way than to attend a shadow puppet performance at a small nearby theatre?

When I first arrived I could not locate the stage (or at least not the kind of stage I was expecting to find!). Instead, there was a large floor area with numerous exotic instruments (including a coupel of xylophones, drums, two-stringed lutes and a gong), and a small translucent white sheet that faced a row of plastic chairs. Once the show started, the magic of the Wayang Kulit took hold of me. The puppeteer (called the dalang) was hidden behind (and below) the translucent stage. He began to flail the thin puppets made of buffalo and cow hide around behind the screen. A bright series of lights helped back-light the characters that danced around the stage like ghostly shadows. A narrator read the script to the tunes of music and sound effects, and though the entire show was performed in Bhasa, I soon picked up that the noble, “good” characters were depicted with slender limbs and almond shaped eyes, while the “bad” guys were represented as giant monsters (like the puppet I had seen for sale on Maliboro). I noticed that people were permitted to get up and walk around during the show, so I followed suit to catch a behind-the-screen glimpse of the dalang and the puppets. To my surprise, the large-scale puppets were decorated with gold leaf and had painted details along their clothing (although this was not visible through the show of shadows where every puppet appeared in dark silhouette).

The show was an overload to the senses to say the least. The loud clanging of the gong, the remnants of incense wafting through the small room, the narrator yelling in different tones of voices to imitate a variety of characters and the flashing lighting from the puppet screen left quite an impression on me. To be quite honest, I was unable to sit through an entire 2 hours of the show – there’s only so much shadow puppetry in a foreign language a gal can take – but I did revel in the joy of experiencing something new and listening to the exotic, gentle music. I would highly recommend you add “Visit a Shadow Puppet Show” to your list of things to do while visiting the alluring town of Yogyakarta.