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Contemporary Wayang
in Global Contexts
Matthew Isaac Cohen

Traditional norms and values stood in the way of radical experimentation with the
form of wayang until Indonesias postcolonial era. The same impediments did not
exist for colonial European artists. Edward Gordon Craig formulated his theories of the
ber-marionette with reference to wayang, while Richard Teschner adapted wayang
puppets for his unique Viennese puppet theatre. This initial encounter of Europe with
wayang articulated a pattern of colonial exploitation: Asian products were alienated
from their producers and transported to Europe stripped of direct connections to the people and conditions from which they arose.
The 1960s ushered in a new era of intercultural communication. A major inux of
Indonesian puppetry came to the United States when a generation of budding American
puppet artists received direct tuition from Indonesian puppet masters at California summer schools in the early 1970s. Many subsequently went to Java and Bali themselves for
lengthy periods of wayang study and apprenticeship. Some of these artists crossed traditional Indonesian puppets forms with other modes of practice to create complex
hybrids. Much of the most interesting contemporary wayang work today is taking place
along transnational axes. Wayang has been embraced by international artists and
companies in order to tell idiosyncratic myths and celebrate the sacred and the ethereal.
Matthew Isaac Cohen is a senior lecturer in drama and theatre at Royal Holloway,
University of London. He is a researcher of Indonesian performance and world puppetry. He has studied wayang kulit in Java for nearly six years, and has performed
as a shadow puppeteer in Europe, North America, Israel, and Indonesia. Among his
publications are Demon Abduction: A Wayang Ritual Drama from West Java
(1998) and The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia,
18911903 (2006).

Introduction
Traditional puppet theatres practiced today around the world
face related challenges and opportunities with the decline of traditional systems of patronage and training, the movement of performers
Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 24, no. 2 (Fall 2007). 2007 by University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.

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and performing objects across borders, the emergence of new forms

of media and technology, the development of new audiences, and the
formation of modern professional associations at local, national, and
international levels. The recent UNESCO proclamations of opera dei
pupi (2001), bunraku (2003), wayang (2003), and sbek thom (2005) as
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity constitutes an international sign of recognition of traditional puppetrys
cultural value, and concern that Italian, Japanese, Indonesian, and
Khmer traditional puppetry are vulnerable to extinction or change
beyond recognition.
Most studies of traditional puppetry have taken a highly particularistic approach to the eld. Studies that have surveyed the eld
have tended to be celebratory rather than analytical. But another
approach is possible. Inspired by recent work in the eld of globalization and the arts, one can look at the durability of traditional puppetry
worldwide in relations to global ows. A particularly important point
of reference is Joost Smierss book Arts under Pressure: Promoting Cultural Diversity in the Age of Globalization (2003). Smiers argues that the
economic and aesthetic muscle of global media forces endangers local
centers of production. The result is a net decline in the variety of
world arts. Viewed at such a macro level, one can observe that many of
the issues confronting traditional puppet arts and artists are common
to cultures around the world. Advances in scholarship and mediated
representations of traditional puppetry allow us to see that traditional
puppetry is characterized by great diversity, with countless unique
regional and familial variations of major puppet genres. This diversity
in local artistic life is threatened by corporate-driven culture and the
standardization of artistic traditions by governmental agencies, educational institutions, media bodies, professional associations, and diverse
market forces. Once distinct artistic formations, such as the villagelevel traditions of rural Cirebon that I documented in my dissertation
(Cohen 1997), are increasingly under pressure to adjust to extralocal
circumstances. Every day, unique antique puppets from Java and elsewhere are being auctioned off to international buyers on eBay,
thereby diminishing the reservoir of models available for future puppet makers. Puppeteers are emulating superstar puppeteers (Weintraub 2004) they watch on television rather than following their local
styles. What will be the long-term effects of this sort of reduction of
diversity? How is the situation of Indonesian wayang related to what is
happening in traditional puppetry elsewhere?

Wayang and Colonialism

An examination of how wayang is situated in global contexts
begins in the colonial period.1 Wayang puppets in traditional Java were

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pusaka (sacred objects), and traditional norms and values stood in the
way of radical experimentation with form until the postcolonial era.
Colonial-era Indonesian puppet artists were exible in their practices.
They were willing to adjust the duration of performances to t into the
performance frames of pasar malam (night fairs) and radio broadcasts.
Puppeteers could work with new stories and puppets in emergent genres such as wayang kancil (mouse deer wayang), created around 1925
by Bo Lim, a Javanese-born Chinese artist. Wayang gures and traditional gamelan melodies were easily adopted or supplemented to tell
simple animal fables for children, centering on the gure of Si Kancil,
the mischievous mouse deer. The well-known puppets and characters
could also be manipulated for advertising or propaganda (see, e.g.,
Grasveld 1988). What Indonesian puppeteers were not willing or perhaps unable to do was evaluate their tradition from the perspective of
modernism. Indonesians with modernist inclinations lacked the training in tradition and the social connections to traditional artists that
would have allowed effective development of wayang as a modern performing art in colonial Indonesia.
The same impediments that stood in the way of experimentalism in Indonesian wayang until the postcolonial period did not exist
for European artists. Wayang puppets were transported to Europe in
large numbers beginning in the nineteenth century. T. S. Rafes, governor of Java during the British interregnum (18111816), returned
from Java with hundreds of puppets. Colonial exhibitions brought to
Europe and America puppet artists, who offered puppets for sale.
Dutch colonial civil servants and travelers returned with puppet souvenirs of their Eastern sojourns.
Wayang provided modern visual artists with a vital iconographic
alternative to naturalism, an early instance being Java-born symbolist
Jan Toorops pencil and crayon drawing De Drie Bruiden (The Three
Brides, 1893). In the early twentieth century, wayang would also provide inspiration for European and American theatre practitioners.
Non-Indonesian modern artists lacked training in puppet techniques:
there were no Europeans or Americans who traveled to Java or Bali to
study at the feet of puppet masters until the 1960s.2 But all the
imported puppets meant that Europeans had free access to puppet
technology, and could study and dissect and emulate and transform
Indonesian wayang kulit (shadow puppets) and wayang golek (rod puppets) without fear of accusations of destroying tradition. They could
discover or invent their own techniques to apply to the technology of
wayang. Some of these techniques would not map well on the puppets,
and the perceived limitations of wayang would then inspire
modications of the technology. New hybrid puppet forms emerged
out of Indonesian shadow and rod puppets.3

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Edward Gordon Craig

One of the greatest European enthusiasts of wayang of the early
twentieth century was the theatre director, theorist, designer, educator, and publisher Edward Gordon Craig. Craig is best known today
for his theories of scenography and the notion of the ber-marionette,
in which the puppet or puppetlike actor is posited as being a superior
performer to the actor (Craig 1956 [1907]). Craig took immense interest in puppets of all kinds over the course of his long career, collecting them, studying their scenic and kinetic possibilities carefully, writing about their history, and designing puppet stages and new forms of
puppets (Laksberg 1993). Craigs major output as a playwright was a
puppet play cycle titled Drama for Fools comprised of at least thirty
short scripts (or motions) written mostly between 1914 and 1921
(Siniscalchi 1980; Jurkowski 2001).
Among all puppets, Javanese puppets (particularly wayang kulit)
have been described as Craigs pets (Taxidou 1998: 153). In 1911 or
1912, Craig acquired a couple of cardboard Javanese gures via
Dorothy Nevile Lees, the editor of his theatrical journal, The Mask.
Craigs interest escalated after the 1913 purchase of a large number of
wayang kulit, many of delicate cutting and colour and gilding from
Venices Palazzo Rezzonico (Lees n.d.). Interest in wayang infuses all
of Craigs work thereafter. Craig wrote for and edited The Mask under
the pseudonym John Semar, after the hermaphroditic clown-servant
of wayang (see Fig. 1).
While building and experimenting with animated model stages
with the painter Michael Carr, Craig hired Carrs wife to translate scholarship on wayang from Dutch into English (Craig 1983). He published
some of this translated material, with caustic comments, in the theatre
journals he published, along with photographs and prints of puppets
in his collection (Craig 1914; Craig 1918a; Craig 1918b). Craigs fragmentary and often parodic wayang writings have been ignored by scholars, but are worth examining in some detail as they represent the rst
time a major European theatre practitioner advanced wayang as a good
precedent (Craig 1918a: 57) for European theatrical practice.
In contrast to Dutch scholars, who approached wayang mostly
as a literary form with a philological sensibility, Craig believed that any
inquiry into Javanese puppetry had to begin with the material culture
of the puppets. In his writing, Craig pokes fun at Dutch philologists
such as Juynboll, Hazeu, and Serrurier, who reduce the living traditions of wayang to the uncreative reproduction of archaic religion
(Craig 1918b: 211f).4 Craig instead celebrates the variety of Javanese
puppet types in a deeply felt attempt to overturn Orientalist stereotypes of the ineffable. In Java, while much is shadowy, there are other

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342

things than the non-committal ghosts there. There are bodies. I am

told this: I am assured it, but as I have never been there I cannot test
the accuracy of my statement. What leads me to suppose there are
bodies is that in their Marionette Theatre they have all sorts (Craig
1918b: 210f). Craig recognized that Javanese shadow puppet theatre is
a subject [that] needs a lifetime of study devoted to it . . . in the world.
Some folk study in Universities, but that is fatal if overdone. [. . .] I
have many of these gures. . . . I see them daily . . . and I assure you
they are like human beings, . . . and overwhelm our aesthetic senses
immediately (Craig 1918b: 210, 214).
Craig takes issues with Serruriers imposition of universality
onto wayang mythology (Craig 1918a: 5455). He castigates the philologists for describing wayang construction without reference to the theatrical functionality of gures, taking issue in particular with Rafess
early description of wayang in The History of Java (1817). While admiring the uency of Rafess writing as an Englishman, he takes him
to task for his clerkish description of wayang purwa.5 The central control rod (gapit in Central Javanese tradition), Craig tells us, should not
be called a horn spike, nor should the secondary control rods
(tuding) be described as a piece of horn hanging from each hand.

Figure 1. Engraving by Edward Gordon Craig

of Semar, the senior clown-servant of wayang
kulit. Craig edited and wrote for The Mask under
the pseudonym John Semar as a tribute (Craig
1911: n.p.). (Reprinted courtesy of the Edward
Gordon Craig Estate)

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This suggests something like an elongated earring, or an indifferent

icicle, or a gentleman with the snifes. Just as there is a cunning contrivance of horn which supports the body of the gure, so are there
two long and delicate contrivances of horn which support each arm.
Supporting each arm is different from hanging from each hand,
damm! and there never was anything in the history of art which supported, precisely SUPPORTED, the whole arm, as do these contrivances of horn.
They are a miracle. Miracles dont hang from the hand like
hand bags, . . . Gladstone bags.
They are the life and soul of the princes, princesses, monsters,
and demons who gure in the Wayang Purwa, these two pieces of
horn. [. . .] This clerk [. . .] robs all generations to come of a possible
contact with these delightful and magical beings. (Craig 1918a: 56)

Craig used the large numbers of Javanese puppets in his collectionshadow puppets, rod puppets and at wooden puppets (known
as wayang krucil or wayang klithik)for teaching aspiring theatrical
directors in his theatre school in Florence, and displayed them with
pride in Zurich (see Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Circular printed by Edward Gordon Craig circa 1917 for sale of
wayang kulit photographs, postcards, and puppets. (Reprinted courtesy of the
Edward Gordon Craig Estate)

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Between 1907 and 1919, Craig designed and cut out of at

pieces of wood free-standing model stage gures that he called black
gures (Craig 1989). Some of these were articulated and could be
moved about on a model stage by means of strings, pulleys, cogs, and
levers. Craig understood these to be puppets, though they were not
intended for public performance, but rather for exploring scenic concepts and stage designs and for stimulating dialogue. (There were
gures for John Semar and Craigs other pseudonyms.) Craig inked
these wooden gures with small dabbers and issued prints of them,
which associates sometimes compared to silhouettes or shadow
puppets.
The inuence of wayang is very clear on Craigs black gures.
A fair number of black gures, particularly the more demonic characters, borrow explicitly from wayang iconography. Looking at the gure
Hunger (Craig 1989: g. 67), one sees the same sort of distended

Figure 3. Beast, a black figure

by Edward Gordon Craig created
in 1914 (Craig 1989: fig. 62).
(Reprinted courtesy of the Edward
Gordon Craig Estate)

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shoulders, elongated neck and arms, the combination of full prole

and half to three-quarters prole, the joining of the feet at the base
that are found in both wayang klithik and wayang kulit.
A contemporary critic wrote of the black gure titled Beast (see
Fig. 3) that it had something of the Japanese feeling (E. F. Spence
cited in Craig 1989: 25). But any wayang devotee will immediately spot
its resemblances to buta (ogre) gures of Java in the way an animal
head is conjoined with a human body, the bulging stomach, the
fanged mouth, and the curled and clawed ngers.
Craig likely initially formulated his theory of the ber-marionette in 1907 with only a general understanding of Javanese puppetryhis practice-based research into the puppet arts of Java came
later. But he found in Javanese puppetry and theatrical dance a powerful conrmation of his nonpsychologically based theatre in which
performers and performing objects perform without ego, perfectly
integrated into a larger mise-en-scne. In a review of the French edition of Lelyvelds pictorial essay on Javanese dance, Craig writes in
admiration of Javanese royal dancers who appear in photographs to
possess no personality whatever: as for character, they are characterless: to us they are not gracious, for they seem to show no sign of wishing to please (Craig 1943: 106). The circular relation between the
wayang puppet and the wayang wong dancerin which dancer imitates
puppet imitates danceris the embodiment of everything that Craig
strived for in theatre.6
Craig mounted few theatrical productions in his lifetime, and
his writings on theatre have not been always kindly received.7 Craigs
inuence on the art of scenic design is undeniable. But his greatest
work might in fact be his puppet motions. Some critics have found
these plays rather lifeless and unworkable for performance (Baraitser 1999: 6f). But this judgment might be inuenced by an overly occidental view of them. A number of Craigs dramas for fools work
quite well as wayang. As Jurkowski (2001) has argued, all are urgently
in need of revival and study.

Richard Teschner and the Appropriation

of Wayang Golek
Equally signicant in the encounter of international modernism with Indonesian traditions of puppetry is the work of Richard
Teschner (18791948). Teschner was educated in Praguea city that
has long had an active puppet tradition. His rst major puppet production, a Hugo von Hofmannsthal play Teschner designed and
directed in 1906, used string puppets. Teschner moved to Vienna and
in 1911 he went to Holland on his honeymoon, where he rst saw

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Indonesian rod-and-shadow puppets in Amsterdam museums and

shops. Teschner was enamored with these puppets for their high artistic quality [. . .] and their simple, effective means of operation (Baird
1973: 161). He saw in them a possibility to depart from the nervous
agitation and dangling motion of marionettes to articulate the
grand geste (Otto Koenig, cited in Anonymous 1928: 492f).
Teschner returned to Vienna with a small collection of both
Indonesian and Burmese puppets, along with a number of books on
the subject of Javanese puppetry and mythology. In 1912 he produced
his rst rod puppet plays based on three Javanese tales from Bezemers
Volksdichtung aus Indonesien: Sagen, Tierfabeln und Mrchen (Folktales
from Indonesia: Sagas, Animal Fables, and Fairytales, 1904), a compilation of Indonesian myths and legends.
Kosumos Opfertod (The Sacrice of Kusumo) concerned a young
man named Kusumo, who sacrices himself to the volcano god Bromo
to save his family from destruction. The Tenggerese people, the progeny of Kusumos elder brother, commemorate Kusumos sacrice
annually with offerings to the active volcano (see Fig. 4). Nabi Isa presents a Javanese tale of Jesus (considered a nabi or prophet in Islam).
A husbands devotion to his dead wife prompts Jesus to resurrect the
woman, but after she is unfaithful to her husband Jesus returns her to

Figure 4. Kosumos Opfertod (The Sacrifice of Kusumo). Kusumo kneels in

obeisance to the volcano god Bromo. (Photo: Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches
Museum Wien)

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the sleep of death. Nawang Wulan is a well-known Javanese tale about

Joko Tarub, who steals the magical clothes of the heavenly nymph
Nawang Wulan as she bathes in a stream (see Fig. 5). She is forced to
stay on Earth, and has a daughter named Roro Nawang Sih with Joko
Tarub. Nawang Wulan provides for the family with a magical rice
cooker. She tells her husband he must never look inside it, but Joko
Tarub of course disobeys, and Nawang Wulan returns to the heavens
after she recovers her magical garments.
All three tales deal with relations between the human and the
divine, but none of the tales is considered to be part of the wayang
repertoire, and there is no evidence to suggest that Teschner was interested in the story structures or dramaturgy of wayang.
Teschner subsequently designed his own stages, which allowed
for the most intricate changes in lighting and back projections, and he
modied the Javanese rod puppet technology to serve the very special
needs of his art.
His gures were fourteen to eighteen inches high. Instead of the central rod of the Javanese gures, Teschner used a strong, light tube
tted with anges which could be slipped into a slotted playboard at
the edge of his proscenium to hold the standing gures upright.

Figure 5. Nawang Wulan, originally produced by Richard Teschner in 1912.

Joko Tarub (left) looks on in amusement at the bathing Nawang Wulan (center). To the right are other widadari (heavenly nymphs) who accompany
Nawang Wulan. (Photo: Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

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Metal belaying plates between the padded slots held the strong, thin
black rods that operated the hands when not in use. Each head was
mounted on a double pivot inside and could be inclined sideways or
nodded up and down by sutures which entered the tube at the neck
and left it below the anges, each one belayed by a clove hitch
through a small bead. The thumb and forenger could thus handle
all head motion. (Baird 1973: 162)

Teschners theatre (see Fig. 6) was located in his own living

room, and he intentionally limited his audiences and was very secretive about his technical innovations. Money from his wifes family
allowed him to create and operate an elitist puppet theatre, presenting dream worlds with mute gures (Teschner was adamant that puppets be made out of wood and should not speak).8
During World War I, Teschner lost most of the money and was
forced to open his theatre to the general public, though he insisted

Figure 6. Backstage with Richard Teschner and assistant.

(Photo: Courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien)

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that he would not admit more than seventy at a time. Teschners theatre was devoted to the evocation of otherworldly magic. Plays
included Night Story (1913), based on E. T. A. Hoffman, Princess and
Water Elf (1913), and The Clock of Life (1935), a dramatization of the
Prague Astronomical Clock. A single artist personality recreates his
own inner experiences, his personal point of view and his emotional
reactions (Otto Koenig, cited in Anonymous 1928: 493). Critic Whilhelm Nhil considered Teschners nativity play Weihnachtspiel (1925)
his greatest achievement, a play that no living theatrical production
could begin to approach in expressiveness and purity (Anonymous
1928: 494).
Puppet historian Henryk Jurkowski (1998: 92) has argued that
the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany does not seem to have seriously affected his theatrical activityso removed was Teschners theatre from the everyday world around him. However, there is evidence
to suggest that Teschner was opposed to Nazismhis short sketch Het
Radioredner (The Radio Orator) is a parody of Hitler as a beer-drinking spouter of nonsense and had to be reworked after Austrias
Anschluss.
Teschners sporadic activity, limitations on audience size, and
secretiveness meant that he had no students and few direct imitators.
However, his appropriation of Indonesian rod puppetry stimulated
puppeteers in Europe and North America to adapt wayang golek in
their own fashion.
Marjorie Batchelder, described by John Bell (2000: 98) as
something of a grande dame of American puppetry, was anything but
secretive of the modications she made to wayang golek puppets in productions such as Maeterlincks Death of Tintagiles. Batchelders 1947
book, Rod Puppets and the Human Theater, is still considered a central
resource on this particular puppet form (Bell 2000: 73). It is in large
part because of the international networking of Batechelder that the
technology of the Indonesian rod puppet can be found in so many
countries around the world today.
The Russian puppeteers and sculptors Nina SimonovichEmova and Ivan Emov are credited by Sergei Obraztsov as being
the creators of functional anatomy for puppets (Obraztsov 1985:
159). The Emovs encountered wayang golek puppets in 1925, and
might have been inspired by Teschner to adopt the technology to their
own purposes. The Emovs, dissatised with the technical limitations
and lack of expressivity of glove puppetry, had already been experimenting with modications of the traditional Petrushka glove puppet
style in their production of Baba-Yaga (1925), withdrawing their ngers
from the arms of the glove puppets and adding control rods. The

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puppets body immediately became more elegant, and the arm movements acquired scope. The puppets entire body acquired a new
expressiveness in the dynamic movements and in static repose
(Obraztsov 1985: 159f).
The Emovs recognized wayang golek as a kindred puppet form
to their own creations. Nina Emova wrote, I saw an ancient puppet
of just this system, only the sticks manipulating the hands were not
masked, presumably because it was not necessary for the story. Apparently it is a Javanese puppet made of gilded wood and with an impressive, mysterious beautyno, more than that, powerat once sharply
contrasted to the character of our puppets (cited in Solomonik 1992:
39). The Emovs did not believe that rods attached to the arms should
be visible, so they attached them at the elbows and hid them in the
folds of garmentsthus sacricing some of the scope of Javanese rod
puppet arm movement for a greater degree of illusionism. They also
continued to insert a nger into the puppet heads in the manner of
Petrushka carnival puppetry, rather than articulating the head with a
central rod. Puppet historian Solomonik (1992) has no doubt though
that the encounter had a direct inuence on the design of the
Emovs Macbeth (1926) and that it led to other Russian puppet practitioners to adopt and adapt rod puppet techniques. Obraztsov (1985:
160) was of the opinion that the Emovs puppets had far more
expressive bodies than wayang golek.
This initial encounter of Europe and the United States with
wayang articulated a pattern of colonial exploitation: Asian products
were alienated from their producers and transported to Europe as a
form of technology stripped of direct connections to the people and
cultural conditions from which they arose.
Teschners work has been compiled on a number of videos and
revivals can be seen at the Theatre Museum in Austria today. His
appropriation of wayang golek is in a many ways authoritative. Ray
DaSilva, head of Puppeteers UK, had always viewed wayang golek
through the lens of Teschner until he saw Sundanese rod puppets in
performance in the interactive multimedia CD-ROM accompanying
Andrew Weintraubs book Power Plays (2004). After having read that
Teschner was inspired by the wayang golek I had always imagined the
performances to be sedate affairs, but no. The videos show that they
can become fast-moving, quite violent and down to earth at times. In
one clip there are two characters ghting, one with a ail which he
wields very effectively, and violently belabours his opponent. The combatant who is getting the worst of it gradually succumbs but suddenly
vomits all over his assailant, much to the amusement/disgust of the
audience (Dasilva 2005).

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Wayang golek in Sunda and other parts of Java is an earthy folk

form. The three-dimensionality of the puppets allows for direct communication with the audience. Wayang golek puppeteers perform in
full view of the audience and an important part of the performance
dynamic is the juxtaposition of the head of the puppeteer with the
puppets. The puppet heads may have only a limited degree of animation, but audiences can read expressions of joy, anger, dignity, and
craftiness from the face of the puppeteer. Javanese pundits say that
wayang golek are called this becauase the word golek means look or
search. The golek puppet facilitates the search for meaning by spectators in a way that shadow puppets cannot because of their ethereal
nature. That is why some Central Javanese wayang kulit traditions conclude with the dance of one or two wayang golek puppetsit is a way
to extend the frame of the stage into the third dimension, opening up
the two-dimensional wayang kulit screen to our own world and incorporating the actual world into the world of wayang.
The use made of wayang golek by Teschner, the Emovs and
other early twentieth-century artists, in contrast, distanced the rod
puppet from the human world by going to lengths to conceal the control rods and hiding the puppeteer from view. In 1931, Teschner even
constructed a special stage he called a gurenspiegel, a three-winged
screen lit from within with a circle of crystal and muslin separating the
puppets from the audience. This arrangement allowed for cinematic
manipulations of illumination and focus, but effectively sealed off
Teschners puppets from his spectators. Teschners gurenspiegel
allowed him to remoor his hybridized version of Indonesian puppet
tradition in a newly created culture garden (cf. Fabian 1983) sealed
off from the realities of imperialism and fascism that surrounded him.
As Batchelder (1947: 169) writes, His shows would, I think, be appreciated by the Javanese whose distinction between the real and the fabulous are far less precise than those of Westerners. His puppet art is
like a strange tropical plant (perhaps just a little poisonous) suddenly
transferred to a northern city, where it lives, far removed from the
characteristic life of that city. Few, if any, Javanese viewed Teschners
work in his lifetime. It was only in 2006 that I brought Teschners
exquisite modications of Javanese gures to the attention of Asep
Sunandar Sunarya, Indonesias foremost rod puppeteer, while Asep
was touring the United Kingdom.

A New Wave of Puppetry

The 1960s ushered in a new era of intercultural communication, facilitated by commercial jet travel and funding for Asian performance research and visiting artists. Pandam Guritno (19282001), a

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lecturer in law at Yogyakartas Gadjah Mada University, was a wayang

enthusiast who came to the United States in 1962 to study anthropology and Southeast Asian studies at Cornell University. Pandam had a
general background in wayang but had never publicly performed in
Indonesia. He was encouraged to do so in the United States as a way to
communicate something about Javanese culture, giving short demonstrations of wayang kulit to the accompaniment of phonographic
records. Pandam then collaborated with James Brandon at Michigan
State University to produce a wayang kulit show with Brandons students of Asian theatre (see Fig. 7) and work with Brandon on the book
that was eventually published by Harvard University Press as On
Thrones of Gold (Brandon 1970).
Brandon had toured Southeast Asia in 19631964 with Ford
Foundation funding, spending much of his time living in Yogyakarta,
where he studied wayang. One of Brandon and Pandams Michigan
State students, Roger Long, went to Java for two years (19671969)

Figure 7. Pandam Guritno and James R. Brandon, codirectors, The Death of

Karna, a Javanese Shadow Play, English-language premiere, Michigan State
University, May 1965. Voices and puppet animation, normally performed by
a solo puppeteer, were divided up among undergraduate students, including
Roger Long and Farley Richmond. (Photo: Michigan State University)

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specically to study puppet animation at the Habirandha puppetry

school in Yogyakarta and take photographs for Brandons book. Brandon, Long, and Pandam all were primarily interested in performing
classical wayang kulit. Brandons Theatre in Southeast Asia dutifully documents forms such as wayang suluh, [C]reated to tell stories about
modern Indonesia, with shadow puppets representing Nasser, Tito,
Nehru, Soekarno, and other contemporary gures (Brandon 1967:
45). But the primary interest of Brandon, Long, and Pandam was not
in innovations but in the careful study, recreation, and documentation
of the classical legacy of wayang kulit.
Such classicism was much less characteristic of the cohort of
performing artists introduced to wayang, gamelan, and allied arts by
way of Indonesian performing artists brought to the United States and
through their trips to Indonesia arranged by ethnomusicologist Bob
Brown. Brown was a student of Mantle Hood, who embraced the practical study of gamelan and other non-Western musics as a mode of
understanding and research methodology. Previous generations of
ethnomusicologist had studied music at an experientially distant
remove, taking tuning measurements, recording pieces, inquiring into
history and legend. Hood advocated sitting down and playing together
with ones informants, who became de facto ones teachers. While he
was teaching in Wesleyan, Brown brought the Wonogiri puppeteer
Oemartopo to teach there. Oemartopo, unlike Pandam Guritno, is a
professional puppeteer from a puppeteer family, with a broad knowledge of the art form.
One of Brown and Oemartopos students was Dennis Murphy,
who was one of the rst American composers to write new music for
gamelan. Murphy constructed his own gamelan instruments, Venerable Sir Voice of Thoom, in 1960 in Plaineld, Vermont. This appears
to be the rst set of gamelan instruments to be constructed in the
United States. Murphy wrote new pieces of music for his gamelan and
wrote about the process of making his gamelan for a Ph.D. thesis at
Wesleyan. In 1967 Murphy made shadow puppets to go with these
instruments, and developed a new performance language called Thoomese and a Thoomese myth cycle integrating Javanese wayang gures
such as Arjuna, Limbuk, and Cangik (Murphy 1983).
Murphys direct inuence has been limited by his rootedness in
Vermont. He describes himself as a super-kosher vegetarian, and will
not eat off plates or use utensils that have touched meat products. His
puppets, rather than being made from traditional buffalo hide (a hard
material to nd in the United States), are constructed from wood and
lace. People from Plaineld who went to his shows as children now
bring their own children, and share memories of characters and plays

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performed long ago, recognizing and commenting on Murphys

invented Thoomese culture (see Fig. 8).

West Coast Innovators

On the west coast of the United States, Indonesian arts developed at a quicker pace beginning in the 1970s. There are several reasons for this. One is the American Society for Eastern Arts (ASEA),
which ran annual summer schools in Asian performance starting in
1963 with the nancial support of Samuel Scripps, an oceanographer
and grandson of the newspaper mogul E. W. Scripps. Scrippss wife
Luise was an ethnochoreologist who had studied bharata natyam with
Balasaraswati at Wesleyan in 1962, so it is not surprising that ASEA initially had an India focus. Browns involvement in ASEA and his move
from Wesleyan to California contributed to ASEA developing an
Indonesia focus starting in the late 1960s. Superlative instructors in
Javanese, Balinese, and Sundanese music, dance, and puppetry came
to the west coast to work intensely with students and perform for the
public as well.
In 1969, Oemartopo taught gamelan and wayang kulit classes,
and performed a six-hour, Javanese-language wayang kulit performance
with prerecorded music before a student audience lying down on
blankets and sleeping bags on the lawn of Scrippss Oakland mansion.

Figure 8. Sanganyeki, the principal baddie in Dennis Murphys

Thoomese wayang, created in
1967. (Photo: Courtesy of Dennis
Murphy)

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The audience seemed to have been well prepped. Occasionally they

meandered out to eat, as is traditional. They returned, chatted,
laughed, listened. Some burned incense (Hertelendy 1969).
Described as being as much a ceremony as a theatrical show, Oemartopo uttered incantations and there was a live rooster penned next to
the puppet screen that was given as an offering. In following years,
Oemartopo was able to give similar marathon performances with live
gamelan music played by ASEA students. Other Indonesian puppeteers taught at ASEA (renamed the Center for World Music in
1974) in subsequent years, including Solonese wayang kulit puppeteer
Soetrisno, Sundanese wayang golek puppeteer Rujita Suhayaputra, and
Balinese puppeteer I Nyoman Sumandhi. Brown also famously
brought groups of students to Indonesia starting in 1973. Many of
these students went on to become gamelan artists or went into academia (Bogley 2004).
Out of these interactions of East meets West came many
important artistic developments and social networks. ASEA had a
major inuence in the founding of many gamelan groups (including
the San Francisco based group Sekar Jaya) and the west coast minimalism of Steve Reich. Director-designer Julie Taymor and actordirector John Emigh were inspired to study in Indonesia after attending the 1973 summer school; both continue to draw deeply from their
deep learning (Snow 1986) in Seattle, Java, and Bali. Marc Hoffman,
after studying Javanese wayang kulit with Oemartopo and Soetrisno in
California, went to Indonesia to further his studies in Solo-style wayang
kulit. Also present at the Center for World Music in 1974 was Kathy
Foley, who specializes in wayang golek puppetry but also studied Balinese shadow puppets with Sumandhi. Foley, who is now a professor at
the University of California in Santa Cruz, performs traditional wayang
plays in English. She also has created numerous new productions
based on European myths and tales (Herbert 2002: 208225). Barbara
Benary studied (unofcially) at the Center for World Music in 1974
and 1975 as well. Benary began in academia as an ethnomusicologist,
but after failing to get tenure turned to work outside academia as a
composer, puppeteer, and independent arts producer. Among her
wayang operas are Karna: A Shadow Puppet Opera (1994) and Wayang
Esther: A Javanese Purimspiel (2001). Her collaborators include the puppeteer Barbara Pollitt and the Javanese puppeteer Joko Susilo (one of
my own teachers).
Larry Reed was an aspiring California lmmaker when he studied traditional Balinese wayang with Sumandhi at ASEA in the summer
of 1973 (Diamond 2001). Reed went to Bali the following year and
studied with Sumandhis father Rajeg, a famous puppeteer from the

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village of Tunjuk, learning puppet manipulation, language, music

all the skills that would allow him to perform himself. Jet travel and
independent means allowed Reed to return regularly to Bali in the
1970s and 1980s to continue his wayang studies. In 1990, Reed began
to experiment with the wayang form, using sophisticated lighting techniques, silhouettes of scenery, and actor/dancers with masks and body
costumes to cast shadows on large screens in Balinese pieces such as
Kawit Legong: Prince Karnas Dream and Sidha Karya, as well as in works
based on world literature. (See Plate 2.) Reed is now in demand as a
director and designer of non-Indonesian theatre as welldesigning
shows for the bharata natyam based Abhinaya Dance Company of San
Jose, the San Jose Opera, and the American Repertory Theatre in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Reed has worked closely with a number of Balinese puppeteers,
directing work in Bali and playing a major role in the Balinese wayang
scene. One of his closest collaborators has been the Sukawati puppeteer I Wayan Wija, who is known in Bali as a very talented puppet
designer. Wija has introduced both new puppets (such as dinosaur
and other highly articulated animal puppets) into traditional wayang.
He has also developed new puppet forms such as wayang tantri, which
focuses on Balinese versions of the animal fables known in India as the
Pancatantra. I Wayan Wija has collaborated with the Mabou Mines, a
New York based performance collaborative, in their production of
MahabharANTa (1992), a part of Lee Breuers warrior ant saga. Wija
has also collaborated with Bang on a Can composer-clarinetist Evan
Ziporyn in Shadow Bang (2001). This project used projection screens
set up in front of and behind the musicians and puppeteer.

Indonesian Contemporary Wayang

In Bali, tradition has not remained static. Puppeteers such as I
Wayan Wija and I Made Sidia travel internationally, collaborating with
puppet artists and companies around the world, exchanging techniques and developing international perspectives. New forms and
technologies, and new societal issues inspired I Made Sidia to develop
wayang skateboard. This new wayang genre uses a three- to ve-meterlong screen that extends beyond the hands reach of the puppeteer.
To use the length of the screen, puppeteers (typically three or more)
move around on skateboards as they animate puppets. Wayang skateboard techniques have been applied to therapeutic communal performances known as Wayang Dasanama Kerta (Wayang of the Ten Elements) that aimed to restore cosmic order after the 2002 bombing of
Kutas Sari Club (Sedana 2005).
Sidia applied wayang skateboard techniques to his puppetry and

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puppet direction to the binational Australian-Indonesian production

of The Theft of Sita (2000), directed by Nigel Jamieson and designed by
Julian Crouch, which toured Britain and the United States in 2001 and
continental Europe in 2002 (see Fig. 9).
Theft of Sita mingles the mythic universe of the Ramayana with
contemporary social critique, gamelan music with jazz. Lanka is
depicted as a version of Jakartaskyscrapers, murderous trafc,
poverty and oppressionand the depiction of Sitas rescue mingles
with the popular uprising which led to the overthrow of Soeharto
(Shuttleworth 2001). Rehearsing and touring an international company of more than twenty independent artists involved great logistical
challenges (Blacklock 2003). There were also political tensions. I
Wayan Wija had been initially attached to the project, but withdrew
owing to political tensions between Australia and Indonesia in the
wake of East Timors 1999 independence referendum (Laurie 2000).
The production garnered rave reviews, however, and successfully introduced wayang and Indonesian politics to European and North American audiences of contemporary performance.
Innovations in Java have also not been lacking. Many formal
innovations have been associated with the major academic institutions
for training puppeteers. Surakartas Institut Seni Indonesia (ISI, Indo-

Figure 9. The Theft of Sita (2000), directed by Nigel Jamieson and designed
by Julian Crouch, with puppetry by I Made Sidia. (Photo: Courtesy of Julian
Crouch)

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nesia Institute of the Arts), a tertiary institution for the arts, has been
producing contemporary wayang since the 1970s.9 Wayang Budha
(Buddhist Wayang), created in 1974 by choreographer Suprapto Suryodarmo, presented Buddhist stories and borrowed from the danced
puppetry of Thai nang yais court shadow puppet tradition. Wayang
Budha (also spelled wayang Buddha) was devised by Suprapto and
other ISI staff as an academic experiment to fulll a mandate for contemporary wayang (wayang kontemporer) at the second Pekan Wayang
Indonesia, a national wayang festival launched by President Soeharto
in 1969. However, it was taken to the community starting in 1975 in
annual open-air performances at the ancient temple of Mendut on the
Buddhist holiday of Vesak. Suprapto left ISI in the 1980s to form his
own school, and wayang Budha was not performed until Suprapto
revived it for the 2006 Vesak celebrations at Borobudur.
Like wayang Budha, wayang sandosa, created in 1981 by a team
of puppeteers from ISIs puppetry department under the direction of
Bambang Murtiyoso, uses multiple puppeteers, offstage narration, and
novel gamelan musical arrangements. Spotlights and multicolor lights
allow close-ups, fades, wipes, and other lmic effects. Central control
rods of some gures are lengthened to maximize the use of a screen
the size of a movie screen. Sandosa (an abbreviation of berbahasa
Indonesia, in Indonesian) has typically been performed at national
festivals such as the Pekan Wayang and on campus for visiting dignitaries to ISI. The use of the national language of Indonesian, rather
than the traditional Javanese so closely associated with wayang, allows
it to speak to extralocal audiences, but sacrices much of wayangs
poetic resonance and comic spontaneity. Its tightly rehearsed movement sequences and musical accompaniment demand many hours of
rehearsal. While the large number of personnel required makes sandosa impractical to export, ISI-trained puppeteers such as Joko Susilo
and Sigit Adji Sabdoprijono have successfully staged sandosa-style productions with university student puppeteers in Britain, New Zealand,
Australia, and the United States.
Wayang rumput (Grass Wayang, also known as wayang suket) is a
creation of Slamet Gundono, a theatre artist and guitarist who has a
degree in wayang puppetry from ISI. Wayang rumput uses puppets made
from dried grasses of the sort used by children as playthings in Javas
past, and now mostly known through textbooks and museum exhibits.
The work is nostalgic for tradition and at the same time serves to revitalize it and make it relevant to educated urban audiences. Gundonos
work is abstract, lled with comedy and informal interactions among
audience and performer, drawing on a range of dramatic registers and
the virtuosic talents of Gundono himself as actor, puppeteer, story-

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teller, and musician. Gundonos work, which uninchingly juxtaposes

the detritus of the everyday (including condoms) with the classical
wayang heritage, is beginning to attract international attention. He was
an Asia Pacic Performance Exchange fellow in 2004, performed at
the Indonesia Performing Arts Mart in 2005, and was the recipient of
a prestigious Prins Claus Award from the Netherlands in 2005.
Another ISI puppetry graduate, Nanang HaPe, teamed up with
the Netherlands-based jazz ensemble Nunuk Purwanto and the Helsdingen Trio and gamelan musicians from both Java and Bali to put
together Mahabharata Jazz & Wayang. In addition to touring Java and
Bali, the production also represented Indonesia in the 2004 Athens
Olympics.
Wayang ukur (Measured Wayang) is the creation of Sukasman,
a graduate of the Yogyakarta arts academy ASRI (Indonesian Plastic
Arts Academy) (see Fig. 10). Inspired by puppetry he saw in New York
and the Netherlands in 19641965, Sukasman created new wayang
puppets and new wayang dramaturgy to do traditional stories, with
puppeteers on both sides of the screen, and dancers taking on puppet

Figure 10. Wayang ukur, Sukasmans wayang creation using translucent

shadow puppets in front and behind the screen, plus dancers. Unlike traditional wayang kulit, Wayang ukur is not meant to be seen from behind the
screen. Shown here is Wayang ukur s creator, Sukasman. (Photo: Courtesy of
Anna Ingleby)

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roles (Susilo 2002). Sukasmans productions are highly crafted works

of theatre and his interpretations of the classical repertoire are often
idiosyncratic and highly personal. While many of Sukasmans puppets
have been adopted by traditional puppeteers, wayang ukurs audience
is largely limited to educated elites and non-Indonesians.
One of Sukasmans wayang students is Heri Dono, a painter and
installation artist associated with a group of neo-folk artists centered
around Yogyakartas CEMETI gallery. Much of the work of Heri
Dono, who is considered to be one of Indonesias most important contemporary artists, is located at the border of theatre and visual art.
His early wayang performances under the label Wayang Legenda (Legendary Wayang, 1988) used cartoonlike shadow gures inuenced by
Sukasmans clowns and demons to perform Indonesian folk and contemporary stories from outside the wayang repertoire, including tales
from the Batak people of Sumatra (Wright 1994: 232240). Subsequent wayang-based work was more abstract, involving painting on the
puppet screen and taking apart puppets in performance. The nightlong performance installation (F)arty Semar performed in Auckland,
New Zealand, in 1999 was a deconstruction of ruwatan, the most
sacred of wayang kulit ritual dramas (Behrend 1999).
Wayang skateboard, The Theft of Sita, Wayang Dasanama Kerta,
wayang Budha, wayang sandosa, wayang rumput, wayang ukur, Mahabharata Jazz & Wayang, and the multifarious wayang work of Heri Dono,
while drawing directly on the wayang tradition, also stand apart from
it. All are produced with government or foreign support outside customary arrangements of wayang sponsorship and often within academic or festival contexts. While wayang sandosa and wayang ukur have
been performed for decades, most other wayang experiments have
been more ephemeral, and tend to be project oriented rather than
aimed at developing a genre with a broad social base. Pace Richard
Schechner (1990), who posits ideological reasons for Western scholars
ignoring contemporary wayang, it is this ephemeral quality (and problems of storing documentation in tropical Indonesia) that has stood in
the way of contemporary wayangs study until recently.
More integrated into the traditional wayang economy is the
work of Sujiwo Tejo (b. 1962). Sujiwo is descended from a line of puppeteers from Jember, East Java. His puppetry performances use traditional wayang technology side-by-side with guitar-driven folk fusion
music and contemporary theatrical dramaturgy. He integrates metaphysical speculation and political commentary with the surreal. Sujiwo
also is a popular actor, composer, singer, and journalist. His work
tends not to be appreciated by traditionalists, who are alienated by his
use of critical theory and his unorthodox dramatic interpretations

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(such as casting Rahwana as the hero of the Ramayana). His collection

of essays, Dalang Edan (Crazy Puppeteer), recommends reading
primers on chaos theory, evolution, quantum theory, and Hawking
(Sujiwo Tejo 2002). Sujiwo is loved by students and educated youth
and is a favorite choice when universities sponsor wayang.
Enthus Susmono (b. 1966) is a popular Tegal-based puppeteer.
Enthus is also from a traditional puppeteer family. When he nished
secondary school, he applied to ISI Surakarta but was unable to raise
tuition and thus did not matriculate. Exposure to modern theatre and
literature and work in radio brought knowledge of experimental techniques and mass media. Enthuss work is populist in orientation, and
he often integrates Islamic messages into performances (Curtis 2002).
Enthus uses the English-inected language of modern theatre
and media in rehearsals. He talks about his performances as konser
(concerts) tells his musicians to cut (cut) when he wants to stop them,
and refers to garb worn on stage (including his own traditional puppeteer garb) as kostum (costumes). Enthus practices both wayang kulit
and wayang golek, has a large puppet collection (including many
unique and antique gures) and is on intimate terms with puppeteers
around Indonesia. Enthus, like other superstar puppeteers, maintains a stable of managers, script writers, and puppet makers, and calls
on musicians and vocalists from all over Java. His performances minimize the use of formal interchanges and maximize humor, frame
breaking, and autobiographical discourse, when the puppeteer speaks
freely about his own experiences and pleasures.
Enthus is perhaps best known for his puppet creations, which
he designs himself. He has created a whole line of interstellar shadow
puppets that he refers to as wayang planet. Shadow puppets of Superman, Batman, Batwoman, and various Japanese manga characters allow
him to contrast and compare these international icons with wayang
superheroes such as Gathotkaca. Other creations include a life-size
shadow puppet caricature of the puppeteer himself. Enthus has been
known to stand up and ght with a life-size Bathara Kala demon puppet and to cut open or burn a puppet screen in performance. He
defends these spectacular attractions (atraksi) as efforts to reach new
audiences, but critics speak of a virus Enthus (Enthus virus) degrading
Javas noble wayang heritage (Kicuk 2003).
Radical innovators have probably always existed within Javanese
and Balinese wayang traditions. The Cirebonese puppeteer Abyor
attracted the same type of censure for his outspoken social criticism,
Islamic-themed plays, and metatheatrical antics (including slashing
screens) in the 1950s and 1960s as Sujiwo and Enthus do today (cf.
Cohen 1997: 160207; Rosidi 1999). The difference is that todays inno-

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vators operate in a globalized marketplace of ideas, techniques, and

technologies. A populist innovator such as Asep Sunandar Sunarya will
happily absorb inuences from American cartoons and Chinese martial arts lms into his rod puppet designs and choreographies (Weintraub 2004), and will tour Europe despite a net loss of income because
of the prestige it brings at home. Contemporary wayang artists such as
Sujiwo Tejo, Heri Dono, and Slamet Gundhono create new work with
national and international audiences in mind, cultivate networks of
international patronage, benet from professional development outside Indonesia, and readily collaborate with artists from around the
world.

Contemporary Wayang and the World

Today there are many performers outside of Indonesia with
deep practical knowledge of Javanese and Balinese wayang. The 1999
Pekan Wayang brought together a dozen of these puppeteers, dubbed
dalang mancanegara by festival organizers, including non-Indonesians
such as Sarah Bilby (Great Britain) and Helen Pausacker (Australia)
as well as Javanese puppeteers Joko Susilo, Sumarsam, and Widiyanto,
all of whom predominately reside outside Indonesia. Most of the
dalang mancanegara produce traditionalist versions of wayang with
gamelan accompaniment, but some have formed companies to apply
wayang golek and wayang kulit to explore myth and its meaning in the
modern world. Three examples from the United States, Germany, and
Britain provide contrasting illustrations.
Anaphoria is a Los Angeles performance collective under the
direction of Kraig Grady that performs microtonal music on homemade instruments and shadow plays using Javanese and Balinese
wayang gures, shadow puppets from other traditions, as well as selfmanufactured shadow puppets and projections. The group purports
to be an ofcial cultural mission of the ctitious island nation of Anaphoria, which has a shadow puppet tradition created by Indonesian
migrants. Anaphorias shadow plays, which often narrate attempted
invasions of their multiethnic island nation, draw on New Age myths.
Their performance processes also read as New Agethey talk about
their unwritten, devised music, for example, as a form of channeling
(Anaphoria n.d.).
Nyai Kangkung, a Cologne based neo-gamelan fusion ensemble, produces shadow puppet theatre under the company name of
Schattentheater Kho. While their music crosses many boundaries, the
shadow plays under Daniel Khos direction maintain the integrity of
the form, with a solo puppeteer seated before a traditional screen
arrangement animating newly created puppets. Java-born Khos

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Pl ate 1. The bruised and bloodied Christ (Allen Madrigal) poses for photos on Good Friday after being beaten, crucified, and entombed in the Marinduque Moriones Festival.
(Photo: William Peterson)

Pl ate 2. Larry Reeds Sidha Karya was performed in conjunction with Gamelan Sekar Jaya
of San Francisco. (Photo: Courtesy of ShadowLight Productions)

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Pl ate 3. The Worm that Squirmed (2002), a childrens puppet play by Indigo Moon, featuring
Anna Ingleby and Haviel Perdama. Puppets are from the Giri Harja 3 workshop in Bandung,
West Java; the Klana gure (right) has been modied by Ingleby to make the malevolent
worm. (Photo: Courtesy of Anna Ingleby and Indigo Moon)

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Pl ate 4. Dilapidated hina dolls come to life for the play-within-the-play. Left to right:
Sagawa Tetsuro, Kaga Mariko, Daimon Goro, Miyawaki Takuya, Matsu Takako, Sanada
Hiroyuki, Sakaguchi Yoshisada, and others. (Photo: Jon M. Brokering)

Pl ate 5. The dead King (blur in center) tumbles down the steeply inclined stairs as
courtiers climb up towards the usurping Fortinbras. Left to right: (above) Takei Shu, Sagawa
Tetsuro, Hirano Minoru; (below) Kaga Mariko, Matsushige Yutaka, Sanada Hiroyuki, Yokota
Eiji, and others. (Photo: Jon M. Brokering)

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Pl ate 6. New Love in a Fallen City with actors Tony Leung Ka-fai and So Yuk-wa. (Photo:
Courtesy of Hong Kong Repertory Theatre)

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shadow play Ich & Ich (I & I) tells the story of a man who gains and
loses fame, wealth, and love from a magic mirror in a voyage of selfdiscovery. While using wayangs potential for depicting the supernatural, thematically the play draws more on Goethe than Mahabharata or
Ramayana.
Indigo Moon, directed by Yorkshire puppeteer Anna Ingleby
and her Indonesian composer-partner Haviel Perdana, is the most
active wayang-based group in the United Kingdom. (See Plate 3.)
Ingleby studied wayang golek and wayang kulit as well as topeng maskdance and jaran kepang hobbyhorse dancing in Indonesia between
1995 and 1998, and uses both traditional and modied rod and shadow
gures in her work. Her recent creation, The Worm That Squirmed, is the
story of a demonic worm with the head of a Rahwana puppet and the
body of a worm, let loose in the modern world, spreading pollution
and computer viruses. The Worms adversary is Cepot, the main clown
of Sundanese wayang golek, the music by Haviel is mostly electronic or
synthesized, and the language is a combination of simple Indonesian
and English that can be understood by young children. While Indigo
Moon does not hide its Indonesian connections, its productions are
not primarily intended as cultural bridges to Indonesia, but rather as
occasions for meditating on social issues of global concern. While aiming to communicate with British children, Ingleby is at the same time
deeply respectful of wayang tradition. This conict between Indonesian tradition and the demands of British childrens theatre often
causes friction between Ingleby and her director and playwright collaborators, emblematized by the puppeteers recurrent protest: Cepot
would not do that!

The Future of Wayang

Many Indonesians are aware of the fact that traditions of
wayang have been transported and transformed outside of Indonesia.
The interest of foreigners is a token of prestige, and a leitmotif in discussions with foreign researchers and artists is that one day Indonesians will need to study wayang (and gamelan, and batik, and so on)
outside of Indonesia if Indonesians do not properly preserve their own
artistic heritage. This seems unlikely within our lifetimes, unless Indonesia comes under the rule of a Taliban-style Islamic government.
Wayang is not quite the endangered art form that the UNESCO award
would indicate. (One of the claims made in the application was that
wayang was being degraded by an overemphasis on humor and clowning, as if popular puppeteers had not always been doing this!) There
are many indications, however, that village and family traditions of
wayang will no longer be the operating structures in the transmission

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of tradition. Increasingly, traditional art forms are operating across

geographically dispersed elds of action. The primary proponents of
certain schools of bharata natyam, for example, are now to be found
in the United States and Europe. Likewise, some contemporary
wayang puppeteers are often more comfortable working abroad than
in Indonesia.
The twentieth-century introduction of electric lights and sound
amplication and the recording and broadcast of wayang on radio and
television have already exerted major inuences on the ways wayang is
produced and consumed. Web-based global technologies will likely
have function in important ways in the future. Wayang is already broadcast over the World Wide Web on streaming video. I was able to watch
myself perform as a guest artist in an Enthus planetary wayang broadcast streamed by the Indonesian private television station Indosiar one
Saturday evening in 2004on the very same computer screen I am
looking at now as a write. It is conceivable that in years to come
Indonesian puppeteers will be communicating with scriptwriters via email, downloading new pieces for gamelan on mobile phones, and conferencing with potential sponsors on web cameras. Virtual wayang performances in which puppets are manipulated by remotely located
puppeteers using animatronics might also arise.
This is no fantasy: in a short trip to Cirebon in the summer of
2004, I saw sinden (female vocalists) checking their messages on mobile
phones during performances, and even receiving telephone calls.
Video monitors had become de rigueur at rural hajatan (ritual celebrations) in Cirebon so that spectators could watch both the shadow
and puppet sides of the screen simultaneously.
The form and content of wayang will always keep pace with
social, technological, and political changes. One should not imagine
that there is one universally preferred model for presenting wayang in
global contexts. Today the lines separating academic experimentalism
and the popular, the foreign, and the local in Indonesia and abroad
are increasingly blurred. The future of wayang is now.
NOTES
1. This survey of wayang in global contexts is necessarily incomplete.
I do not discuss wayang in Surinam or Malaysia, which have very different
relations to Indonesia than other parts of the world. Because of barriers of
language, I do not deal with wayang in Japan or Thailand, although both
merit detailed consideration. I also address only theatrical wayang and do not
consider other artistic mediations of wayang.
2. This is in contrast to the substantial number of Europeans and

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Americans who studied dance in Java and Bali starting in the 1920s, such as
Ruth Page, Xenia Zarina, and Claire Holt. European and Eurasian scholars
living in the central Javanese court cities of Surakarta and Yogyakarta, such as
Jacob Kats, played important roles in the redaction of wayang texts for publication in colonial Indonesia, but the extent of their involvement in wayang
practice is debatable. See Sears 1996.
3. My understanding of techniques and technologies draws on
Tenner 2003.
4. For overviews of Dutch wayang scholarship, see Sears 1996 and
Kleinsmiede 2002.
5. In referring to wayang purwa (literally, early wayang ), Craig follows a standard tripartite model that divides the wayang repertoire into early,
middle, and late stories.
6. In this respect, Craigs relation to wayang is something like the relation of Artaud to Balinese dance-theatre. Artaud had formulated many of the
essential features of his Theatre of Cruelty before viewing Balinese dance at
the Colonial Exhibition in Paris 1931, but his viewing conrmed the possibility of a physical and non-verbal idea of the theater (Artaud 1958: 68).
7. It seems that Craig occasionally used wayang puppets for small-scale
performances in Rapallo, the Italian town where Craig lived from 1917 until
the early 1930s. A 1923 newspaper article refers to plastic actions that Gordon Craig enjoyed performing with marvelous Javanese puppets and the
monsters that he built in the solitude of Rapallo (Anonymous 1923).
8. Teschners insistence on his puppets muteness is consistent with
Craigs dictum that [t]he marionette has no voice, though a degenerate public has at times begged that he shall be made to speak. His power and his
expression lies in movement. By movement he can tell us of the very things
that Shakespeare, for all his words, cannot tell us; and so to manufacture for
him a voice is foolish and extravagant (Craig 1977: 61). In contrast, wayang
is traditionally a very discursive theatrical form.
9. ISI was known as Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia (College of Performing Arts) before 2006 and Akademi Seni Karawitan Indonesia (Indonesian Music Academy) before 1988.
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