Javanese shadow puppet master performs, instructs at Dartmouth

Posted 02/20/01

Dartmouth is hosting an Javanese shadow puppet master for a month of instruction and two performances of Indonesia's oldest, most rigorous and most classical theater form.

Called wayang kulit (shadow puppet theater), the art form includes an orchestra of at least 20 pieces, performances that last a whole night, and illustration of segments of the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata stories.

The puppet master, Javanese artist Joko Susilo, is performing at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 21 in Faulkner Recital Hall, for about an hour, and at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 1 in the Top of the Hop, for about 90 minutes. Both performances are free and open to the public, and will be performed in English.

Susilo, of the Shadow Theater Department of the University of Performing Arts in Surakarta, Java, is considered by many to be one of the best dhalang (puppet masters) in Java, an island of Indonesia. It's not an easy rank to attain. He manipulates puppets, speaks all the voice parts, usually around 60 per performance, sings and directs the 20-plus piece percussion orchestra, the gamelan, all at the same time. The performances usually involve several languages and last a full night, from about 8 or 9 until just before dawn.

"The shadow play is one of the main carriers of cultural information. A dhalang becomes a repository of incredible amounts of knowledge, cultural and historical. They're highly respected, and Joko is a master of this tradition," said Jody Diamond, Visiting Scholar in Asian Studies, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music and Director of the American Gamelan Institute.

Susilo, one of the few dhalang with a doctorate (received in 2000 at the University of Otago in New Zealand), is working with students in the Music of Southeast Asia class, giving individual instruction in the instruments of the gamelan and manipulation of puppets and preparing a series of lectures and demonstrations on puppet technique to be videotaped for future use.

Susilo learned wayang kulit from his father, and has seven previous generations of dhalang in his family. He started to learn the art at age 3, and at age 10 gave his first all-night performance. His parents had double-booked his father for the night, and the sponsor insisted that the performer be from the Susilo family. So Susilo took the assignment. He sat on a platform so he could lift the puppets high enough to be visible on the screen. He sat cross-legged with his right leg over his left so he could play a brass percussion instrument with his foot, thus directing the tempo of the gamelan. He didn't move from his spot, use a restroom or eat for nine hours. (In Java this kind of endurance is considered a spiritual gift.) His sister sang the female solos. The characters sometimes flew, and he had to stand up to get them high enough, and people could see how little he was. The audience loved watching a performance by such a young boy, and by the end, most of the people in the room, including his sister, were crying. Susilo said he was so thrilled by the experience he wanted to continue for another two hours.

"That was the best performance of my life," Susilo said. "I made thousands of people happy. That was the beginning of my career."

Susilo's visit is sponsored by the Music Department, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and the Allen and Joan Bildner Endowment for Human and Intergroup Relations. For ticket information on the upcoming performances, call 646-2422.

The puppets are made of the hide of water buffaloes and the handles from their horns. Although not visible in front of the screen, the puppets are painted with intricate, brightly-colored decorations and cut with tiny details, like curls in the hair, visible when the puppet is held right up to the screen, as they usually are.

Demonstrating the puppets' movements, Susilo made them flap their wings, jump, fight with swords, flip over and die dramatically.

The story varies somewhat from performance to performance, as the dhalang creates the script as he goes along, remaining true to the original story but adding subplots, new characters or commentary on current conditions. There is usually a part where clowns appear, making jokes and talking about local events. They'll sometimes harass the musicians and almost always compliment the host.

Wayang's importance in Javanese society started in preliterate times, Diamond said. The shadow puppet shows entertained and communicated history, philosophy and ethics. The stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata mythology are thousands of verses long, and only a portion can be performed in one night. Susilo draws his performances from the Ramayana tradition.

Diamond said the cultural importance of these stories compares to the Old Testament and all the fairy tales of western civilization combined. But more than that, they have a part in everyday life; people refer to characters as they would acquaintances or celebrities, saying things like, Oh, you're just like Rama.

"It's very exciting to have an artist here, teaching a tradition that nobody here knows anything about," said Larry Polansky, Chair of the Music Department and Jacob Strauss 1922 Associate professor of Music. "It's really an important tradition. It's the closest thing to an artistic shaman that exists. They tend to be the great artists of the culture."

Audiences at the wayang sit in front of the screen to watch the shadows or behind the screen to watch the dhalang and the gamelan. These days, Diamond said, most people in Indonesia like to sit behind the screen. They say they can imagine what the shadows look like, and they like to watch the action of the performers. In the West, however, audiences always sit in front of the screen. Susilo's March 1 performance will be in the center of the room so people can sit all around and see wayang as most Indonesians see it.

Indonesian audiences usually bring children, buy food and toys at vendors on the periphery, sleep, socialize and return to the center to watch the parts of a story that are particularly interesting to them or their children.

"It's all very fluid," Diamond said. "A wayang performance is not just a theater event; it's a social context for a community to come together, celebrate rites of passage and acknowledge their shared artistic heritage. It's on a very large scale."

The dhalang training involves several disciplines to prepare the students for lives as professionals. They must learn at least five languages to be able to tell the stories as they should be told, develop the endurance to sit still and work their arms high for a whole night, and develop their voices to give a unique quality to each character's voice. They must also know the characters' personalities, families and roles.

They must be creative in forming new interpretations of the classic stories. The entire mythology has about 250 characters, and the dhalang will use around 60 in a single performance. If this kind of self-control and knowledge is achieved, a dhalang is considered a professional.

Susilo's passion at this juncture of his career centers on teaching the art form. He has told Diamond he wants very much to open the door wide to the English-speaking world to understanding the tradition. He has worked in English while at Dartmouth, and he insisted on translating the stories, a difficult procedure because Javanese has many different sounds and uses a lot of metaphors that can't be easily translated, Diamond said.

Diamond has played Indonesian music for 30 years, and often teaches the gamelan in her Music of Southeast Asia class. This year, she said, the class has Susilo visiting, who knows wayang kulit inside and out.

"My specialty is music and composition," she said. "Joko's a top-level theater artist, so he challenges us to try new things. It's very exciting. He's inspiring to work with."

Diamond teaches Indonesian music and theater with a gamelan of about 20 instruments and a 250-piece shadow puppet set. She teaches community courses and offers a weekly community group in gamelan.

Link:

• The story of Rama, short version