American puppet-master takes to the stage
By Emma Cameron
JAKARTA (JP): An English language shadow puppet (wayang kulit) performance to be held here on Sunday is already sold out.
The performance will be held by the Indonesian-American Friendship Association (PPIA) on Sunday at 7 p.m. at LIA's Pengadegan campus, South Jakarta, by puppet-master (dalang) Marc Hoffman from America.
The show is a celebration of 50 years of diplomatic ties between Indonesia and the U.S. and 40 years since the founding of the Indonesia-America Foundation which went on to become PPIA and the Indonesia-America Foundation (LIA).
The story to be shown, Kikis Tunggorono (The Tunggorono Border), was chosen by Hoffman because it has "a lot of issues that are current and that I think will be challenging."
It begins with the five Pandawa brothers from the Mahabarata epic, cheated out of their legitimate ascension to the throne of the kingdom of Amarta by their cousins, the hundred Kurawas. All this was the plan of the wily and deceitful Sangkuni, then Prime Minister of Astina -- the place in which the Pandawa's established a kingdom while they gathered power.
The free performance has already proved popular, giving viewers the opportunity to see the well-known Javanese story.
However, despite the performance's interpretation into English, the puppet show is not confined simply to an Anglo-Saxon audience. Hoffman is well aware of his English speaking Indonesian audience.
He believes his foreign status gives him the duality to provide a bridge between the two cultures and languages. "That's what I know about, to put in that intersection," he said.
Hoffman was originally an art student at the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles when he was first introduced to shadow puppetry. Oemartopo, a puppet-master, was teaching the art in L.A. and inspired a love of Shadow Puppetry in Hoffman that led him eventually to PDMN (the Mangkunegaran dalang school in Surakarta).
Hoffman is unhappy with those who say that only Javanese citizens can become true puppet-masters, seeing no difference between what he is doing to an Indonesian playing in a classical orchestra.
Javanese shadow puppetry has no scripts which means puppeteers must reinterpret each story, with the character of the clown- servant allowed to comment directly on contemporary issues.
When a comparison to the recent wave of 'modern' Shakespeare in film and theater was made, Hoffman said that shadow puppetry was more flexible "You can say things, you can put in scenes. It's a lot more adaptable". However, he did feel that in the original time of Shakespeare, before his works became almost as sacred as the Bible and not to be tampered with, the similarity to shadow puppetry was much more striking.
Hoffman operates under the assumption that his audience knows nothing of the myths and story cycles that are performed in shadow puppetry, although he admits any knowledge of Javanese culture and history would be an advantage. Shadow puppetry performed in Javanese can focus on things such as clothing, whereas Hoffman is more concerned with personalities and creating a sense of character. Primarily, he is about creating good theater, which for Hoffman means combining the classical with the contemporary, along with a certain amount of 'soap opera' quality.
Hoffman has performed many times, not only in Indonesia but also in the United States. Most recently, he has performed at Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI) Jakarta, St. Mary's College of Maryland and the new Wayang Building in the vicinity of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah.
He finds it easier to perform in Indonesia simply because of the availability of professional musicians to prepare with. He is wary of schedules in the U.S. which are too demanding and "can burn people out".