American puppet-master takes to the stage
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".