U.S. 'dalang' presents 'wayang' show

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): The kelir, a long white screen with a colored border and banana tree trunks running along its base, will be there. When the time comes, all other lights are switched off except the lamp illuminating the screen, and from above a man in Javanese dress with a dagger tucked into the sash in the small of his back will sit cross-legged before the screen.

To the man's left is the kotak, a large wooden chest that has functioned for centuries as the home to a host of characters waiting to cast their shadow on the screen, and as a sound box which is struck periodically by two small wooden hammers called cempala to keep rhythm, and as a cue to play or not to play, to the gamelan orchestra behind him.

The man being talked about is no ordinary person. He is the dalang, or the great hand responsible for making the world of shadow puppets come alive in a wayang performance, the ancient and most venerated of Javanese art forms. The dalang may commence a performance with a dance of the mountain, or by separating the tree of life to unfold stories derived from Javanese versions of the Indian Ramayana and Mahabharata epics about various dangers and risks that are confronted in life.

And the popularity of any wayang performance clearly depends on the fame of the dalang, whose name is said to be derived from the Javanese word for wanderer, as sponsors in the past called upon them to travel a circuit of villages to perform in celebration of harvest and other rituals.

To reach out to his audience, the dalang sings or speaks, clowns or cries, drones or decides on behalf of the puppets whose central stem he manipulates constantly with slight, nervous movements. The puppets are flipped, twirled, spun and handled anyway the dalang wills, demonstrating all the while the exceptional coordination and choreography at his command.

This show has been part of Javanese life for nearly a thousand years. It will be performed once again on the campus of the American Friendship Association (PPIA) at 7 p.m. on Sunday, but with a slight difference. The dalang here is no son of the soil. He was not born to the tradition like most children of dalang who have watched since childhood and fallen asleep behind their fathers at countless nightlong wayang performances.

Masterminding this special performance held to celebrate 50 years of friendship between Indonesia and America is Marc Hoffman, an American dalang who is much in demand these days for his English-language performances.

For the soft-spoken, bespectacled Hoffman with a perpetual twinkle in his eyes, it matters little as to what color his skin happens to be. As a dalang, what concerns him most is the expectation of the audience. The primary job of a dalang is precisely to interpret the mood of the moment for his audience, even as he is expected to pay utmost attention to the totality of the performance, and the basic requirements of the tradition. If he is able to convey even some of the complex, aesthetic and deeply mystical riches found within the wayang, he is happy even as he makes changes to suit his times.

He said that is what he attempted to do. After all, the tradition dates back 900 years. It has gone through countless variations, as it existed before Hindu-Buddhist beliefs influenced life in Java and continues to retain its place at the apex of Javanese culture even in an Islamic environment. In ancient times the role of the dalang was that of a mediator between man and the invisible forces. Today that socioreligious role is perhaps waiting to be transformed into that of a critical artist in a modern society.

He added that sometimes the title of dalang, with its multiple responsibilities, filled him with awe. He prefers to look upon himself as a student, a great fan of wayang instead, who gets to sit in the right place sometimes.

Story

The piece chosen for his performance is a story about two minor rulers who are at war over a tiny piece of land that borders their respective kingdoms. As the narration unfolds, the audience is witness to the clash of egos of the two kings and all the death and destruction that is brought upon the populations of both kingdoms. If the episode happens to remind anyone of the recent rape of East Timor, then the conclusion is merely the result of a fertile imagination, Hoffman said. For yet another role of a dalang is never to indulge in obvious finger pointing.

Just before the presidential elections last August, Hoffman performed the famous episode called the Dice Game, adding to the excitement in the mind of his audience as to who would win this time round. He is also making notes of Corneonalus, a lesser known play by Shakespeare which ponders on pride, for a possible adaptation for a wayang performance.

His aim is to attract more and more young people away from watching movies, listening to records and going to economics school with his continuous performances. He feels it is futile to look for religious meanings in the wayang. More important is the aesthetic pleasure that the wayang provides through its stories about gods, heroes and monsters, transporting the imagination into worlds unknown even as instruction is poured out in the form of entertainment.

But it was for none of these reasons that Hoffman was first attracted to the wayang. He was just another student waiting to graduate in fine arts from the California Institute of the Arts where Cokro Wasitodipuro taught the gamelan and Oemartopo from Wonogiri instructed in wayang.

It was just one more course until it became a favorite one and Hoffman found himself in Surakarta where he continued his studies for another two years at two dalang schools.

"My teachers, Bapak Suratno and Bapak Suyatno, saw the raw material in me. I love drama, I could sing, I could think. That perhaps made them look upon me as a strange challenge. They inspired me continuously," said Hoffman, who began public performances in 1980 which have pleased foreigners and also non- Javanese speaking Indonesians.

Today he performs in English, having reduced the nightlong performances to two hours. Hoffman, who is now fluent in Indonesian, sings in the original Javanese with a mixture of English words thrown in when he thinks it is necessary to do so.

After all these years of studying the art, he finds himself body and soul involved with the wayang. He cannot dream of living anywhere else but in Indonesia. His biologist wife, an expert in malaria, plays the gamelan in her spare time while six-year-old daughter Claire is growing up on wayang stories, told to her not just at bedtime.

Hoffman also studied for two other degrees in law and business management, which makes it absolutely normal for him to be advising clients on how to make money during the daytime with the hope that they will not feel deceived by the story he will narrate all nightlong about those who lost everything in their blind pursuit of wealth.

Such is the way of double-talk in the wayang.