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

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.