Wayang Week features rich variety of puppet theater

Wayang Week features rich variety of puppet theater

By Gus Kairupan

JAKARTA (JP): From towering structures in masque dramas to
tiny puppets manipulated by fingers; from lavishly costumed and
decorated performances to the impromptu simplicity of street
shows; from stories based on age-old myths, legends and fairy
tales to portrayals of episodes in this angst-ridden century...

All these elements were acted out during the recent Pekan
Wayang Indonesia-Eropa (Indonesian-European Puppet Week) from May
24 to June 2 at Taman Ismail Marzuki.

Participants in this highly informative and entertaining event
were from France, Germany, the U.K. and the Netherlands, who
appeared here under the auspices of, respectively, Centre
Culturel Francais, Goethe Institute, the British Council, and
Erasmus Huis. Switzerland's sole participant, Margrit Gysin, was
sponsored by the Swiss embassy.

"Puppet Week" is of course not quite right as a translation or
interpretation of "Pekan Wayang" and may have been chosen for
conveniences sake. Maybe "Theater of Images" would've been more
to the point -- the human actor who played St. Peter (The Moon by
Carl Orff) was made up to look like a puppet.

Story-telling

Anyway, the week -- or ten days -- contained a rich variety of
dramatic entertainment, including what must surely be the
progenitor of the performing arts: story-telling.

In fact, the entire event could be described as something of
an excursion through the development of the theater arts, though
of course the performances were not exact replicas of what, say,
the jongleurs (street entertainers) did in medieval Europe.

They, the street entertainers, are still very much around, but
whether their acts are as multi-faceted as those of their
ancestors in the 10th-11th century is doubtful.

Aaptheater (Netherlands) with its impromptu props may well
have looked at this medieval type of theater, but otherwise has
developed its own ideas and manner of presentation.

Certainly the subject matter, dealing with animal rights and,
by extension, conservation, is more substantial than that of
ordinary buskers.

Temps Fort Theatre (France) also appeared with another age-old
form of entertainment: the masque, which may have disappeared
altogether from the European scene.

The use of masks is probably the only element related to
ancient Greek drama, but otherwise the European masque (14th-15th
century) is totally different. Besides, unlike Greek plays which
were public events, the European masque was court entertainment
by aristocrats for aristocrats. Though the masque may now be
non-existent in Europe (some of its music has apparently
survived), it is still very much alive in Indonesia (topeng), so
what the French troupe did was work together with artists from
Bali (they've been here for a month prior to the Puppet Week) and
worked out a program which will be taken to various countries in
Southeast Asia and France.

Hands-in-puppets marked the presentation of Faulty Optic
(U.K.), but this wasn't an ordinary Punch & Judy show. The trio
went much further in, applying some aspects of Japanese bunraku
puppet theater -- the manipulators in black outfits that covered
them from head to toe. This surrealistic presentation was
definitely not a "for-all-ages" kind of play, dealing as it did
with the isolation of man, acted out by characters that were
half-human (or half-puppet, rather) and half-sack. Not a very
cheerful subject, but it did provide a glimpse of the unlimited
possibilities of puppet theater. Imagine real people hopping
about in sacks!

Which brings us to puppets on a string, the speciality of the
Duesseldorfer Marionetten Theater from Germany. Their pre-
sensations featured adaptations from operas, one of which was
Mozart's Magic Flute. It features genies flying about, which in
the actual opera doesn't look as "natural" as in the puppet
version. The Magic Flute of course has the perfect ingredients
for puppet theater, and combined with the gorgeous (recorded)
voices of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Franz Krass, Roberta Peters,
Evelyn Lear, and other opera stars, you'd be forgiven for
preferring the puppet version over the original. Marvelous
theater and marvelous entertainment.

But so was the one-woman show by Margrit Gysin from
Switzerland. Dressed up as a tree, i.e. in layers and layers of
textile (she must have suffered in the heat) within which the
tiny puppets were hidden, she had the small audience enthralled
with the story about seven brothers who were turned into ravens
as a punishment for failing to fetch water which would sustain
their little sister. The tiny puppets, not much more than five
centimeters tall, served to enhance the story-telling -- a dying
art of which Margrit may well be one of very few masters.

Depth

A revelation was the presentation of Ki Dalang Khasman's
Wayang Kulit Kontemporer (Contemporary Wayang Kulit). Now here's
an ancient art adjusted to the times, making use of whatever this
century offers technically and dramatically. If you prefer
watching the shadow you no longer need to move to the other side
of the screen. Clever projection of lighting takes care of it
all, alternating shadow image with real puppets. It involves
three dalangs (puppetmasters), one on the front side and two on
the backside, handling a set of identical wayangs. Using both
sides of the screen simultaneously and for different actions
gives this type of wayang a depth which is lacking in traditional
wayang kulit.

The accompanying music also revealed something radically
different: there was a short section which had the three sinden
(singers) singing in harmony, i.e. in intervals which, in
diatonic terms, came close to a perfect fourth. It may well lay
to rest the commonly held belief that pentatonic systems are
unsuitable for harmonic music.

Audiences were not large, but then, these kinds of theater
have an intimacy that does not lend itself well to immense crowds
of onlookers. The Pekan Wayang Indonesia-Eropa is worthy of
repetition if only because it provides an opportunity for people
to get together to enjoy and praise -- or not to enjoy and
condemn -- actual performances. Still, it's more than can be
said for television which does not encourage people to go out and
mix with others.