Me and Wayang Kulit

Wayang theatre is considered to be a highlight of Javanese culture.   Over the centuries its religious character has increasingly developed into a distinct art form; foreign influences introduced new stories, characters were added, and new refined styles were developed at the courts. There are various types of wayang, but, in Java, the most important is the wayang purwa, which uses kulit(flat cut-outs of painted leather puppets) whose shadows are projected on a large white screen.Wayang purwa makes use of the purwa repertoire: the oldest stories about cosmic events and divine will are represented; the course of events is seen as being predestined, part of a cosmic law. The Javanese word purwa means ‘beginning’ or ‘first’ and derives, probably, from the Sanskrit parwan, a word used to denote the chapter of the Mahabharata.

Wayang is clearly of Javanese origin with animistic features. Originally it was not individuals who were depicted on stage but legendary beings. These mythical figures, represented by the most important puppets, were used to explain the relationship between heaven and the human society; and the origin and the structure of the world. The introduction of narratives, such as the Indian epics, increased the number of puppets and brought more individuality to the characters.  The wayang is part of the religious complex constructed around the concepts of aulus-kasar, lair-batin and rasa. Aulus means pure, refined, polished, exquisite, ethereal, subtle, civilized, smooth. Kasar is merely the opposite: impolite; rough; uncivilized. Lair means «the outer realm of human behaviour»; batin «the inner realm of inner experience.»
Rasa has two primary meanings: ‘feeling’ and ‘meaning’. As ‘feeling’ indicates both feeling from without (taste, touch) and from within (emotional); as ‘meaning’ indicates the implicit import, the connotative ‘feeling’ of dance movements, polite gesture and so forth.

Traditionally a performance last an entire night, starts soon after sunset with an overture (talu) ofgamelan music and continues without a break until dawn. The making of shadow puppets is a long and painstaking process. Skin of a female buffalo of about four years of age, the ideal type for texture and strength, is dried, scraped and cured for up to ten years to achieve stiffness and eliminate warping and splitting. On maturity, skin are carved and pierced to fashion the required character. This technique involves extensive knowledge of iconography and physiognomy, since all lines – angles of the head, slant of the eyes and mouth, profile of the body – are specific to the the character. When carving is completed, the traditional pigments including powdered burnt bone for white, lampblack, indigo, yellow ochre and cinnabar for red in a gelatinous medium mixed from dried egg-white. Gold leaf and pigment are applied in a medium of protein glue derived from fish bones. The cempurit, or manipulating rods, are made of buffalo horn, while the studs attaching the jointed arms to the torso are of metal (sometimes gold), bone, bamboo or, in rare courtly examples, gold studded with diamond.

In a wayang kulit performance the shadow of the puppets are cast on to a white fabric screen (kelir) in a wooden frame. The puppets are fastened to a tortoise-shell stick, running from head to below their feet, at which point the dalang grasps the stick as a sort of handle. The arms, the only movable parts, have the cempurit – short sticks attached to them – which the dalang holds in the same hand and manipulates with his fingers. He holds the puppets up in either hand over his head and interposes them between the light and the screen. If they are nobles, as most are, he must be doubly careful never to let them get lower than his head. From the dalang’s side of the screen one thus sees the puppets themselves and their shadows rising up dominant on the screen behind them. From the reverse side of the wayang screen, one sees the shadow of the puppets only. Over the head of thedalang there is a special brass oil lamp (blencong) often shaped like the mythical bird Garuda. The light shining from the lamp on the head of the dalang – and making possible the projection of the shadow of the puppets on the screen – represents the divine light infused through the upper chakra in the dalang (intermediary between gods and humans). The puppets symbolize the original entities, or the celestial archetypes; the white screen represents the World. Thus, thanks to divine light, the ‘shadow’ of the archetypes are projected onto the  phenomenal world, where the dialectic of opposites takes place, but the world is, and remains, a ‘word of shadows’.

Musical accompaniment dates from as late as the eighteenth century; gamelan music is essential to a wayang performance, and the music is especially selected for each performance. The gamelan orchestra presents to the ear the picture of the inner life the shadow-play presents to the eye. It is an entirely percussion orchestra, which may consist of as many as fifty  instruments in a very large court ensemble. There are several tonal scales or modes, but in wayang purwa the music is mostly in salendro, the five-tonal scale of Javanese gamelan music, with approximately equal intervals between the tones (barang, gulu, dada, lima, nem). The music expresses the atmosphere of the various sections of the performance and accentuates the movements and words of the puppets. Some wayang characters have their own particular melodies, associated with their personalities and moods.

A dalang is highly respected and is often believed to possess supernatural qualities – especially healing – because of his position as mediator between people, gods and spirits. Adalang has nine voices for the main figures, as well as the typical language of each one; rengep (to involve completely), to keep the performance alive; enges (emotion), to create interest in the characters and involve and move the audience, for instance, during a dialogue between lovers; tutug(eloquence), to recite prescribed dialogues or pagedongan (traditional, fixed explanations); banyol(comedy), to  make the audience laugh; sabet (flow, wave), to handle the puppets correctly, and properly distinguish between their movements, especially during fight scenes; kawiraja (kawi refers to the old Javanese mode of speech, raja means ‘prince’), to be able to recite the traditional eulogy prior to the performance; parama-kawi (parama is the Sanskrit word meaning ‘high’), to correctly explain the nicknames of the kings and nobles in the performance; amardi-basa (to focus on language), to know the different ways that gods, giants or humans speak in their various social positions (hierarchy is strongly embedded in the Javanese language, which has two completely separate vocabularies: if the listener has a higher status krama is used, but if he has a low statusngoko is used); parama-sastra, to know the writings (layang) on which a performance may be based, and which are necessary to determine the content of the suluk (narrative announcements) and greget saut (pieces of music); awicarita (knowledge of many tales), to know all the tales referred to in a performance, the character depicted by each puppet, and the significance of each stage requisite;amardawa-lagu (melodious singing), to know the verse measure and singing techniques which are used in performance.

A lakon, the Javanese word for ‘play’, is an adaptation of the classical wayang literature forwayang performances, and is divided into fixed sections, these being related to religious overtones of consecration and entering a new state. The word lakon is derived from laku, which means ‘go’ or ‘act’, but can also imply ‘adventure’ or ‘journey’ Each section can be seen as a stop along the journey towards perfection. The transition from one section to the next is marked by suluk, the dalang’s recitative announcement of what is about to happen. The wayang purwa repertoire consists of four different performance cycles: the first, the preamble, deals with the origins of the world and the vicissitudes of the gods, and is inspired by both the Adiparwa, the prologue of the Mahabharata, and ancient Indonesian tales; the second, the Arjuna Sasra Bau cycle, deals with the lineage of several prominent characters of the Ramayana, including the birth of the twelve-headed giant known as Ravana or Dasamuka, and his opponent Arjuna Sasra Bau, he of a thousand arms, an incarnation of the god Visnu; the third cycle, the Rama cycle, is based on the Ramayana, and tells the story of the errant hero Rama, who goes in search of his wife Sita kidnapped by the giant Ravana; the fourth cycle, the Pandawa cycle is based on episodes from the Mahabharata, the story of the struggle between the five Pandawa brothers (Yudistira, Bima, Arjuna, Nakula and Sadewa) who rule the country of Amarta and the hundred Korawa brothers of Ngastina (led by Suyodana, Sakuni, Dorna and Karna, the dissident half-brother to the Pendawa) which ends with the disastrous battle (Baratayuda) lasted eighteen days during which the champions from each side face one another. Wayang stories states the formulation of how is action possible, given compassion. Their philosophy is that insofar as one can perceive ultimate reality, which is within oneself as an ultimate feeling (rasa), one will be free of the distracting effect of earthly emotions, not only compassion, but anger, fear, love, hope, despair, and all. This gives one great power, either for good, as in the case of the Pendawa, or for evil, as in the case of the Korawa. Good and evil are human values only, and God is in in everything, the hate and the cruelty as well as the love and the compassion; and everything is in God.

The Pandawa, especially Arjuna, are always accompanied by their five loyal servants clown by the name of panakawan: Semar, a very fat man with big belly and enormous buttock; and his sons Gareng, with his misshapen arms and cross-eyes; Petruk, a tall man with a very long nose; Topog and Bagong, with a squat body and very big eyes. Semar’s sons have been brought to life by their father’s practice of meditation. They live in the village of Karang Kabolotan, bolot means human body's dirt. Panakawan (pana means ‘clear vision, clever’ and kawan means ‘companion’), thus, those who have clear vision and that can give a wise advice. Although they are only servants, with ugly faces and disproportional bodies, they are very wise and good advisers. On the stage, the most pathetic scenes are often interrupted by the panakawan. This occurs especially during the gara-gara, the climax and turning point of the performance. There is a fine line between the sublime and the ridiculous; wisdom easily becomes foolishness and vice versa. Humour and satire have a protective and strengthening power and are the counterbalance for passion, despair, and other deep feelings which may disturb the harmony with their intensity. The Javanese word for clown, badut, is derived from badot, meaning ‘healer’. The panakawan are thought to be purely Javanese by origin because of their roles as mediators. They always refer to the ksatrias as «Ndara Den Bagus» (ndara, from bendara,means ‘master’; den, abbreviation of Raden, a male court title; bagus means good and handsome), the whole meaning being  “Master, do a good things”.

Semar or Sang Hyang Ismaya, the oldest and most important of the panakawan, was originally a god, ‘the twin brother of heaven’. He is the elder brother of the highest god, Batara Guru. As a punishment for a misdeed he was given a grotesque form and sent to earth to serve the descendants of the gods (ksatrias). He is the guide of the hero on a journey full of tribulations which the hero must overcome before achieving his goal.