After class on Tuesday one of my wayang teachers invites us to a performance in his village. Since it is a weeknight, I quietly assume it will be a relatively short exhibition (maybe 2 hours?) like the ones I’ve seen at the museum on Fridays. And so it is that I show up completely unprepared for the awesomeness of an all-night wayang kulit show.
We meet at the teacher’s house, on a country road about half an hour outside of town. In place of a garage he has an open-walled building with a full wayang screen setup inside, for practice or small performances. We pile into his truck and he drives us further out, to the village where the real stage is set up and people are starting to gather. We eat with him and some of the other performers "backstage" and then take our positions to the left of the screen.
The show lasts from around 8:00 PM until roughly 4:00 AM. It's a grueling eight hours, but despite still not understanding any Javanese, the performance is incredible and and I am able to stay awake the whole time.
I take many pictures. These are some good ones:
One of the sequences toward the end of the show involves a maurauding giant and the hero's noble efforts to thwart him. The hero fires off a magic arrow [Note: themes that keep coming up in these stories: flight, giants, and magic arrows.] that bounces off the giant, no effect. A clown character (the tall one with the goofy pony tail, on the far right below) produces an unmistakably phallic fish which he throws at the giant. The fish/cock flops through the air along the same path the arrow flew. It buries itself in the giant's side, he is killed instantly. The fish/cock has fucked him to death. Here is the aftermath:
One aspect of the show I found particularly inspiring: Between the dalang, the singers, and the gamelan players, there are about thirty people onstage. A handful of others prepare food, set up/tear down the stage, run sound, etc. But at its largest, the audience never outnumbered the people working to put the show on. By the end, less than ten were left (including the wayang students).
One of the most exciting parts of classes has been the teachers' genuine love of wayang. More than anything else, they just have the best time in the world making it and their enthusiasm is contagious. This performance reinforces that feeling; although it might have be modestly attended and no one here is paid much (if anything), it is still clearly considered a successful show. For the performers, that other stuff is secondary to the show itself. [As it should be! Artistic integrity as a matter of course? Sold!!]
On Thursday night we see my other wayang kulit teacher in a wayang orang performance. [Note: Wayang kulit is the play with leather puppets illuminated against a screen. Wayang orang is the play with human actors. Same stories, same music, but with colorful costumes and the performance lasts about half as long.]
This is the open-air hall where the performance takes place:
There is a recurring joke involving this leering demon king's attempts to copulate with the beams:
The climax of an extended fight sequence between a graceful warrior princess and this pack of (apes? demons? giants?) comes when she climbs/leaps in slow motion up above them...
...and then drives a slow-motion punch down into the middle of them, the force of which knocks them away in all directions. [Wasn't that a Street Fighter move?]
Finally, we saw an Indonesian film called Barbi3:
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