Ancient Arts in Modern Times
In Indonesia, the Hindu God Vishnu comes to Earth in the disguise of a mortal and battles an evil, ten-headed ogre. Srikandi, an assertive female character, earns her husband’s wrath for being too independent and outspoken.
These stories and others are told through Indonesia’s time-honored, exquisitely beautiful shadow theatre called “Wayang Kulit”. Rooted in the ancient belief that ancestors’ spirits return to earth at night, inhabiting the puppets’ shadows, the dalang (shadow master) casts his puppets’ shadows on the illuminated story cloth. He makes them dance, fly, wander, fight, grieve, triumph and love. He speaks for each of his puppets in different voices, retelling ancient stories about the cycle of life, reincarnation and the forces of good and evil, the good always triumphant! Performed in temple yards or village squares, the average wayang play lasts from sunset to dawn without intermission.
As with any ancient traditional form, there are questions about the future of the art. Can wayang kulit survive in the new millennium? Will traditional arts die a slow death?
Or, will globalization revive interest in our past? Will the slower-paced traditional arts meet the challenges of electronic entertainment that seduces the youth with immediate gratification and little need for imagination?
These questions, and others, were pondered at the International Wayang Festival, August 1999 in Jakarta, Indonesia. I was privileged to have been invited to present a paper at this seminar on globalization of traditional arts in the new millennium. Additionally, I was also invited to participate as a performing dalang in the festival. It was the first time I performed in my homeland!
The marathon wayang festival proved to be phenomenal! Fifty dalangs, the best among the best, participated in performances that started at 10:00 am and ended at 5:00 am the next day, for ten days straight. Additionally, a select group of invited “foreign shadow masters” performed. I was among them!
Let me emphasize that a woman dalang is an oddity in this extraordinary, centuries-old all-male profession. I am even more so because I am a woman dalang of mixed race. Born in Java to an Indonesian mother and Dutch father, I spent my childhood on my family’s rubber plantation, where I first watched an all-night wayang performance. This almost-mystical experience proved to be a great force in my artistic development.
I left my native Java after World War II. My family and I had been imprisoned by the Japanese as we were people of mixed race (“Indo” - people of European and Indonesian heritage). I survived three and a half years in the Japanese concentration camps for women on Java, but if I thought the war had finally ended in 1945, I was wrong. Japan’s surrender to the Allies marked the beginning of a bloody revolution for Indonesian independence from the Dutch. The Dutch colonial empire collapsed and Dutch citizens, including those of mixed-race parentage, fled the country. I was a young child when I arrived in Holland as a refugee. We had lost everything.
Although uprooted and separated from my homeland because of political and ethnic prejudices, I never lost my love and passion for the art of puppetry. The magic and stories of wayang were locked inside me.
Coping with culture shock, adjusting to living in a new environment and assimilating into Western society, I managed to finish school in Holland.
Through all this, theatre was my first love. In Paris, I studied drama and appeared in the motion pictures Lust for Life and Trapeze. Following my childhood dream, I emigrated to the United States where I settled in New York, married and had two children. I soon realized that I had a beautiful culture and a heritage that needed to be expressed and shared. A few old wayang puppets, which had been gifted to me by relatives many years before, seemed to beckon to be brought to life. I built a screen and started to play with them. I spoke for the puppets just the way I remembered they spoke and I moved them across the cloth the way I remembered they moved in the dalang’s hands when I was just a little girl, sitting and watching him from behind the screen. I have been playing with my puppets ever since and my collection has grown to over 400.
That moment in time, twenty-three years ago, when I picked up my puppets and brought them to life, marked the birth of my theatre production, TAMARA and The Shadow Theatre of Java.
Since then, I have presented my multi-media production at corporate venues and concerts, theatres, universities, colleges and festivals throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. I have also presented TAMARA and The Shadow Theatre of Java on cruise ships going from Australia to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.
But, going home to perform among the best of Indonesia’s Shadow Masters was an exceptional experience. It has transformed me from feeling like a small butterfly among the very great to feeling myself grow into a great big “atlas vlinder” (a very large butterfly, common to Java, with wing designs reminiscent of an old atlas map!)
I was thrilled when, during the opening ceremony at the Presidential Palace, Indonesia’s president B.J. Habibie shook my hand and welcomed me to Indonesia and the festival. Words cannot describe my emotions at that moment!
Tamara and the president of Indonesia
I presented my show in Indonesia with two important modifications: The first was that I introduced the performance with a short information-packed talk about the history and culture of Javanese Shadow Theatre. Secondly, preserving the authentic elements of traditional Indonesian shadow theatre when done outdoors, during which the audience walks around the performance area, I presented my theatre on a rotating stage. In a dramatic interplay of illusion and reality, the audience could first see the delicately designed puppets’ shadows move on the screen in front and then, see the huge, brilliantly colored puppet ogres from the back, as the dalang careened them onto the screen while at the same time delicately manipulating the princess’ movements in a court scene. I ended the show on the “spiritual” shadow side.
The play takes on an exotically graceful form on its backlit screen. Above: A scene from the Ramayana.
The story, The Abduction of Sinta, from the Hindu-Javanese epic Ramayana, was accompanied by the fabulous sounds of gamelan music played by eleven musicians who shared the stage with me. The show lasted just over one hour.
I had been able to capture the magic, bridge the cultures and engage an international audience in a new and innovative way of presenting an ancient theatre art form. Was it all a dream or was it real?
Touching the puppets during a workshop is a real high point for the students
With global communication and a growing exchange of cultural values, wayang kulit is being redefined through new artistic concepts. The performances are shortened. Young men can enroll in special dalang schools to graduate as “certified” dalangs. The entertainment media has incorporated wayang into programs that resemble soap operas. Popular wayang stories can be enjoyed in one-hour, sequential episodes on television screens in the home or in the workplace, to be continued the next day -- same time, same channel.
Are there any women dalangs in Indonesia? The answer remains elusive like the shadow of the puppet. But with changes occurring, professional women dalangs cannot be far behind. There is an Indonesian women’s movement that took its name from the rebellious mythological character, Srikandi, who habitually questions male authority in shadow theatre. In Jakarta, a parent may opt to enroll her little girl in the “Srikandi Montessori School”. (I have occasionally been called a “Srikandi” by dalangs who thought I argued too much!)
Bridges are being built between East and West. Puppeteers from Indonesia are invited to perform in Europe and the United States and dalang mancanegara (puppeteers from foreign countries) are invited to perform in Indonesia. Ideas are exchanged and friendships forged. East and West are no longer two opposites. American artists have incorporated Indonesian puppetry into their works in film and on stage. We are merging into one, finding ourselves in the other.
When theatre artist Julie Taymor spoke at the closing plenary session of the Arts Presenters Conference in 1998, one of the first things that she spoke about was the four years she lived in Indonesia after graduating from college, and the profound influence Javanese puppet theatre had upon her career. It prompted her to fuse much of the Balinese and Javanese culture, along with African cultures, into the magnificent Broadway production “The Lion King”.
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| Left to right: Toni Harris Thorpe of NC State, Tamara Fielding of the Shadow Theatre of Java, Julie Taymor, Gail Lima of Lima Productions, and Max Fielding of the Shadow Theatre of Java. |
I was very excited to hear her say this! While she was speaking, I left
the room to return with two shadow puppets from my collection. At the end of
Taymor’s talk, I introduced myself as the only Indonesian dalang at the
conference and presented her with “Srikandi”, the assertive puppet character
and “Sumbadra”, symbolizing the submissive female. Julie immediately
recognized these two female characters and was delighted with my gift.
Wayang has been included on the Broadway stage, in Hollywood movies and on cable television. With the ever-growing diverse population in the United States - and in particular the growing influx of Asians into this country - I continue to find opportunities to be active in arts-in-education programs, and have reached the minds of thousands of students and adults with this art. I like to weave my own cultural identity into my lectures and performances to teach tolerance, understanding, acceptance and appreciation for cultures different than our own, hoping to create links between people that have never been made before.
Enrichment workshop with Tamara
Will Wayang survive the new millennium? Will traditional arts continue to capture our imagination? Will globalization revive our interest in the past?
The answer is: YES!
Wayang is spiritual and magical! Wayang transcends time. It has changed my life.
Copyright ©2000
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