Organizer: Matthew Isaac Cohen, International Institute for Asian Studies
Chair: Andrew Weintraub, University of Pittsburgh
Discussants: A. L. Becker, University of Michigan; Robert Wessing, Leiden University
Puppet theater in Indonesia, particularly Java’s wayang kulit, has been valorized as a locus classicus of symbolic anthropology, celebrated as an icon of ethnic identity and national culture, and reified as a sign of the static and essentially "Indic" or "syncretic" nature of Indonesia. Recent developments in Indonesian society, co-articulating with changes in scholarly paradigms, have resulted in "reformations" of both how puppet theater or wayang is studied, as well as wayang’s political, cultural, and religious uses and meanings in Indonesian society. Indonesian puppet theater can no longer be viewed as the exclusive cultural property of the Indonesian people; new work on its historical development and cross-hatched global connections force students of this art form to consider it in new ways. This panel is an exploration of the interplay of politics and scholarship around this critical theatrical art form (in the past and present) at the current moment. It is an attempt to define the contours of a relationship: how scholarship by young and emerging scholars of this ancient yet vital theater, building on a 150-year scholarly tradition, interacts with contemporary cultural-political issues and themes of late and post New Order Indonesia. Issues to be considered include the politics and poetics of representation, performance innovations and social context, interaction with mass media and popular entertainment, governmental control and local resistance, regional and global narratives of historicity and change, sub-regional and counter-hegemonic traditions, and the significance of individual creative artists as agents of innovation.
Origin and Diffusion of the Shadow Play: The Buddhist Connection
Thomas Cooper, University of California, Berkeley
Why, where, and when did shadow puppets originate? Why and how did the shadow play spread across half the world, from China and Indonesia in the East, to Morocco and England in the West? To find the most likely answers to these questions, the paper examines the forms of shadow puppets, and the early documentary evidence on stone monuments and in manuscript sources. It reexamines, in light of current knowledge, the reasons proposed by earlier scholars for an autochthonous development of the shadow play in Indonesia. According to the most likely scenario, the shadow play begins in India some time before the 6th century with its use by Buddhist priests as a didactic medium: a metaphor for the eternal realities that lie behind and beyond the illusory world of senses. Missionary Buddhist priests took it to both Indonesia and China, in the great period of Buddhist expansion from the 6th through the 9th centuries. From Indonesia, then, shadow play diffused northward to mainland Southeast Asia, and from China it traveled westward on the Silk Road to Persia, the Arab world, Turkey and, finally, to Europe, where "ombres chinoises" were a popular entertainment in l8th-century London and late 19th-century Paris.
A Marriage of the Media: Central Javanese Shadow Puppet Theater in the Age of Television
Jan Mrázek, Leiden University
Central Javanese wayang kulit, more so than other forms of wayang, tends to be thought of as the "classical" or "traditional" performing art of Java, and has been elevated, and thus reduced, to a privileged symbol of Javanese culture, to the extent that it is rarely discussed as performance. An ideal, timeless image of wayang has been created that is too infrequently checked against reality. In addition to wayang’s status as a cultural icon, and to some extent apart from it, Central Javanese wayang kulit is also a lively entertainment attracting thousands of spectators, and as such, wayang exists next to, interacts, and competes with other traditional and modern entertainments and media. This paper will examine how wayang in performance has developed so as to thrive under the present circumstances. It will focus on the interaction between wayang and other media and entertainments, especially television, on which wayang is very popular: e.g., how wayang performances are adjusted so as to fit the television "frame" when they are broadcast on television, and how other performances are fashioned after these television wayangs; how they incorporate "attractions" from other entertainments, such as acrobatic movements from Hong Kong kung-fu movies, Indian film-music, pop and rock singers, and comedians; and how performances are fashioned so as to appeal to audiences who are used to watching television, i.e., how wayang performances, whether or not broadcast on television, are increasingly like other television shows.
"Entrusting the Scriptures": The Rejection of History in a Cirebonese Wayang Kulit Play
Matthew Isaac Cohen, International Institute for Asian Studies, The Netherlands
"I would like to discuss the belatedness of the times . . . and the imminence of the year 2000." So intones the Hindu-Javanese deity Sanghyang Wenang at the beginning of a newly crafted "branch play" for wayang kulit, created and performed by the shadow puppeteer Udaya of the Cirebon region of north-coastal West Java in 1994–95. And so do Sanghyang Wenang and the Hindu-Javanese pantheon’s leaders decide to entrust the holy books of the Mahabharata and Ramayana to the king of Amarta, so that one day these texts might be transmitted to the Islamic holy man Kalijaga, preserving the Hindu-Javanese religion’s essence after the gods exist no more. Not all agree. The heavenly sphere becomes a battle field. Udaya’s play, "Entrusting the Scriptures," is a performative response to millennial anxieties, an allegory for the hazards of religious convergence, literary loss, and cultural domination. The play is also a critical contestation, created by a puppeteer from a marginalized theatrical school lacking government recognition or support, in response to a government-sponsored wayang kulit conference. Udaya’s deep suspicions of official formulations of the functions of puppeteers and sanctioned versions of wayang kulit history in late New Order Indonesia permeate the performance. An exploration of the play’s genesis and reception, its anti-canonical moves and utopian reformulations, demonstrates the potential of wayang kulit in performance as a means for contesting cultural hegemony and the importance of individual creativity in the continuing vitality of wayang kulit as a popular art form.