The World of Shadows Come Alive, Part 2/2

Translation of the second half of Haljand Udam's essay "Elustunud Varjude Maailm", which investigates shadow puppet theatre in Indonesia as well as the impact left by shadow puppetry on Antonin Artaud

Figures used in Indonesian wayang kulit.

Part 1 of the essay, which explores the art of shadow puppet theatre as seen through the Arabic and general Traditional worlds, may be read here.

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Shadow Puppetry in the Malay Archipelago

In the Malay Archipelago, where the animism of yore and diffused elements of Hinduism have been expelled — though not entirely exterminated — by the religion of Islam, traditional shadow puppetry (wayang kulit, wayang purwo) has largely preserved its connotations of sorcery and magic.¹ The performance of shadow puppetry is first and foremost a part of celebrating some important event or holiday, and warding off evil concurrent with the attraction of good forces is knowingly expected of the act.

The performance is preceded by a lengthy ceremony, as is customary. The dalang — the owner of the theatre and the puppeteer — sacrifices to protective spirits, and supplicates for aid from all the deities as well as the spirits of the ancestors. Thereafter he begins to bring out various props and puppets from the chest in a specific order. Firstly emerges a figure cut out from leather,  sometimes called a tree (kayon), sometimes a mountain (gunungan), and which remains on the linen screen for the entire duration of the performance. This figure symbolises either a mythical mountain in the centre of the world wherein spirits dwell, or the World Tree. Then out of the chest are taken the good heroes — these, like the plot lines of the performance, mainly originate from the Indian epics “Mahabharata” and “Ramayana” —, and along with the heroes emerges the protagonist’s servant who embodies the ancient spirit of the ancestor. These figures are then incensed. Only then does the dalang bring out the remaining figures; for them to stand upright, these are impaled into a soft banana trunk laying on the ground — the good heroes on his right, the bad heroes on his left. Having chosen the puppets necessary for the performance, the puppeteer then lays all the remaining ones on the edge of the trunk, whence they cast ambiguous shadows onto the screen.

The wayang kulit performance begins in the evening, when it is already dark. For this, special props are not required. The only thing necessary is a frame for the purpose of fastening a linen screen symbolising the cosmos, wherein the story takes place. Symbolically, the lower edge of the screen is the earth, whilst the upper edge is the sky onto which is attached an effigy of the mythical bird Garuda. Behind the dalang burns a lamp, with musicians, the gamelan players, sitting beside. In older times only the men could have looked at the dalang’s workings behind the screen, whereas women and children were only allowed to see the shadows cast onto the screen. The play is conducted with flat puppets fashioned out of cowhide, bearing openwork for decoration. The height of puppets ranges from anywhere between 30 and 50 centimetres; men are taller than women, giants and gods even more so. Good heroes are distinguishable from evil ones by their facial profile. The puppet’s shadow is pronounced only when it is pressed against the screen. By rearranging the puppets in multiple ways, increasing and decreasing their distance from the screen, the puppeteer creates various shadow effects. The work of the dalang is accompanied by a song or a speech, having chosen the play’s plot in accordance with the nature of the celebrated event. These plot lines mostly stem from cosmogonic myths and epics of Indian origin, which have developed into variants based on local animist traditions. Wayang first stands for shadow, second for the soul capable of leaving one’s body after death — as understood by the imagination of animism, a living person has, besides his physical body, also a shadow, or in other words a spiritual counterpart. Instead of their bodies, it is likely easier to summon the bodiless shadows of the ancestors wherefrom they dwell.

Conjuring epic and mythological events in front of the audiences’ eyes by means of an exciting and suggestive play of shadows, the dalang, as if a shaman, takes them into the centre of the world where the world is still only forming and growing. Therein the perceptible world blends into one with the supra-natural, time ceases to pass, and the good once again triumphs over evil.

The Imprint of Bali Theatre on the French Dramatist Antonin Artaud

We have now shown that traditional Eastern theatre, rooted in ritual, does not just pass time and serve the purpose of teaching, but chiefly expunges the bad whilst repairing and healing by symbolically taking viewers back to the beginning of existence, liberating the flesh from the collected ruination imparted onto them by the unfolding of time, and from the constraints of imagination and thought instilled by the surroundings of the soul.

By watching a performance of Bali theatre, whose origins lie proximal to the Javanese wayang kulit described above, such a revelation was also likely lived through by Antonin Artaud in the year 1931.² Artaud found in Bali theatre a manifested version of his passionately wished for “speech before words” (parole d’avant les mots):

In Bali theatre we anticipate a sort of pre-language state, where it’s still possible to choose a tongue for oneself — music, gestures, movements, words.³

In the play of Bali performers Artaud saw emerging in his thoughts a “pure theatre”, the language of theatre as “a visible and plastic materialisation of the word”, an ancient integrality of the world where the word is inseparable from action, the dream from wakefulness, the sign from sensation, the thought from life — of such a magical state of coinciding where “we know we are speaking ourselves”.⁴

The healing given by theatre is in Artaud’s view just like Eastern medicine — something that restores the wholeness and cleanliness of Man. Theatre for Artaud was an initiatory dream which opens the possibilities of transmutation shrouded within Man. In the traditional philosophy of the Orient, the dream is a symbol for awakening. The melting and moving dimension of dreams is nearer to the beginning of the world and opens existence’s inherent richness of possibilities more than the world of wakefulness, which by and large has solidified into having a single meaning. In Artaud’s view, all forms of culture must be in a constant state of destruction and creation for them to be important for life:

The masterpieces of the past are fit for the past — for us, they are not to taste. We have a right to say that which has been already said, and even that which has not yet been said, but only in a manner that is characteristic of us, immediately, directly, such that it may correspond to the sensibilities of modern times and that it may be understood by everyone.⁵

On the other hand, this thought has been expressed even more sharply:

Culture is an evolving spirit which emerges from emptiness towards form and returns from form back to emptiness, as if unto death. To be cultured means to burn the forms, to burn the forms to be worthy of life. Meaning: to learn to correctly be amongst the torrents of the destruction of forms.⁶

Having called to “destroy the masterpieces” the loudest and yearning after brutality and plague the most, Artaud’s sincere nihilism takes on a new shade of meaning when juxtaposed with the worldview of the East.

References

1. The following assessment is mainly based on the following works: Л. А. Мерварт. "Малайский театр". — восточный театр. Ленинград, 1929, pp. 112-195; И. О. Соломоник. Традционный театр кукол Востока. Москва, 1983, pp. 94-153; А. А. Бернова. "Религиозные обряды как один из истоков традиционного театра народов Индонезии". — Мифы, культы и обряды народов Зарубежной Азии. Москва, 1985, pp. 89-107.

2. В. В. Малявин. "Театр Востока Антонина Арто". — Восток-Запад исследования переводы, публикации. Москва, 1985, pp. 213-231.

3. A. Artaud. Esseid ja kirju. Tallinn, 1975, lk. 54

4. Aforementioned, p. 58

5. Aforementioned, p. 65

6. A. Artaud. Messages révolutionnaires. Paris, 1971, p. 118. The sinologist V. Malyavin, whose field of expertise is ancient Chinese philosophy, has likely intuited the similarities between Artaud’s endeavours and the Taoist idea of “any objectified form’s inauthentic sharpened perception”. See also his book Чжуан-цзы. Москва, 1985.