Wayang Performance

A Wedding and a wayang (shadow puppets)

Bridegroom and Bride at UMM Dome Wedding

Last evening we attended one of the most sumptuous wedding celebrations I have ever seen.  The whole of the University "Dome" was filled with perhaps twenty tables offering wide varieties of foods, from Peking Duck to Arabian stuffed filo dough, to Malang "bakso" (meatballs) to an American-inspired chocolate fountain. The caterers dressed in red uniforms along with the wedding committee went about collecting dishes.  Lines snaked through the entrance to the Dome for hours, with people from the university coming to pay tribute (and pay money I found out) to the newlyweds.  The bride was adorned with a headdress bedecked with jewels, looking very Javanese in a shimmering magenta form-fitting dress with the bridegroom in a matching suit by her side.  She was the daughter of an engineering professor, I learned. 

  The next event we attended was a wayang, the shadow-puppet play that practically defines Javanese cultural tradition.  If you have seen the film, "The Year of Living Dangerously," you know how important these puppets are to the psyche of Java.  It was the first wayang we had been able to see, since the other one was rained out (as described in a previous blog).  This one was put on by a very rich man, under an enormous tent, big enough to hold a couple hundred people, right at his house.  A great and famous dalang, was brought in at great expense, and the whole event was televised.  The puppets themselves were selected from stacks of puppets along the state, and held in front of the white background, giving the effect a lighter feel than the darker world behind the screen.  Still, the puppets created their shadows and almost interacted with them, making for almost a dual presence.  The actual story was a familiar one from the Ramayana, but the skilled puppeteer very much improvised, even including criticism of the government in his dialogue with the puppets.  The reason for the wayang, we learned later, was to keep safe the only son of the rich man and his wife.  To keep safe from what, you may ask?  From the dangerous spirits, like those under the great banyan trees, that can attack and destroy a life at any point.  Wayangs, it seems are often held to keep something awful from happening.  The first, postponed wayang was to "cleanse the village" (bersih desa) by an offering to the guardian spirit of the village.  Food is an important part of this performance, as in a slametan, and so we were urged, if not ordered, to partake of what turned out to be our third dinner of the night, and were even televised sitting next to the rich man and his wife.