A richly illustrated study of wayang, the traditional puppet theater form of Java, based on unprecedented decades-long participatory research. Wayang, the traditional puppet theater form of Java, fascinates and endures thanks to the many ways it works as a medium-bearing the weight of Javanese culture and tradition as a key component of rites of passage, as a medium of ritual and spiritual practice, as public spectacle, and as entertainment of the broadest sort, performed live, broadcast, or streamed. Over the past forty years, the form has been subject to a great deal of experimentation and innovation, pulled in many directions within an ever-changing media landscape. In this book, Kathryn Anne Emerson outlines both significant contributions by a number of key figures and the social and political influences propelling such innovations. She also describes deeper and more lasting changes in wayang, based on what the art form's most accomplished practitioners have to say about it. At the core of the book is one pivotal figure, Purbo Asmoro of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, who, Emerson argues, has taken the individual and singular innovations of the era and integrated them into a new system of performance practice, one that has shaped the key Surakarta school of performance. Grounded in an unprecedented, decades-long participatory research project involving hundreds of interlocutors, the book is beautifully illustrated and will be of considerable interest in Indonesian studies.
Kathryn Emerson is a performance translator of wayang kulit and runs an art center in Solo, Central Java.
List of Illustrations, Tables, and Charts Acknowledgements Basic Terminology Guide to Illustrative Audio-Video Clips Variant Spellings Map of Java Introduction Part One: Historical Perspective Classical Style Condensed Style Birth of an Idea: All-Night Interpretive Style or Garapan Rise to Fame in the Age of the Entertainment Interlude Part Two: All-Night Interpretive (Garapan) Style A New Vocabulary for Wayang Accompaniment The Prologue Creating Dramatic Hierarchy: a New Level of Intensity Multi-Episode Constructions In the Hands of Other Practitioners Passing on the Art Going Virtual Amid a Pandemic: An Unexpected Third Rail Conclusion Bibliography Index
"It must be said that the author has put a lot of time and devotion in this study as she attended or watched hundreds of wayang performances all over Java in a period of around 20 years. The result is a fascinating book that shows a light in how one of Java's best and most renowned dalang found his own style."-- "The Review"
