Traditional norms and values stood in the way of radical experimentation with the form of wayang until Indonesia's postcolonial era. The same impediments did not exist for colonial European artists. Edward Gordon Craig formulated his theories of the ūber-marionette with reference to wayang, while Richard Teschner adapted wayang puppets for his unique Viennese puppet theatre. This initial encounter of Europe with wayang articulated a pattern of colonial exploitation: Asian products were alienated from their producers and transported to Europe stripped of direct connections to the people and conditions from which they arose. The 1960s ushered in a new era of intercultural communication. A major influx of Indonesian puppetry came to the United States when a generation of budding American puppet artists received direct tuition from Indonesian puppet masters at California summer schools in the early 1970s. Many subsequently went to Java and Bali themselves for lengthy periods of wayang study and apprenticeship. Some of these artists crossed traditional Indonesian puppets forms with other modes of practice to create complex hybrids. Much of the most interesting contemporary wayang work today is taking place along transnational axes. Wayang has been embraced by international artists and companies in order to tell idiosyncratic myths and celebrate the sacred and the ethereal.
The numerous interrelated ‘popular’ theatres of Indonesia provide important evidence for the study of artistic interaction and change. The West Sumatran Randai theatre emerged in a culturally hybrid space and has been a sensitive index to local, national, and international flows and conditions. Matthew Isaac Cohen traces the origins of Randai in the late-colonial period and discusses its associations with rantau – a time of temporary migration, traditionally associated with the rite of passage to adulthood, but increasingly a semi-permanent exile for many Sumatrans. He then traces how and why Randai has now become more than a local art form, having been exported out of the province of West Sumatra to be utilized as source material for modern theatre by Indonesian theatre makers in Jakarta and Australia. Matthew Isaac Cohen is a Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Glasgow, a scholar of Indonesian theatre and performance, and a practising shadow puppeteer.
The initial repertoire of the Komedie Stamboel, a commercial Malay-language theatre from colonial Indonesia, was composed largely of plays based upon tales from the Thousand and One Nights. The Nights arrived in Indonesia via European translations, and were viewed as risqué and sensationalistic. The spectacular and comic elements of the Nights were exploited by the Komedie Stamboel during its first years of existence.
Doomsayers and traditionalists prognosticate that the dominance of digital media spells the end of traditional arts in Java, Indonesia.Wayang kulit(shadow puppet theatre), while still highly regarded as theatrical heritage, is said to be under particular threat due to the long duration of its plays, complexity of language and the need for prior knowledge of characters and situations. Such features are at odds with the short attention spans and need for instant comprehension and gratification of Gen Z – the youth referred to in Indonesian media as inhabitingjaman now(literally the ‘era of now’). While digital social media, including Facebook and YouTube, definitely offer up alternative forms of entertainment and amusement, they are also being used by traditional puppet practitioners to reinforce and expand communities of practice. Facebook provides platforms for comparative discussion and critical debate, while YouTube potentiates the inclusion of a geographically dispersed audience, including overseas workers.
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