The dominant type of performance throughout Bali, though, is Wayang Parwa. Its performance is frequently held on many ritual and religious occasions, both as entertainment and as a rite of passage. Broadly speaking, this Wayang theatre consists of the sacred Wayang Lemah (day puppet, without a screen) and the ceremonial Wayang Peteng (night puppet, with the screen and oil lamp). All the stories are derived from the Indian epic Mahabharata, including numerous related folk tales from which a dalang frequently modifies and occasionally creates branch stories. Wayang Parwa is the oldest standard puppetry in all aesthetics aspects of Wayang theatre in
Bali. Hence, dalang students in several training centres, especially in the two government-sponsored schools (SMKI and STSI), are required to begin to learn this type of performance before moving on to other types of Wayang. Lasting one hour for the sacred Wayang Lemah and about two to four hours for the ceremonial Wayang Peteng, the performance involves one dalang puppeteer, two assistants and four musicians. The musical accompaniment is the quartet metallophone (similar to, but taller than, the Western xylophone) Gender Wayang music ensemble, although sometime it is reduced into one pair (two instruments) in north Bali.Before looking at a typical performance of this genre, understanding what has happened in advance of the event itself is important when examining Balinese performance – as much as the performance of a given Shakespeare play will have been determined at the point of design and conceptual decisions. The complex social, and sometimes religious, contextual situation affects, in an intricate way, how the performance will be structured and delivered. This applies not just to Wayang Kulit, the genre mainly under scrutiny here, but for most performance situations in Bali. Even before a specific performance is contemplated, the dalang has created the puppets and thereby made decisions about style.
In Bali, the audience is the active subject that invites the artists and also sponsors the performance. In contrast, in the West the audience is a comparatively passive entity that gains the right to watch a theatrical production by paying for admission. The patrons in Bali initiate and arrange the schedule, as well as select the artists. They provide the transportation, arrange for the food served at the event, set the performing venue and provide the fee for the performers, an amount almost never fully established in advance, which they pay immediately after the show. Balinese artists are correspondingly more economically passive than the entrepreneurial Western artists. All artists are trained in certain specialised repertoires and performance genres, and focus on perfecting and producing their own artistry without any effort to advertise or promote the performance. Artists await the invitation and leave all issues concerning box office and marketing to the patron.
An individual or a group of people with the intention to commission a performance would, typically, first come to an artist’s house and agree with the artist on the performing arts genre to be performed. The theatre genres often commissioned include: Gambuh dance-drama with seven-toned Pelog music, Wayang Wong theatre with Slendro Batel music, Parwa dance-drama also with Slendro Batel music, Calonarang dance-drama with Gong Kebyar music, Topeng masked theatre also with Gong Kebyar music, Arja opera with Geguntangan music, Prembon with Gong Kebyar music and Wayang Kulit with its Gender Wayang music. The genres are distinguished from each other more by the form (style of dance/movement and acting, speech and diction, song repertoires, costumes, stage property and musical accompaniment) rather than by the content (story or play), although each genre implies its related repertoire of stories and the dramatic characters associated with that repertoire. At the time of commissioning a performance, however, the sponsor is concerned with the genre and not with the specific play to be performed or characters to be presented. Once an artist is hired and agrees to perform a given genre, the artist prepares the performing devices, puppets, masks, costumes, musical instruments, etc. belonging to the genre. When the sponsor wants Topeng, the artist is ready with masks; when the sponsor selects Wayang Kulit, the artist brings the puppets.
After the genre is set, the artist considers the story. Many conventions regulate the aesthetic concepts and treatment of story for each genre. The way the story will develop is regulated by the rules of the genre, but the specific plot or presentation will be moulded by the artist’s understanding of the repertoire from having viewed other performances of that play or from the artist’s own interpretation of the episode. The dramatic characters are the last features the artist considers. Although each genre has in itself an implied number of stock characters (king, prime minister, sages, prince, princess, servants, etc.), the specific identity or profile of each character can only be established after the story is selected. The story determines which kingdom is involved and who, in turn, is the king. For example, if the story selected is a Mahabharata episode in the kingdom of Amarta, Yudistira, the eldest of the five Pandava brothers will be the king. Thus, the artist typically thinks first of the genre, then moves to the story and finally thinks of the
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