Wayang shadow theatre In Bali Part 9

It is this triangle of genre, story and character that sits at the centre of the dalang’s creative process in any performance situation. By manipulating and juggling these elements, the dalang moulds a particular performance once the commissioning process is complete and agreed upon with the sponsor. It is in some ways parallel to the work of the modern theatre director in the West who is asked by a specific theatre company to direct a Shakespearian work, for example. The play is chosen, the financial parameters established, the cast selected and then the script/concept/design work generally follows. In much of the Western tradition, it is the text/ script that is the scaffolding or skeleton upon which the performance is built in the same way that in Bali

nese tradition it is the genre. Shakespeare himself has adapted the source materials and the director will further adapt and refine; whereas in Bali, the dalang takes on this role, but within a tightly structured, traditional framework. Interestingly, the major focus in both cases is on the behaviour of kings, princes and politicians; the major themes are often about justice, power, love, honour, kingship, justice, betrayal and trust. Both projects come with a fairly fixed set of characters and both have a central narrative sequence. In both cases, one can make changes to story and characters but in both traditions they are mainly left intact. The key difference is that in the Shakespeare project the text, that may seem rigid and inflexible to the outsider, is considered by most directors an actors to be the strength and heart of the work that will follow; whereas in the Balinese performance, the genre, complete with rules and also rigid structures, is similarly at the heart of the work. It is sometimes easier for a foreign theatre director, often working in translation, to be more radical and free with a Shakespearian text than a native English speaker conversant with text/verse conventions. The same is true for foreign directors or performers who borrow from and adapt shadow-puppetry technique from Bali. With Shakespeare, the native-speaking director is more likely to freely adapt/ change the period setting or style of acting/presentation rather than depart largely from the text itself. In other words, knowledge of the form demands more adherence to the subtleties implied in that structure. Similarly, the Balinese dalang is likely to be more innovative within the story rather than within the overall conventions of structure. In either example, the uninitiated outsider will only see the external effect/impact and not be aware of the creative tensions between innovation and creative expression on one side and tradition and structure on the other.

The interplay between the three elements of genre, story and character is typical of the tripartite patterns of balance at work in many aspects of Balinese culture and thought. The balancing concept of God, human and environment within every house and village is called Tri Hita Karana; the trinitarian god Brahma (creator), Wisnu (preserver), and Siwa (destroyer) is called Tri Murti and the three balancing aspects of human energy, speech and thought are known as Tri Premana. The creative interplay between the three key dramatic elements can be easily described diagrammatically.