Despite a never-ending debate about the origin of the
Balinese Wayang, whether Wayang was imported from China or from India, most
scholars believe that Wayang theatre was first created in Indonesia (primarily
in Java and Bali) by the indigenous shamans or artists. The epics of the
Ramayana and Mahabharata were later used to enrich the Wayang narrative
repertoires after they were imported from India for other purposes in the
fourth century AD. Compared to the work of historians, myths about the origin
of Wayang are more prevalent and important. Recorded in the sacred treatise
Purwagama, the key myth serves as the philosophical foundation of performing
Wayang, for it shows Wayang’s role as an exorcistic force; it is performed for
the purpose of purification ceremonies.
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 Balinese 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.
Genre occupies the bottom of the triangle serving as
the foundation or base, which accommodates the story and the characters. Among
the three components, genre is the most identifiable feature, establishing an
autonomic form. While the same story and characters may appear in a few different
genres, the form will be clear from the genre. Almost the entire structure of
the genre, music, style of costume, customary way of improvising a performance,
etc., may be seen in one single holistic presentation, but only the selected
parts of the story and characters will appear in that performance because the
genre has very limited space to accommodate dramatic scenes. For example, in
the Wayang genre, the dalang typically selects only one sad scene, one love
scene and one climax for each performance, although the narrative from which he
draws has many more scenes of each type.
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