WAYANG KULIT IN CIREBON (Part 2 - Plays in performance)

Above Arjuna and his wife, the long-haired Dewi Sumbadra, enjoy a moment of intimacy sleeping on their ‘bed’ (pegulingan) - represented by the kayon

Plays, with extemporised dialogue in Cirebon Javanese and Indonesian, are, as in most of the rest of Java, based largely on the characters and  situations  of  the  Mahabharata. Much less frequently, stories featuring Ramayana characters are performed, or stories featuring the descendents of Arjuna, a central protagonist of the Mahabharata. There is also an important set of stories  featuring the ancestors of Divine Guru. Some of these ‘old’ stories feature Islamic prophets, including Adam, Seth, Solomon and Jesus.

Most puppeteers today own commonplace books in which they write down story outlines. Some also own published plays from Central Java or comic book adaptations of wayang kulit stories. But, until recently, stories were transmitted entirely orally and dhalang are still renowned for their phenomenal memories. Performance structure is flexible. Performances always begin with an instrumental musical overture. Night-time shows are preceded by a battle demonstration performed by a musician or junior puppeteer from the audience. The play proper opens with an audience scene with a king or queen, or a hermitage scene with a holy man. A highly formulaic narration is recited and mood songs sung. Ceremonial exchanges of greetings are pronounced. An issue arises - a missing heirloom, an overly insistent suitor, a portentous dream, a mysterious plague. A guest arrives, sometimes an unwelcome one, and a fight breaks out. The play proceeds in like fashion for the rest of the night, alternating dialogue with battle. Some scenes emphasise courtly protocol and diplomatic intrigue; others, mystical philosophy, romance, or rough humour. Dialogue and battle are introduced by mood songs, which also serve to change the musical mode of the gamelan (up to five musical modes may be used in a performance).

Audience members send cash and song requests to the vocalist for the latest popular Cirebonese songs with titles like ‘Bumping’ and ‘Too Much in Love’, and also request that their names be cited in song by her. These songs interrupt the play frequently. While the song is being sung, the dhalang may choose to sit silently in front of the screen, smoking a cigarette, or he may use the songs as background music for a battle scene. Male audience members, many of whom are intoxicated, stand up and dance during these songs. Some of them have brought female escorts with them and insist that they dance as well. Song requests and social dancing normally peter out around 2.00am or so.

The plot during the last hour progresses quickly, building towards the final all- out violent confrontation. A non-canonical carangan (branch) play always ends with unmaskings and transformations, as in a Shakespearian comedy. A canonical galur play ends with a formulaic statement that all endings are arbitrary and that the history of a certain character or kingdom is much longer than can be depicted in a single night. Before the dhalang can recite customary words, blessing the audience and sponsor, before the final musical piece rounding off the show is played by the gamelan, the audience is already dispersing and the vocalist counting her ‘tips’ and dividing a portion of her take among the musicians. No applause, no curtain calls, no bows.

Appeal

Wayang kulit in Cirebon is a multi-dimensional art that is simultaneously classical and popular. Its combination of rough humour, high theatrics, Islamic philosophising, light music, and social dancing appeal to a broad spectrum of people in Cirebonese rural society. Spectators are familiar with Java’s other puppet forms from television and radio broadcasts and Cirebonese puppeteers occasionally imitate puppet acrobatics, jokes, or stories from these media.

During the colonial period, many among Cirebon’s bureaucratic elite were from central Java and sponsored performances of central Javanese wayang kulit troupes in conjunction with celebrations. Today, many are from the Sundanese highlands, and may occasionally sponsor Sundanese wayang golek (rod puppet theatre). Cirebon also has its tradition of wayang golek, known as wayang golek cepak or wayang golek papak, in which plays from Islamic history and local legend are enacted. (Sundanese rod puppet theatre draws its stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana). But none of these enjoy a fraction of the popularity of Cirebon’s own wayang kulit.

A drunken spectator (standing) requests a song from a bemused vocalist, who covers her mouth to hide her laughter. Note the presence of a seeing-impaired violinist, who doubles as the group’s suling player.

I have often asked Cirebonese spectators why they attend wayang kulit performances. Everyone seems to have their own particular constellation of reasons. The language used by puppeteers is readily accessible to spectators, far more so than in Java’s other shadow puppet theatres. Puppeteers make it a point to gloss ‘difficult’ words and provide thorough explanations of concepts in order to communicate effectively with audiences. At every performance, there is at least a handful of spectators genuinely interested in following the story as it unfolds. They will sit in relative silence from early in the evening until late at night, generally watching from the shadow side of the screen. Such devotees often talk of an interest in ‘history’ (or what we would call mythology). Many more enjoy the social ambience of performances: the food stalls, drinking, and relaxed socialising. Others speak of their love of music or sexual attraction to a singer. Children, in particular, enjoy the excitement of shows: the pounding rhythms of the gamelan, the quick-paced battles.

Nearly everyone delights in the comedy of the clown-servants (panakawan, wulucumbu). There are nine main clowns in Cirebon’s wayang kulit: Semar, his seven children and grandchildren (Bagal Buntung, Bagong, Bitarota, Ceblok, Cungkring, Duwala, Gareng), and Semar’s brother-in-law, Curis (also known as Sekar Pandan). Some plays feature only a subset of three or four of the clowns, but a scene set in Karang Tumaritis, the hamlet where Semar is headman, will involve the whole lot, plus typically Sudiragen, Semar’s devoted wife.

The clown-servants are readily distinguishable by their voices and deformities to all devotees, and are commonly the central characters in ‘branch’ stories, clowning it up from the first scene to the last. Each has his own special proclivities. The dwarfish Bagong usually speaks in Sundanese (barely understood by anyone else), while bent-armed Duwala (sometimes understood to be Chinese) speaks in highfalutin’ Indonesian.

The pot-bellied Ceblok plays the cowardly lion, aggressive and angry but always first to run at    the first sign of danger. Hobbling Bitarota mumbles caustic remarks about one and all. Bagal Buntung, who lacks one leg, delights in physical cruelty and practical jokes. Gareng speaks for youth; though small in stature and with a body twisted in knots, he never fears harm, even when he should. Cungkring is always curious, sticking his nose into matters that don’t concern him and questing for mystical knowledge beyond his comprehension. Curis is the butt of everyone’s joke, the last to catch on, but (like Semar) a god in disguise.


Rotund Semar himself is a bundle of contradictions: god and servant, old and young, wise and foolish. He accompanies, serves, counsels, and defends his masters, the Pendhawa brothers (and their ancestors and descendents before and after them), through thick and thin. Semar is not a trickster, as has sometimes been suggested, but an ambulatory trick; the incarnation of the droll god Munged (also known as Ismaya), older brother of Divine Guru. In the middle world of humans, his presence never fails to foul up the most dastardly of schemes launched against his masters.

The best puppeteers are able to weave stories that feature elements of interest to all. They allude to contemporary politics, discourse on mysticism or types of women, stage dramatic battles fought over agonistic high ideals, and improvise pornographic jokes at the spur of the moment. Well-trained vocalists can do all the latest popular Cirebonese songs and can sing in the regional styles of Sunda, Central Java, and Betawi, as well as in the national pop dangdut style.

Singers also know all the prominent spectators by name, and flirt with many in the course of the night. The tireless musicians, performing day and night, maintain a high level of energy to ensure the creation and projection of the appropriate ramé (lively) atmosphere. They sing, play their instruments with gusto, shout response cries to and zany comments on the dhalang’s dialogue, sometimes put on masks and dance, and are constantly clowning it up for the audience - insulting each other and hitting each other on the head with their mallets. The total art is live and immediate. Spectators don’t just sit and watch, they approach the stage to request songs, ask a musician or the dhalang a question, and flirt with the vocalist or the drummer (a virtuostic musician who is commonly a sex object for female spectators). The atmosphere is intimate, and directly relevant and responsive to local concerns, interests, and passions.

The quick-to-anger Baladewa (left) castigates his brother Kresna (right) for failing to consult him about the upcoming marriage of Kresna’s daughter in the classic galur play, Parta Krama, The Marriage of Arjuna. A fight will shortly break out between Baladewa and the commander of Kresna’s armed forces Padmanegara (also known as Secaki) who is seated here respectfully behind his king.
The puppeteer is Grami and this 1993 performance is at the house of Elang Djoni, a high-ranking member of the royal house of Kanoman, dance instructor and a devotee of Cirobenese art.

Kresna (left) and Semar (right) discourse in a 1993 performance by the puppeteer Darmabhakti.

The clown servant Duwala (right) squares off against a ponggawa (bold knight) in a 1994 performance by the puppeteer Artadaya. Note the careful placement of the shadows in this battle scene.

Locality

The reasons why Cirebonese wayang kulit is relatively obscure outside of Cirebon are related to why it is so popular in this area of Java. One important factor is language. The dialect of Javanese originally associated with the court city of Surakarta spread throughout much of central and eastern Java as ‘normative’ Javanese beginning in the colonial period. Surakarta’s dialect of Javanese is the Javanese taught in schools and published in books and magazines. Cirebon Javanese, on the other hand, is limited mostly to one stretch of Java’s coast, with a few pockets of migrant speakers elsewhere in Java and Sumatra. Within this language area, there are numerous sub-dialects, for little effort has been made to standardise Cirebon Javanese. This means that Surakarta’s puppeteers speak a tongue linguistically accessible to a large number of Javanese, while Cirebon’s are more closely associated with particular locales.

Another factor is Indonesian national aesthetics. The wayang kulit varieties of Surakarta and Yogyakarta are heavily inflected by long association with the royal courts, which ran training programmes for puppeteers and were active sponsors. This gives wayang kulit of south central Java a classical aesthetic. Stories, which are always in three acts, develop at a snail’s pace, with many scenes that are extrinsic to the basic plot; language is archaic, flowery, and obscure; puppets are intricately carved but not easily distinguishable from one another from far distances; musical pieces are complexly stratified and highly polyphonic, but not very lively on the whole.

Such an aesthetic suited the dominant ideology of the Soeharto period (1966-1998), when genuine political activity was banned and replaced instead by the five principles of monotheism, just and civilised humanity, national unity, deliberation instead of voting, and social justice, known collectively as the state ideology of Pancasila. Indeed, the idealised ordered and prosperous kingdom ruled by a just king described in the dhalang’s opening narration (which can take nearly an hour in central Java!) is precisely the image activated by President Soeharto to represent his own regime. Cirebon’s wayang kulit, always oriented towards the contingencies of the performative moment, rowdy, unpredictable, and highly oriented to the clowns, is antithetical to such a project.

The fame enjoyed by the wayang kulit of Surakarta and Yogyakarta outside Indonesia is related as well to the large numbers of foreigners who have engaged in practical study of the performing arts of these court centres. Interest dates back at least to the late colonial period, when a number of Europeans, including Claire Holt and Helena Leodiman, studied dance in Surakarta and Yogyakarta from noble dance masters such as Tejokusumo. Around the same time, Jaap Kunst, considered by some to be the father of modern ethnomusicology, initiated a programme for teaching gamelan to foreigners in the Netherlands that was later widely imitated in the United States. Devoted American students of wayang kulit, including Roger Long and Marc Hoffman, were attracted, beginning in the  1960s and 1970s; other nationalities followed. There are clear incentives for foreign artists    to study in Surakarta and Yogyakarta, including w e l l - e s t a b l i s h e d training institutions, text-books, and experienced teachers.

The performing arts of Cirebon, in contrast, are not oriented towards teaching non-natives. Only a handful of foreign students have seriously studied Cirebonese performance of any sort. Most of these have been dance students interested in Cirebon’s distinctive topeng (mask-dance); as far as I know, I am the first foreigner to pursue practical studies in Cirebonese wayang kulit. This means that Cirebonese performance, and particularly wayang kulit, has far fewer backers for tours abroad, international recording projects, and the like, in comparison with the arts of central Java.

Other factors can be identified as well, including quirks of the recording industry, an affinity between hippie and new-age philosophy with central Javanese theosophy, the relatively low number of high-placed government officials of rural Cirebonese descent, the low formal education of most Cirebonese performers, and the location of Cirebon in West Java, a province which is dominated by ethnic Sundanese.

There are signs that the cultural domination of central Java is ending now, as Indonesia enters a new democratic era. We shall see if this political shift potentiates increased visibility of ‘minority’ art forms like Cirebon’s wayang kulit on national and international stages. ■

**
Source: Cirebon Arts
These articles appeared in Seleh Notes, The UK Gamelan Magazine, Volume 9 Nos 1 and 2
By Matthew Isaac Cohen - Lecturer, Theatre Studies, University of Glasgow.
Photographs: Matthew Isaac Cohen

Selected bibliography

• Basari (1998). Demon Abduction: A Wayang Ritual Drama from West Java. Edited and translated by M. I. Cohen. Jakarta: The Lontar Foundation.
• Cohen, M. I. (2000). The big man and the puppeteer: a transcultural morality tale from West Java, Indonesia. Puppetry Yearbook 4: 103-156.
• Cohen, M. I. (1997). An Inheritance from the Friends of God: The Southern Shadow Puppet Theater of West Java, Indonesia. Doctoral dissertation. Yale University. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI.
• Wright, M. R. (1978). The music culture of Cirebon. Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI.