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Updated: June 7, 2025
It is noticeable, however, that the wayang commands a far wider range of subjects than the theatre. In the true wayang the figures themselves are not seen, but only their shadows. The dalang places a transparent curtain, stretched over a frame ten feet long by five high, between himself and the audience.
In the performance of their somewhat limited functions they display considerable skill and histrionic capacity, but the piece resembles a ballet rather than a drama. The recitations of the dalang are accompanied by the music of the gamelan, which, as in the case of the wayang, forms the orchestra. A topeng company numbers eleven persons the dalang, six actors, and four gamelan musicians.
When the natives have been educated and the industries of the island freed from unnatural restrictions, financial and commercial prosperity will return to Java. The Tji Wangi bungalow Coffee plantations Cinchona Native labour A wayang Country-bred ponies Bob and the ducks Loneliness of a planter's life.
The works of the Mohammedan Javanese period include, in addition to translations and versions of all kinds both from the Kavi literature and the Arabic, romances, dramatic works, and plays, intended both for the theatre and the wayang, ethical and legal compilations, and, lastly, the babads, or chronicles.
The performance is given without the intervention of a curtain, and the figures in the wayang are slightly smaller and not nearly so skilfully constructed as in the two former. The wayang klitik takes its subjects from the period of the Mohammedan invasion. The dalangs are held in great respect by the common people, and many of them possess their own sets of wayang puppets.
This wayang is especially useful as serving to keep alive some knowledge of the literary dialect among the common people. The wayang gedog differs from the former in so far as its subjects belong to a later period, and no Kavi verses are recited. The gamelan also which accompanies the dalang is somewhat different.
He then fixes his figures in the bamboo bar immediately in front of him, and throws their shadows on to the curtain by placing a lamp behind them. At the same time he moves the arms with wires in order to produce the effect of action. The wayang dolls are singularly grotesque. There is an interesting tradition which ascribes this distortion to a deliberate purpose.
The wayang is the most important of the native amusements; for the theatre is a rare luxury, and confined chiefly to the towns or to the courts of the native princes. It is a very simple business far beneath a punch-and-judy show in point of art, but the audience watch the puerile display for five or six hours without intermission.
During this month the chiefs and the better class abstain from eating or smoking from sunrise to sunset. Every village has its market once a week or thereabouts, and after this there is generally a wayang, or puppet show, and some mild amusement.
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