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The middle pearl in the necklace

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Learning the Voices of the Wayang...

Kundang teacher Kang Ega gave a demonstration in his car on our return from a traditional Sundanese wedding he was playing at. Voices: Rahawana, Gatotkaca, Cepot, Rama, Cinta

The Ninth Month

Last month was Ramadan. Performances were scares, bars and nightclub closed their doors for a month of praying and fasting. Fortunately some friends we had made still had some soirees and culture to entertainment and amaze with. A visit to the mesmerizing Kawah Putih, an apple green sulphur crater volcano, a Sundanese wedding, contemporary and traditional music performances and our very own debut of Sundanese song Euis Bandung...

At The Common Room, a platform for experimentation and creative collaboration, Karingding Attack; a Sundanese bamboo and heavy metal band....
Common Room activities conclude a vast sphere, starting from documenting and exploring phenomena, ideas, models and new concept born from multidisciplinary approaches in the field of visual arts, design, urban architecture, music, fashion, literature, media arts, network culture, as well as ongoing research & development on urban culture and urban ecology.


Karingding Attack at The Common Room

Euis Bandung

Another participant and I were selected to perform a boy/girl traditional Sundanese duet pop song in a breaking of the fast event one Friday evening. It was a truly surreal experience...the crowd whistled and cheered to see us dressed up in costume, singing in local dialect a song we had 4 days to learn!! Since the event we decided to make a pop music video, with the hope of becoming the next viral phenomenon in Bandung !!!

Blue Sunda at Motekar art centre

A nine year old boy sings a Sundanese song to his lost father and mother in pentatonic tone scale accompanied by kechapi at a full moon performance in Bandung.

Worlds of endless invention...

Philipe Genty, Désirs parade 1986

Philippe Genty's theatre is a blend of dance, music, puppetry and magic. In this refined world that recalls the poetry of Magritte paintings, scenes follow in succession as in a dream. There isn't just one story, there are thousands, and each spectator has his or her own.






James Thiérrée, La Veillée des Abysses 2007

Acrobat and clown, poet and magician - James Thiérrée creates a world of endless invention, which allows your imagination to soar. Acknowledged as one of today's greatest, and most creative, contemporary circus performers.




Jan Švankmajer, Punch and Judy 1966

Jan Švankmajer is a czech surrealist artist and filmmaker. His work spans several media. Švankmajer has gained a reputation over several decades for his distinctive use of stop-motion technique, and his ability to make surreal, nightmarish and yet somehow funny pictures. Švankmajer's trademarks include very exaggerated sounds, often creating a very strange effect in all eating scenes. He often uses fast-motion sequences when people walk or interact. His movies often involve inanimate objects being brought to life through stop-motion in a dark and disturbing nature.

Dealing with the whole animal

“For me the most interesting thing about wayang is that it really gives you the whole picture. There may be some other art form that is more comprehensive, but I don’t think so. I feel that in other performing arts people touch only on the trunk or the tail of the elephant, but when I am doing wayang I am pushed into dealing with the whole animal.”

“What builds in me as I work with the wayang is a kind of awe that I had no inkling of when I first chose this topic. I suppose Shakespeare is held up within the Western canon, but his plays end. They do not have the same deeply embedded place within a larger philosophical, religious, and cultural framework.

The wayang never ends. It just goes deeper and deeper because there have been so many generations of puppet masters. Often when I am performing I feel that I am not the puppet master. I am the puppet being held by all the puppet masters of the past under the power of some kind of ancient force that is trying to awaken me.”

Kathy Foley, American dalang.

Rama & Rahwana fight from faith brandon on Vimeo.

Rahwana dance from faith brandon on Vimeo.

The flower has been picked, may its fragrance spread...

The wayang world exists in mythical time, eternal time, or no time at all. Sometimes, the mythical and historical time merge. There are no sharp boundaries.

My interest to visit Indonesia arose from my curiosity in the puppetry Wayang Golek an art form which is integral to the cultural, religious and philosophical history of Indonesia. In what I have come to encounter here wayang is quite elusive and multifaceted. The word
wayang is derived from yang, eyang, and hyang, referring to ancestors and sometimes deities, and from banyang, which means 'shadow'. The veneration of ancestors and the propitiation of the gods are recurrent themes in the wayang tradition, and 'shadow' could be a reference both to early shadow puppets and to the spirits. Golek simply means 'wooden puppet'. Wayang Golek is just one type of Wayang prominent in Southeast Asia.

The stories of Wayang Golek played out by the puppet masters (dalangs) here in West Java/Sunda are derived from Indian Epics such as The Ramayana and The Mahabharta. Being a dalang is an incredibly demanding role. There are hundreds of puppets, each with their unique dances, style and speaking voice. Performances often last 7 hours from dawn to dusk and during this time the dalang is responsible for the dialogue, mood songs and narration. Additionally this performer conducts the gamelan orchestra and plays metal plates (kecrek) attached to the puppet box which he hits with his foot for emphasis of movement which enliven the energy of the scene. A fight scene can last 1 or 2 hours as in turn the generations are defeated and another ogre of monkey king comes to battle.

Since I arrived in Bandung I have been overwhelmed by everything I have learnt from the pencak silat (martial arts), jaipong (dance), karawitan (gamelan) to of course the mystical world of Wayang Golek. Already my experience of Indonesian traditional art forms is deepening my understanding of this vast archipelago. I have taken up an apprenticeship under local ki dalang Abah Amay, becoming familiar with the characters and stories. Ki dalang is a kind and charismatic man, short and stout about fifty-four years old. Stern looking on first impressions, his great black bushy eyebrows and wise countenance comes to life as soon as gives voice to the demon Rahwana with a deep resonant guffaw. Taking private tuition comes in the form of 2 to 3 hours late night practicing at his small house with all his family gathered in the same room, some playing the karawitan, drinking tea and smoking clove laced cigarettes, whilst his grandchildren watch their grandfather in amazement clapping and laughing. My Japanese friend Miki plays kendang drums as Abah Amay sings the rhythms; pak pok tung dong bang. With the limited Indonesian language I have learnt and even less Sundanese, Abah Amay and I communicate through our affinity for wayang and visceral trial and error. There is no organised teaching method, no music theory everything is learnt by listening, watching and playing and all simultaneously. My method: making as many videos and photographs as possible and watching them 100 times....

Learning Cepot the clowns' laugh from faith brandon on Vimeo.

Cepot walk and dance from faith brandon on Vimeo.

Introduction to Wayang Golek

Indonesia Arts and Culture Scholarship

Puppets and masks from the Wayang Museum, Jakarta.

IACS & Saung Angklung Udjo, Bandung

The IACS (Indonesian Arts and Culture Scholarship)

26 July – 22 October 2010

The Indonesian Arts and Culture Scholarship has been conducted since 2003 and was initially offered to and participated by member countries of the South West Pacific Dialogue (SwPD); Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and the host Indonesia.

Bearing in mind the significance and advantages obtained from the program, the offer was expanded over the years to include member countries of ASEAN, ASEAN+3, and PIF, as well as India and South Africa. In 2008, Indonesia welcomed the participation of Azerbaijan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and Austria. This year, the Government of Indonesia will give the opportunity for participants from Germany, France (New Caledonia), Norway, Russia and Suriname.

In order to deepen the participants’ understanding of Indonesian arts and culture, and to enhance their skills for the final performance, participants will be divided and assigned by the organising committee to different arts centers for the duration of approximately two and a half month. The arts centers are located in Bandung, West Java; Denpasar, Bali; Solo, Central Java; and Surabaya, East Java.

Participants will live within or around the arts centers, allowing for the chance to experience the local heritage and interact with the local community. Synergy between theory and practices shared inside and outside the art centers would undoubtedly become the driving force for shaping international cultures and norms, and will eventually strengthen regional as well as global understanding and cooperation at a people-to-people level.

In Bandung, West Java, participants will study at Saung Angklung Udjo art centre and learn Sundanese art and culture namely the production, maintenance and appreciation to angklung; karawitan, wayang golek, and traditional dance of Sunda. They will also learn Sundanese and Indonesian Language as a component of the culture.


Saung Angklung Udjo was established by Udjo Ngalagena after he developed an avid interest in the angklung. Angklung is a musical instrument made out of two bamboo tubes attached to a bamboo frame. The tubes are carved so that they have a resonant pitch when struck. The two tubes are tuned to octaves. The base of the frame is held with one hand while the other hand shakes the instrument rapidly from side to side. This causes a rapidly repeating note to sound. Thus each of three or more angklung performers in an ensemble will play just one note and together complete melodies are produced. Angklung is popular throughout Southeast Asia, but originated from Indonesia and is used to play in both diatonic and pentatonic tone scales contemporary as well as traditional Sundanese music.

Saung Angklung Udjo (SAU) is in the east of Bandung, a tropical paradise away from the busy city. Performances take place every day promoting traditional Indonesian dance, music, theatre, puppetry and martial arts. The angklung instrument is also made and sold on site in small bamboo shacks scattered across the art centre. Saung Angklung Udjo not only operates as a performance space and workshop, but is an educational centre for young people with the aim of preserving Sundanese culture through teaching. Udjo Ngalagena established the centre in the 1960s with this strong purpose to preserve Sudanese traditional art and culture. The centre has bamboo theme, so, the chairs, the musical instruments and even the stage, all are made of bamboo.

Participants at Saung Angklung Udjo

Mondspiel (Moonplay)

Moon Play (Mondspiel) by Lothar Schreyer is a German Expressionist puppet play first performed in 1923. Actors work with two hand-made life-size contemporary Bunraku styled puppets as an extension of their bodies, performing a magical ritual to the moon. As the puppets come to life so does the mystical world around them, through the use of OHP puppetry, digital recordings, visual art and live music this Bauhaus inspired play explores a mesmerizing transcendental form of puppet and object theatre. The abstract script experiments radically with language and deliberately avoids the use of conventional characterization and narrative plot structure to create a phantasmagorical bubble of eternity and escapism for its audience.

Like Schreyer's performances during the Expressionist movement our version of Moon Play emulates not the power of individual feeling but the purity of communal spirituality. Here the impetus to theatrical performance is not explosive expansion of individual personality - but in dissolution and subsumption into collective. In our show we attempt to fully realise this and work as an ensemble with the puppets and objects and have strived to develop and deliver an extremely close relationship between live and animated bodies.

Password: Moon

Moon Play from Fay Buzzard on Vimeo.