Putting On A Shadow Puppet Show (Wayang Kulit)
I was living on a university campus then, with a community consisting of more than 70 different countries. The university encouraged its community to showcase their country through an event called “Meet My Country”. When some of the Malaysians decided to take it up, I was delighted to say the least, as I love to put on a show. I remember putting on plays as early as the first grade in school, being the director, scriptwriter and main actor all in one! Though my ‘acting days’ had ended decades ago, I did manage to grab hold of a few enthusiastic young Malaysians who wanted to do our country proud. They weren’t keen on acting or dancing a traditional dance, so we decided that a shadow puppet show (also known as a Wayang Kulit) would be perfect .
Wayang Kulit
Wayang Kulit originated in Indonesia but is very popular Kelantan. It translates to Skin Movie. This is because in an authentic production, the puppets are made out of buffalo hide mounted on bamboo sticks. We did not have any access to the original puppets so we made out our own out of cereal boxes, some brad and some bamboo sticks (used for making kebab).
We did not draw any details on our puppets to save time as my young artists were also going to play the angklung but that’s another story :)
To put up a Wayang Kulit you must of course have a story to tell, as with all movies. I remembered a famous old Malay movie called Bawang Putih Bawang Merah, which weirdly enough, translates to Onion and Garlic. Again, with the help of my best friend Google, I looked through some versions on YouTube, found a simple one that would do, decided that with some adjustments it could be adapted to a screenplay and started looking for the music for it. Then with the help of my sons who are experts at Garage Band, we put together the audio for this play.
For the stage set, I used my photography studio set which included the stand on which we stretched tight a white sheet, one studio lamp and a gray studio backdrop that I hung on the lower part so as to allow us to stand while playing the show theatre and still not be seen. In an original production, members of the theatre would sit down behind the screen but we needed ours to be higher as we were playing on a stage.
The students were very dedicated at making it a success and with practise got the timing and movements just right and when the big day came they were all ready and confident. The actual performance was a hit, with so many people trying to see it until hall was full.
Young Ambassadors of Malaysia
All in all, we had fun and as Ambassadors of Malaysia in Saudi Arabia, it was great to bring Malaysia to the world.
