King Rahwana flies high into the sky toward the clouds, holding on to Dewi Sinta against her will. Rahwana, charmed by Dewi Sinta’s beauty, decided to kidnap Prabu Rama’s wife and take her to his country Alengkadiraja across the sea.

This scene from the Ramayana story unfolded on the puppet display screen at the Diponegoro University award ceremony in Semarang, on Oct. 17.

In the next scene, spectators watched the Jatayu eagle catch Rahwana and Sinta as soon as he spotted the pair escaping. In most ordinary shadow puppet shows, there would have been a chase across the sky and in between the clouds. But no, not this time. The leather puppets disappeared instead.

What’s more, puppeteer Ki Rohmad Hadiwijoyo, the master behind the show, performed the customary nine-hour-long Dhuta Wanara Seta (the ambassador of the White Monkey aka Hanoman) in just 150 minutes.

“One day I asked myself how I could make young people interested in watching a puppet show, rather than pop music concerts. I realized I had to design the puppet show differently and make it interesting for them.

“So, I decided to use multi-dimensional puppets,” said Ki Rohmad, 42, a graduate from George Washington University, USA. “That way, the audience will not get bored, fed up or sleepy.”

Performing in the big hall, which is like a chamber for orchestral performances, gave Rohmad the flexibility he needed to innovate his puppet show. For example, when Rahwana flew off carrying Dewi Sinta, the puppets’ white-cloth screen moved to the stage in front of the guests, and the leather puppets metamorphosed into Wayang Wong (human puppets).

The sound of rolling drums and the gamelan while Rahwana and Jatayu’s hands and feet collided in a dance maneuver created a realistic and lively atmosphere representing war. After the war dance, the audience’s gaze was redirected to the screen, where Rahwaman’s puppet attacked the eagle Jatayu in the sky, before the bird fell to the ground.

As Jatayu was seen falling on the ground against the shadow puppet screen, the white screen suddenly became a movie screen, and Jatayu metamorphozed a human puppet lying on the ground.

Then Prabu Rama and his brother Lesmana came to help Jatayu.

When Jatayu spoke, Rama and Lesmana finally let the audience know that Rahwana had kidnapped Sinta and taken her to his country, Alengkadiraja.

Scene after scene, traditional shadow puppets, human puppets, then human puppets screened on film took turns in accompanying the main protagonists of the story, Rama and Lesmana, to make the puppet show more visually stimulating.

“I became interested. This show was different. I’ve never seen a puppet show like this before,” said Nurcahyo, a member of the audience.

“Usually, performances that involve leather shadow puppets and human puppets are restricted to the Punakawan figures. Petruk [a funny-looking man], Gareng [the son of Semar in the Javanese shadow puppet plays], Bagong [a pot-bellied clown in a wayang performance] tend to be human puppets accompanied by a singer. They are just comedians. But this puppet performance is really different. It’s very good.”

Students from the Diponogero University gave an impeccable performance as human puppets. When the monkey army, the army from Rama, moved across the sea to attack the kingdom of Alengkadiraja, the lighting system made the multidimensional puppet show come alive.

But how exactly did the puppet master shorten an all-night event into less than three hours?

“It was easy. I scrapped the monologues of the wayang narrator in the lengthy prologue. I took out the discussion scenes where puppet characters are held up to the audience, as if in a meeting. I also removed the early scenes depicting the war unfolding. So the show flows more smoothly and is straight to the point. I kept all the busy, action-packed war scenes, as those were interesting,” said Rohmad.

However, he admitted that by making all these changes, he was probably breaking all the rules of a standard puppet show.

“But my intentions are good. I wish to make puppet shows more attractive and popular again. There are so many young people nowadays who do not want to watch puppet performances all night,” he said.

Ki Rohmad’s contemporary puppet shows have been a source of inspiration in the US. The puppet master performed several times in Washington at the Indonesian Embassy, inviting Indonesian Embassy officials to impersonate the puppets. Americans even learned a few tricks from the wayang maestro.

When he returned to Indonesia, Rohmad further developed his contemporary version of the puppet show. Rohmad, who also became Chairman of PEPADI (the Indonesian Puppeteers’ Association), has been performing on a regular basis in Indonesian and overseas since 1982.

Rohmad was very thrilled when he found out a 10-year-old autistic child was cured by learning the art of puppet mastery.

“People with autism are hyperactive. So they must have something to do. Their hands can be manipulating puppets while they are listening to the gamelan. Their feet are also moving. The puppet master is constantly busy. In about half a year, one child recovered from autism. In fact he came third at the little puppeteer competition in Jakarta.”

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