Dozens of elementary schoolchildren from East Jakarta broke into laughter when the popular puppet Semar complained to his son Bagong that he spent far too much time on his Playstation.
They laughed even louder when Semar, the quintessential baritone-voiced angry father to a tee, dropped the name of a popular new game that Bagong often played.
“I don’t understand the story because I don’t speak Javanese, but I know when there’s a fight,” fifth-grader Tito Huda Pangestu told The Jakarta Post.
“The puppet master’s cool. Maybe he’s a sixth-grader.”
The repartee between Semar and Bagong was part of an hour-long story about Ramandiko (Rama and Shinta), presented in formal Javanese by puppet master Sihhono Wisnu Purwolaksito, 12.
He was the first of about 20 young participants at the inaugural 2009 Young Puppet Masters’ Festival (Festival Dalang Bocah), which kicked off Wednesday at the Gedung Pewayangan Kautaman on Jl. Raya Pintu 1 TMII, East Jakarta, and runs until Saturday.
There are four to six performances scheduled each day, all presented by children aged 8 to 15 years, who are representing their provinces, including Jakarta, Central Java, Yog-yakarta, East Java, Bali and East Kalimantan.
Most children attending the shows did not fully understand the whole story, as most participants used their traditional dialects.
Two girls sitting in the back row, trying to figure out the story together, were confused when the Pancawati residents in the story shouted “Shinta ilang...” (Shinta is missing), because one of them thought Shinta, in Javanese, was a tool.
“No, it’s not a thing, Shinta is someone’s name!” said her friend.
Both barely understood that Shinta was King Rama’s wife, who was kidnapped by Rahwana, a king from the Alengka kingdom.
The language barrier in the first performance, though, was broken by the mesmerizing Javanese gamelan, simple jokes and the beautiful voices of the sinden (female singers).
Sumari, from the Indonesian Puppet Masters Association (Pepadi), said the association was holding the event to raise the profile of the traditional art and develop children’s knowledge of culture.
“There used to be 75 kinds of wayang in this country, but only 20 now exist,” he said.
“We have to preserve this art.”
He added he was concerned that there were no young Betawi puppet masters in Jakarta, with all participants from the city performing in the Surakarta style.
The national competition, Sumari went on, would challenge the young puppet masters to present shows that could be enjoyed by their peers.
“I prefer young puppet masters because we’re the same age,” said Tito, at his first-ever wayang show.
Indonesia has various kinds of wayang, with the most popular from Java, including the Sundanese wayang from West Java.
Javanese wayang characters are derived mostly from the Indian epics Mahabharata and Ramayana.
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