A shot of the wayang shadow puppet. (Courtesy of Maison de Cultures du Monde)

A shadow puppet ensemble led by Javanese puppet master Ki Purbo Asmoro wows the audience in Paris.

The group arrived from Surakarta, Central Java, Tuesday last week, comprising eight gamelan players headed by Indonesian composer Rahayu Supanggah, veteran traditional Javanese singer (pesinden) Suyatmi and translator Kitsie Emerson.

They were due to present six performances at the annual festival de l’imaginaire, organized by Arwad Esber, Maison des Cultures du Monde, which opens at the beginning of spring.

This year, the opening was held at the famous Theatre du Soleil, directed by Ariane Mnouchkine, just outside Paris.

But the temperature was freezing. Purbo and the singer were especially careful to protect their throats, as performances depend on the quality of their voices.

Wednesdays in France are always school free, so the audience on the first afternoon performance last week were mainly children accompanied by parents.

The young audience was fascinated by the seated puppeteer; the way he chose the fine colored leather figures, including the ones signaling the beginning and ending of every tale.

Purbo threw them into the air and twirled them around to help the audience follow the story.

Everything happens behind the white screen lit up from behind, and where puppets are placed upright in a holder, to be plucked out when needed.

Purbo sang the parts of all the characters used in Bima’s quest to find the holy elixir in the two-hour tale, Dewa Ruci, which is derived from the Javanese version of the epic Mahabharata.

The puppet master was worried because the dry Parisian air had rendered the leather shadow puppets and their horn-handles brittle, making it difficult for him to manipulate them smoothly with his hands.

However, the enthusiastic reaction warmed the group, encouraging the performers to overcome the drastic drop in temperature.

Onlookers filed down from their seats to places on either side of the white screen, where they could observe the shadow master behind the screen where it was lit.

Not only could they watch the extraordinary dalang, but also witness how the gamelan players would laugh when Purbo made a joke, a short diversion from the actual story in Javanese.

Ki Purbo Asmoro. (Courtesy of Francois Guenet/MCM)
At the first performance he sang: “Oh, I am so hungry, it is so cold here!”

American Kitsie Emerson translated simultaneously from Javanese into English: the dialogue appeared above the white screen. For instance, he explained wayang shadow puppet had been declared a world heritage by UNESCO.

At that first performance, the story-teller, clad in his flowered surjan (jacket) and kain with an artfully pleated destar headdress, was seated behind the screen while characters appeared only in black and white shadows from the front.

In the Dewa Ruci story, the chief protagonist Bima, in his search for immortality, has spats with giants, dragons and others in the woods, making for pithy interludes.

The gamelan players occasionally rocked with laughter at some witty comment in Javanese. They never missed a beat in their music.

“Every performance is different. It depends on the dalang’s mood, it can be embellished with poetry, songs sung by the pesinden and the tempo set by the dalang’s knocking on a wooden board with a small hammer grasped between his toes,” Emerson, a pianist originally from Michigan, explained backstage.

Emerson, who is married to a Surakartan music teacher and lives in Jakarta, said she empathized with the way Purbo tells a story.

Purbo Asmoro is exceptional. Born in Pacitan, East Java, of generations of distinguished dalang, Purbo became a puppet master in 1980 at the age of 19.

Purbo’s brilliant career blossomed in 1988, when he was admitted to the community of dalang in Surakarta. The 51-year-old teaches at the Indonesian Fine Arts Institute (ISI) in Surakarta besides touring Indonesia and, increasingly, abroad, such as to London, Paris, Singapore and Greece.

With short curly hair, smooth skin and often an impish look, Purbo immediately turns more serious and concentrated once seated behind the screen. Purbo’s essential other head-gear on this trip was a soft beige knitted hat that he used to protect his head from the cold.

Angela Kristianto, born in Surakarta, was fascinated by the show. She sat high up in the tiered row of seats with her husband Marcel Dewulf last Friday night, watching how the audience reacted to the story.

Some jumped the queue up the steps on either side of the stage to watch. People occupied these seats on either side of the stage, while others impatiently, or patiently, waited to take their places.

Before the performance, the musicians led by Supanggah arrived dressed in blue-green jackets and kain, the pesinden in a green lace kebaya and Emerson in a loose pleated skirt preceding the puppet master.

Then Purbo came up the sloped wooden ramp on the right to take his place behind the white cotton screen, this time in a black jacket, with his kris planted in his belt behind his back.

“The suspense was palpable. Pak Purbo was in excellent form, electrifying the performance,” Angela said.

After the performance, the dalang, pesinden and the rest of the gamelan players along with Emerson joined the audience to eat. That night, opor ayam (chicken curry), steaming rice and a variety of drinks were served in the large theater foyer.

And last Saturday’s morning performance was even better, judging from French musicologist Jacques Brunet’s fiery enthusiasm: “I was captivated”.

So, when Bima finally finds the elixir of life, guarded by a snake at the bottom of the ocean, he is able to enter Dewa Ruci’s soul through the god’s ear.

This represents man’s final quest and destination.

The troupe will fly back home on the wings of success, ready for other tales to tell.