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EMARANG: In a bid to help promote a wayang kulit (shadow puppet) performance to the wider community, lecturers and students of the Semarang State University’s School of Literature and Arts jointly staged a play over the weekend.

Held with “Wayang Conservation” as its theme, the performance involved five lecturers and 14 students of the Javanese Literature Department and a teenage puppeteer.

They played the Bambang Ekalaya story, telling about the sacrifice made by a student as a way of expressing gratitude to his teacher.

Head of the Javanese Literature Department, Yusro Edy Nugroho, said the performance was not just aimed at providing entertainment to the public but also to help make wayang kulit more popular among all walks of life.

“The more often the performance is presented, expectably, the more students are attracted to learn more about it, regardless of their major fields of study,” Yusro said after the performance.

He added that his department had been providing a workshop on wayang kulit once a week and held an annual event to demonstrate the results of the workshop. “That way, hopefully more will join to learn,” he said.