Research Guides: Subali-Sugriwa: Battle of the Monkey Kings: Shadow Puppetry

Books in Hamilton Library

Improvisation and Composition in Baliness Gender Wayang by Nicholas S. Gray This text is an examination of the music of the Balinese gender wayang, the quartet of metallophones - gender - that accompanies the Balinese shadow puppet play - wayang kulit. The book focuses on processes of musical variation, the main means of creating new music in this genre, and the implications of these processes."
Balinese Discourses on Music and Modernization by Brita Renee Heimarck While many Western scholars have discussed the technical aspects of Balinese music or the traditional contexts for performance, little has been written in Western languages about Balinese discourses on their music. This dissertation seeks to understand the experience of music in Bali according to Balinese voices through an analysis of oral and written dialogues on music, mainly by musicians and dalangs (shadow play puppeteers) from the village of Sukawati, and scholars, teachers, administrators and students from the Indonesian College of the Arts (STSI) in the City of Denpasar. The study examines the influence of modernization on the traditional arts and their role in society. A concentration on Balinese discourses enables individual performers and scholars to represent themselves to a greater extent than previously seen in ethnomusicological scholarship, making this study more of a critical discussion among equals than a Western interpretation of others. This approach permits a rare view into contemporary Balinese conceptions and practices of music.

Journal Articles

AV & Links

ShadowLight Productions ShadowLight Productions was founded in 1972 by theatre artist, filmmaker and shadow master, Larry Reed, to nurture indigenous shadow theater traditions and to explore and expand the possibilities of the shadow theatre medium by creating innovative interdisciplinary, multicultural works. Larry Reed is one of the few Americans to be trained in wayang kulit, Balinese shadow puppetry and performed in this tradition around the world over the last 35 years. In the early 1990's, Reed began expanding the scope of ShadowLights artistic activities and invented an ingenious shadow casting method, which integrates the traditional shadow theatre techniques, cinematic effects and modern theatre and dance styles. Truly multidisciplinary and performed behind and in front of a large screen (15ftx 30ft), our original works employ specially-designed projectors to cast silhouettes of puppets, actors, and cutout sets, all of which are manipulated to create astonishingly cinematic effects live on stage. Each show features live music and is created by a collaborating ensemble of writers, choreographers, composers, designers, actors, dancers, musicians and puppeteers from the various performing arts traditions such as Chinese, Tibetan, Indonesian, Japanese, Filipino and Latin American.