Performing a World Theatre Tradition Story
When introduced to the story of Ravana the evil king with 10 heads and 20 arms, it seemed quite familiar. To other people in our class, familiar would be an understatement. A lot of the people who were brought up in India or had an Indian heritage/background/culture knew this story very well as one of the commonly told myths in school or home. When we began working on it all the different versions and endings started to come out.
Tableaux, the bane of my existence. Every single time we start a piece, or unit, or story it starts with a tableau. Every time. Beginning, Middle, end. The story of Ramayana was no different to this, start with a tableau then merge them all together, and this we did. The end piece wasn’t very special. Until we started working with masks that is…
Performing a World Theatre Tradition Story in traditional masks
The first thing we did at the start of our unit was working with oddly shaped face masks and trying to characterise yourself to become the person in the mask. We could choose the different quirks and styles of the person/thing we were becoming and how to interpret scenario’s we were given based off of our own ideas for our character. However, when we were introduced to the Topeng masks we were bound by the emotions and character outlines presented by the masks through its immaculate carving detail, facial expression, even hair placement. These new rules and regulation set in place by the culture we were being introduced to were initially very frustrating to have to work with. However, after a while of getting to know the masks and characters over the few lessons we had with them, I began to understand the importance of having one character to be and that just because the masks portray one emotion it does not make the character one dimensional. The masks are an incredibly significant part of the Indonesian theatre culture and our experience with them has been truly enlightening and engaging.
Performing a World Theatre Tradition Story with traditional puppets
Our first experience with puppets was similar to the masks in which we started off with neutral puppets which we made ourselves and got to experience working with and moving considering three factors, weight, breathing and focus. We were then introduced to the Indonesian Wayang Kulit puppet tradition during a workshop which the intern Kate ran, she described the incredibly detailed tradition surrounding the puppets and the process in which someone would have to go to become a puppet master. After the workshop, we began the experience of trying out moving the puppets and that’s when it hit us how hard it would be to become a puppet master; the shows up to 9 hours long and directing up to 4 puppets with one hand, having to go to university specifically to specialise in this dying art form. With newfound respect, we began trying to move the puppet in the way we wanted it to move, the joints would go the opposite way, the other people weren’t moving it correctly, suffice to say there were many frustrating points of wayang kulit.