Ramayana

26 March 2002, 11 am and 7 pm

A contemporary Indonesian shadow puppet presentation of the ancient Sanskrit epic. Part of the Puppet and Animation Festival.

Puppeteers: Joko Susilo (evening) and Matthew Isaac Cohen (morning)
With musical accompaniment by Gamelan Naga Mas

The Ramayana is most associated with India and the classic Sanskrit literary telling by the poet-sage Valmiki. This epic piece of literature, however, has been told and retold in countless forms by storytellers, actors, singers, dancers and puppeteers throughout South and Southeast Asia, for the better part of 2000 years. In Java (Indonesia), the Ramayana is most closely associated with Wayang Kulit, shadow puppet theatre. Puppet theatre in Europe is thought of primarily as a children’s art form, but Javanese Wayang Kulit is loved by adults and children. It is Java’s most important living repository for classical rhetoric, philosophy, traditional etiquette, music and theatre. The solo puppeteer, or dhalang, is a total artist who weaves tales, manipulates puppets, sings songs, provides percussive effects with a wooden knocker and metal plates, utters the occasional incantation, and entertains audiences of all ages. Puppets, made from carved and painted buffalo hide, are back lit, casting their filigreed shadows on a white cotton screen. The performance can be watched from both sides of the screen—Wayang Kulit is thus both shadow theatre and puppet theatre simultaneously.

Musical accompaniment is provided by a Gamelan, or gong-chime musical ensemble. Gamelan is both the name of a set of instruments and of a form of music. A Gamelan orchestra is composed of a variety of metallic xylophones, gongs, sound kettles, drums and other instruments. Gamelan music, figuratively compared to the sound of rippling water, is highly stratified and polyphonic, but not based on Western harmonies. There are two basic tunings—the pentatonic slendro scale and the heptatonic pelog tuning. This performance uses the slendro tuning, the scale most associated with Wayang Kulit.

The story

The basic outline of the Ramayana is well known to most people in South and Southeast Asia. RAMA is in exile from the kingdom of Ngayodya. Rama has agreed to give up his rights to the throne, in favour of his younger brother Brata. Rama, with his wife SINTA and brother LAKSMANA, live simply in the forest of Dendaka. The beauty of Sinta arouses the interest of the rapacious king of Ngalengka, RAHWANA—also known as Dasamuka, the ten-faced. Rahwana concocts a dastardly plan and kidnaps the princess, abducting her to Ngalengka. Rama enlists the aid of an army of moneky and apes from the kingdom of Guwa Kiskenda, under the leadership of the white ape general, ANOMAN, and succeeds in regaining his beloved wife.

The performers

Joko Susilo is an eighth generation puppeteer born in Sragen, Central Java, Indonesia. He holds a doctorate in ethnomusicology from Otago University (New Zealand) and has been a lecturer in puppet arts at Sekolah Tinggi Seni Indonesia (The Indonesian Conservatory for the Performing Arts) in Surakarta, Central Java since 1987. Dr Susilo is well known among his generation of puppeteers and has performed internationally in New Zealand, the United States and Great Britain. He is currently Leverhulme Trust artist-in-residence at the University of Glasgow and puppeteer-in-residence at the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre. Dr Susilo can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Matthew Isaac Cohen began his studies of Wayang Kulit in 1988, with a Fulbright grant to Indonesia. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Yale University and is a lecturer in theatre studies at the University of Glasgow. In addition to writing extensively about Indonesian performance, he also practises what he preaches; he has performed Wayang Kulit in Indonesia, the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, and Great Britain. Dr Cohen can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Gamelan Naga Mas is a community arts group founded in 1990 and currently based at the Tramway. It has performed throughout Scotland and is very privileged to be tutored by Dr Joko Susilo for the academic year 2001-2002 with support from the Glasgow City Council.