{"id":9457,"date":"1997-04-21T13:40:00","date_gmt":"1997-04-21T19:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wend.ca\/?p=9457"},"modified":"2020-06-19T22:51:21","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:51:21","slug":"shadow-play-of-terengganu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wend.ca\/?p=9457","title":{"rendered":"Shadow Play of Terengganu"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the “filler” courses I took while at Acadia University was called Peoples and Cultures of Asia<\/em>. After the first few classes I no longer considered the course “filler” because I was so intrigued with the discussions that it forever cemented my desire to visit Asia. (In an ironic twist, I ran into the professor who taught the class in Sri Lanka — but that’s another story about the six degrees of separation).<\/p>\n

Peoples and Cultures of Asia<\/em> was the first time I’d ever heard of shadow play. Shadow play is an ancient form of story telling found throughout Asia. It uses opaque figurines on a background to tell old folk stories. In North America we’d call this shadow puppetry.<\/p>\n

In Malaysia shadow play is called Wayang Kulit<\/em> and while in Terengganu I attended a Wayang Kulit show that acted out stories from the Ramayana<\/a>. It could have been the Ramayana (which I saw in many different forms in India) but I had the impression that the puppeteer made creative changes to the story as he went. There were funny characters with funny voices (sometimes referred to as clown-servants), royal puppets in elaborate dress, and funky demons — all of which are controlled by the Tok Dalang<\/em> or puppet master. There could be upwards of 40 puppets and each one is handled by the Tok Dalang.<\/em><\/p>\n

Behind the Tok Dalang.<\/em> sits the orchestra who play music seamlessly with the improvised storyline put together by the puppet master. I remember thinking during the three hours we watched that everyone involved with the show had tremendous skill, endurance and patience to maintain such an energetic storyline.<\/p>\n

* Shadow puppet photo taken by Gunawan K<\/a> and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.<\/em><\/p>\n