Thursday, October 22, 1998
Shadow puppets battle good vs. evil in Royce Hall
ON-CAMPUS: Sound, light bring Bali’s traditional silhouettes
alive on stage
By Harshan Jeyakumar
Daily Bruin Contributor
Flying, swirling and mutating shadows, along with a warning for
children, do not describe a regular theater experience. These,
however, are the characteristics of a new show coming to UCLA.
"Wayang Listrik/Electric Shadows," a production of contemporary
shadow theater presented by UCLA Performing Arts, comes to Royce
Hall this Saturday.
The show features the timeless tale of good vs. evil, the fierce
battles between heroes and villains, gods and demons, and the
inevitable search for a prize more precious than life itself.
"Wayang Listrik" offers this tale as a combination of light,
sound and silhouettes that grow, shrink, become transparent and
transform into a multitude of other figures, all uniting in a
cinematic shadowplay of drama, slapstick and even
improvisation.
Inspired by Balinese myths and based on a type of shadow
puppetry in Bali, the work is a combination of American and
Indonesian styles.
Pioneering the modern-day version of the shadow puppet genre and
co-creating "Wayang Listrik" is Larry Reed of San Francisco.
"I studied traditional shadow theater for 20 years, and I wanted
to do something to combine my background as a filmmaker with my
interest in shadow theater," Reed says. "About 10 years ago I
started experimenting with projected shadows."
Reed is the artistic director of a company he started in 1990
named ShadowLight Productions. The idea for "Wayang Listrik"
originated with the ShadowLight company. He is one of the few
Americans trained in Balinese shadow puppetry. To create the play,
he teamed with a well-known puppet master and composer from
Bali.
The show at UCLA comes after "Wayang Listrik’s" long East Coast
tour, as part of this year’s Jim Henson Festival of Puppet
Theater.
The show incorporates seven Balinese and seven American
puppeteers. Accompanying them are five musicians, three technicians
and several actors. Some are trained in the Balinese style while
others have learned the ShadowLight style.
"We’re all working together; it’s pretty seamless," says
Reed.
The show, for all its "electric" hype, is performed completely
by hand, using 30 different giant slides placed in front of three
main light sources.
Reed says that the show mimics the movie-going experience by
using quick-cut scenes, sequence series and a variety of shots,
much like in film editing.
"This is the original form of screenplay," says Reed.
Reed says the show is of definite interest to filmmakers, in
that the puppeteers achieve a full montage, live and onstage.
"It’s full of filming effects of one sort or another," Reed
says. "It’s like live animation. Also, a lot of it is improvised,
and we can respond on the spot to the audience."
In addition to this, "Wayang Listrik" often resembles a
traditional theatrical production. Puppeteers manipulate their
shadow makers in front of the scenery; in front of them, onstage,
the live actors imitate gods and fantasy characters.
But what makes this film and theater synthesis unique is that
everything is masked in tradition and eerie shadow. The actors wear
special masks so that they can double as the characters the puppets
portray. The action is projected onto a giant, cinema-sized
screen.
"We’re combining a sense of place with live action, actors and
puppets," says Reed.
Most of the puppets are traditional, but "Wayang Listrik"
includes some inventions of its own.
One of these is a set of light puppets made expressly for this
performance. These are puppets pasted on to mirrors, where their
image reflects onto the screen. The masks are also specially
invented for this play, and the use of actors is not traditional to
shadow puppetry.
"What we’re doing is really creating a new tradition, expanding
on the old one," Reed says. "Nobody else is really doing anything
like this on the scale we’re working on."
"This is a form of theater nobody has seen here before. It’s
very unique," says Judy Mitoma of the world arts and culture
department. "It is the result of an honest exchange between East
and West; it is relevant to this time of so much international
contact."
Mitoma provides promotional support on a professional and
personal level for her long-time friend  her daughter being
the only actress and her son-in-law a composer in "Wayang
Listrik".
Even though the UCLA performance is not recommended for children
under the age of 12, Reed believes that age seven would be a better
cutoff.
"It’s just a presenter’s choice in how they want to present it,"
Reed says. "Some places it’s an adults-only, some places it’s a
family show. We’re really comfortable with a mixed audience of all
ages."
Reed teaches his form of theater in university seminars, but he
adds that it is more closely related to film than theater.
"We have sections where we have freedom and sections which are
structured," Reed says. "I think of it as combining the power of
film, the magic of shadows and the immediacy of live
performance."
THEATER: "Wayang Listrik/Electric Shadows" will perform on
Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. in Royce Hall.UCLA Center for the
Performing Arts
San Francisco’s "Wayang Listrik/Electric Shadows" uses giant
projected images. The show will be coming to Royce Hall on
Saturday.
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