In Bali, everyone is an artist. Participation in the performing
arts is, according to the tenets of the Hindu religion, essential
to the spiritual well-being of each individual in the community.
Farmers sowing seeds in rice fields, politicians hammering out
legislation, and shopkeepers displaying merchandise in windows each
have an obligation to make an artistic contribution to their
community.
Every summer Asian theater specialist Professor Patricia Harter
introduces a small group of UCLA students to an academically
rigorous culture shock by taking them to Bali for three weeks to
study the performing arts. Students normally hear from speakers
specializing in such types of theater as gamelan orchestra music,
mask dance and trance while also participating in workshops and
living in the cultural environment.
Due to the political climate in Bali and the United States, plus
the SARS scare through Asia, UCLA students were not able to attend
this summer. But Professor Harter is determined to take students
next year, in time to observe an elaborate festival that occurs
every 210 days.
One of the many ancient art forms that the students see is
shadow puppetry. Two dimensional cutout figures represent Hindu
gods behind a sheer fabric-like screen illuminated by candlelight.
The puppets act out familiar religious stories, complete with stock
clown characters and slapstick comedy, garnering laughs from
children in the audience.
Though only the smoke-colored shadows of the god figures are
visible through the screen, the puppets are painted gold with
vibrant colored accents and intricate design. To an untrained
puppeteer, maneuvering the sticks proves awkward, and the
delicately hinged limbs move in a gangly way. A Balinese puppeteer
makes the movement look fluid on the screen the same way his
ancestors did before him.
“Everything in Balinese Theater is very set in
ritual,” said Melissa Shunk, a theater graduate student who
went to Bali for her thesis on theater education. “There is
no improvisation; there are no solo moments where you make it up on
your own. It’s about putting your spirit into the
details,.
Putting spirit into the details is exactly why theater in Bali
has survived for so long. “Here in the West, theater is a
cultural appendage,” Professor Harter said. “(In Bali)
performance is very much a part (of) and integral to society in
that performance is efficacious. Every person is involved in
performance because it is a gift to the gods.”
The potent culture of Balinese theater can exist because of the
island’s small population and because the individuals are all
Hindu, leading to an integration of religion and art.
However, the island’s tradition of theater doesn’t
exist in a vacuum. As tourism flourished around Bali and the
surrounding islands of Indonesia, a new direction for theater
developed.
Wood-sculpted masks modeled after the Hindu gods and demons were
traditionally only used for temple performance and required a
lengthy process of ceremonial purification. The tradition of sacred
masks remains, but in addition masks are now carved in a
non-ritualistic fashion solely to sell to tourists. Performance
space was made outside of the temple and performances were created
for the tourists.
“The quality of performance isn’t very high because
they do it every day of the week for tourists,” Shunk said.
“I think primarily it’s to make money. (Another
possible reason is) some Balinese might find it easier to
choreograph for the tourists because the dances are not sacred or
ritualistic, so they have more freedom to create.”
Though the students can witness sacred the Balinese performance
tradition in a way the typical tourist visiting the island never
can, there is no denying they are tourists. A major reason
Professor Harter brings students to Bali is to demystify the
“exotic” feel of Asia. “For all of us here in the
United States, anything to do with Asia tends to be exotic. When
something is exotic, you think of it as the other and you place it
at a distance. The more you understand the culture and the belief
system, the less exotic it becomes and the more you appreciate
it.”