Lisa Siregar

Detail from the poster for the 'Bima' series.

Shadow Puppets to Help Fund Literature in Indonesia

Soldiers and genies will take center stage at the JW Marriott Hotel in Kuningan, South Jakarta, tonight in a wayang kulit shadow-puppet play put on by Lontar Foundation to celebrate the publisher’s 22nd anniversary.

The performance — titled “Babad Wonomarta” (“To Cut Through the Forest of Wonomarta”) — is the third in the foundation’s “Bima” series of five shadow-puppet plays by five famous dalang (puppeteers), which is aimed at teaching the importance of this performance tradition and raising funds for the production of educational packages, including three books: “The Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Drama,” an English translation; “Menagerie 7”; and “The Modern Library of Indonesia,” a compilation of modern Indonesian literature.

“Babad Wonomarta” is to be performed by master puppeteer Ki Mantheb Soedharsono from Solo. The first performance, titled “Bimo Bungkus,” was held in April at Dharmawangsa Hotel in South Jakarta. The second performance was staged at Cilandak Town Square in August.

Tonight’s performance will pick up from where the story left off at the end of the second performance. The Pandawa soldiers have been given a concession to live in Wonomarta Forest. The woods are known as an eerie area because of the genies that live there. The soldiers receive help from a genie to survive in the forest.

This fund-raising event is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. in the hotel’s Dua Mutiara function room. Admission costs between Rp 500,000 ($52) and Rp 750,000 and are available from the Lontar Foundation.

The group was established on Oct. 28, 1987, to help preserve Indonesia literature by four local writers: Goenawan Mohamad, Sapardi Djoko Damono, Umar Kayam and Subagio Sastrowardoyo, as well as American translator John H. McGlynn.

“I think 22 years is quite a long time for a nonprofit organization to exist in Indonesia,” McGlynn said.

“During this period, we feel that it is not hard to find cultural products to be preserved, it’s harder to make people aware and appreciate those,”

The books are also an effort from the foundation to educate both Indonesians and foreigners about wayang.

In 2003 the international significance of this art form was testified to by Unesco when it declared wayang a “masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.”

“This [preserving cultural heritage] is important,” McGlynn said. “We don’t want any more countries to claim Indonesian heritage, right?”

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