Wayang Kulit Contest and Around the World

There are many competitions on Shadow Puppet. However, most of the competition is held outside Malaysia. One of which is in Thailand, where it is held during the King Rama 5 celebration. Below is the video of the competition.

 Shadow Puppet is also in China. The Tangshan Shadow Puppet Theatre has brought imagination to the traditional art of shadow puppetry, entertaining the likes of high profile attendees from Chinese leaders to envoys from foreign countries. Tangshan Shadow Puppet Theatre possesses a unique expression and unrivaled technique. In their 68th year, they are still considered one of the premier shadow puppet acts in the world. The Tangshan Shadow Puppet Theatre has performed in nearly 20 countries and regions across Europe, Asia, and the United States. In September 1987, the theater took part in the First China National Art Festival.

Even in the Western world, Shadow puppet is also popluar. Larry Reed is one of the few Americans to be trained in wayang kulit, Balinese shadow puppetry and performed in this tradition around the world over the last 35 years. In the early 1990's, Reed began expanding the scope of ShadowLights artistic activities and invented an ingenious shadow casting method, which integrates the traditional shadow theatre techniques, cinematic effects and modern theatre and dance styles. Truly multidisciplinary and performed behind and in front of a large screen (15ftx 30ft), our original works employ specially-designed projectors to cast silhouettes of puppets, actors, and cutout sets, all of which are manipulated to create astonishingly cinematic effects live on stage. Each show features live music and is created by a collaborating ensemble of writers, choreographers, composers, designers, actors, dancers, musicians and puppeteers from the various performing arts traditions such as Chinese, Tibetan, Indonesian, Japanese, Filipino and Latin American.

Festival appearances and commissions include the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater (Wayang Listrik: Electric Shadows of Bali and In Xanadu), the Britt Festival (Wayang Listrik), the Spoleto Festival USA (In Xanadu), the World Puppetry Festival (Wayang Bali), the Huddersfield Festival in England (Lou Harrison's Coyote Stories), the Walter Spies Festival in Bali (Mayadanawa), Indonesian National Shadow Theater Festival, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Puppetry Conference (Wild Party and El Californio workshop). 

As you can see, Wayang Kulit has spread throughout the world and became popular even today.

Today’s Wayang Kulit

Today’s wayang kulit performances are still based on the ways of the ancients, but with many modifications to suit modernity.

In our frenetic, multi-tasking world, few have seven spare hours to spend watching puppets in the late evening. To adapt to this situation, a three-and-a-half hour show is the longest you’ll see, with only the best practitioners captivating the audience’s attention for this long.

There have been many ingenious new puppets created over only the last few decades: Tantri, with an Aesop fables animal-style theme is a notable innovation which now a number of puppeteers perform .The 3-D stick puppets , have strangely enough not taken on .

For the most part ,  wayang of the 21st century seems to eagerly imitate the modifications of the Javanese shows: bigger orchestras, more singers, louder sound systems, modern lighting, fancy decorations and costumes.

Today, some puppeteers no longer use the oil lamp in preference for an electric one, as well as additional coloured lights, spots and strobes. There are no night performances that don’t use sound systems: a mike and a (normally feeding-back with treble on full) speaker system is all part of the kit.

Large gamelan orchestras with more grunt and power, playing in many different scales are the modern preference. Traditional ones, such as gender wayang and suling gambuh, are used occasionally, but contemporary favourites are semarandhana, semar pegulingan, and angklung. Conservatives go white in horror when the choice is selonding or the bamboo joged, but what really is more the case is whether it suits the story-telling atmosphere or not. Now an orchestra is considered ‘complete’ if it features female singers (sindhen), but this is an adaptation from our neighbouring Java.

More radical brainwaves include multiple puppeteers zooming back and forth on skateboards; sampled sound effects; smoke machines; and techno strobes—all this promises more explosive, adventure-sport style shows in the future!