Clarkson University
Spring 2023 David A. Walsh‘67 Arts & Sciences Seminar Series
Wednesday, February 15th at 12pm on Zoom
Zoom Registration: https://clarkson.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0qf-mtqDwrHtda2Kyt5fWxAYfL4GC4o1h3
Ramayana and Animism in Wayang Puppet Theatre
Dr. Matthew Issac Cohen
Abstract:
While performed in Indonesia by and for Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians, traditions of wayang puppetry realize what Philippe Descola refers to as an “animist ontology.” Not only human figures but also what Tim Ingold calls “nonhuman persons,” including personal possessions, landforms, and animals, possess consciousness and interiority. Humans can have conversations with magical weapons, who might act as their envoys or surrogates. A mountain might be an incarnation of a god and provide sage advice to visitors. A horse can hitch itself to a chariot and rally to rescue its master. People metamorph into animals or flowers, become possessed, and transform into enraged giants. Characters transform upon dying into a rice field or an animal, merge body-and-soul into other characters, or reincarnate.
Among the diverse story sources enacted in wayang (and other puppet forms of South and Southeast Asia), the Ramayana stands out for its animistic qualities. Episodes depict interactions between humans, ogres, monkeys, deities, and other nonhuman persons, activating the potential of the medium for representing transformation and theatrically mining the suspension of natural laws. This paper is based on ongoing research in the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets at Yale University Art Gallery, examines how the characters of the Ramayana have been represented in different regional wayang styles practiced in the Indonesian islands of Java and Bali as a reflection of different understandings of the Ramayana epic and shifting theatrical styles and trends. Analysis of these historical puppets will be followed by an exploration of an experimental 2023 Ramayana production at the University of Connecticut hybridizing wayang with the tholpavakoothu shadow puppet tradition of Kerala, India, in which the epic is retold from the perspective of the trees and wood inhabiting it.
Bio:
Matthew Isaac Cohen, PhD is a professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. He has lived, taught, and studied in England, Scotland, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and Malaysia. His research concerns creativity and itinerancy in global sites of cultural complexity, with particular focus on the arts of Indonesia and global traditions of puppet theatre. He is currently at work on a visual history of wayang based on the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets at Yale University Arts Gallery.
