The Shadow Puppet Theatre of Malaysia
The Shadow Puppet Theatre of Malaysia

Author: Beth Osnes

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 0786457929

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This comprehensive book explores the Malaysian form of shadow puppet theatre, highlighting its unique nature within the context of Southeast Asian and Asian shadow puppet theatre traditions. Intended for a Western audience not familiar with Asian performance and practices, the text serves as a bridge to this highly imaginative form. An in-depth examination of the Malaysian puppet tradition is provided, as well as performance scripts, designs for puppet characters, instructions for creating a shadow screen, and easy directions for performance. Another section then considers the practical, pedagogical, and ethical issues that arise in the teaching of this art.

Shadow Play
Shadow Play

Author: Barbara Ismail

Publisher: Monsoon Books

Published: 2012-05-01

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 981435869X

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"Shadow Play" is the first in the series of “Kain Songket Mysteries” set in the northern state of Kelantan, Malaysia during the 1970s. Mak Cik Maryam, a smart and take-charge kain songket (silk) trader in Kota Bharu Central Market, discovers a murder in her own backyard, shattering the bucolic village world she thought surrounded her. While the new Chief of Police, a pleasant young man from Ipoh whose mother’s admonitions about the wiles of Kelantanese girls still ring in his ears, wrestles with the bewildering local dialect, Maryam steps up to solve the mystery herself. Her investigation brings her into the closed world of the wayang kulit Shadow Play theater and the lives of its performers—a world riven by rivalries and black magic. Trapped in a tangle of jealousy, Maryam struggles to make sense of the crime in spite of the spells sent to keep her from secrets long buried and lies woven to shield the guilty.

Malaysian Shadow Play and Music
Malaysian Shadow Play and Music

Author: Patricia Ann Matusky

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13:

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The ancient, time-honoured art form known as wayang kulit (literally, 'leather puppet theatre' or 'shadow puppet play') is found in many parts of South-East Asia, including the Malay Peninsula. The present book, an ethnomusicological study focusing on the musical sound and its role in the drama, explores an aspect of wayang kulit hitherto neglected by scholars. Based on interviews and recordings conducted by the author in the villages of Kelantan, as well as on her experience as a student performer in one of the finest and most skilled wayang kulit troupes in Malaysia, the book begins with a useful overview of the various types of wayang kulit in Malaysia. It then goes on to discuss the main theatrical conventions, puppet design, performance structure, musical repertoire, orchestral instruments, and characteristic features of the music of wayang kulit Siam, the most popular type of Malaysian shadow puppet theatre. Written in a pleasing, easily digestible style, this book will be of value to ethnomusicologists, sociologists, students and practitioners of the performing arts, theatre enthusiasts, and general readers interested in the arts and culture of South-East Asia.

Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind: The Javanese Shadow-play Dewa Ruci Performed by Ki Anom Soeroto
Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind: The Javanese Shadow-play Dewa Ruci Performed by Ki Anom Soeroto

Author: Bernard Arps

Publisher: NUS Press

Published: 2016-04-18

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 9814722154

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Javanese shadow puppetry is a sophisticated dramatic form, often felt to be at the heart of Javanese culture, drawing on classic texts but with important contemporary resonance in fields like religion and politics. How to make sense of the shadow-play as a form of world-making? In Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind, Bernard Arps explores this question by considering an all-night performance of Dewa Ruci, a key play in the repertoire. Thrilling and profound, Dewa Ruci describes the mighty Bratasena’s quest for the ultimate mystical insight. The book presents Dewa Ruci as rendered by the distinguished master puppeteer Ki Anom Soeroto in Amsterdam in 1987. The book’s unusual design presents the performance texts together with descriptions of the sounds and images that would remain obscure in conventional formats of presentation. Copious annotations probe beneath the surface and provide an understanding of the performance's cultural complexity. These annotations explain the meanings of puppet action, music, and shifts in language; how the puppeteer wove together into the drama the circumstances of the performance in Amsterdam, Islamic and other religious ideas, and references to contemporary Indonesian political ideology. Also revealed is the performance’s historical multilayering and the picture it paints of the Javanese past. Tall Tree, Nest of the Wind not only presents an unrivalled insight into the artistic depth of wayang kulit, it exemplifies a new field of study, the philology of performance.

Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts
Magic and Divination in Malay Illustrated Manuscripts

Author: Farouk Yahya

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-10-27

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 9004301720

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This book offers an integrated study of the texts and images of illustrated Malay manuscripts on magic and divination from private and public collections in Malaysia, the UK and Indonesia. Containing some of the rare examples of Malay painting, these manuscripts provide direct evidence for the intercultural connections between the Malay region, other parts of Southeast Asia and the rest of the world. In this richly illustrated volume many images and texts are gathered for the first time, making this book essential reading for all those interested in the practice of magic and divination, and the history of Malay, Southeast Asian and Islamic manuscript art.

ISSUES IN TRADITIONAL MALAYSIAN CULTURE
ISSUES IN TRADITIONAL MALAYSIAN CULTURE

Author: GHULAM-SARWAR YOUSOF

Publisher: Partridge Singapore

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 1482895404

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This book contains a selection of non-academic materials on a wide range of topics related to Malaysian culture. Several of them deal with traditional Malay theatre genres, particularly mak yong, recognised by UNESCO as an item of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005, the shadow play and bangsawan. Others record the contributions of prominent personalities as practitioners, preservers, teachers and transmitters of oral traditions. The author touches upon issues related to the precarious situation in the arts in a rapidly changing Malay society which has in general neglected traditional performing arts forms under pressures exerted by modenisation and the simultaneous wave of Islamicisation. His own involvement in teaching, research, documentation as well as preservation of many of these arts provides unique personal insights into some of the problems and pertinent issues. Other essays of a more general nature, touch upon the continuing and at times controversial relationships between Malay cultural manifestations and those in neighbouring countries, contributions of the minority Indian-Muslim community in Malaysia, and upon the role of the administration in the preservation of heritage. The brief accounts contained in this volume are presented in a direct and readable manner for the non-expert enthusiast of culture and the arts from the perspective of someone deeply and passionately involved.