Dalang of wayang in America
moessQn
'Sagio is very helpful. If I need any new
puppets I just call him and he sends it
to me,' she said with a smile. Tamara
owns a collection of 500 puppets, one
white screen or kelir, along with its fra
me and one debog, made of styrofoam,
in place of banana logs; one set of
knocking instruments and one com
plete set of gamelan instruments.
She named her theatre Tamara and
The Shadow Theatre of Java.
Many times while we were chatting,
I detected a trace of an Indonesian ac
cent in het English speech. Even
though she is not longer fluent in
Indonesian, the accent is still there as
Indonesian was her everyday language
in addition to Dutch when she grew
up in Indonesia.
Text: Jeannette Sitorus
Translation from: Femina no. 8/XXV
(27 February - 5 March 1997)
Jakarta, Indonesia
The woman's name is Tamara. She is
Indonesian and Dutch. There is no
thing different about this woman
except that she is a dalang. She is a
professional dalang in America. Wow!
Tamara was born in Tjimahi, West-
Java on April 26, 1934. She has been a
dalang since 1977. She has performed
almost 400 shows for elementary
schools, universities, libraries, museums
and on luxury cruise ships. Tamara
says that this profession has earned
her an adequate income and that it has
brought her to many places throughout
the United States and to Athens,
Greece. Additionally, she performed on
Orient Lines and Royal Caribbean
Cruises sailing to Singapore, Malaysia,
Thailand and Indonesia.
Indonesian Accent
On May 31, 1996, at the Indonesian
Consulate in New York, Tamara's hus
band, Maxwell Fielding, helped her
prepare for het performance. Tamara
showed all the equipment needed for
the wayang performance which lay
neatly arrranged on a bamboo mat or
tikar, behind the white screen. In the
center of the mat, about a third of a
meter behind the screen, there was a
small pillow where the dalang sits. On
the left and right of the pillow, layers
of wayang kulit puppets were put in
order. Between the pillow and the
screen, the dalang's knocking instru
ments, the cempala and the kepyak,
lay ready for the performance.
Beneath the screen is a tapeplayer to
accompany the performance with pre
recorded gamelan music. At times, the
show is accompanied by a live gamelan
orchestra called Srikandi Gamelan and
is played by American musicians who
studied gamelan in Yogyakarta.
The electric light which stands about
two meters behind the screen, replaces
the oil lamp used in Indonesia to
create the shadows on the screen.
Tamara explained that most of het
wayang theatre was sent to her from
Yogyakarta to New York with the help
of a good friend. The first set of pup
pets was an old and used set, bought
from a dalang in 1975 who did not
need it anymore.
Two years later, because of the in
creased demand for the performances,
Tamara bought a new set of puppets
from Sagio, a famous wayang kulit
maker in Yogyakarta.
Creating a new world
It was fun to watch Tamara per
form at the Consulate in New
York. After Tamara's ten-minute
introduction to the wayang, all
lights went off and the show began.
Softly we heard gamelan music as the
performance opened with the gunun-
gan's shadow. Then, Tamara began to
articulate the voices of the legendary
characters of Rama and Sinta. She
spoke in English, purposely though,
incorporating the Indonesian accent
into her character voices. Occasionally
she mixed Indonesian dialogue which
was easily understood by the audience.
During the performance some in the
audience could no longer hold back
their curiosity. The wanted to know
how Tamara soared the King of Birds,
fatayu, or landed the giant Dasa Muka
on to the screen; and how did she
create the sound of kepyakan, which
accompanied Gareng's steps or the
sound of dodogan during the show
down of Dasa Muka and Rama? They
could not believe that Tamara was able
to change her voice from the weeping
of Princess Sinta to the giant roar of
Dasa Muka. Without hesitation, many
in the audience got up, walked by
dining tables to the back and peeked
behind the screen at the Dalang at
work...
'Aren't those people distracting you in
your concentration?' I asked.
'Not at all,' she answered, 'when I per
form, I am 100 percent absorbed in
another world in which the screen is
the universe, the light symbolizes the
26
