On 12 June 8 pm at the Teatro Goldoni, a performance of Javan shadow puppet theatre (wayang kulit), will be given by artists from the Yogyakarta ISI, one of most prestigious music and dance academies created by the Indonesian government to promote the teaching and spread of traditional arts. This show has been organised by the Intercultural Institute of Comparative Music Studies at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Education, the Indonesian Embassy to the Holy See, the Venteo Region, the City of Venice and the Music for Rome Foundation and under the patronage of the Patriarchate of Venice Offices for the Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The event takes on even greater importance considering that Javan puppet theatre, one of the most refined art forms in Indonesia, has not been performed in Italy for such a long time.
Wayang kulit (literally “leather theatre”) is usually performed at public festivities and religious celebrations. On Java it is the main aesthetic reference model for music, words, painting and gestures, which are all then combined in the performance. The characters are represented by various figures, which have been cut out of leather and then delicately decorated. The puppets are manoeuvred to project shadows on an illuminated screen. There is only one puppet master known as the dalang who moves and provides the voice for a very large number of characters. The play is accompanied by the sound of the gamelan orchestra whose role is to underscore all the dramatic movements during the performance by expressing through song and musical instruments of various kinds the emotions, feelings and moods of the characters who act on the lit-up canvas screen.