Barikan: A Wayang ritual drama with gamelan and shadow puppets

On December 12, 2017, the Yale Art Gallery hosted a performance of Barikan, a ritual drama of Indonesia, using shadow puppets (wayang kulit - a dramatic form involving puppetry - derived from a Javanese Hindu-Buddhist tradition, where hand-crafted leather puppets are used to depict epic stories of the gods in shadow play). The puppets for this performance were from the new Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection, a recent major gift to the Gallery. This gift is the largest collection of Indonesian puppets and related material ever given to a collecting institution: 166 complete sets of wayang puppets from Java, Bali, and Lombok. Each set has between 50 and 250 individual puppets. The exact number still needs to be assessed, but it is likely to exceed 20,000. Bringing the collection to Yale University has created the potential for a center for cultural and academic research related to wayang, which is at the core of Western Indonesian cultures. The collection will become a draw for scholarly research and heritage preservation of one of Indonesia’s most cherished performance traditions.

The puppeteer or dhalang for this performance was Matthew Isaac Cohan (Yale PhD 1997), Professor of International Theater, Royal Holloway, University of London Art, who has been studying and assisting with curating the collection. He was accompanied by the Yale Gamelan Suprabanggo, directed by Maho Ishiguru and Darsono Hadiraharjo, with special guest artist Anne Stebinger (vocalist). The performance was co-sponsored by the Yale Art Gallery and the Council on Southeast Asia Studies.

This video shows highlights from the full performance—https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOGbyHbBMws&feature=youtu.be

To see the performance in its entirety, visit https://youtu.be/SUVFBoUt94I