Be enthralled by the theatre of shadow

All night long the shadow master of eastern Malaya controls his puppets in front of a light and behind a white cloth screen. The adventures and exploits of legendary kings and Gods are known to all the audience, but their interest never flags as the tales go on for hour after hour.

In Kota Bharu, capital of Malaya’s Kelantan State, you will never go to bed before midnight. Your mind will throb to the wonder of gongs, rhythms, faces and colours thronging upon the inward eye, transforming processions of actors and puppets, dancers and shadow masters into symbol from all time. You would sit in the sand, crowded by children, watching the demons leap and soar and the great Hanuman, greatest leaper of them all, conquering the wicked genius of the Demon King of Lanka.

But before you have been baffled by too many shadow plays you might have the remarkable good fortune to meet a ‘To Dalang’ as the master of the shadow play is called, and the most experienced in all Kelantan. He could be fifty-nine years old and began training as a shadow master at the age of twenty-two. He spent seven years intensively studying the art, learning by heart the many stories and incantations, and acquiring the dramatic sensibility which makes every shadow play an intense and personal experience for the beholder.

The shadow play was known in China in AD 200 when the spirit of the Han Emperor’s favourite concubine was projected miraculously by a Taoist monk on to a white cloth screen. Possibly, the monk faked this effect, using knowledge brought back by early Chinese travellers from Indonesia where the shadow play had been in use for centuries as a simple form of morality play.

In Thailand you will discover an ancient form of the shadow play known as the Nang Yai, using huge puppets, with characters sometimes in groups, but this again was likely to have come from Indonesia. Centuries ago, the Arab took one version to Egypt. The rare Indonesian version, therefore, would be most important to you and you may have an opportunity of recording an entire performance one night in a village just outside Kota Bharu.

You will find yourselves in a large compound just off the main road going north into Thailand. A special stage had been erected surmounted by a white screen. Behind it will seat the To’ Dalang and the orchestra. As the audience quietly assembles in the darkness he will begin to chanting a Muslim prayer with selected verses from the Koran to purify his own spirit calling the blessings of Allah upon the spectators.

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