After the performance: Wayang Kulit

Reflection for…
Wayang Kulit Project: Serena
Andrea Masuda

In this project, my roles were acting, lighting and also decorations. I was the voice for King Wrath’s troops and also I was one of the narrators. Although my role as well was lighting, it was also Mei’s role as well.

When we were given the assignment, I thought that the puppet manipulation would be the hardest, and I thought this during the whole of the preparation process for the presentation. The other parts such as lighting, sound etc, I did not think was going to be so difficult, and I was right. The puppet manipulation seemed to be the hardest obstacle to overcome.
Our project was successful to an extent, but could have been better. It was mainly because of time issues but I think that our ideas were good and interesting (I explained these ideas in one of the previous entries) just our action time was not fast enough. Time management was clearly an issue.

The reason we had time issues was that we had to make the shadow puppet theatre and also the puppets and that took time. Until we had the puppet theatre and the puppets, we could not rehearse. In the end, we only rehearsed it the day before the performance, which then became a hectic two days for all of us.

My contribution backstage was mainly lights (for during the performance), however (as I stated in the beginning of this reflection) I was also in charge of the decorations. I thought about it, discussed it with the rest of the group to get more input and finally, I went out on a Sunday to buy these decorations at Daiso (100 yen store). I also contributed in the sense that I attended rehearsals. I had attended the extra morning rehearsal that we had before the performance.

Before the performance, we had many technical difficulties. One major one was that we had not rehearsed it with the close-up puppets so we could not get much practice with that. Also, we could not find speakers for the sound effects. Mainly because we did not have the cable that would go from the computer to the speakers, so we had to use the weaker ones.

During the performance, we had further problems. One was the lights. We had a moment that some one (I could not catch who it was) did not know which lights to turn on and there was one time that we turned on a light and then turned it off soon after which made it seem like a mistake.

Another complication was the puppets. During scenes in which included many actions, the puppets would get damaged and during the performance, the puppeteer would have a tendency to overdue it and with that, the arm of one of the puppets fell off. Lancelot’s arm fell out and the Serena’s hand fell off, which created unintentional humour for the audience.

Also, another major problem was that there was a transition between scenes in which the puppeteers did not know what was next. There was a time that there was a long pause in the dark. Perhaps, if we had a list of scenes in big letters below the screen, then that complication would have been prevented.

Despite the problems we faced, it was successful. The audience had reacted the way we expected them to (such as laugh at the right times), and some transitions were smooth. The live music worked well, but could have been more planned out so that it did not just sound like a bunch of pans hitting each other (which is good for only particular effects).

The audience’s participation during the narrator’s scenes was unexpected but rewarding because Mei and I had been preparing just in case if the audience was not participating. This precaution was worth it in the end because at the beginning, when I asked them if they had any ideas why Serena was upset, they simply answered “No.” So then I asked further questions and that was when they had participated more.

From this performance I have mainly learnt that time management and practice is very important, but this is what I learnt through a mistake. I also learnt through an achievement, which was that the synthesis of traditional aspects and physical acting can be effective and create different effects.

Although this was a tougher project than “Perfection,” it was more rewarding in the sense that there was more research and backstage work than practical work.



Here are some pictures:

This is the main screen. The characters on the screen are the King and Serena.


This is the close up screen. This scene is the scene where the King gives the letter to Serena.


This is the narrator area.


This is how the set looks like. Where the sarongs are is where the audience sits. Around the audience there is a border of potpourri and fake flowers (hibiscus).