LECTURER TO ILLUMINATE ASIAN SHADOW PUPPETS

Like many traditional cultural forms, shadow puppet theater is an endangered species.

The way Nixson Borah tells it, this theater form has been popular in Eastern cultures for more than a thousand years. But now, the Los Angeles-based artist explains, movies and television are capturing the imagination of audiences in India, China, Java and Bali.

Borah, 48, will lecture on the puppet traditions of these countries at 7:30 tonight at the Laguna Art Museum South Coast Plaza satellite.

“Shadow puppet theater is extraordinarily hypnotic as a theater form, but it is not well known in the West,” Borah said. “Some people may have seen it in the opening scene of the film ‘The Year of Living Dangerously.’

“I think of it as the ancestor of TV. People in small villages gather round to watch an illuminated screen, from behind which comes music, poetry and situational comedy. And usually the screen is small.”

(In shadow puppet theater, figures made from flat leather are manipulated by rods and lit from behind--which throws their silhouettes on an opaque screen.)

Borah, a teacher of art at Fullerton College since 1962, began collecting puppets five years ago. He now has approximately 100.

“I soon realized that since they are part of a performance art, I wouldn’t fully understand them until I could see them in action,” he said.

So in the summer of 1983, he and his wife traveled through India and Indonesia, collecting puppets and attending performances in villages and remote areas. His hourlong talk tonight at the museum will include slides he took on his trip, including those of a performance he specially commissioned.

“There are quite dramatic differences among the four styles,” Borah said. “There is an enormous range in size, for one thing. Indian puppets can get to be six to eight feet high, whereas Chinese puppets are only eight to 10 inches high.

“Also, Indian and Chinese puppets also are translucent, so that when light shines through them, you get colored shadows, which waver and flicker like stained glass seen under water.”

Indonesian puppets, however, are opaque and cast black or dark brown silhouettes.

The puppets are used in different ways, too, according to Borah.

“In India, they are usually held up by dancers who perform, and you can hear the rhythms created by the bells on their feet. In the other traditions, the puppeteer sits down and works with the puppets above his head.”

Usually, the audience is only allowed to see the shadows cast by the puppets. But in Java, the audience can sit on either side of the screen.

“Originally, only the men could watch the puppeteer,” Borah explained.

“The women had to sit outside the theater and watch the shadows, which was considered the lesser aesthetic. But gradually it became the greater.”

The plots, while entertaining, contain a religious element not usually associated with popular Western culture, Borah said.

“The stories are drawn from the ‘Mahabharata’ and the ‘Ramayana’ (the two great epic poems of India), which are very comparable to our ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’--but with the weight of the Bible thrown in,” Borah said. “So they’re not considered just great literature.”

Traditional performances last nine hours, beginning at 8 p.m. and going on until 5 a.m. “I saw such a performance and the puppeteer never got up!

“There is an adult period around midnight, when the children are presumed to be asleep, and the clown puppets tell (off-color) body jokes and also takes jabs at local politicians and bigwigs.

“Then around 3 a.m., there’s a horrendous battle between a hero and the demon, with lots of flapping around and banging of puppets before it arrives at some kind of resolution.”

Westerners may be surprised at the episodic and choppy way in which the stories can be told.

“Very often a puppeteer just begins in the middle of an episode--bang, you’re right there,” Borah said. “Then if he gets tired or senses that the audience is bored, he’ll just end.

“That’s all right because the stories are considered an unbroken tapestry, and everyone knows the beginning and the ending anyway.”

Borah stands in awe of the skills demonstrated by the puppeteer.

“The puppeteer is the most consummate performance artist of any kind I’ve ever seen,” Borah said.

“He has to not only manipulate the puppets, but he also has to be a ventriloquist. And each puppet has a distinct voice.

“He also must be a master of an ancient language which is the equivalent of Latin and which no one understands except scholars: Only the gods and noble characters speak it.

“He must be capable of reciting long stretches of poetry, up to half an hour at a time. And he must sing, conduct the gamelan orchestra with his foot and be able to improvise.”

Amazingly, Borah said, the puppeteer usually does all this alone, although occasionally he has an assistant who hands him puppets. “Learning all this is a family tradition. The puppeteers actually are traveling gypsies.”

Unfortunately, as a living art form, puppet theater has fallen on hard times, according to Borah.

“In the cities of Indonesia, it’s done mostly as a tourist attraction and lasts only three hours.”

And the art of making puppets appears to be dying out:

“Puppeteers now cannibalize their collection. If an arm or a a leg wears out on one figure, they take the necessary part from other puppets. Since the puppets are made of leather, if you have one that is 60 or 70 years old, it’s already ancient.

“Of course, the theater is still popular in the more remote areas, but there’s not enough money in it for the artist anymore.

“In India, I found one puppeteer who works in a spark-plug factory during the day. And here is a man who combines Leonard Bernstein, Rudolf Nureyev and Robert Frost in one package, with a little bit of Edgar Bergen thrown in!”