Bigger Not Really Better for Balinese Puppetry

No performing art depends on the “small is beautiful” philosophy more than puppetry--and traditional Indonesian shadow puppetry takes the premise to the max by retelling mythic stories with delicately carved, flat leather figures held against illuminated fabric from inside a portable booth. The intricate carving of the leather represents an art in itself, as does the one-man manipulation of all the puppets in the narrative.

Developed in San Francisco and presented at UCLA on Saturday, “Wayang Listrik/Electric Shadows” changes the scale of Indonesian shadow-puppet performance to that of a wide-screen movie and enlarges the roster of performers as well, mixing puppets and dancers. Moreover, motion picture techniques such as dissolves between scenes update the way the story unfolds.

As in the traditional Balinese rod-puppet idiom called wayang kulit, the gods speak an inflated, archaic tongue while the comic characters use the vernacular--in this case, English. Drawn from religious epics, the serious scenes of the drama essentially provide motivational bookends for an extended display of whimsical puppet designs and farcical confrontations.

The distinguished “Wayang Listrik” creators--I Wayan Wija, Larry Reed and I Dewa Putu Berata--prove immensely clever at projection technology and also manage to skillfully combine Balinese puppet conventions with related dance traditions. But there are losses as well as gains. For starters, a Balinese wayang kulit performance is light, uninsistent, small, and, if you wish, you can walk behind the booth to watch the puppeteer and musicians at work. There’s no such freedom at “Wayang Listrik,” however, and all the pumped-up effects and even the quirky charm can eventually grow heavy-handed over 90 minutes.

The 13-member company performs tirelessly, and the narrative itself (“The Elixir of Immortality”) has enough sex and violence for a dozen Hollywood action films. But the distinctively sly, antiheroic perspective of Bali’s shadow puppet drama may just not play as well when blown up to stupendous proportions. Finally, even the novelty of the project seems a little ominous, for an emphasis on spectacle usually signals the death of an art form, rather than its renewal.