The Puppet Master

Maria Tri Sulistyani brings her puppet theater to the next level.

- Ester Christine Natalia

Puppet theater has been a part of Indonesian, and especially Javanese, culture for centuries. Wayang, the term for shadow puppets made of carved leather, is among the most popular forms of puppet theater in the country. Historically, wayang was utilized as a means of spreading Islam by conveying values through ancient epics like the Mahabharata and Punakawan. In wayang performances, a puppeteer called a dalang moves the puppets against a large, backlit, white screen while acting as narrator, director and actor simultaneously. He is also accompanied by a group of gamelan musicians and vocalists. However, enthusiasm among the younger generation for this form of puppet theater has declined amid the search for modern forms of entertainment.

Recently, a new puppet troupe called the Papermoon Puppet Theatre has emerged and successfully attracted the interest of younger audiences. Tickets for its seasonal performances are sold out within minutes and the Yogyakarta-based group has been invited to perform in a number of countries. Not only entertaining, the stories delivered by the puppets are also able to draw forth the emotions of the audience.

Papermoon Puppet Theatre was founded by Maria Tri Sulistyani, more familiarly known as Ria, and her husband Iwan Effendi in 2006. Encouraged by the desire to create art without boundaries, the couple have combined their respective backgrounds and poured them into their artworks. Ria is a graduate of Arts in Communication from Gadjah Mada University (UGM) while Iwan is a Fine Arts graduate from the Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI) in Yogyakarta. During her studies at UGM, Ria was an active member of a realism theater group that eventually expanded her interest in the performing arts.

“Theater made me fall in love with performing arts. I love the performance process-making, but I don’t want to be an actor,” Ria says.