Indonesian Shadow Puppet or Wayang Kulit are without a doubt is one of Indonesian popular culture. Wayang means theater, meanwhile “Kulit” means skin, so “Wayang Kulit” basically means Shadow Puppet Theatre. The Kulit are refers to the leather construction of the puppets that are carefully chiseled with very fine tools and supported with carefully shaped buffalo horn handles and control rods.
According to Wikipedia, The stories of Indonesian Shadow Puppet are usually drawn from the Hindu epics the Ramayana, the Mahabharata or from the Serat Menak . UNESCO designated wayang kulit, a shadow puppet theatre and the best known of the Indonesian wayang, as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on 7 November 2003. In addition UNSECO required Indonesia to preserved this amazing culture.
In Indonesia, Wayang Kulit mostly played by Javanese and Balinese. In Java, Wayang Kulit is accompanied by Gamelan, the traditional Javanese music orchestra. Meanwhile in Bali, Wayang Kulit is accompanied by Balinese traditional music orchestra called Gender Wayang. There is similiarities between Wayang kulit in Java and Bali, the main reason is because most of Balinese is came from Java.
Balinese Wayang Kulit
Javanese Wayang Kulit
What the different between the Javanese Shadow Puppet and Balinese Shadow Puppet?
Just like I mentioned before that there is similarities between Javanese Shadow Puppet with the Balinese version of Shadow Puppet but both basically different. Beside the accompanied music, Both Shadow Puppets have many differences, one of them is the shape.
Javanese Wayang Puppet usually had big and abstract shape meanwhile the Balinese Shadow Puppet has small and realistic shape.
In performance perspective, the Javanese puppet hands touching the feet , while the size of a hand in Shadow puppet of Bali is the size of average human hand anatomy.
Based on history and the shape, basically Balinese Shadow puppet is older than Javanese one. Balinese Shadow Puppet looks like a temple reliefs contained in Jago, East Java which built in 13 century AD, while the Javanese Shadow Puppet form is not in the reliefs of ancient buildings or temples in Java.