the musical scene in solo numbered into the hundreds of pieces to be started or stopped on a dime!). Nowadays it is more common for each troupe to work out in advance not only the pieces to be performed for a particular story, but also a specific arrangement of those pieces, often involving written-out choral singing. In these innovations two things are lost: a sense of spontaneity and a beautiful simplicity predicated on making an entire world come to life out of shadows, pentatonic gamelan music, and the dhalang’s voice. Few aficionados would consider these recent alterations of the tradition to be improvements. Yet, so far, they have succeeded in keeping wayang from getting buried in mothballs. A few dhalangs have achieved star status, which also increases wayang’s mass appeal, and helps it compete with—and sometimes take advantage of—newer, glitzy diversions like television. Other “outside” art forms that use professional musicians are kethoprak—a popular “folk” theater form whose plots revolve around Javanese historical figures—and wayang wong [Ng] (wayang orang [I], literally, “people puppets”)—a more court-based theater tradition with mythological stories, in which the actors occasionally sing and dance.55 Wayang wong’s popularity has declined steadily over the past several decades, perhaps because the narration and dialogue use many difficult, archaic words, and because the plot moves more slowly than in kethoprak. The primary venues in Solo are the auditorium at RRI and the theater in the Sri Wedari amusement park, which was formerly connected to both the Kraton and the Mangkunegaran; since Independence it has been run by the city of Solo (Susilo 1984:119). Wayang wong was officially created by Sultan Hamengkubuwånå I of Yogyakarta in the mid-eighteenth century (Soedarsono 1984:19).56 It is important to note that official, court-centered histories usually ascribe a court origin to all of the court arts, whether they were actually first practiced inside or outside the palace walls. Wayang wong certainly reached its apogee at the Kraton in Yogyakarta and the Mangkunegaran in Solo. Wayang kulit also had a strong palace tradition, which is now all but defunct. In recent decades, in Solo at least, both wayang wong and wayang kulit have flourished more outside of the palaces than in, and so may be thought of as “outside” traditions. Choreographed dancing with gamelan accompaniment is frequently performed on a small scale at weddings. The larger-scale choreographies are staged 55. For a thorough treatment of wayang wong in Yogyakarta, see Soedarsono 1984. See also Lindsay 1985. For an excellent, concise introduction to the art form and its history, practice, performance context, and musical accompaniment, see Susilo 1984. 56. According to Kusumadilaga, though, wayang wong was created in 1731 in Surakarta, at the urging of a “woman of European ethnicity” (1981:168). But what he describes was a masked dance, which must have corresponded either to the modern-day tari topèng (performed by silent, masked dancers), or topèng dhalang (which used to be performed, during wayang’s off-season, by masked dhalangs, who occasionally lifted their masks to speak). In either case, even though Kusumadilaga’s wayang wong was wayang (mythico-historical drama), and even though it was wong (people), it was probably not what today is called wayang wong.
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