Color Insert

Plate 1.

Rangda-Barong performance with I Ketut Muada (on the left) holding the rangda figure, I Wayan Dibia (middle) in the role of the minister, and I Putu Adi Darmadi (on the right) inside the barong body puppet.

Plate 2.

Yoke thay performed by Mandalay Marionettes Theatre under the direction of Kyaw Myo Ko.

Plate 3.

In the interactive performance installation Drawing Your Attention, Liesje van den Berk draws the shadows of the spectators while they are moved by the rhythm and sound-scapes of the guitar of Jeen Rabs.

Plate 4.

Khamphiphaksa (The Judgment), written and directed by Punnasak Sukee based on the novel by Chart Korbjitt for the Bangkok University Theatre Company. In this scene, Fak, the principal character, is dreaming about his father’s funeral. His father is seen dancing happily on a coffin to celebrate his own corpse’s cremation. The scene turns nightmarish when Fak discovers that the cremation is actually for himself.

Plate 5.

Kabong Lao, the Laos object theatre company, in performance.

Plate 6.

In Kathy Foley’s Birth of Wayang, Balinese shadow puppets (wayang parwa; the leather puppets are [left to right] Yudistira, Arjuna, Bima, Nakula, and Sadewa) represented the Hindu Temples on the Dieng Plateau in Java dedicated to these Mahabharata heroes. The rod puppets framed by the temple/shadow figures are the long-living Yudistira (right), eldest of the Pandawa who longs for death, and fifteenth-century Islamic saint/first dalang Sunan Kalijaga (left, with military cap). Kalijaga here initiates Yudistira in Muslim thought, thereby allowing him release into eternity in a tale from the babad (Javanese chronicles) showing Islam as the perfection of Hinduism.

Plate 7.

The scholar Wang Shen (Huang Jun Cheng) is seduced by a nasty ghost disguised as a woman in Painted Face, a Cantonese opera scripted by Chua Soo Pong and performed by the Nanning Theatre Academy, China.

Plate 8.

Life after Death of Norah Ancestor, a contemporary response to southern Thailand’s manora dance-drama tradition, choreographed by Varakorn Pensrinukoon.

(Photo: Matthew Isaac Cohen)

Plate 9.

John Williams’ design for A Symphony of Lights, Hong Kong

(Photo: Courtesy of Laservision).

Plate 10.

John Williams’ lighting design for Galaxy Macau.

(Photo: Courtesy of John Williams)