SHADOWS

1 S H A D O W S K E N N E T H G R O S S The thinnest of puppets, the poorest, the least substantial, is the puppet of shadow theater – the true puppet here being the moving shadow itself, a thing bound to the screen, whose life is independent of the opaque or translucent silhouette of paper, leather, or plastic that casts it. This is a puppet all of surface, with no back to it, no depth, or only such hints of depth as are caused by the silhouette’s being held closer or farther away from the screen or with one shadow overlaying or passing through another. It is a shape which, when it fades away, recedes not so much into darkness as into light, always part of something larger than itself, something that shares the nature of what is seen and what is unseen. Shadows can be playful and elusive but also hungry; at times they absorb all forms and color and light to themselves. Shadows are also something to feed on, a strange, insubstantial but nourishing kind of food. The wayang kulit theater of Bali makes shadows its vocation. Shadows are its principal actors, settings, and props, a world of things given shape on the taut, backlit cotton screen. The shadows are moved – flown, twisted, pulled, slid, floated, clashed, struck, and stopped – by a single operator who sits concealed behind the 2 G R O S S Y screen, the dalang, who also speaks all of their voices. He (or, rarely, she) is a person whose thought, will, gesture, and voice we feel translated into the puppets themselves, made visible the more strongly for his invisibility, showing us gods, demons, ghosts, and giants, warring clans of nobles, and brilliant clowns who are themselves the earthly forms of the most ancient gods, descended by necessity or curse into the world of creation. The shapes of the figures are distinct in their modes of being, their personalities; the audience knows each of them intimately, with their iconic faces, eyes, heads, and bodies, their peculiar graces and deformities. Yet these distinct shadows also come to us as pieces of the larger field of darkness that surrounds the audience and the screen itself, a rectangle of pale, yellowish light where the play unfolds. They are broken-o√ fragments of something more massive, thicker, general , parts of the darkness of the surrounding night, a night full of the smells of incense and flowers (jasmine, frangipani, rose), earth, charcoal, and gasoline, the sounds of children, birds, lizards, dogs, and motorcycles. It is a night that, on an island so close to the equator, always comes quickly and at about the same hour throughout the year. It comes with little of the luxury of twilight, giving us a darkness very distinct from the bright day. Portions of darkness, the shadows on the screen, are also collaborators with light, if not sharers in its substance. They are made alive, animated, by the living pool of light created by the flame of the palm-oil lamp, the damar, that hangs suspended behind the screen, so that the shadows move even when the puppets themselves are still, fixed in place in a tableau, the sharpened ends of the rods that form their supporting spine stuck in the trunk of a young banana tree that is placed at the base of the screen. The flame’s wavering shape is always visible, centered slightly high on the broad, cinemalike screen, distinct if also hazy, blown by winds, like a beacon rising through fog, an eye of life, a source of life that dances with shadows, their bright double, even as the edges of the screen darken. In Plato’s parable from The Republic, shadows are cast on the wall of a cave by moving statues – representations of humans and animals – which are carried by hidden operators in front of a fire. The shadows are what the prisoners in the cave watch, chained in place, their faces fixed in one direction, so that they can see nei- S H A D O W S 3 R ther the statues themselves nor the men who move...