WASHINGTON D.C., September 26, 2014 (Washington Post): Epic narrative. Exquisite music. Spirited humor. And puppets. The performing-art form wayang golek has it all, says Kathy Foley, a scholar and master puppeteer who is deeply versed in this brand of theater, traditional to the Sundanese culture of West Java, Indonesia.
Wayang golek could be likened to “a combination of what we would think of as opera, Shakespeare and popular stand-up comedy,” with dance (by puppets) and some “high philosophical wisdom” thrown in, says Foley, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She was speaking by phone in the lead-up to “The Miraculous Birth of Hanuman, the Monkey King,” the wayang golek production in which she’s scheduled to perform at the Freer Gallery of Art on Oct. 4.
The show, which dramatizes an episode from Hindu mythology, also will feature gamelan musicians from the Indonesian College of the Arts in the city of Bandung. It’s all part of “Performing Indonesia: Music, Dance and Theater From West Java,” a two-day festival being presented by the Smithsonian’s Freer/Arthur M. Sackler galleries and the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia.