Story: Indonesians

The art of shadow puppetry, demonstrated here inn 1983 by Mr Widiyanto of New Zealand’s Indonesian embassy, is known as wayang kulit (wayang is a Javanese word for ‘shadow’ or ‘ghost’). These two-dimensional figures project images onto a backlit screen and are used to tell stories. Many tales are based on Indian epics, but have been given their own interpretations by generations of Javanese storytellers. Widiyanto learned the arts from his father, who was a professional puppeteer (dalang).