Page 6 | Wayang puppets

Colours

Contents

Wayang puppets - a spotter's guide (1)

Making the puppets (2)

The main character types (3)

Stylisation (4)

The elements of puppet design (5)

Colours (6)

A final word (7)

Seleh Notes Volume 4 Number 4

© Tim Byard-Jones

 

Permadi - one of the names for the young Arjuna

 

Body colour also implies something about character:
white for holiness or purity;
gold for nobility;
black for resolution or forthrightness;
pink or red for a quick temper and green for deceitfulness, for example.

Some characters have several versions in different colours or in differing forms.

A major character like Arjuna, for instance, will normally be represented in a set of wayang figures by about a dozen separate puppets, each depicting Arjuna at a different stage of his life.

The young Arjuna can be known as Janaka, Permadi or Mintarga, and puppets representing these phases have extravagant arm and leg adornments and, in the case of Mintarga, waist-length hair.

On gaining more maturity however, Arjuna dispenses with this ostentation and the adult Arjuna is plainly dressed with no adornments whatsoever.

Similarly, different coloured versions of the same character can help to indicate mood, an obvious example being the contrast between Bima with a gold body and black face, and Bima with a black body and black face – the latter is more forthright (read short-tempered and provocative) than the former.

Kresna - a halus puppet

 

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