The Mahabharata and Ramayana are also very popular here in Indonesia as the source for wayang . Wayang means something like performance and there are different kinds, wayang kulit (shadow puppets), wayang topeng (masked dance), and wayang wong (something like a musical).
A traditional wayang kulit performance lasts from dusk to dawn and will tell an episode from one of the epics, with all the parts played by one dalang (puppet master). The puppets are highly coloured two dimensional leather (kulit = leather or skin) figures manipulated by the dalang between a lamp and a screen; the audience watches the shadows from the other side of the screen. Even if they don't know the story, the audience can tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy from the shape of the puppet (good guys have long straight noses for example) and the dalang's tone of voice (good guys have higher pitched ( not shrill), calmer voices). A gamelan orchestra accompanies the action and there's a chorus of women who sing in intervals between scenes to give the dalang a break. The performances tend to be in local languages like Sundanese, Javanese, or Balinese, rather than Indonesian, so my attention span is rather limited.
Bali also has the kecak dance which tells the story of the Ramayana. Dancers play the main roles, but there is no music, only a chorus of men (anything from 20 to 100) chanting "kecak kecak" (c = ch) at different tempos and volumes. They represent Hanuman's monkeys.
Bingley
