A shorter version of the following article appears in Puppetry International #15. We hope you enjoy learning more about this fascinating and little known art form. Editor

Survival and Change: Wayang Arja Shadow Theatre
I Nyoman Sedana, Ph.D.

What is Wayang Arja Shadow Theatre and How It Existed
Wayang Arja (essentially puppet opera) integrates the aesthetic elements of the wayang puppets and the Arja (“opera”) dance-drama. The characterization (the profile, shape, and the movement of the puppets), the rhetorical methods (with tembang songs, speech, and diction in poetry and prose), including the structure of performance and the musical accompaniment all imitate the human Arja.

Consequently, Wayang Arja fully observes the structure and the use of stock characters found in the Arja “opera.” Therefore, it does not adhere to the established dramatic structure of the Wayang Parwa, which is the quintessence of the Balinese wayang theatre.

The musical ensemble that accompanies the Arja “opera,” gamelan Geguntangan, is now used for a Wayang Arja show. The narrative repertoires consist of numerous modified stories derived from the Malat or Panji cycles. All types of tembang songs are employed although the macapat type is the most prevalent. Each line of the tembang poetry is rigorously composed and sung according to the musical and dramatic rule.

The musical rule precisely governs the number of line in one stanza, the number of syllable in a line, the last vowel of each line, the rhythm and melody. The dramatic rule governs the appropriateness in employing a specific type of tembang poetry according to the character type, scene, and dramatic mood.

Wayang Arja was first performed in 1976, in Gianyar Palace. In conjunction with the Arja “opera” summit on December 29-30, 1975, the late mask-dancer and dalang Ketut Rindha originally proposed the creation of wayang arja, but the work was performed by his student, dalang Made Sidja from Bona.

The production of this genre was financially supported by the Consultative and Development Council for Balinese Culture (Listibya) and the Indonesian Dalang Association (Pepadi). My Wayang Arja Class Manual (Panduan Kuliah Praktik Wayang Arja) for the Arts Institute’s students in Bali gives a complete play of Cita Kelangen and provides details about the origins of the genre and additional details about the art.

Pun and wordplays in Wayang Arja
Just as in the human Arja, the puppet form employs various types of sayings and proverbs according to the Balinese tradition to convey messages in an indirect way. This complexity adds richness to the form. Of these literary flourishes, riddle, conundrum and ambiguous words are often used in clowning scenes; rhyme is used frequently in seductive scenes; allegory, metaphor, and parable are used to glorify or debase things; analogy and proverbs are used by a servant or priest to coax other characters to do some particular thing; satire or parody are often used in a debating scene.

In the book regarding multi-Balinese verbal expression, Aneka Rupa Paribasa Bali (1982— Nengah Tinggen) briefly describes thirteen types of Balinese linguistic phenomenology.

1. Puzzle, riddle, conundrum (cecimpedan)
2. “Dragging words” (bladbadan): The bladbadan way of saying, “she will be married” can be “she will be a palm leaf.” The palm leaf is ron, which is dragged away to become makaronan, which means married.
3. Multi-meaning words or ambiguous words (rawos ngempelin): When somebody say tum-isi, it can be tum isi (steamed boneless meat) or tumisi (snail). Hence, an ambiguous question may be “Can anybody eat tum-isi in this house?” To take a similar example in English, a boy may say. “My mom has four fry days [sounds like Friday] a week.”
4. Analogy (sesawangan): Her eyes like blue lotus (palihat manunjung beru). Her voluptuous breasts like twin yellow coconuts (susune nyuh gading kembar).
5. Satire or parody (sesimbing): If a cat is given meat [anyone knows for sure, what would happen].
6. Proverb (sloka): big wave big wind [big challenge for big earning]; How to store smoke? [How a teenager can conceal her obvious pregnancy].
7. Allegory, metaphor, parable, (sasenggak): Like feeding (sprinkling) black rice to the chickens [chickens are unable to see black rice, just as people are unable to see a matter correctly].
8. Seeking the next meaning (sasonggan): teaching a duck to swim, contributing salt to the sea.
9. “Praying, wishing, and amen” (Susanna): When a lizard’s voice interrupts somebody’s talking, one may say “be it true goddess Saraswati.”
10. Repeating a phrase in full rhyme (wewangsalan). Paying deposit for making battle, seeking benefits but loosing capital.
11. Rhyme (peparikan/pantun/saduran): Most of the pantun rhyme consists of four-lines. The first two lines may be a mere malapropism that serves as the springboard in order to establish a clear point on the second two lines.
12. Modesty or Litotes (tetingkesan): Please accept our little gift [although the gift may be great].
13. Symbol-based words (sesawen): white flag with Ganesa (a chubby deity with an elephant head), an image to prevent obstacle.

With these many types of wordplay, we see that the performance of this puppet form involves considerable flexibility in verbal improvisation. Generally, a dalang tends to use verbal improvisation to debase words or terms that symbolize hegemonic systems, political parties, and economic forces.

For example, the word “Camat” (district authority) may be treated as an acronym of “Calo maklar tanah,” which means “land stockbroker or land dealer.” However, for the terms that symbolize religion or God, they tend to reinforce or upgrade the significance. For example, the local word for religion, agama, is said to be an acronym of fire (Agni), water (Gangga), and air (Maruta).

The Decline of Wayang Arja Shadow Puppet
The establishment of Wayang Arja Shadow Puppet in 1976 was cheerfully applauded by local community and government, especially the local Bali Puppetry Foundation (Yayasan Pewayangan Bali) and the Cultural Consultation and Development Council (Listibya). Following its surprising debut, however, Wayang Arja developed little and was employed by few dalangs.

After almost one decade Arja puppet declined, the Indonesian State College of Arts in Denpasar allowed seven students (including myself) to learn Wayang Arja as an independent study (Kelas Spesialidsasi) in the academic year of 1987/88. After studying with the creator of Wayang Arja, Dalang I Made Sidja, for about five months, we presented it on campus before some faculty members, without a public audience. That marked the first time Wayang Arja was performed by a student dalang—myself— accompanied musically by the six other students.

After many intensive rehearsals, I eventually mastered the artistic methods and began to feel confident performing Wayang Arja, whether for a final project in campus, a ceremonial show in a village temple, a secular show (such as the Bali Arts Festival) or for the 50th Golden Indonesia Anniversary.

Detrimental Elements to the Development of Wayang Arja Shadow Puppet
Through my research since 1986, I discovered the artistic elements and performance method that hindered the development of Wayang Arja, namely, a sluggish dramatic development, excessive physical and mental demands on the performer, lack of audio/visual interest, and so on.

1. The sluggish dramatic development
Wayang Arja has stock-scene characters: The characters are based on the genre of Arja instead of a play or narrative source being enacted. Presenting the quintessence of a character type is more important than presenting the dramatic character him/herself. In other words, epitomizing the character of a prince (mantri) is more important than presenting the dramatic character of, for instance, Ferdinand or Hamlet. Each quintessential character of Arja enters the stage in precise chronological order, one after another, as follows: Condong ”maid servant,” Galuh princess, the protagonist Punta (older) accompanied by Wijil (younger) male paired servants, Mantri Manis sweet prince, Desak/Made Rai coquettish servant, Limbur queen, Liku coquettish princess, antagonist Punta (older) and Wijil (younger) male paired servants, the Mantri Buduh crazy prodigal prince, Patih prime minister, and Prospero-like Dukuh. This precise entrance structure certainly limits improvisation. Each character appears with a lengthy song and dance before the main story unfolds. Thus, the audience waits too long for the story. As a slow form of story telling Wayang Arja quickly bored the contemporary audience—especially children. Each dramatic character dances on a sung stanza that consists of between seven and twelve lines, visualized by a mere dancing shadow. No mater how good the puppeteer manipulates puppet, the audience preferred watching the Arja dance-drama with varying voices, and appearances of the dancer, rather than watching the Arja shadows. Overall, the beauty of song and dancing shadows only satisfy ear and eye, while the dramatic story that will pacify an audience’s psyche and emotion is not yet revealed.

2. Exhausting
Singing alone for all characters while manipulating puppets and cueing musicians for more than two hours is quite exhausting for a single dalang. Unlike performing Wayang Parwa that requires primarily spoken dialogue and fewer sung lines, Wayang Arja gives no time for the dalang to be free and relax. After practicing Wayang Arja for several months, dalang I Made Tempo of Tampaksiring district said to me that he would not strong be enough to perform Wayang Arja, because all of the thirteen standard characters in the genre demand rigorous songs.
Indeed, during our independent study my friends and I experienced the same difficulty. After about 60 minutes practicing Wayang Arja, I had to force my voice to sing, so that in rehearsal I rarely completed the play Cita Kelangen that I used in practicing along with my classmates. Even during our class presentation, we did not perform the piece to its actually ending, which would take about three hours.

3. The dance-drama form is more interesting than the puppet form
Another reason that caused Wayang Arja’s decline was because the dance drama form was more interesting than the puppet form. While the Wayang Arja simply features black silhouettes, the dance drama form features a great varieties of interesting audio and visual images, through varying dances, voices and types of dancers: funny, cute, seductive, disgusting, beautiful, voluptuous, refined, course, scary, etc.

4. The rule of tembang song is strictly dictating
The narrative texts and dramatic dialogues of Wayang Arja mostly exist in sung poetry (tembang) and in spoken lines (ucapan); the rest is in prose (gancaran), in rhyme (Paparikan) and in a mixture of them known as Palawakya. Of the four major divisions of tembang, macapat is the most prevalent in the performance of Wayang Arja. Each type of macapat is defined by precise metric, rhythmic, and melodic rules. The metric rule of macapat is termed Pada Lingsa. Pada is the number of lines in one unit of stanza and the number of syllables in a line. Lingsa is the required vowel of the last syllable in each line (see Bandem, Model of Macepat poetry, 1983).
This rule of tembang is detrimental for the development of this genre in that it strict formal constraints, and demands that the dalang to spend a lot of time composing
the sung dramatic lines before each performance. The mistakes that a dalang makes as a result of this rule may undermine the dalang’s reputation.

5. Engrossed in translating, forget the next melody of the tembang
There is no artistic challenge in reciting tembang for the introductory part of each character, because each line does not require the comic servant (punakawan) to translate and interpret it to unfold the main story. However, once the tembang is sung to convey a dialogue, say between a prince and a princess, the punakawan court attendant has to translate, interpret, and comment upon each line with an appropriate context and linguistic social level while maintaining the distinctive speech and diction of each character. The difficulty lies here: After providing a translation with a punakawan puppet, a dalang tends to forget the continuing melody of the next line, which he has to recite for the prince or princess puppet. In the dance drama form, the procedure is much easier because the dancer who sings the line is different from the one who provides translation in vernacular language. In the puppetry form, a single dalang has to undertake both tasks. Thus, the challenge lies in continuing a song from the middle part after we a period of talking. The only way to overcome this challenge is by undertaking the sort of extraordinarily rigorous rehearsal regime, which has discouraged many dalangs from performing Wayang Arja.

6. The Puppets occupied the Bali Museum
A decade after its depbut, Wayang Arja had never been performed, and the fans began to forget about it. In 1986, the Government of Bali put the puppets in the Bali Museum, Denpasar. That was the death of Wayang Arja.

Destructive Perception of Wayang Arja Shadow Puppet
Despite both private and government support, many artists thought that Wayang Arja was not needed, because it would be unable to compete with the dance-drama form. No matter how skillful a single dalang was at manipulating puppets, mastering the dramatic and musical aspects of the form, the quality and the attractiveness was bound to be lower than the dance drama.

The Survival of Wayang Arja
Seen from its artistic components, Wayang Arja integrates highly developed music, dance, and drama, perhaps similar to what might be known as Gesamtkunstwerk in Germany. Amazed by the rich artistic components that make up Wayang Arja, I began to learn the form, as well as developing ideas to modify it: In1986, I wrote a BA thesis on this genre, simply describing (without analysis) the origin, the transformation of Arja dance-drama into Wayang Arja shadow theatre, and the artistic concept and methods. In 1988, under the supervision of the Wayang Arja’s creator, the maestro dalang I Made Sidja, and my academic advisors, I performed a revised version of Wayang Arja of only 45-minutes to complete my SSP degree (essentially an MFA degree in Balinese shadow theatre). Fulfilling the degree requirements for my graduate committee, I also presented 48-page performance script. This script elucidates various problems of the artistic concept and methods, as well as thoughtful suggestions for changes, which might help re-establish Wayang Arja. Thus, the biggest change made to this genre since it was first created a decade ago includes shortening the performance duration and constructing plot through a written script.

The main part of the change, as implemented in my short performance, was by making Wayang Arja more of a shadow puppet theatre than the existing Arja dance-drama form. The entrance of each dramatic character no longer features the genre’s ritualistic entrance, but is governed by the dramatic necessity of the play being enacted. The dramatic flow no longer reveals in chronological order, but freely goes back and forth. It may start from the middle and proceed to the end through the beginning. In my performance, when the queen tells her servant of her disappointment at her son’s decision to marry a country girl (instead of an aristocratic woman), the drama goes back and forth in the queen’s head, which is enacted as the dramatic action of the show. Through such a revised artistic method, Wayang Arja can present a story which contains multiple layers of reality, and which can integrate more than one plot, while still maintain a unity. Making visual the thoughts of a character allowed me to deconstruct many traditional conventions, such as bringing dramatic drive much sooner than before. For instance, the prince may be seen hunting, and then quickly involved in a love scene even before the appearance of his two servants. This would not have been possible in the traditional practice.

Other important changes include compressing the artistic elements, carefully constructing a thoughtful plot with more stimulating dramatic text, eliminating any lengthy ritualistic overture for each character, reducing the performance duration, creating a dozen decorative and animal puppets and reshaping some of them to be more expressively manipulated.

It is important to note that the necessity of presenting a final project on my campus made it possible for me not only to practice more frequently with drummers and other musicians, but more importantly to selectively integrate various artistic ideas from both innovative and conservative artists. If it were not for an academic degree requirement, I believe that dalang Sidja would not have allowed me to deconstruct/restructure his Wayang Arja. Similarly, it is only possible to perform the 45-minute Wayang Arja on campus before a public audience and academic committees, as in the village it could not be properly less than 90 minutes.

Although Wayang Arja survived these changes and abridgements, the extent, depth, and source of the story remained the same, based on the Malat or Panji cycles. In the book Comparative Stories of Panji (Tjeritera Pandji Dalam Perbandingan), Poebatjaraka reports and analyzes numerous versions of stories that belong to the Panji cycles. All of them circulate around the love journey of the amorous Panji to seek his beloved fiancée princess, who is variously named Candra Kirana, Rangkesari, Galuh Daha, and other more recently invented names. One of those versions that I performed in my compressed Wayang Arja goes as follows.

After the prayer/wish of the Daha barren king, he is granted a beautiful daughter, Rangkesari, the king forgets to worship God. As a divine punishment, the gods send a precious golden dragonfly to lure Rangkesari away deep into a forest, where Rangkesari is adopted by an old farmer who gives her the rural name Luh Martalangu.

Seeking for the lost Rangkesari, prince (Panji) of Koripan kingdom, Rangkesari’s fiancé, begins a long series of adventures in which he is involved in numerous love affairs and fight scenes. These are typical romantic events of the Panji cycle. Eventually, he hunts a deer that goes through the farmer’s cottage, where he meets Martalangu. A passionate love scene begins daily between the two, despite the strong opposition from all parties concerned. Unfortunately, to prevent her son from betraying his lost fiancée, the ignorant queen of Koripan sends her private assistant Rawisrengga to kill Martalangu. Having been killed, the ghost of Martalangu broadcasts to the entire kingdom that she is originally a celestial nymph, Gagar Mayang, who is cursed to live in the middle world fulfilling the prayer of the barren king of Daha as the princess Rangkesari. She can return to heaven only after being murdered.
Since the existence of Luh Martalangu is somewhat mysterious and serves as the core of dramatic drive and leading character, the title of my performance script is Luh Martalangu.

More dalangs began performing Wayang Arja
In 1991, Nyoman Candri of Singapadu village began to perform Wayang Arja. As the third winner in the 1980 Women Wayang Parwa Competition, Candri is better known as a refined dancer and Arja dance-drama instructor through her affiliation with the National Radio Station in Denpasar. Therefore, she certainly has the training needed to be a dalang of Wayang Arja. Dalang I Made Sidja suggested she perform this genre, although she did not directly learn from him.

Candri’s performance involved new interpretations in transforming the dance-drama into the wayang shadow theatre. During the Regional Puppetry Festival, from October 26th through November 1st 1996, her performance enacted a play Bandana Kencana (golden ring). Her performance employed two additional women singers, Ketut Suryatini and Gusti Ayu Srinatih, who simultaneously served as dalang’s assistants (who traditionally only take care the oil lamp and hand puppets to the dalang). Employing additional singers, the composer I Wayan Rai, Ph.D. said, is necessary to help the dalang. Should the dalang’s voice get wobbly, or unsteady, as Candri had once experienced, these two singers can easily replace her singing. A creative composer who now leads the Indonesia Arts Institute Denpasar, Rai composed the musical accompaniment. To the standard Gaguntangan music ensemble Rai added two instruments of Gamelan Curing. These Curings, Rai said, were not the traditional slendro scale of five notes, but an innovative seven notes, able to play both the pelog and slendro pentatonic scales. There was an expanding challenge in Curing music instruments, as only a skilful musician can play them. The advantage of employing Curing was to enable the musician to incorporated various childhood tunes and folk songs into the show, which the traditional bamboo flute is incapable of playing.

Despite stimulating aesthetic changes, some audiences were critical of the innovations, saying, among other things, that the sound of Curing was too strong and dominating—out of balance with the softer musical instruments, such as bamboo flutes and Gun tang gong. Candri did not utilize her vocal strengths, because she did not construct a plot featuring female characters. Rather, she featured male characters like panama buffoon, priest and Prime Minister, which demand the sort of big and guttural voices that she does not have.

Nevertheless, Candri’s group made a significant contribution toward reviving Wayang Arja. She remains the only woman dalang of Wayang Arja. Thanks to certain artistic assets, perhaps Candri is the best for Wayang Arja, because she is one of the reputable singers of tembang macapa—the structural component of dramatic expression in this genre. Her puppets were carved by the reputable dalang I Wayan Wija, who is also a refined puppet carver. The feet of puppet that Wija carved are no longer turned out (tapak sirang), representing the dance basic position as carved in the original one, but are facing forward as the traditional puppet foot of Wayang Parwa/Ramayana in Bali.

Candri first performed Wayang Arja for the 1991 Annual Bali Art Festival at Gianyar Cultural Hall. She enacted a story of The Lost and Discovered Princess. The synopsis may be given as below. King of Gagelang kingdom discovered the lost princess Galuh Daha. When Prince Mataram requested to wed her, Galuh proposed a pre-requisite month-long cultural art festival to entertain people. In the program, there would have to be performance of Galuh’s favorite Sanghyang dance. Prince of Jenggala kingdom, Mantri, who has long been searching for his lost fiancée, Galuh Daha, disguised as a Sanghyang dancer. During his Sanghyang performance, Mantri and Galuh Daha meet each other and decide to marry. Right after a great debate and fighting, their wedding ceremony concluded the show.

After carving the Wayang Arja puppets for Candri and having been inspired by her performance, the reputable dalang I Wayan Wija of Sukawati village also revived, modified, and performed Wayang Arja. He first performed this genre on August 18, 1994, at the Pura Desa village temple, Sukawati district. He enacted a story derived from Panji cycle.

In such surge of revising and reviving Wayang Arja through such varied approaches, the creator I Made Sidja—after sending his puppets to the museum for more than a decade—resumed performing Wayang Arja for the anniversary of his art foundation, Sanggar Seni Paripurna, in 1994. He also performed by invitation around nearby villages such as Nyarmas, Wanayu, and Gianyar. Furthermore, the government of Gianyar regency and Bali Cultural Council recognized the uniqueness of Wayang Arja and sponsored the performances. In, 1995 the creator I Made Sidja preferred that I perform it for the 50th Golden Indonesia and another one for the Cultural Celebration.

More Changes and Proliferation of Wayang Arja through all Nine Regencies in Bali
After holding 1995 Wayang Cupak Competition, Bali Cultural Council (Dinas Kebudayaan Bali) held the 1996 Wayang Arja Competition from December 4 through 29, 1996. As a preliminary guidance for this competition, on August 30, 1996, the Council provided a collective training to many dalangs from all city and regencies of the island. Crowded by dozens of regent dalangs and other artists in the main hall of Bali Cultural Council, dalang I Made Sidja was the only instructor and keynote performer who demonstrated and answered numerous questions from many candidates of dalang and musicians of Wayang Arja. The questions were primarily pertaining to the artistic concept and method of puppet manipulation, rhetorical style or diction, musical accompaniment, puppet construction, etc. Whether the structure emulated a wayang puppet genre or the Arja dance drama was seriously debated without achieving a unanimous agreement. That was an important historical day, during which Wayang Arja was directly introduced and explained toward its proliferation throughout the island.

Bali Cultural Council demanded each of the nine regencies to establish a group of Wayang Arja to compete in the all-Bali puppetry competition. Some debatable aesthetic concepts and methods pertaining to the structure, story, and number of performers, puppet shapes, and any local preferred style were liberalized and optional to all participating dalangs. The role of provincial pedagogical committee, who usually visit the rehearsals of every group for consultation, was replaced by a regent pedagogical team, which consisted of around five to twelve members. Consequently, there appeared widely varying versions of Wayang Arja. However, the Cultural Council still composed a team of judge/jury representing the Indonesian Arts Institute, the Performance Arts Conservatory, and non-academic artists. Since the judgment was still based on the established canon and conventions, the judge generally frowned upon local styles which flouted convention, even though the performance was very interesting. Violating the poetic rule of tembang macapat, among others, was unappreciated. In a meeting on December 30, 1996, the judge decided that the winning group was from Badung regency. Second prize went to a group from Bangli regency and third was taken by a group from Gianyar regency, where Wayang Arja originated.

In summary, the late mask-dancer and dalang Ketut Rindha originally proposed the establishment of wayang arja in the Arja “opera” summit on December 29-30, 1975. The work was done and first performed by his student, dalang Sidja, in 1976 at Gianyar Palace. The Consultative and Development Council for Balinese Culture and the Dalang Association financially supported the production. Following its cheerful debut, however, Wayang Arja developed little because its numerous and rigorous aesthetic canons encouraged few dalangs to perform the genre; the puppets were put in Bali museum. After almost a decade, Arja puppet declined, in 1987/88 the local College of Arts allowed seven students to learn the genre as an independent study. As a result of this study, a thesis (and then a class manual) was written; its fastidious artistic concept and methods were analyzed and modified. The performance was reshaped until a thoughtful, revised version was performed for public and academic committees. Non-academic artists also developed further revisions until the local Cultural Council held the 1996 All-Bali Wayang Arja Competition, from which sprang various versions of Wayang Arja.

Thus, through an academic vision and mission to conserve and develop cultural arts, the local Art College found various reasons to revive the “dead” Wayang Arja shadow theatre. For the sake of artistic innovation and experimentation, campus students were supported to shorten the show from more than three hours to only 45 minutes, a practice that would be strongly frowned upon in a village. In cooperation with Bali TV, the winner of the competition now weekly broadcasts a quite different version of Wayang Arja Shadow theatre, often using only two to five characters in less than twenty minutes, but the creator is not disappointed. However, on campus the current students are not taught the shortened version, but the original version of more than three hours, because each student first needs to master the rich and rigorous artistic concept, and the fastidious techniques, which are integrated in this genre.

Works cited
Bandem, I Made. Wimba Tembang Macepat, oleh Ni Nyoman Candri Denpasar: ASTI, 1983.
Jirna, I Wayan dan I Wayan Ruma. Taman Sari. Denpasar: Pustaka Balimas, 1961.
Sedana, I Nyoman. Wayang Arja di Dusun Bona Kelod Gianyar (unpublished BA Thesis). Denpasar: ASTI, 1986
______. Luh Martalang: Skrip Pedalangan (unpublished Performance Script for an advanced degree in local theatre, SSP.). Denpasar: STSI, 1988.
______. Panduan Kuliah Praktik Wayang Arja (unpublished Wayang Arja Class Manual). Denpasar: STSI, 1993.
Sugriwa, I Gusti Bagus. Penuntun Makakawin, Denpasar: Proyek Sasana Budaya BAli, 1977/1978.
Tinggen, I Nengah. Aneka Sari,1982.

Notes
The term Macapat is also known as Pupuh and Sekar Alit.

The four major divisions of tembang includes (1) Old Javanese poem kakawin, (2) Middle Javanese choir kakidung, (3) Balinese poetry macapat, (4) Children playing song and lullaby dolanan

The thesis entitled Wayang Arja di Dusun Bona Kelod Gianyar, Indonesian Dance Academy (ASTI), Denpasar, 1986. This work is still available at the Indonesian Arts Institute’s library, Denpasar.

The performance script entitles Wayang Arja Luh Martalangu, Indonesian Art College (STSI), Denpasar, 1988. This work is still available at the Indonesian Arts Institute’s library, Denpasar.

The Balinese original title of the play is Limun Hilang Serepet Teka.

To a certain degree, the training was like the IRS annually trains all international students to file income tax.

The judge/jury were I Nyoman Sumandhi, I Nyoman Sedana, Dewa Ngakan Sayang, I Made Sidja, and Ida Bagus Raka.