Noncredit Course
Dancing the Four Directions: Mask, Puppet and Character Type in Southeast Asia
Event ID: S09398
Info: Feb 2 • Sat • 2:00-4:00pm • 1 mtg • UHM Earle Ernst Lab Theatre • $18 (General), $10 (Students)
With: Kathy Foley
The character masks of West Java and the wayang golek puppets use specific character types that depend on solo performance. This workshop will explore how variations in energy, vocal resonators, music, and movement frame all stories. After learning the types the ideas will be applied to a story exploring how dalang (narrator/puppeteer) and type (dancers/puppets) interact.
Kathy Foley is a professor of theatre arts at the University of California-Santa Cruz. She has performed wayang golek purwa regularly since 1979. Over the last two decades, she has been invited to perform at the Indonesian Wayang Festival (Pekan Wayang, Indonesia), a national and international gathering of dalang. She spent six months in 2003 as a Fulbright Scholar working on “Cosmology and Character Type in Topeng and Wayang.” She taught in Thailand at the Cultural Management Program of Chulalongkorn University before returning to the U.S. She is currently working on a manuscript about mask and puppet performance in Southeast Asia.
Co-sponsored by UHM Department of Theatre and Dance, and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Funding provided by the Office of the Vice-Chancellor for Graduate Research and Education Fund for Major Initiatives in the Liberal Arts.