Notes from Cambodian Living Arts
{ January 11, 2010 @ 5:03 pm }
“Before performers start any Khmer art performance, they need to do the “Pethi Sampeah Krou” ceremony first.
Steps of the Pethi Sampeah Krou.
– All the performers come to the front of the cloth screen and stand in two rows facing the screen.
– One of the performers standing in the front row lights the candles/incense sticks or both, and offers them together with a bunch of bananas or other kinds of fruit to the deities, and/or spiritual ancestral teachers.
-Then a shout comes from the mouth of each performer, while the coconut shell pile behind the stage is lit.
– While the fire behind the screen is lit, two gods dance to represent the creation of the universe. Afterwards a fight between a white monkey and a black monkey symbolises the conflict between good and evil. The black monkey is captured and taken to Maha Eysei. He is advised to change his way.
“Preah Ream Ka Thnal” means “Preah Ream Building the Road” in Khmer. The excerpt is basically a battle sequence from the Ramayana, but the names are different:
Ramayana => Reamker
Preah Ram => Preah Ram
Sita => Neang Seda
Laksamana => Preah Leak
Ayodhya => Akyut thyea
Ravana => Krong Reap
Lanka => Langka
Oddly enough, Hanuman’s name remains unchanged.
“Preah Ream Ka Thnal” by Wat Bo Shadow Puppet Troupe
{ January 11, 2010 @ 4:45 pm }
Whoa. That was fun.
https://youtu.be/X7TMrDobvsM
KS had been promising us a “puppet show” for our first evening in Siem Reap. Turns out this “puppet show” was more than just a Punch and Judy thingumajig or a wayang kulit outing.
Yes, this was shadow puppetry, but on a new level: besides the fact that the puppets are huge leather sheets mounted on one or two sticks, and that each character has about 20 different puppets to portray him in different postures of battle, and that some war sequences are simply portrayed by one puppet consisting of a single tableau (gawd, they have a beautiful set of characters back there…)
Since I’ve been in a numerative mood all day, let’s list:
1. Held outdoors! A path of candles in palm leaves to guide us to the performance area.
2. Huge live fire behind the screen! Guys stoking it with kerosene!
3. Huge cast of extremely young people! (All boys, except for one girl who narrated the heroic non-monkey roles.)
4. The puppeteers don’t stay behind the screen – they alternate from the background to the foreground, and their movements are a dance in themselves – rhythmically jerking elbows, ritual three-dimensional box-step parades playing to the audience…
5. …although they’re always facing away from the audience. Weird, huh?
6. It’s performed in an accessible language that ordinary Cambodians understand – the local participants were chuckling away during the comedy scenes. (This is not something to be taken for granted: in Singapore, there are no traditional performing arts in the current lingua franca of English except when someone decides to stage a Purcell opera.) There were even kids and monks and average citizens just hanging out around the area to catch some of the fun.
7. Battle scenes! The chorus goes whooa, whooa, whooa, while the puppets smack each other, whap! whap! and sometimes one of them flips over so the other puppet chases it behind the screen, and back to the foreground…
8… oh and the fact that the narrators were standing in the foreground, pointing at each other and gesticulating while they threatened each other; that was cool too.
9. Religious ritual opening!
10. Celebratory closing! They lined up and started clapping and invited all of us to dance. And after Tarek and I jumped in, almost everyone did!
11. For those of us who were not thus inclined, the outdoor seating included fully reclining cushions so certain members of us could snooze through the 45 min.
12. Hearing the back-story. Turns out that the holocaust of artists and intellectuals during the Khmer Rouge left really few masters of shadow puppetry alive, and while Wat Bo once had a master, he died before he could pass on most of his skills. (There are four shadow puppet troupes in Siem Reap, but they’re fiercely competitive, and they won’t lend out each other’s masters.)
What Wat Bo had was amazing puppets, really enthusiastic young learners and sponsorship from Cambodian Living Arts, which usually supports contemporary arts but figured what the hell this time. Somehow they found themselves a temporary master and they studied damn hard and became really rather good (pleasantly surprising KS, who had not realised they were up to this standard already).
I took a tuk-tuk to the hotel with Amrita dancers Tou, Leak and Belle (oh gawd, that rhymes and alliterates). Turns out that they’ve done this art form before, on a smaller scale, with a more modern Phnom Penh-based group that uses electric lights, distancing techniques and modified puppets so that it can tell stories about corrupt politicians and HIV awareness instead of just the Ramayana.
And they’re impressed. They say these kids are good. And they know how hard the craft is: Belle remembers how after the first day she handled the heavy puppets, she had red sores all over her hands.
Not everyone’s seen the show before, though. It was Kanitha’s first time. A number of the Bophana kids were shooting the whole event.
Gotta sleep now. Gonna try and catch the sunrise at Angkor tomorrow with Zul, Andy, and the three Amrita dancers. Lee haoyi!
*just read the accompanying synopsis for the show. It’s based on the storming of Lanka by Rama, but the names are all different and rituals are even weirder than I thought. Will write about it on a later date.
Ng Yi-Sheng