Bali News / Bali Travel and Holiday Updates

A couple of excellent shows by foreign artists were performed at Ksirarwana Building of Bali Arts Center on Tuesday (July 1st) night. The performance titled “International Puppet Festival” gave a new color for the lover of puppet performance as well as all Balinese in general.

First part of the show perform a story tited “Cukup-cukup”. Unusual combination leather shadow puppet and human puppet offers quite an an appealing performance. Brought by artists from five different continents, “Cukup-cukup” is basically a composition of theatrical art, dance, and music. Held like shadow puppet, the show used two screens and light reflection. However, instead of leather puppets, the artists themselves performed. Unique musical composition combines modern and traditional musical instruments like guitar, tabuhan gender, and electronic special effects.

The second session was performed by a story conducted by an Italian traditional puppet master and mask player Pino Confessa titled “Pulcinella E Il Diavolo”. Audiences have been fouled by the title at first thinking that it would be a pure Italian tradition. They were wrong, the show was performed mostly in Balinese language. Children enthusiastically got closer to the stage and follow the story with laughter.

Positive Appreciation

A number of audiences told Bali Post their positive appreciation. New version of puppet show by foreign performance offer a different color to long well-known traditional mainstream. Story performed by Pino Confessa got enormous respond from young audience. It was proven that properly conducted, educational messages could be passed along seamlessly. “Well, it makes sense that kids liked the performance as nowadays parents telling their children educative story are rather rare”, said Darmawan, an audience interviewed by Bali Post.