Wayang Kulit

Wayang kulit, shadow puppets prevalent in Java and Bali in Indonesia, are without a doubt the best known of the Indonesian wayang. Kulit means skin, and refers to the leather construction of the puppets that are carefully chiselled with very fine tools and supported with carefully shaped buffalo horn handles and control rods.

Punakawan

The stories are usually drawn from the Ramayana, The Mahabharata or the Serat Menak. There is a family of characters in Javanese wayang called Punakawan, they are , and sometimes reffered to as "clown-servant" because they normally are associated with the story's hero, and provide humorous and philosohical interludes. Semar is the father of gareng (oldest Son), Petruk, and Bagong (youngest son). These characters didnot originate in the Hindu epics, but were added later, possibly to introduce mystical aspects of Islam into the Hindu Javanese stories. They provide something akin to political cabaret, dealing with gossip and contemporary affairs.

The puppet figures themselves vary from place to place. In central Java Surakarta (Solo) and city of Yogyakarta are most famous and the most commonly imitated style of puppets. Regional styles of shadow puppets can also be found in west Java, Banyumas, Cirebon, Semarang and east Java. Bali produces more compact and naturalistic figures,and Lombok has figures representing real  people . Often modern -world objects of bicycles, automobiles, airplanes and ships willbe added for comic effect, but for the most part the traditional puppet designs have changed little in the last 300 years.

Historically< the performance consisted of shadows cast on a cotton screen and oil lamp. Today, thesource of light used in wayang performance in Java is most often a halogen electric light.