Traditional Wayang with Puppets

First and foremost, thanks to Carol who took this wonderful pictures, and informing me of the traditional puppet wayang up in Ang Mo Kio Ave 10. As of the reason to why there was a Chinese puppet opera and a wild celebration of worshiping the deities that night was unknown to me. I wouldn’t understand anything of that sort but would do my best to understand, though my objective that night was to attempt to make some sketches of the event.

Drawing a crowd.

My sketch of the puppet show stage

My sketch against the real deal

My sketch took about 20-30mins to complete, or maybe more as during the process, I stopped to talk to an elderly guy who came over to tell me that this is a vanishing trade. Well so much for vanishing trade. When first I arrived at the puppet show, there wasn’t anyone sitting in front of the stage to watch it. I thought the show was over but it wasn’t. The crowds were gathered at the getai and another opera a short distant away. There were no chair too. I have to pull a chair from somewhere so I could sit myself right in front of the stage. I was the only audience. Halfway through my sketch I managed to attract a small crowd standing behind me. They were not watching the show but looking on curiously why and what I was sketching.

I was having quite a lot of fun splashing colors – lots of it. The traditional puppet show was a great display of light and colors. Due to the nature of the medium and my lack of proper management of paint, I had a hard time replicating or representing it. But I think I did a fairly good job in making the sketch look really busy – that would easily be the noise, the smell of the incense, the crowds and so forth that invaded my space while I was sketching.

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