Wayang Kulit (Shadow Puppet) in Bali

Wayang Kulit is one of the grat story-telling traditions of the Javanese and Balinese. The Wayang show normally consists of a small 4-piece orchestra, which provides the musical accompanisment, around 60 'puppets' carved out of flat pieces of water buffalo hide and the Dalang, or puppet-master. the Dalang has to be both incredibly skilled, as well as knowledgeable.
He not only manipulates all the puppets, but has to provide a different 'voice' for each one. Good characters normally speaking in ancient 'Kawi' and evil or coarse characters speaking Balinese. The Dalang, therefore, has to be fluent in both languages.
Traditional dramas cover a wide variety of themes. The most popular are stories taken from the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata.