LEWISTON – Joko Susilo, a master of Indonesian shadow puppetry and a Fulbright scholar-in-residence at Bates College, will performs a story from the Hindu epic “Ramayana” at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 13, in Olin Arts Center concert hall at Bates, 75 Russell St.

Susilo and guest musicians will perform with the college’s Gamelan Mawar Mekar, an Indonesian-style orchestra.

Susilo belongs to the eighth generation of “dhalangs” or shadow-puppet masters in his family. He also composes and teaches gamelan music. A lecturer in the music department at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, he is teaching at Bates through the college’s first grant from the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence Program.

Although Indonesia today is predominantly Muslim, a period of Hindu rule beginning in the seventh century left a cultural legacy. “Wayang kulit,” the puppet theater form practiced by Susilo, derives many of its stories from the Hindu epics “Mahabarata” and “Ramayana.” On Saturday, he will perform a central episode from the latter.

It’s the story of the battle between Rama, a semi-divine king, and the demon-king Rawana. Rawana, smitten by the beauty of Rama’s wife, Sinta, asks a servant to help him kidnap her.

Trickery

The servant transforms himself into a golden deer, which Sinta asks Rama to catch for her. “This evil deer tricks Rama away from Sinta, far away in the middle of the forest, so then Rawana can take Sinta from Rama,” Susilo explains.

“Rama’s friend, the gigantic bird Jatayu, tries to save Sinta,” he continues, but Rawana kills the bird and reclaims Sinta. Finally, Rama enlists the aid of a monkey god and his followers to fight Rawana, and an epic battle ensues between the monkey army and the giant soldiers of Rawana.

“The story ends with the reunion between Sinta and her husband, Rama,” says Susilo. “Happy ending.”

More than mere fantasy, the story and the epic from which it’s derived are rich in moral lessons, Susilo says. “In the puppets we have a lot of philosophy. If you watch the puppets it’s like you’re watching yourself in the mirror. You will find yourself, because many, many characters appear on the screen – ‘Oh, that’s like me.'”

“It’s for everybody – for children, adults, all people,” he said.

In Indonesia, these performances typically last all night and are used to celebrate important occasions. The Bates event will run about two hours.

An unusual resource

The guest artists are Jody Diamond, a New-Hampshire-based singer and international expert on gamelan, and Nicole Erickson, a gamelan musician from Minnesota.

Bates is unique in Maine and distinguished nationally for its resources in Indonesian performing arts, especially its extensive collection of shadow puppets – around 250 – on permanent loan by David Eisler, of Dover, N.H.

“Only a few schools in the United States have a complete set of puppets,” Susilo says. “There are more than 500 gamelan groups, but the complete puppets are very few.”

Susilo was born into a family of dhalangs in a village in Central Java, Indonesia. At the age of 3, his father began taking him to performances, and at age 10 he performed his first all-night wayang kulit play.

He finished his doctorate at Otago in 2000. Susilo has taught and performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C, at Dartmouth and at the University of Virginia. Internationally, he has worked in the United Kingdom, Australia and the Netherlands, and taken his Padhang Moncar gamelan group from Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, on tour in Indonesia.

The event is open to the public at no cost. For more information, people can call (207) 786-6135.

At Bowdoin

BRUNSWICK – The Bowdoin College Department of Theater and Dance will present “The Abduction of Sinta,” a performance of Indonesian shadow puppetry accompanied by gamelan music, at 7 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 14, in Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center.

Tickets are free, and are available at the David Saul Smith Union information desk on campus, by calling (207) 725-3375 or at the door.