This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
A traditional wayang kulit performance begins after dark and can run until dawn, staged around a taut cotton screen lit from behind by an oil lamp or, today, an electric bulb. On one side sits the audience that came to watch the shadows; on the other, often, sits a second audience that prefers to watch the dalang and his puppets directly, since both views of the same story are considered legitimate ways to attend. The dalang works alone at the center of the production: he selects and voices every character, sings the narrative passages, cues the gamelan orchestra seated around him, and strikes a wooden mallet against his puppet chest to mark rhythm and punctuate combat, all while manipulating flat leather puppets whose jointed arms he moves with thin horn rods.
The repertoire performed most often, wayang purwa, retells the Ramayana and Mahabharata, but rarely in a straight recitation. Javanese performance convention interleaves the Sanskrit epics with the punakawan, a set of clown-servant characters belonging to no Indian source at all, who comment on the unfolding action, crack jokes about current events, and give the audience a familiar, indigenous voice inside a story of gods and kings. A dalang's reputation rests as much on his skill at these improvised interludes as on his fidelity to the epic itself, and a single performer is expected to hold an audience's attention, and an entire cast of characters, for a night that can stretch past eight hours.