Narration

Dear Banjar,
This is my initial draft of the narration for the middle school performance.


It was a different age, a time when men were gods, and gods became men. A time when monkeys ruled kingdoms, demons scourged the countryside, and good was a precious rarity. Yet in one man this rarity was transfused to such a surfeit that all who laid eyes on him were stunned by his perfection. This man, this exiled prince, was named Rama.
Rama had been blessed with a wife named Sita, a woman of such incomparable beauty that to lay your eyes on her was to lose your heart. She, along with Rama and his equally formidable brother Lakshmana, were destined to wander the forests of Dadanka for ten years. But as they searched for a place they might call home, far away in the demon city of Lanka a greedy, lustful king plotted. His name was Ravana, an irresistibly horrible and incomparably powerful demon with ten heads, each more terrifying than the next. Ten heads have many ears, and word of Sita’s beauty had flown across the sea and landed in his fancy.
Ravana traveled to meet his uncle Maricha to contrive a plan by which he might spirit away the wife of Rama. Maricha, though reluctant having heard of Rama’s power, was more frightened of his nephew. He would transform himself into a golden hind, a deer of such extraordinary beauty that Sita’s heart would be transfixed as irrevocably as Ravana’s own. Rama, to please his wife, would have no choice but to hunt the deer, leaving Ravana’s path unguarded. They lay their plan into action…
Rama returned to find their home empty. Where Sita had been taken he knew not. Blood ran russet through his cheeks as rage and despondency entwined round his thoughts. As Lakshmana struggled to encourage him, they stumbled upon a group of creatures, part monkey part god. Their king, Sugriva, and Hanuman, his advisor, son of the winds, enlisted Rama to help them reclaim their kingdom in return for their assistance. This done, the monkeys agreed to help find and liberate Sita, wherever she might be. While they searched the four corners of the earth, Rama waited.

Hanuman had found her, a defiant prisoner behind the impenetrable walls of Lanka. Rama, filled with a new spirit of hope, gathered the monkeys and other creatures of the forest into an army to assault Ravana, king of the demons.


The segments are for before the different scenes. I hope this looks good.
Sincerely,
Eddie

Thoughts on the Banjar

Today I thought I might discuss the Banjar and how it has affected my mind as to what a "classroom experience" should be. In some ways, I feel that we as a class have adapted the Balinese concept of a Banjar to our Western concepts of how a group should function. I noticed this particularly in our last class wherein we switched into our sub-banjars to work on certain aspects of our upcoming performances. In the posted reading the Banjar is described as a cooperative association of neighbors...and I suppose that's what we as students our. We are cooperating for our common goal to create art. Yet for so many aspects of Western culture art is an individual experience. This class, therefore, and the banjar structure of our classroom setting, has in fact changed my entire perspective of how art is formed. My usual art is creative writing, gourmet cooking, and the like, very individual projects. Typically group work for me is a much more commercial, functional experience. So when we were working in our sub banjar, discussing how our art was going to turn out, how the aesthetics and aural quality of what we were creating would turn out, it was a very strange experience to vocalize it, debate it, and build off other's ideas. I suppose this post is kind of an extension of the creation of art with body, because we aren't just creating art with our own bodies, but the "body banjar", if you will.

Last week we got the rough outline of our performance hammered out, so I'm excited to fine tune it in the next couple of weeks before our performance. I was curious to see how Balinese kechak circles look in completion, and I found these videos. Pretty cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZMIifS9hIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZMIifS9hIE