'We all have ghosts in us': Southeast Asian women reclaim ancient shadow puppet art

Under the glow of Kuala Lumpur's Merdeka Square, an all-female troupe worked behind a white screen, casting shadows of ghosts, folklore and memory in a modern take on one of Southeast Asia's oldest storytelling traditions.

Wayang Women, a multinational wayang kulit troupe with members from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar and the Philippines, is using shadow puppetry to tell stories from a female perspective — challenging an art form that has long been dominated by men.

Its master puppeteer, Illya Sumanto, said the troupe drew on folk tales passed down by mothers and grandmothers, many of which centred on female ghosts.

"Folk stories that they heard from their mom or their grandmother — we found out that most of these stories are about female ghosts. Why are they all female?" she said. 

"From there we connected these stories to our own experiences."

For Illya, the puppets are more than characters on a screen — they are a tool for self-discovery.

"We all have different ghosts in us, and by unpacking our own shadows through playing with a tool like a puppet, it will help us explore the parts of ourselves that we don't know exist," she said.

But beyond questions of gender and representation, the troupe said their work is also about keeping wayang kulit alive.

"We have to start from somewhere, and one way to start is to infuse whatever we know into the tradition that we want to preserve," Sumanto said.

Rooted in its members' understanding of their cultural identity, Wayang Women's performance weaves contemporary electronic beats into traditional Southeast Asian instruments. For music producer Victoria Yam, that process of modernizing the sound was never about chasing a younger audience — it was personal.

"Contemporising traditional sounds — it wasn't to attract the younger crowd, but rather to really understand where I came from, why these sounds are so important, and why it's so important to preserve them," Yam said. "I see traditional practices as like ancestral technologies."

For Yam, the healing power of reconnecting with those roots is what she hopes to pass on.

The troupe also held workshops where children learned to make their own puppets from recycled materials, extending their mission of preservation to the next generation.

Latifa Romanita, a Jakarta-based lecturer and shadow play researcher, said the troupe's work carries a spirit similar to that of female puppeteers in Java, and reflects a broader push to tell the tradition's stories from a new vantage point.

"They are trying to create and develop stories from a female perspective. That's why they focus on female ghosts — they're incorporating messages of empowerment, and perhaps feminist messages as well," Romanita said. "That's how they see it from their perspective as practitioners of the modern wayang kulit."

Production: Mandy Leong Huey Mun, Ahmad Luqman Ismail, Zahra Matarani/Reuters