SETTING UP OF STAGE

So, this is what a typical wayang stage looks like.

What is the most essential thing needed by a wayang performing group? The stage, of course. During a play, the street looms a wooden stage lit by neon tubes and a multitude of tiny incandescent bulbs; at the other, a more modest wooden structure is ablaze with long red candles and rows of giant, smoking joss-sticks adorned with colourful papercuts. The stage is actually a raised platform supported on four stout stilts, secured with rattan lashing, and covered with faded green tarpaulin and sheets of blue-and-white striped plastic. "Stage front" is framed by a brilliant array of ornately painted wooden planks, so that from afar it resembles the facade of a richly endowed Chinese temple.

The very term "street opera" suggests impermanence: a temporary site, a hastily erected stage, a run of perhaps two or three days and nights. Historically, this has been largely true. The sites have been the forecourt of a temple, a car park in a housing estate, a plot of vacant land, a narrow street in Chinatown just wide enough to contain the stage. Every stage looks pretty much like any other (apart from the vertical columns of Chinese calligraphy identifying the troupe), and each one can be assembled in less than a day for a series of afternoon and evening performances that might last for two or three or, at most, four days.

After the stage is set up and decorated, it is time for the actors to move their props and costumes up the stage and prepare for their performance.

Filling up the stomach before the big showdown.