Wayang is an Indonesian and Malay word for theatre. When the term is used to refer to kinds of puppet theater, sometimes the puppet itself is referred to as wayang. “Bayang“, the Javanese word for shadow or imagination, also connotes “spirit.“ Performances of shadow puppet theater are accompanied by gamelan in Java, and by “gender wayang“ in Bali.
UNESCO designated Wayang Kulit, a shadow puppet theater and the best known of the Indonesian wayang, as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity