Recorded from a live Zoom Webinar on December 29th, 2020. Edited together with archival footage and photos.

For additional context and supplementary material, consider revisiting our films Shadow Master and Ceremonies & Wayang with I Made Sija and Family also available on Vimeo.

I Nyoman Sumandhi is a scholar and Dalang from Tunjuk, Tabanan, Bali-Indonesia who has taught and performed Wayang around the world. Pak Sumandhi is grandson of the renowned I Made Durya, and son of I Nyoman Rajeg, and has continued the family tradition as a practicing dalang.

In his career, he has pioneered teaching Wayang to non-Balinese people and encouraging women in Bali to practice as shadow masters. Pak Sumandhi was a founding teacher of the performing arts school, Kokar, selected to study ethnomusicology at UCLA by the JD Rockefeller Third Foundation and has taught in the US, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, and France. With his student Michael Tenzer, he was instrumental in helping to found the Berkeley CA group, Gamelan Sekar Jaya.

Larry Reed, founder of ShadowLight Productions and Fritz de Boer were his first foreign students. Larry went on to study with his father Pak Rajeg, becoming the first Westerner to learn Balinese Wayang.