KAWI DALANG: CREATIVITY IN WAYANG THEATRE by I NYOMAN SEDANA (Under the direction of Professor Farley Richmond, Ph.D.) ABSTRACT The wayang puppet theatre is the oldest continuously performed theatrical form among the many genres of performing art in Bali. While wayang theatre has a fixed structure and stock dramatic characters, creativity and improvisation play a major role in the way the dalang puppet master shapes a performance. The dalang’s creativity serves as the ‘soul’ of wayang and has successfully been responsible for transmitting cultural traditions as well as reflecting contemporary social and political issues from one generation to another. This dissertation examines the creativity and improvisation of the dalang puppeteer in the performance of Balinese wayang theatre. Due to the dynamic nature of its constituent parts it is possible to consider these innovations within a particular paradigm, that is Trisandi ‘the interplay of Genre-Scenario-Character.’ After outlining the mythology of wayang and providing a brief overview of the various types of wayang in Bali, the study explores the structural interplay within the organic elements of genre, story, and characters. Next is a chapter on the creativity in plot construction, recounting the process of selecting a play and transforming narration into dialogue, complemented by the six fundamental principles of constructing a play and originating the story. Then it explores other elements of creativity such as selecting