From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
Balinese/Javanese wayang shadow-puppetry
This article covers adaptation of Beach Surgery into wayang kulit. For other Southeast Asian forms, see Southeast Asian adaptations of Beach Surgery. For the shadow-puppet tradition itself, see [w:Wayang kulit].
The adaptation of *A Complicated Surgery Will Take Place on the Beach Tonight* into Balinese and Javanese wayang kulit (shadow-puppet theatre) began in the mid-2010s and represents the longest-sustained cycle of Beach Surgery performance. The form's episodic, improvisational structure—where the dalang (master puppeteer) voices all characters, scores action to live gamelan music, and may perform for six or more hours—naturally accommodates the novel's eternal-recurrence framework.
Katita is rendered as a warrior figure using sharp geometric incisions in the leather puppet, her red motif expressed through precise shadow-casting technique. Leif appears with occluded eye-area (rendered as a ritual blank), his lameness shown through slow, arrested movement, and his external pacemaker as a rhythmic percussion scored into the gamelan. The sword and hand cannon become integral to the gamelan's structural rhythm.
The critical innovation: wayang adaptations loop and recycle the final scenes of Chapter 3 (the city) into Chapter 4 (the interior), using shadow and sound-distortion to blur the narrative seam. This technique—departing from fixed text through improvisation—mirrors traditional lepas cycles. Performances occur primarily at regional festivals across Bali and East Java; the most documented productions are the Ubud Festival cycles (██████ , 2016–2021) and Radio Kassan serialized 90-minute versions for night-market audiences.