Plays are set in mythological times, some relating to indigenous festivals and worship of local spirits, some dramatizing episodes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics. The majority--the Pandawa cycle of about 100 plays--are Javanese creations in which the five heroic Pandawa brothers are placed in different situations. Three or four god-clown-servants, and a set of ogres who are not in the epics at all, suggest how far removed the shadow plays are from the epics.

The wayang puppeteer works within one of the world's most carefully organized performing arts, making possible a virtually solo performance without intermission, from around nine at night until the gray before dawn. Each play is in three parts, coordinated with three keys of music played by the gamelan ensemble. The puppeteer chooses from among 150 musical selections, matched to scene type, character, mood, or action. The puppet figures are carved to indicate character type and status according to fixed patterns for nose, eyes, gaze, stance, body build, and costume. The puppeteer can choose one or another puppet of the same character, coloured gold or black or with a stern or relaxed countenance, to indicate the mood of the figure in a particular scene. In battle scenes, he develops individual encounters between opponents, drawing upon a repertory of 119 movements classified for use by god, female, refined hero, muscular hero, ogre, or monkey. Traditional phrases describe famous kingdoms and characters, and battles are preceded by challenges.
The puppeteer works from a brief scenario, but is able to extemporize, adding contemporary jokes for the clowns and molding the performance to suit the occasion and the audience. He and his supporting musicians and female singers are improvising within established, although exceptionally complex and subtle, artistic conventions.

This artistic system developed within the shadow theatre has proven to work so well that it has been widely imitated, being adopted in Bali and in Malaysia. At least 25 other play cycles have been performed in Indonesia as shadow drama within this system. Performances are commissioned for special occasions and can be interpreted in religious or mystical fashion. The translucent screen can be interpreted as heaven, the banana-log stage as earth, the puppets as man, and the puppeteer as god, and the Pandawas can symbolize the attributes of righteous behaviour.