Wayang is a Javanese word for particular kinds of theatre. When the term is used to refer to kinds of puppet theatre, sometimes the puppet itself is referred to as wayang. Performances of shadow puppet theatre are accompanied by a gamelan orchestra in Java, and by gender wayang in Bali.

UNESCO designated wayang kulit, a shadow puppet theatre and the best known of the Indonesian wayang, as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity on 7 November 2003. In return for the acknowledgment, UNESCO required Indonesians to preserve their heritage.

The term ‘wayang’ is the Javanese word for shadow or bayang in standard Indonesian . In modern daily Javanese and Indonesian vocabulary, wayang is most often ociated with the puppet itself or the whole puppet theatre performance.

Wayang is a generic term denoting traditional theatre in Indonesia. There is no evidence that wayang existed before the first century CE, after Hinduism and Buddhism were brought to Southeast Asia. This leads to the hypothesis that the art was imported from either India or China, both of which have a long tradition of shadow puppetry and theatre in general. However, there very well may have been indigenous storytelling traditions that had a profound impact on the development of the traditional puppet theatre.