Transcript Modern Indonesian Drama - East

Modern Indonesian Drama
Beyond Bali
Good News!
• Although it is possible to study every major non-English speaking Western
culture through its translated literature, this has not been the case with
the literature of Indonesia. This is one of the reasons why Lontar was
established: to ensure the ancient literary tradition of Indonesia, and its
thriving contemporary literature, are more accessible to international
scholars.
• Aware of the need abroad for text books, Lontar is publishing several
multi-volume anthologies of Indonesian literature: one on the history of
Indonesian drama, the other two on poetry and short stories.
• In 2001, with financial assistance from the Luce Foundation, Lontar began
to collect modern Indonesian playscripts. Hundreds were collected and
scanned. With advice from Lontar’s editorial advisory board, 50 plays,
representing the range of issues that were aired on the Indonesian stage
in the twentieth century were chosen for transcription and publication in
Indonesian. Of these, 35 were then selected for translation into English.
Early Developments in Modern
Theater
• Traditional dramatic forms such as wayang in Java and
Bali had been performed for their ritual and/or
religious significance.
• “A modern, secular theater, Malay Opera, emerged in
the late nineteenth century. … The audiences as well as
playwrights, directors, and actors, of Malay Opera
included Europeans, Chinese, peoples of mixed-racial
ancestry (the peranakan), and indigenous peoples of
the Netherlands Indies (e.g. Javanese, Sundanese, and
Balinese).” (Rafferty 10). The development of this
multi-ethnic, secular, though still non-scripted, drama
was an important transitional stage for Indonesian
theater.
Malay Opera
• “In 1891, August Mahieu, a Eurasian of French descent born in
Surabaya (c.1860), established the first successful Malay Opera
group in the Indies.” (Rafferty 10)
• Improvisational theater, with no written script and performed in the
open, it combined tales from many cultures—European, Chinese,
Indian, Persian, Javanese, and Malay. The merging of multi-ethnic
stories also enabled the establishment of modern national
identities and sensibilities.
• For a historical perspective on Malay Opera in Borneo, see
http://www.hicsocial.org/social2003proceedings/nur%20afifah%20
vanitha%20abdullah.pdf
• See also Tan Sooi Beng, Bangsawan: A Social and Stylistic History of
Popular Malay Opera.
Origin of Modern Indonesian Drama
• The publication of Rustam Effendi’s play,
Bebasari, an allegorical verse drama about the
struggle against Dutch colonialism, is considered
to be the foundational moment of modern
Indonesian drama.
• It was the first original play written by a native
Indonesian in “high” Malay, and was intended for
an urban, educated elite.
• Other playwrights following in this tradition both
glorified the past and attempted to include
contemporary issues.
Realistic drama
• After independence, two major theatrical
institutions were established: Cine Drama
Instituut in 1948 in Yogyakarta, and Akademi
Teater Nasional in Jakarta in 1955. Both taught a
realistic style of acting.
• Translations of Western playwrights (Poe, Ibsen,
Shakespeare) became popular in the 1950s.
• “Serious” plays, featuring representation and
analysis of contemporary Indonesian society
flourished.
Lontar Anthology 2: 1926-1965
• Synopsis: The first four decades of the national art theater in Indonesia
(1926-1965) were a period of fascinating experimentation undertaken by
elite intellectuals heavily influenced by, and attempting to come to terms
with, the forms and styles of western theater. These experiments ranged
chiefly from hybrid anti-colonial allegories and grand historical epics to
psychological and social realisms. This volume contains a selection of plays
representative of the main currents of this exciting and pivotal era in the
construction of Indonesia’s modern national art theater. The volume
begins with nationalist allegories, then moves to psychological and socialrealist works, and finally to plays that typify the dominant currents into
which the theater of the New Order period, beginning in 1966, would later
flow.
• Authors: Roestam Effendi, Sanusi Pane, Armijn Pane, Saadah Alim, Usmar
Ismail, Utuy Tatang Sontani, Muhammad Ali, Motinggo Busye, Misbah
Yusa Biran, Agam Wispi, Yoebar Ayoeb, Iwan Simatupang, Mohamad
Diponegoro.
Utuy Tatang Sontani, Awal and Mira
(1951)
Sontani was Sundanese and used both the local language
and Indonesian in his writings. He was famous during his
lifetime for his novels, short stories, as well as plays. The
plays were published in the 1950s and earned him high
praise. He chose to frame his vision in one act plays in short
story form as a way of exploring “human problems at a
specific time during man’s long life.” Awal and Mira focuses
on the “physical and psychological victims of revolution in a
newly independent nation” (Rafferty 14) by portraying the
love of a nervous aristocratic man for a beautiful common
coffee house owner who turns out to be handicapped.
For an article on Sontani, see
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2002/04/14/utuytatang-sontani-a-tragic-end-a-literary-great.html
Iwan Simatupang,
Square Moon and Three Other Plays
• Simatupang was a journalist, novelist, actor, director, and
playwright. For a brief biography, see
http://www.lontar.org/index.php?page=author&id=96&lang=en
• Born in North Sumatra, he fought for freedom from the Dutch, and
was later on the staff of Siasat, a journal on the forefront of
intellectual life in the struggle for freedom and post-independence
Indonesia.
• He was associated with Theater 2000, an avant-garde theater
company, and was heavily influenced by Existentialist writers ,
believing in the possibility of autonomy and independence for all.
• Square Moon (1957) focuses on an old man who has spent his life
tying to build the perfect gallows and whose philosophy is “I kill,
therefore I am.”
• His works deal primarily with issues of death, freedom, social
disenfranchisement and conflict.
Lontar Anthology 3: 1965-1998
• Synopsis: As Soeharto's New Order government became
increasingly authoritarian, censoring and crushing public
opposition openly and often brutally, there was a clear shift
in playwriting style from allegorical fairytales of wordplay,
humor and oblique reference to a more direct engagement,
interrogation, and call to arms. All in all, Indonesian drama
during the New Order provides a fascinating window into a
society in transition caught between the legacy of tradition,
the challenge of repression, and a strong desire for
democratization.
• Authors: Arifin C. Noer, Rendra, Putu Wijaya, Noorca
Marendra Massardi, Akhudiat, Wisran Hadi, Saini K.M.,
Yudhistira ANM Massardi, N. Riantiarno, Aspar Paturusi,
Afrizal Malna, Emha Ainun Nadjib, Ratna Sarumpaet.
“New Tradition”
• The governor of Jakarta, Ali Sadikin, was instrumental in the foundation of
a Cultural Arts Center, Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) in 1968, which
provided a Western-style, government subsidized venue for the staging of
modern drama.
• The plays staged at TIM have seen various degrees of merging of local and
Western forms and techniques. The use of regional elements in modern
genres is central to the “New Tradition” and is in direct reaction to the
forced social realism of the Soeharto’s regime.
• In order to keep the theater relatively free of political pressures, an Arts
Council was formed. For the most part, it was an autonomous body with a
“free hand” (Mohamad 3).
• TIM organized an annual festival of theatrical groups run by young artists
and featured traditional theatrical forms as well as modern plays, making
it possible for traditional and modern forms of drama to co-exist in postindependence Indonesia.
W. S. Rendra: Struggle for Cultural
Independence
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Indonesia’s most famous playwright, he was also an actor, essayist, translator, critic, and poet.
He was openly anti-Establishment, and was arrested in May 1978 for his seditious writings.
Rendra wrote satirical, experimental plays, known for their innovative form combining Javanese
wayang and ketoprak in modern Indonesian productions. He borrowed elements of music,
costume, dramatic structure, acting style, and joking routines from traditional drama, breaking
down boundaries of low/high theaters.
Struggle of the Naga Tribe (1975), while influenced by Western ideas, incorporates many traditional
Javanese theatrical conventions, including the use of the figure of the dalang, the puppet master, to
provide a social critique. Rendra valorizes the rural poor, and an non-cosmopolitan, folk lifestyle.
Rendra’s Bengkel Theatre group initiated a new performance style, mini-kata, using movement and
music but minimal dialogue, in response to the “prevalent slogalization of the Indonesian language
in the late 1960s” (Mohamad 8).
For an article on Rendra, see http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-97/w-s-rendra-1935-200916081231
For an interview of Rendra in Australia, see http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-86/rendraspeaks-1507094
Putu Wijaya: Theater of Surprise
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Worked with Rendra’s Bengkel Theatre group from 1967-69.
Putu’s tontonan theater similarly emphasizes spectacle over narration, and reflects
his commitment to improvisation, creative adaptation, openness and flexibility.
“The plays are both visually and aurally busy, at times verging on the chaotic”
(Rafferty 16).
Plot is minimal; characters are stylized and remain on stage for most of the play
resulting in a crowded, noisy stage; humor tends to the bawdy and the grotesque
and is used as a distancing device; and action is non-realistic.
As in traditional Balinese drama, there is no obvious closure, and the central issue
remains unresolved.
Putu’s theater seeks to incorporate spirituality, bringing the traditional
religious/ritual element back into a secular model.
According to Putu Wijaya, Indonesian actors “act without analyzing; they are
reluctant to question the meaning of actions or situations in the script.”
For an article on Putu assessing his life and works, see
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2001/04/08/putu-strives-save-theater.html
For a video of Putu’s tribute to Rendra, Monolog 'Merdeka'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7qLSBk7uzI
N. Riantiarno: Commercially Viable
Modern Theater
• His blending of indigenous and Western forms is influenced by the
example of Malay Opera.
• High ticket prices and an “entertainment” model make Riantiarno’s
company, Teater Koma, a much more capitalistic enterprise,
catering to an affluent middle class.
• However, the plays, “with their graphically literal representation of
the dark ‘underside’ of elite prosperity, subvert rather than affirm
middle class assumptions. On the set of Time Bomb (1982), directly
below the chairs of a group of oblivious restaurant diners, sits a
slum on the banks of a fetid canal” (Hatley xi-xii).
• For an article on Riantiarno, see
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/02/24/playwright-nriantiarno-visionary-mission.html
Women Playwrights: Activists
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Actress and playwright, Ratna Sarumpaet, has her work included in the Lontar
Anthology, and comments incisively on issues relevant to women in contemporary
Indonesian society, though she sees herself as a champion for all underprivileged
people rather than as a feminist.
Her play, The Prostitute and the President (2006), focuses on the lack of choices
available to women who are forced into prostitution. The main protagonist,
Jamila, has taken to murder as a way of dealing with her oppression: “hate that
keeps building inside me, forever ready to explode and make me kill again…to
make me kill again….” On her attempts to film this play to raise awareness about
child trafficking in Indonesia, see
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2007/07/24/ratna-sarumpaet-agonysenior-director.html
A clip of the film, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtsgSL0fDiY
Her most famous work, Marsinah: Songs from the Underworld (1994) directly
accuses President Soeharto.
For an article on her life, beliefs, and her arrest, see
http://www.insideindonesia.org/edition-55/ratna-accused-and-defiant-2909767
Putu Wijaya: Geez!
• Only two characters have stable names: Bima and Sita. Both names
go back to the Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata.
• Bima or Bhima is the second Pandava brother, known for his
strength and bravery: "Of all the wielders of the mace, there is none
equal to Bhima; and there is none also who is so skillful a rider of
elephants. In fight, they say, he yields not even to Arjuna; and as to
might of arms, he is equal to ten thousand elephants.”
(Mahabharata, Book 5, Section 22).
• Sita is famed for her marital fidelity and devotion in the Ramayana.
Despite her abduction and imprisonment for ten years by Ravana,
she remains impervious to his sexual advances and is able to remain
chaste.
• http://www.britishmuseum.org/images/puppet_m.jpg
Three Worlds in Geez!
• The worlds of the mourners, the corpse, and
the dancers are kept separate in the
beginning, though we expect them to collide.
There are also tiered platforms on stage: the
top with the gamelan orchestra in a fourpillared temple; the middle with the corpse
and the mourners; and the bottom with Putu
himself. “No world subsumes, destroys, or
dominates another as the action progresses”
(Zarrilli in Rafferty 42).
Characters
• Putu’s characters do not behave in causal,
psychologically consistent ways. He
establishes characters though monologues
which start out by isolating a single motive or
emotional tone for the character but which
unfold by contradicting or subverting the
original stance. Putu: “My manuscripts and my
style of directing are neither antipsychological nor do they support
psychological reality” (Rafferty 44).
Use of humor and the unexpected
• The gravediggers, reminiscent of the ritual-clowns of
wayang, are not the only characters who joke
inappropriately; the mourners also indulge in
incongruous, exaggerated behavior that belies
expectations, leading one gravedigger to comment,
“Hey, is this a burial or a party!” Their bawdy humor as
well as their inter-changeable names give rise to
laughter. The rising of the corpse multiple times also
contributes to the macabre humor. Putu’s intention is
to jolt the audience but also to convey a Balinese
sensibility. Putu: “In Bali people joke all the time, even
at funerals. They play cards at funerals. People are
naturally prone to joking” (Rafferty 39).
Use of Indigenous Javanese elements
• In Madison, he used gamelan, Javanese court
dance, and a shadow puppet but in Jakarta, he
has never used traditional techniques. Even in
Madison, he subverted their traditional use,
often breaking the conventional rule that
guide both orchestra and dance. Dance
movements were speeded up and changed; at
times gamelan broke up into random
cacophonous sounds (Zarrilli in Rafferty 40)
Questions for discussion
• 1. Bima is the only character in the play whose speech and
motivation remain consistent. What is the significance of
this consistency attributed to a supposedly dead person
who remains in limbo at the end?
• 2. To what extent is Putu intentionally supplying an
exoticized spectacle in using traditional Javanese theatrical
elements in his Western productions? How necessary do
these elements seem for an understanding of the play?
• 3. Analyze the ways in which Geez! functions both as a
satire and as an absurdist commentary on the human
condition.
• 4. How are confusion and distancing used in the play to
subvert conventional theatrical narrative and expectations?
Bibliography
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Asmara, Cobina Gillitt. “Tradisi Baru: A ‘New Tradition’ of Indonesian Theatre, Asian Theatre Journal 12, 1 (Spring 1995): 164-174.
Aveling, Harry. Man and Society in the Works of the Indonesian Playwright Utuy Tatang Sontani and Awal and Mira by Utuy Tatang Sontani. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Southeast Asia
Paper No. 13, 1979.
McGlynn, John H “Silent Voices, Muted Expressions: Indonesian Literature Today.” Manoa 12, 1 (2000): 38-44.
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Mohamad, Goenawan. Aspects of Indonesian Culture: Modern Drama. New York: Festival of Indonesia Foundation, 1991.
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---. Ed. Putu Wijaya in Performance: A Script and Study of Indonesian Theatre. Madison, WI: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1989.
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Simatupang, Iwan. Square Moon and Three Other Short Plays. Trans. John H. McGlynn. Jakarta: Lontar, 1997.
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Zarrilli, Phillip B., Putu Wijaya, Michael Bodden, “Structure and Subjunctivity: Putu Wijaya's Theatre of Surprise.” The Drama Review 31, 3 (Autumn, 1987): 126-159.
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Zurbuchen, Mary S. “Images of Culture and National Development in Indonesia: The Cockroach Opera.” Asian Theatre Journal 7, 2 (Autumn 1990): 127-149.
Peacock, James. Rites of Modernization: Symbols and Social Aspects of Indonesian Proletariat Drama. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Rafferty, Ellen. “The New Tradition of Putu Wijaya.” Indonesia 49 (Apr., 1990): 103-116.
Rendra, W.S. The Struggle of the Naga Tribe. Trans. Max Lane. New York: St. Martin’s Pess, 1979.
Riantiarno, N. Time Bomb and Cockroach Opera. Ed. John H. McGlynn. Jakarta: Lontar, 1992.
Soedarsono. Living Traditional Theaters in Indonesia: Nine Selected Papers. Jogyakata: Akademi Seni Tai Indonesia, 1974.
Three Plays by Three Indonesian Playwrights. Jakarta: Jakarta Arts Council, 2006.
Winet, Evan Darwin. “Between Umat and Rakyat: Islam and Nationalism in Indonesian Modern Theatre.” Theatre Journal 61, 1 (March 2009): 43-64.