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Contemporary Indonesian Theatre in the Regions: Stage Idiom and Social Referentiality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 January 2009
Extract
In 1973, the poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad wrote a lengthy and incisive defence of contemporary Indonesian theatre (that is to say, modern, Indonesian language plays of roughly the mid-60s onwards) against the complaints of its critics.1 The lack of dramatic and psychological development noted in many plays, the sketchy scripts, bizarre dramatic happenings, showy settings and inappropriate mixture of comic and serious elements—all of these purported ‘faults’, in Goenawan's view, were associated with the great strength of contemporary Indonesian theatre, its concern with the process of performance, and with intimate communication with its audiences. Previous playwrights had written worthy, wordy ‘schoolroom’ dramas, and members of a small European-educated élite performed them, for an amorphous, universal ‘general public’. Their view that the current minority position of modern theatre would strengthen as Indonesian society became better educated, at the same time revealed a sense of distance between plays and their public. But for the new breed of playwrights, people like Rendra, Arifin Noer and Putu Wijaya, who directed and performed in their own plays and were fully involved in the totality of production,2 there was no such gap. Spectacle and humour, colloquial, everyday language, and the improvisatory possibilities of sketchy scripts, served to entertain, engage and involve audiences drawn from a particular sector of society. Theatre audiences were identified by Goenawan as overwhelmingly young, educated but not used to reading. They had been brought up in a ‘post-literate’ culture of radio, television and film, influenced in some ways, certainly in its group-oriented entertainment habits, by the ‘pre-literate’ aural-oral regional cultures of their parents.
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- Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1994
References
Notes
1. The article, ‘Sebuah Pembelaan untuk Teater Indonesia Muthakir’ (A Defence of Contemporary Indonesian Theatre), was first published in Budaya Jaya in 1973Google Scholar, then reprinted in the collection of Goenawan's essays, Seks, Sastra, Kita (Sinar Harapan, Jakarta, 1980Google Scholar). It remains the most intelligent and perceptive analysis of late twentieth-century Indonesian theatre.
2. Reasons for the emergence of these new trends are suggested in Goenawan's mention of possible influences from absurdist playwrights such as Ionesco, and of Rendra's contact with avant-garde theatre during a period of study in the United States. That these developments should have taken place in the late 60s relates to the shift of political power which occurred at the end of 1965, from the left-leaning Sukarno régime to the right-wing, army-dominated New Order of President Suharto. In the early years of the New Order there was a great opening up to Western cultural influence, including emphasis on personal creativity, replacing the earlier framework of nationalist, populist ideology. Ironically, contact with avant-garde theatre in the West, in its fascination with primitive, ritual aspects of performance, helped generate a new appreciation of their indigenous theatre traditions among young Indonesian playwrights. At the same time, in appropriating elements from these traditions, they were also motivated by a desire to create a distinctively Indonesian theatre with, Goenawan suggests, close links to its audiences.
3. Goenawan, , Seks, Sastra, Kita, p. 115.Google Scholar Another commentator, Boen Sri Oemaryati, attributes this phenomenon to nostalgia on the part of writers for the solidarity of traditional theatre. Goenawan disputes the use of the terms ‘writers’ and ‘nostalgia’, as they imply a sense of separation from the public that today's total theatre practitioners—not just ‘writers’ of plays—do not experience. Creating ‘solidarity’ is indeed a central aim of the exercise.
4. Arifin Noer spends most of his time producing films rather than plays; Rendra has taken on the role of ‘elder statesman’, as mentioned below; Putu Wijaya has spent much time abroad in recent years, teaching and writing.
5. Like the plays of the 70s, many of Koma's performances invoked indigenous theatre traditions, often rendering familiar characters and conventional scenes in a lampooning, farcical fashion. But after the banning in late 1990 of Susksesi (Succession), set in a wayang-style kingdom, but referring to the all-too-topical theme of presidential succession, the director/playwright of Teater Koma, Riantiarno, turned away from popular satire to serious moral drama. Songs, humour and folk-theatre reference dropped away. Recent productions have included adaptations of foreign works such as The Crucible and The Good Woman of Szechwan.
6. See ‘Constructions of “Tradition” in New Order Indonesian Theatre’, in Virginia, Matheson-Hooker, ed., Culture and Society in New Order Indonesia, Oxford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
7. Greg Accioli documents the re-shaping of local cultural expression in Sulawesi in accordance with state definition of modern values in ‘Culture as Art: From Practice to Spectacle in Indonesia’, Canberra Anthropology, 8, 1985.Google Scholar
8. Amrih Widodo documents this process in the cultivation of tayuban dance by state officials in the Blora region of Central Java in ‘Panggung-Panggung Negara: Kesenian Rakyat dans Ritus Hegemonisasi’ (Stages of the State: People's Art and Rites of Hegemonization) (unpublished).
9. Goenawan, for example, remarks in a booklet, Modem Drama of Indonesia, published by the Festival of Indonesia Foundation, 1991, p. 12Google Scholar, that in contrast to struggling modern theatre practitioners ‘many puppet masters have become rich and famous’.
10. Brett Hough describes two such performances and the process of their production in Contemporary Dance Spectacles as National Ritual, Monash University, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992.Google Scholar
11. In early 1990, for example, a Yogyakarta newspaper, Berita Nasional, published a series of articles written by local actors and other modern artists, querying and challenging the policies of local arts institutions. The hoped-for vigorous response from the institutions and the public was, however, not forthcoming.
12. cf. ‘Constructions of “Tradition” in New Order Indonesian Theatre’, n. 6 above.
13. See Murray, Alison, ‘Kampung Culture and Radical Chic in Jakarta’, Review of Indonesian and Malayan Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 1, Winter 1991.Google Scholar