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Beyond the Shadows of Wayang: Liberation Theatre in Indonesia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
Abstract
Outside its ‘classic’ forms, little is known in the West about the theatre of Indonesia. The colonial ‘heritage’ proved largely sterile, and the more fruitful recent developments of the past few decades have been dominated by attempts to integrate the indigenous tradition with contemporary problems and needs. Eugène van Erven has spent several years exploring new theatrical movements and activities in the Pacific region, and earlier results of his studies appeared in NTQ 10 (1987), on the People's Theatre Network of the Philippines. Here, he introduces the work of the two leading theatre-of-liberation companies in Indonesia, Teater Arena and Teater Dinasti, and analyzes their contrasting approaches to the integration of ‘theatre-of-liberation’ techniques with distinctively Indonesian social, religious, and theatrical traditions. Eugène van Erven also contributed a study of recent political theatre in Spain to NTQ 13 (1988), and has recently taken up a post lecturing in English at the University of Utrecht.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989
References
Notes and References
1. According to Agam Wispi in his unpublished paper ‘The Ups and Downs of Popular Theatre in Indonesia’.
2. Ibid., p. 2.
3. Interview with Fred Wibowo, Yogyakarta, 14 November 1987.
4. See my ‘Theatre of Liberation in Action: the People's Theatre Network of the Philippines’, New Theatre Quarterly, III, No. 10 (May 1987), p. 131–49.
5. Wibowo interview.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Annotated from the Studio Puskat video production of Der Versiossene, 1987.
9. Wibowo interview.
10. Ibid.
11. Kethoprak is a central Javanese form of dance drama with plots derived from local histories and legends. Its rhythms allegedly originate in the songs peasant women sang while stamping rice in hollow logs. According to James R. Brandon, the Yogyakarta style of Kethoprak, which emphasizes spoken dialogue over dance and gamelan over western instruments, came to be dominant after the late 'twenties. See Brandon, James R., Theatre in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 47–8Google Scholar.
12. Annotated from the Studio Puskat video production of the Tanen workshop. I am grateful to Michael Bodden for translating the commentary from Bahasa Indonesia into English.
13. van Erven, Eugène, ‘The Theatre of Liberation of India, Indonesia, and the Philippines’, Australasian Drama Studies, No. 10 (04 1987), p. 12–13Google Scholar.
14. From the Studio Puskat video production Der Weg ist noch weit, 1987.
15. Wibowo interview.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Interview with Fr. Rüdi Hoffmann, Yogyakarta, 14 November 1987.
19. Interview with Emha Ainun Nadjib, Yogyakarta, 19 November 1987. I am grateful to Michael Bodden for interpreting during the interview.
20. Ibid.
21. Earlier this year, Emha discovered to his dismay, minutes before he was due to give a poetry reading in Jakarta, that his poems had mysteriously disappeared from the stage where he had placed them.
22. Dagelan mataram is a type of coarse peasant farce that has domestic quarrels as its main theme. The qualifier mataram indicates that this type of play was mainly performed and developed in the territory of the old Javanese Mataram kingdom, present-day central Java. The term dagelan is also used to indicate the clown figures in kethoprak, for example.
23. Interview with Michael Bodden, Yogyakarta, 20 November 1987.
24. Ibid.
25. Interview with Simon Hate, Yogyakarta, 16 March 1986.
26. Interview with Simon Hate, Yogyakarta, 19 November 1987.
27. ‘Theatre of Liberation in Action’, p. 139.
28. Generally speaking, Indonesian Islam is less fundamentalist than, say, Islam in Pakistan, Malaysia, or the Middle East. Nevertheless, certain islamic traditions, not necessarily written in the Koran, hinder the development of theatre as a performing art. Conservative mullahs wage active campaigns against all kinds of artistic expression that promote secularism. More specifically, Islam in Indonesia and elsewhere discourages the presence of women in the theatre, both on stage and in the auditorium. Particularly in the big cities, however, a gradual change is noticeable among the educated middle classes, where female participation in theatre activities has become more widely acceptable.
29. Nadjib interview.
30. Ibid..
31. In May and June of this year, the Singapore police arrested and tortured sixteen people whom they accused of belonging to a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the government. Of these, five belonged to Third Stage, a progressive but certainly not Communist theatre company specializing in musical satires and theatre of liberation workshops for the working classes. Among the 107 dissidents arrested throughout Malaysia in October and November 1987, several have used theatre of liberation methods in their community work.