Yogya theatre reaches out

Critical commentary

In the late 1970s, ketoprak’s performances of historical and legendary stories celebrated the Javanese cultural heritage of actors and audience members, while its improvised interactions and dialogue resonated with their daily life social experiences. The leftist, populist political connection of much ketoprak in the 1950s and 1960s had ceased with the takeover of the New Order government. Now it was modern, Indonesian language theatre which problematized Javanese history and cultural tradition, depicting past kingdoms ruled by corrupt, flawed power holders to comment critically on the state of the contemporary Indonesian nation.

The ending of the Suharto era in 1998, the shift to greater regional autonomy and freedom of cultural expression, was reflected in a performance in Yogya by vibrant, diverse celebration of the local folk arts, incorporating global references, performances dramatizing real-life occurrences staged in neighbourhood locations and connecting with communities. One group, Teater Garasi, staged a series of productions reflecting on the state of contemporary Indonesia as a whole – problematizing the haunting stain of Java’s past (Waktu Batu), depicting people interacting, clashing, rushing headlong into the future along a present day ‘street’ (Jejalan), celebrating hybridity of identity (Tubuh Ketiga), and exposing intolerance (Yang Fana Itu Waktu, Kita Abadi).

Reaching out beyond the centre

Recent visits to Yogya have evidenced both a continuation of the focus on the local and signs of something new, a reaching out beyond Java to the wider nation. Veteran ketoprak figures stage performances, organise festivals, train young people; modern theatre groups perform in Javanese language aiming to evoke everyday experience and engage identification among audience members. At the same time three groups, Teater Garasi, Kalanari Theatre Movement and Bengkel Mime Theatre, have been involved in activities outside Java. Garasi’s Pementasan Antar Ragam ‘Performing Difference’ project, as the most extensive and formalised of these activities, involving connections with local actors and artists from four outer island locations – Madura, Flores, Sumbawa and Singkawang – is the focus of a brief review below.

On Garasi’s website the ‘Antar Ragam’ project is described as “a new initiative that aims to build contacts and new meetings with different traditions and cultures as well as with emerging artists and young people in cities outside Java, as an unlearning and relearning process on being Indonesian or Asian”. In conversation at their studio in May 2018, Garasi members explained that in working on their last project, the performance Yang Fana itu Waktu Kita Abadi, they had seen radicalism and intolerance rising everywhere. They needed something new to inspire and mobilise them. They decided to go outside Java as the centre of Indonesia: having always experienced the world as Javanese they wanted to see how things looked from elsewhere.

Madura and Flores were their first destinations as they had contacts there, through Madurese studying and performing in Java, and a pastor and theatre director from Flores with connections with ISI Bandung. Garasi’s major aim in going to these locations was to encourage young people to look around them, to identify important social issues and engage with these themes in performance. On their initial visit, teams of 3-4 Garasi members focused on making contacts and learning about theatre and arts activities and the general social environment. In strongly Islamic Madura they encountered relatively large numbers of theatre groups and activities, encouraged by an emphasis on literature in the pesantren Islamic school system. In Flores theatre is generally less developed, although in Maumere there is an active group of writers and artists, mostly students and former students of the local Ledalero Catholic theological college. Singkawang, a small multi-ethnic city comprising predominantly Chinese along with Dayaks and Malays, has a cultural centre, impressive buildings, a busy film industry but few arts activities. Garasi teams were asked by local artists to share their own theatre process, so they visited again some months later, holding workshops demonstrating how they research social issues, then explore them through improvisation to develop a full performance. Used to presenting conventional written scripts, local performers found Garasi’s method new and stimulating, and wanted to try to emulate it in their own work.

Bringing together local groups

Two representatives from each area undertook residencies at Garasi’s studio in Yogyakarta, discussing and developing their planned projects with Garasi members, observing studio activities and attending arts events in the city. At the Garasi studio in July 2017 I met the two Flores representatives, lbu Veronika, from Adonara Island, whose women’s theatre group stages plays about women’s experiences, and Eka Putra Ngalu, a theatre writer and activist from the KAHE arts community in Maumere. In August 2018, I also met Mpok Yanti from Singkawang, a transgender artist who encountered theatre while at university in Pontianak, then returned home to teach drama in high school and set up a theatre group, as well as appearing in local films.

The residency-recipients then returned to their regions to work with other local artists on their projects. Arts events in Madura and Flores in late 2018 and festivals in all four regions in 2019 showcased the results. Garasi members came to observe, and provided guidance and assistance with festival preparations. One important benefit of the Garasi-initiated project has been the bringing together of local groups – Catholic and Muslim theatre groups from neighbouring localities with no previous contact, non-government organisations seeing theatre as a new medium for addressing social problems, government officials impressed by a theatrical work providing funding for its further staging.

Of the social questions explored in the festivals, the Madura event focused on land, viewed traditionally as a sacred family heritage, and now, after construction of the bridge linking Java and Madura, bringing in outside investment, a contested economic resource. Of two festivals in Flores, one, involving local government and Tourism Department officials, celebrated the ongoing practice by young people of local cultural forms; the other focused on the theme of tsunami, both the literal tsunami which struck the region in 1992 and the current metaphorical flooding in of global capitalism and mass media. The Singkawang festival, with its theme of tolerance, featured a performance depicting transformation of the city’s famous market Pasar Hongkong from a wholly Chinese site to today’s centre of vibrant multi-ethnic activity. And Sumbawa, with high numbers of overseas migrant workers, focused on human trafficking.

Such activities provide insight into the diverse, complex social conditions characterising the different regions of Indonesia, and a seemingly growing commitment to engaging with these issues among local theatre groups and other artists. They also indicate a new interest in the regions for Garasi and several other Yogya theatre groups. Given the history of Yogya performance in connecting with its social context, might there be suggestion here of a more general shift in social attitudes to and understandings of ‘the nation’? What potential is there for new performances encapsulating the overall situation of Indonesia today? Do Garasi members envisage the current project feeding into their own creative work, inspiring future productions? “Certainly”, they say, because every new experience enriches artists’ ideas; currently preoccupied with regional organising, however, they don’t yet know what form this work might take. Watch this space!

Barbara Hatley, Professor Emeritus, University of Tasmania. Her major research interests are in Indonesian performing arts, modern literature and gender studies and her publications include Javanese Performances on an Indonesian Stage Contesting Culture, Embracing Change (NUS Press, 2008), and Theatre and Performance in the Asia Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era, co-authored with Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall and Chris Hudson (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).