Australian writer to debut new play

Australian writer to debut new play

By Deborah Cameron

JAKARTA (JP): With the New Zealand ambassador as the leading
man, the Australian ambassador's wife as the leading lady and a
string of embassy officials and amateur actors making up a
scratch cast, the only thing that's certain about the Jakarta
performance of Alex Buzo's latest play, is that it will be a lot
of fun.

Buzo, an Australian playwright and writer, in residence at the
University of Indonesia, is staging, directing and giving
wardrobe advice to a cast that has had to juggle rehearsal times
and cast meetings round replying to faxes from head office and
trailing after visiting VIP's.

Next Tuesday, when the curtain goes up at the Australian
Embassy Theaterette, it will be the first time that many of them
have trod the boards.

For Buzo, taking a breather over a cool glass of water at the
embassy snack bar, it has been a matter of shedding an uptight
Sydney demeanor and getting into "Jakarta mode". Don't fret, he
tells himself.

Buzo's play is called Pacific Union and is set in 1945, at the
United Nations conference on International Organization in San
Francisco. The key character in his play is H.V. (Doc) Evatt, the
then Australian Minister for External Affairs and Attorney
General, who was a representative at the conference and came to
be a dominant figure at its debates.

"Evatt emerged as the champion of the smaller nations in this,
his finest hour," Buzo writes in the author's notes on the play.

Indonesia, which did not declare its independence until later
that year, was not represented at the San Francisco conference.
However, Buzo believes that the outcome of the meeting sowed the
seeds for the Non-Aligned Movement in which Indonesia has since
been a principal player.

Buzo, whose past plays have dealt with the themes of young
societies in such places as Australia, Fiji, Indonesia and New
Zealand, grapples in Pacific Union with the tensions of the
infant United Nations.

In 1987 Buzo wrote Makassar Reef, a play set in Ujungpandang,
which was the first Australian play to be set in Indonesia. And,
with a brief passage written in bahasa Indonesia, was the first
time that the Indonesian language was heard on the Australian
stage.

Buzo has had a lifelong interest in Indonesia since, as a boy,
he read an atlas and became fascinated by the archipelago.

He quickly agreed to become the writer in residence at the
University of Indonesia after an approach by the Australian
Council and the Australia-Indonesia Institute, and has been in
Jakarta for about six weeks.

At the university he has lectured students in the faculty of
Australian Studies, where one of his plays, Coralie Lansdowne
Says No has been on the syllabus for two years.

But one of the big highlights of his visit is the staging of
Pacific Union, which, even with its scratch cast of enthusiastic
amateurs, is something of a world premier, as the play is not set
to open in Australia until later this year.