Garasi gives subtle performance in revised 'Rain Repertoire'

Garasi gives subtle performance in revised 'Rain Repertoire'

Evi Mariani
The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

A woman is watering flowers on her front porch, as if putting out
a fire that soon will burn down her house.
-- Gunawan Maryanto, in Rain Repertoire

Any loyal, Teater Garasi audience will already know it is
fruitless to try to comprehend the literal meaning of the
12-year-old Yogyakarta-based theater group's plays.

The group has been around too long for fans to know that is a
useless endeavor.

Any attempt to interpret the meaning and explain it to others
will likely sound like a nice try to explain either God or love.

Nevertheless, the group rarely fails to move the audience's
emotion with their performance, be it due to the props, lighting,
music, dialog, acting, artistic achievement or a mixture of all
of them.

In a new version of Repertoar Hujan (Rain Repertoire), Garasi
moved the audience with deft and subtle physical theater, in
which the actors presented a breathtaking display in which they
used their bodies to great effect.

With astounding precision, three Garasi actors, Bernadeta
Verry Handayani, Sri Qadariatin and Jamaluddin Latif, gave a much
more mature and subtle portrayal since staging the same play four
years ago.

The play is based on Gunawan Maryanto's poetry on rain and
much else, like a family's cold dining room or the murder of a
father by his son.

The 40-minute performance, comprising seven brief acts, was
staged in Jakarta on Thursday and Friday at Bentara Budaya
Jakarta, after the group had performed at the Physical Theater
Festival at the Storehouse Building in Tokyo on Nov. 11 and Nov.
14.

Directed also by Gunawan Maryanto, the play, which had no
dialog, was first staged in their hometown, Yogyakarta, in 2001.

For the Tokyo festival, Gunawan and artistic supervisor Yudi
Ahmad Tadjudin made some changes to almost every element,
including the script, rehearsals, the music and stage
arrangements.

Thus, Sri and Jamaluddin became dogs, running around the stage
with four legs, tickling each other's bellies, making animal
copulation gestures, somersaulting high, and, with amazing
precision, each landed at the side of a low table in a sitting
position.

Both showed subtle, yet articulate movements when melancholic
music accompanied the actors, staring at each other in a loving
manner, extended their arms and gently caressing each other, only
to act shortly after like dogs again.

Verry, who was very physical in 2001, took a smaller part in
the recent performance.

"It is her comeback after a hiatus of a few years, so we
adjusted her role to her current physical condition," said
Gunawan, an author who has published a collection of short
stories, Bon Suwung.

Both Jamaluddin, who once attended a Japanese butoh workshop,
and Sri, who played Princess We Cudaiq in Robert Wilson's I La
Galigo, produced stunning performances in their energetic and
subtle stage movements.

All Garasi players, including these three, have been required
to take Javanese dancing courses and silat (traditional martial
arts) classes as part of their basic skills training.

Some took additional courses, like Sri, who studied Cirebon
mask dancing under Wangi Indriya.

In June this year, Garasi staged Waktu Batu at the In Transit
Festival at the House of World Cultures in Berlin, Germany.