Helen Pausacker, the only female 'dalang' in Australia

By Dewi Anggraeni

MELBOURNE, Australia (JP): There is no doubt many an opera aficionado has been so overwhelmed by a performance of, say, Othello that, he or she would dream of playing Othello or Desdemona, but how many actually have gone ahead, trained and eventually realized their dreams?

In 1974, a young university student from Australia, went to see an all-night wayang performance in Solo and became so enthralled that she quietly decided to learn the exclusive craft of a puppeteer, a dalang as it is known in Indonesian. And Helen Pausacker, the student, did not only dream, she acted and with determination and perseverance, and not least, inherent talent, she realized her ambition.

After graduating from university majoring in Indonesian in 1975, Helen obtained a Dharma Siswa scholarship and headed for Solo. In this cultural city in Central Java she was accepted as a private pupil at Pasinaon Dhalang Mangkunegaran and Akademi Seni Karawitan Indonesia, two of the most respected learning institutions for aspiring performers of traditional Javanese performing arts, for a year, from 1976 to 1977.

During that year, Helen recalls, she worked very hard during the day learning Javanese and going to performances in the evenings. Since the performances were not always close to her lodgings, she would often have to walk long distances through rice fields in darkness and by moonlight, depending on the time of month. But being an enthusiastic pupil, nothing dampened her spirits. Just before she returned to Australia, she gave a performance at the school, where, she confesses, she made many mistakes because she had not quite mastered the workings of the accompanying gamelan music.

That was not the end of her learning. After continuing in Melbourne under a local dalang, Ki Poedijono, and completing a Master's thesis, Helen returned to Solo in 1981, where she joined regular classes. She also met a number of fellow wayang aficionados and friends, with whom she was able to share her interest in the wayang art. Not only did her puppeteering skills keep improving, her mastery of Indonesian and Javanese languages kept developing.

In later years she would return and continue learning under various noted experts and puppeteers in Java.

Asked what captivated her about a wayang performance, Helen replied that she could not separate the elements individually. "It is the performance in its entirety. The gamelan music, the characters, the ambience, everything," she said. No doubt being a puppeteer, there is an additional thrill in being able to breathe life into the characters and to fill and move the story.

The lakon or play she likes most to perform is Srikandhi Meguru Manah, or Srikandi Learning Archery, because it is a story about a woman warrior who plays an important part in the battle of Bharatayuda -- the great war in the epic Mahabharata between the Pandawa and the Kurawa.

Helen's interest in cultures other than her own began when she was in primary school in a Melbourne suburb of East Kew. "I was very lucky. I went to a big school where there was a large mixed- race student population. There were many recent migrants, who needed assistance with their English. So I asked to sit next to them to help them. My friends then would often invite me to their homes. That was how I came in contact with other cultures," Helen recounted.

The secondary school she went to however, only offered European languages, so she learnt French and German. By the time she went to university, in 1972, there was a groundswell of consciousness, especially among young Australians, that Australia was geographically closer to Asia than to Europe. Helen felt that it was therefore more sensible to learn Asian languages, so she took up Indonesian and Japanese in her university course.

While learning the artistic craft of wayang, Helen's awareness of Indonesian politics became heightened. In fact, it was her presentation at the Indonesian Council Open Forum on July 10 and July 11 at the University of Melbourne, which revealed how inseparable politics was from wayang performances.

During the New Order era, she observed how circumspect the dalangs were if they wanted to sneak in any criticism of the authorities. They were rather, used as tools of propaganda for the government and they had no choice but to acquiesce, because to show dissent would only land them in trouble. Performances were often commissioned by those who wielded power, so naturally there were instructions, explicit or otherwise that the dalangs were expected to follow. Only after the fall of the New Order did the dalangs begin to include various criticisms of the authorities in a more open manner.

Helen was on one of her regular visits to Solo in May 1998 when the riots that razed parts of the city occurred. She took photographs and video film of the scenes showing some buildings in flames and people around them expressing behavior only manifested in uncommon situations.

Though she has been reluctant to draw connections, she takes note that a number of people believe that this devastation had been predicted by a wayang performance of the Ramayana only two months earlier. A dominant scene then had been the wholesale burning of Rahwana's Alengkadireja by the departing soldiers of Rama and Hanuman when they rescued Rama's wife, Sinta. She also recalls that in 1965 a performance of Bharatayudha, the famous war between the Pandawa and Kurawa of the epic Mahabharata, preceded the post-30 September-failed-coup mass killings of suspected communists.

"They were both commissioned by the palace and as you know, the Sultans of Solo are generally regarded as being gifted with a prescience for what is to come or to happen."

The only female dalang in Australia as far as she knows, Helen has now done approximately 100 performances, half of these in Australia while the rest in Indonesia. She has also written a book, Behind the Shadows, understanding a wayang performance, in which she explains various aspects of wayang performances, the history and the stories involved in them.

Her life now seems to be fated to be linked with Indonesia. Maybe that is the certain and accepted fate of a dalang.