Helen Pausacker, the only female 'dalang' in Australia

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.