Multitalented Putu still a rebel with a cause

Christina Schott, Contributor, Jakarta

The huge animal twitches and writhes when it finds its master with a whip. Then the white object changes into new forms: soldiers going to war, a human being born in pain, another swallowed by the constantly moving thing.

Seven people under a huge canvas fight a war with the world and themselves, building the illusion of becoming one, just to break this again with lighting of inside silhouettes.

It was already late at night at Gallery Langgeng in Magelang, Central Java, when Teater Mandiri performed its newest production Zero in the backyard of the cultural studio last week.

Several hundred visitors of the gallery's second anniversary exhibition "Wings of Words, Wings of Colors" watched the play by writer Putu Wijaya as the last of several performances by a coterie of famous artists: Rendra, Budi Kristanto and Arahmaiani.

Zero expresses the beginning and the end of all beings, the resulting nothingness.

"But a vacuum will never come without fullness, desperation never without hope," said Putu. "People from Bali believe that everything has two sides."

It's hard to picture Teater Mandiri without the name and the ideas of its founder Putu. The director, who does not want to tell his age, is one of the country's most important authors and dramatists today.

Having already won around 20 national and international awards, Putu has also penned about 1,000 short stories and 40 novels, numerous plays, poetry, newspaper articles, several screenplays and about 200 episodes of TV serials. His works have been translated into Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian and Thai.

The son of a noble from Tabanan, Bali, felt in his childhood the need to break with social convention, which he felt was unjust. But since he did not dare to speak out openly, he used writing and theater to rebel indirectly since he was in middle school.

"I asked myself why everything had to follow these stereotyped forms? So very early on I had the wish to shape a new type of expression in theater."

Fulfilling the wish of his parents, young Putu went to Yogyakarta to study law. Although he got his degree, he never practiced law. His profession became what he studied on the sidelines: the arts. In 1967, the student joined the Bengkel Theater of Rendra, located in Yogyakarta at the time, before going to Jakarta.

He was a journalist working for the magazine Express and then an editor for Tempo magazine for 20 years.

"I really liked Jakarta for its loud and tumultuous atmosphere, because it is dynamic!" the Balinese said. "Bali, in contrast, sometimes was so calm and lonely that I got afraid."

In 1971 Putu Wijaya founded Teater Mandiri, in the beginning to shoot theater plays for television. His colleagues became actors, and the rehearsals were held at the magazine office after work. After coming back from a stay at the United States in 1975, the director was encouraged to try new experimental ways.

"The concept was to leave behind what we had. We wanted to create mental terror, to make the people hesitant and to think over again what they took as certain in their lives," he said.

The first success was the piece Lho, staged at the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts center in Cikini, Central Jakarta.

"The piece did not have any plot, it was just a spectacle," the creator said. Two other pieces of this kind followed, but in the end, the audience was no longer interested.

"I learned that the audience needs a story and because I need the audience, I started to look for storylines again."

In 1985, the writer left again to the United States, this time invited as a lecturer for the Fulbright program for three years. For a scholarship in Japan 1991, the journalist finally left his job at Tempo and continued working as a freelance writer and film director.

But Teater Mandiri continued.

"It was in 1988 that I started to deal with canvas," Putu said.

Almost all his pieces since then play with elements reminiscent of the shadow puppet play wayang kulit. Actors work -- in a mental and physical sense -- hard behind and in front of the canvas, supported by light and sound effects.

Putu's theater definitely does not offer any conventional dialog to the viewer.

"People watching our performances cannot expect simple entertainment. I want them not just to accept everything, but to fight for their own way," the dramatist said. "It's same for my actors: Mandiri means independent. They do not just act, but become independent themselves."

Whoever wants to join the group is invited to do so. But after two weeks of exhausting exercises, usually only a handful people still come back. That is the time when the director introduces a new piece to the members who are strong enough.

But Putu Wijaya's soft side is not only shown to his family, but also in his screenplays and TV drama scripts. The newest one, planned for this year, is a sitcom about a newly elected president.

"In contrast to the tense situation at the moment, I want to give the people simple, fresh entertainment," the father of two said. "I confess that I might be an ambiguous person."