Ratna's 'Alia' puts human face on Aceh's tragedy
By Rita Sri Hastuti
JAKARTA (JP): White ropes hung down from the ceiling, separating the stage and the audience at Graha Bhakti Budaya at Taman Ismail Marzuki Cultural Center (TIM). The black cloth around the stage radiated a sense of grief.
Sorrow and sadness were the dominant themes from May 12 to May 17 in Teater Satu Merah Panggung. Directed by Ratna Sarumpaet, the 2.5-hour play Alia, Luka Serambi Mekah (Alia, Wounds of Serambi Mekah) told of the human tragedy happening in Aceh.
Alia is a tough Acehnese woman who is disturbed about what is occurring in her homeland. Sounds of machine guns and soldiers marching haunt her. Massacres and rape by security personnel have become commonplace; Alia herself is one of the hundreds of rape victims in Aceh.
In her 30s, Alia continually questions the meaning of true freedom.
Her complaints are typical. "We don't have a sense of security, even when we bow in prayer to God ... We in Serambi Mekah (Aceh) have been crying too much ... We Acehnese have never been given the right to choose."
Alia is strong and intelligent. She asks her fellow Acehnese to exhume the remains of people buried in a mass grave and rebury them according to Islamic custom. She believes her father's body is among the skeletons.
The authorities consider her act "subversive". An official, who is her own uncle, tries to arrest her. When her boyfriend Farhan asks her to flee Aceh, she scolds him, "Surrendering is the last option I would ever do".
Her father, Tengku Saiful (L. Halim), turns out to be alive and well. When he asks her to join the Serambi Mekah proindependence movement, she replies, "Can the move make Aceh secure and free from fear?" Her father cannot answer the question.
Ratna is known as a director who raises vivid sociopolitical issues. She emerged as "defender" of labor heroine Marsinah when she performed Marsinah, Nyanyian Dari Bawah Tanah (Marsinah: Song from the Underground) in 1994 and Marsinah Menggugat (Marsinah Accuses) in 1997.
There is no resolution to the drawn-out Aceh affair. "It has been going on for a long time but what the government has been doing is politicking which does not touch the substance," she said.
Ratna hopes Alia will encourage people to find out more about Aceh and the crux of the matter. She needed three months to write the script based on newspaper clippings, not on her personal observations in the province. She enriched the clippings with data from Jejak (Footprint), an institute she founded to monitor human tragedies that the government refuses to resolve.
She said she decided not to personally visit Aceh "so that I am not leaning to either side of those in the dispute".
In Alia Ratna does try to stay neutral, which is no doubt difficult because she has been highly involved in political activities over the last two years. The Soeharto government jailed her for two months in 1998.
She is determined to return to art and she wanted to make Alia free from political slogans.
"Politics is too heavy for me. I feel I am needed more in the arts."
Ratna, who received Rp 120 million in donations from businesspeople to stage the production, said Alia was her first step in her effort to devote herself to the arts.
"There are no political motives behind this work but people are free to interpret it otherwise after seeing the play," she said.
Still, Ratna has not changed. Although the political content of Alia is presented in a refined way, the overtones are obvious.
It is shown in Alia's final statement: "It's unimportant whether Alia dies or not. What counts is if truth calls you, follow it even though the road is bumpy."