Sena Didi mime goes beyond the boundaries of movement
Sena Didi mime goes beyond the boundaries of movement
M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
When the Romans invented mime, a play consisting of short,
improvised burlesque acts, it was performed to depict current
events and delved into themes like love, adultery and mockery of
the gods.
Staying true to the time-honored tradition, the Jakarta-based
Sena Didi mime company made effective use of the art form to
serve a more mundane cause, mocking the country's leaders who
allow common people to drown in misery.
But if the Romans were the first to disengage mime from dance
and speech, Sena Didi, out of necessity, resorted to the two
attributes to express a variety of emotions be it anger, disgust
or despair.
In a two-hour-plus performance, staged at Gedung Kesenian
Jakarta (GKJ) as part of the Schouwburg Festival to commemorate
the 18th anniversary of the playhouse, the mimes tackled headline
issues like scarcity of fuel, bad debts, the slumping economy,
Aceh peace, ethnic and racial division, and even a tacit rivalry
between Vice President Jusuf Kalla and President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono.
Sena Didi, founded by the late Sena A. Utoyo and actor Didi
Petet, is known for its socially commited performing art, which
are frequently staged to make stinging criticisms of a variety of
government policies.
The company's first production, Becak (Pedicab), staged in
1987 at the height of president Soeharto's authoritarian rule,
touched on the issue of a purge of the three-wheeled pedicabs in
Jakarta, a means of transportation that was very instrumental
both for its driver or the capital's residents.
During Tuesday's performance, titled Tanah Air Tanah (Land
Water Land), Sena Didi commissioned five of its consummate
actors, who had full control of their seemingly rubberized bodies
and expressions, to vent all manner of anger and apathy about
anything amiss in the country, at times in a highly comical
manner.
The five characters seemed to be created to give a voice to
the powerless individual and in the course of the play, none were
given a chance to escape their fate.
A sense of impending doom was felt from the time the curtain
was drawn.
A sad-looking pregnant woman, symbolizing the motherland or,
perhaps, mother nature, was seen watering a growing plant on the
side of an oddly-shaped creature, which was chanting the name of
product brands familiar to the country's millions, from food and
modern gadgets to clothing and cars.
While mother nature was carrying her burden, we, the happy
consumer, are busy buying things that are processed in such a way
that is detrimental to nature.
The five characters, dressed in clown dresses, later turned up
on stage and for the next half hour delivered mime in its
original form.
Thirty minutes of stage antics and physical jokes was enough
to dispel the gloomy ambience from the opening scene.
A band of live musicians, stationed at a corner of GKJ's
spacious stage, deserves credit for bringing a fine-tuned score
to the lengthy show, down from one note tip-toeing sounds to an
instrumental cacophony that provided a background for frequent
quarrels between the characters.
The characters went seriously verbal when they began to
address the country's myriad of problems in their private `room'.
After juggling and dancing, the five clowns arranged one of
two most important stage props, their wodden chair -- the other
being white panels that could be modified into wheelchairs or
public toilets! -- to build a row of windows from which each
could read out open letters to whom it may concern.
"Once you are allowed to set up a political party, what color
will you choose to represent your party. Will it be yellow, red
or green? All have been used by other parties and I don't want
this problem with colors to start a new conflict," Mimi said,
apparently directed toward the Acehnese, who will be able to set
up local parties in the near future.
Other posed questions to Susilo, Kalla and House speaker Agung
Laksono who failed to handle problems from unemployment, rising
fuel prices and only imaginary answers they would likely get.
Approaching the show's intermission, the mimes dabbled in the
realm of post-modern theater -- of confounding the boundary
between a spectacle and its spectators.
Many times, actors stepped down from the stage and teased
spectators with silly questions or asked someone to partake in
the show.
At one point, stage announcer and TV personality Jody of rock
outfit Superbejo asked the audience to stand up in honor of
something that turned out to be silly stage antics.
In his open letter, one of the characters, Birkud, uttered his
disappointment by saying that the government is no Michael
Jackson -- able to provide entertainment amid their destitution.
But for the audience at the GKJ, the Michael Jacksons were
Birkud and his four friends.