Teater Kita, where ritual meets cartoon

By Lauren Bain

MAKASSAR, South Sulawesi (JP): It's a balmy night and the amphitheater is crowded. It's a run-down, almost derelict space; the pavement, still warm from the midday sun, is badly cracked; tall black roosters are running around an area that might be described as "backstage".

The audience sit on sheets of newspaper spread out on the ground. The backdrop is a high cement wall scrawled with graffiti. A snapshot of urban Makassar.

Teater Kita is arguably the leading contemporary theater group in South Sulawesi. Their most recent work, Aku Pinjam Baju Baru (I'm Borrowing A New Shirt) presented last week, drew considerable attention from both the theater community and the general public in Sulawesi.

The group, officially established in a sidewalk coffee stall opposite Makassar's Benteng Fort Rotterdam in 1993, works under the direction of Asia Ramli Prapanca ("Ram" to his friends) who collaborates closely with designer and writer Is Hakim.

Teater Kita's work is both highly contemporary and grounded in a strong sense of tradition and local identity.

"Although we create contemporary performance, we always use ritual and traditional performance as a point of departure," explained Ram.

It's not often in Jakarta that we hear news of contemporary theater from outside of Java. There are many reasons for this, but primarily a Jakarta-Yogya-Bandung centric "system" of legitimization and recognition in the arts has led to an assumption that if an arts event is happening outside of Java, it must be of limited critical value.

This, of course, is nothing new, and nor is it unique to Indonesia -- similar patterns of centralistic cultural hegemony exist all over the world. But it's unfortunate that Teater Kita's Aku Pinjam Baju Baru will probably not be seen outside of Sulawesi because it's an imaginative and challenging work.

Aku Pinjam Baju Baru is all about costumes. It's about the changing of costume, the adoption of new identity and the chaos that results. It's about how easy it is to put on a new "costume" or borrow a new shirt, for a new context. Of course it's intended as a political critique -- the military uniform is easily swapped for a reformist outfit, the dictator's supporter becomes a democrat.

At the same time as being sharply critical of this duplicity, like the best of political cartoons, Aku Pinjam Baju Baru is extremely funny. We see a series of "characters" put on new costumes, which they pull out of a coffin, a Pandora's box with the potential to unleash chaos on the world. And the costume design is what really makes this performance work. The characters are delightfully exaggerated superheroes and supervillains of a world going off track. They make fun of political life and of themselves; they are as self-deprecating as they are menacing.

One character wears a headpiece crowned with a huge crucifix and a crescent and star, and a breast plate instantly recognizable as the Pancasila shield without the symbols. He's the hero of emptiness, his values stripped of meaning. This character presides over the costume changing ceremony, mumbling mantra as catastrophe unfolds.

Other characters include an enormous silver communist/East Javanese/Dayak sickle, a man locked in a set of "legal" scales like a convict in stocks, a man tied down by a ball and chain, a woman who dances in a field of rupiah, a man covered in spoons. Their interactions are at once violent, chaotic and ridiculous, climaxing with one character being winched into the air by industrial lifting equipment.

In addition to the exceptional costumes, Aku Pinjam Baju Baru uses a limited amount of text, elements of traditional Makassar- Bugis ritual such as mantra, and a chaotic, almost apocalyptic sound design with trumpets and drums, songs and laughter, the clanging of the huge industrial pulley.

"This work is a reflection of the postreform era, the Gus Dur era," Ram said. "We have tried to 'photograph' the current era and the (manifestations of) power."

Aku Pinjam Baju Baru tests the possibilities of performance and in doing so moves beyond presenting a "flat" critique of politics, which after all we can read about in the newspaper. It effectively contests the symbols of Indonesian political life and the meaning of identity (whether it be of the individual, the political party or the nation) derived from these symbols.

The result is a highly contemporary and unconventional physical performance, perhaps best described as being like the Asterix cartoon crossed with a traditional Bugis-Makassar ritual. Sounds crazy? Well that's exactly the point -- maybe this is a way in which to make sense of the complexity and contradictions of contemporary Indonesia.

It is only one of several Sulawesi-based groups which are challenging the assumption that Java is the center of contemporary Indonesian theater. Last week Makassar audiences also had the opportunity to see new works by locally based Sanggar Merah Putih and Komunitas Teater Perempuan Randa nTovea from Palu in Central Sulawesi. Their works are brave, sophisticated and deserve recognition on this side of the Java Sea.

The writer is an Australian doctoral student and theater worker living in Jakarta.