Teater Kita, where ritual meets cartoon

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.