CONTEMPORARY AND TRADITIONAL, MALE AND FEMALE IN GARASI'S WAKTU BATU

Abstract

Teater Garasi's monumental performance project Waktu Batu (Stone time) appeared in a context of alienation from Javanese cultural tradition produced by the fall of the Suharto regime. Modern theatre groups had previously used familiar Javanese images to simultaneously criticise the authorities and celebrate local cultural identity. Waktu Batu, by contrast, engages with Javanese history and myth in an abstract, fragmented multi-layered stage idiom, said to express the confusion of young Javanese living amidst a mixture of age-old myths and global cultural influences. Reviewing these performances as theatrical events and as reflections on contemporary social experience, I suggest additional resonances, including, importantly, changing gender relations and the power of women.

‘I hear that Garasi are making theatre from Javanese myths. How can that be? They're not Javanese.’

So ends the text of the second of Teater Garasi's Waktu Batu trilogy of plays, in ironic meta-commentary on the group's mammoth project – an intense, three-year-long exploration of Javanese mythology as it reflects on issues of contemporary Javanese/Indonesian identity. Such opinions of Garasi's project did indeed circulate among theatre and arts practitioners in Yogyakarta where the group is based, when news spread about their new work in 2002. For from the time of its founding in the mid-1990s by students of Gadjah Mada University, through its transformation into an independent theatre group in 1999, Garasi had been seen as aligned with the wider world of modern Indonesian and international theatre rather than the local, Java-focused performance scene. While a few early performances had engaged with Javanese themes and theatrical imagery, most of its recent productions had been adaptations of European plays (Caligula, Waiting for Godot, Endgame) or abstract, avant garde, experimental productions, eclectically blending Indonesian and global cultural influences. Garasi members explained such hybridity as reflective of their own hybrid cultural world.1 Several group members had come from areas of Indonesia other than Java; the group leader, Yudi Tajuddin, although ethnically Javanese, had grown up in Jakarta and only recently moved to Yogya. That Yudi and the group should be directing their theatrical energies so intently, and over such a long period, to Javanese myth and history, was surprising and noteworthy.

The wording of the comment may suggest some resentment of its essentialising implications – only Javanese may engage with Javanese culture. If a further intimation of unfair judgement comes across in the statement, one factor might be disappointment at the critical reception of the first play in the trilogy, Waktu Batu: kisah-kisah yang bertemu di ruang tunggu (Stone time: stories which meet in the waiting room).2 ‘Confusing’ (membingungkan) was the repeated evaluation, a quality seen to derive from ‘fragmented scenes, unclear characters, a disorderly dramatic structure. … a lack of focus’ (Tranggono 2002). Some commentators appreciated that the sense of confusion was intentional, that it suggested contemporary social experience. But most argued that audiences would be confused and dissatisfied, unable to understand the play's meaning. While the production was indeed demanding and difficult, the Yogya critics' refusal to engage with it seemed particularly strong. Arguably Garasi had failed to play the game, to engage with Javanese cultural tradition from the ‘inside’, to represent Javanese identity in a recognisable way.

In response to such critique Garasi members immersed themselves in intense rehearsals for the second and third production, adding layer upon layer of visual images, movements and sounds, crowding the stage with action, so that the later productions were still more complex and, presumably, confusing than the first. The second production, Waktu Batu II, was performed in July 2003, and the third, Waktu Batu III, staged to great acclaim at the Jakarta Arts Summit in September-October 2004.3 The script of Waktu Batu II has been published in book form, together with introductory and concluding sections setting out the mythical and historical background to the play, and reflections on the process of its development from the director and the script writing team.4 With the project satisfactorily completed, Garasi has moved on to new ventures.5 Yet the issues raised by the Waktu Batu performances about contemporary meanings of Javanese tradition and identity, and their representation in modern Indonesian theatre, remain very interesting to explore.

This paper examines Garasi's trilogy against the background of a common pattern of engagement with Javanese cultural tradition among modern theatre groups in central Java in the late 20th century, and in the context of post-1998, post-Suharto Indonesia when the Waktu Batu plays were produced. It looks at the factors motivating Garasi to turn to Javanese mythology, the nature of the performances they created, and the sense of Javanese history and identity conveyed. We might ask how Garasi's stage imagery works as an expression of contemporary meanings of Javanese tradition as compared to the performances of other groups, in earlier times. Who is it speaking to and what is it saying?

Javanese kings, clowns and kampung folk

During the time of the New Order regime in Indonesia, the dominant trend in ‘modern’ or ‘national’ theatre – plays with dialogue in Indonesian language, influenced by the model of European theatre – among groups based in Java was one which drew strongly and directly on local Javanese theatre tradition. Narratives, characters and scenic conventions from the wayang tradition were invoked in modern plays; gamelan music, traditional dance and shadow puppetry provided a common store of stage devices. Approaches varied, some groups reproducing traditional theatrical imagery straightforwardly and engaging seriously with its cultural meanings, others exaggerating and lampooning familiar forms.

In Yogyakarta the acknowledged founder of and model for this kind of theatrical activity was the playwright and poet Rendra. The open-air rehearsals of Rendra's Bengkel Theatre in the kampung where they lived provided the crowds that gathered to watch with both an entertaining spectacle and a novel mode of theatre training and performance – more socially inclusive, more populist, less tied to intellectually demanding written scripts than the standard format of modern theatre, with lots of energetic movement accompanied by gamelan instruments and incorporating local Javanese performance elements. Several directors of theatre groups I encountered in the 1980s and 1990s reported being fascinated and intrigued by Bengkel's work as teenagers in the 1970s. Later they established their own groups, likewise in kampung neighbourhoods, with local youths devising performances incorporating elements of regional theatre.

Rendra's plays were characteristically big epic dramas about kings and state politics, at first adaptations of western classics such as Oedipus, Lysistrata and Macbeth, and later his own works. Most famous of these, seen as emblematic of the role of Javanese ‘tradition’ in his theatre, is Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga (The struggle of the Naga tribe), with its wayang-like structure, use of a narrator styled as dalang (puppeteer) and farcical use of court scene conventions in traditional theatre to create a satirical portrayal of a queen, her ministers and military leaders. In fact the play's influences are eclectic – a chorus in the style of Greek drama participates prominently in several scenes. But it is the Javanese wayang reference which gives a local cast to this story of dispossession of an idyllic regional community by a rapacious central state, and that equates the fat queen with President Suharto and/or his wife, Ibu Tien, and by implication indicts the exploitative policies of the contemporary Indonesian government. Javanese cultural tradition is crucial to the play as the site of its political meaning.

Engagement with national politics was central to Rendra's theatre practice, as it was to that of Dinasti, the group that followed Bengkel theatre as the dominant force in Yogya theatre, after Rendra was banned from performance by the government in 1978. Like Bengkel, Dinasti staged grand dramas set in historical kingdoms, reflecting on issues of political power. Their early productions contained lengthy, serious debates about political values and strategies, intended, in the words of the group's founders, to ‘conscientise the officials’ (menyadarkan pejabat). Later the critique becomes more strident, conveyed through grotesque parodies such as that of a king who wears huge military boots preventing him from contact with the ground and understanding of his people in Sepatu Nomor Satu (Number One Boot)

In the mid-1980s a new mode of performance emerged, introduced by the groups Jeprik and Gandrik. Designated sampakan,6 it drew on the simple, participatory style of rural folk theatre to depict interactions among kampung and village folk rather than kings and nobles. Mixing light-hearted social critique with engaging humour, its colloquial Indonesian dialogue interspersed with Javanese, sampakan theatre attracted a wide popular audience. Its folksy, simple style and focus on the ‘little people’ was adapted by NGO groups for community education. In the city of Solo, the group Gapit engaged more seriously and directly with the social experience of ordinary people, through plays set in contemporary lower class communities, expressed in the rough Javanese language used by such people rather than Indonesian, focusing on themes of social injustice and marginalisation.

Among the different varieties of modern theatre activity, political resistance was clearly a key function. Critique of the contemporary political order was expressed through theatrical symbols and images associated with traditional powerholders. Sympathy and solidarity with the have-nots were celebrated through images of clowns and villagers. At the same time, the Javanese resonance of stage productions arguably connected with the sense of identity of actors and audiences. Theatre practitioners and their audiences were still intimately familiar with the idioms of local theatre, and involved in practices of ‘tradition’ in their daily lives. Both steeped in local cultural tradition, yet critical of its perceived flaws and its manipulation by contemporary power-holders, they were able to express through theatre both the contradictions and rich, plural resonances of this experience.

After the fall

The big political changes resulting from the resignation of President Suharto in 1998 and the dismantling of the New Order regime have also had important effects on cultural expression. The restructuring of administrative relations to provide greater autonomy for the regions has been accompanied in many areas by enthusiastic celebration of local cultural traditions. The loosening of political ties to the centre and the weakening of its cultural dominance is marked by proud assertion of local identity through various media, including performance. In the heartland of Java, however, the situation is more complex and problematic. Javanese values and symbols, as the cultural currency of the New Order regime, were widely questioned and criticised when the regime fell. Seminars, newspaper articles and media interviews debated whether Javanese cultural tradition was irredeemably hierarchical and ‘feudal’ or had something to contribute to the new era of democratic reform.

The responses of performance groups were various. A collaborative production involving 13 Yogya theatre groups, with a stated agenda of exploring ‘the development of Yogyakarta culture from the time of Mataram, the time of transition to Independence, the New Order and the period of reform’ (Kedaulatan Raykat, 28 May 2003), presented an unrelievedly bleak, dystopic portrayal of Java's past and present. Other performances attempted to revive the historical figure of Gadjah Mada as an emblem of national unity and healing.7 The most surprising and interesting response was Garasi's. Just as others were struggling with and turning away from themes of Javanese identity and political history, Garasi embraced them.

Subsequent years have seen a readjustment to post-Suharto political and cultural conditions. Javanese cultural reference of the established type, drawing on familiar symbols from the wayang tradition, mobilising kingly figures and village clowns, still continues in modern theatre in Central Java. But it no longer occurs as part of a cultural/political movement, an expression of collective consciousness and shared political resistance. Javanese identity and ‘tradition’, destabilised by recent events, have arguably ‘opened up’. No longer ‘owned’ by authentically credited figures, these concepts become available to a group like Garasi for creative exploration – even if there is some sceptical commentary from the sidelines. Likewise perhaps, Javanese identity as something contested and problematic rather than a revered cultural essence, becomes more interesting to Garasi in its plural possibilities.

Exorcising historical stain

Yudi, Garasi's director, explains the origins of the project in terms of his own personal situation and that of other members of the group. Around 1999–2000, he developed a growing interest in doing a production about Javanese identity and time. He and other Garasi members were experiencing at this period a sense of disorientation, a lack of direction and of unified self through time. ‘History had no significance for my life then; my current situation was dark and the future blurred.’8 Perhaps Indonesia as a whole was experiencing this kind of disorientation, set in motion by the events of the previous few years. As to whether their mood may have been influenced by the kind of questioning of Javanese values referred to above, Yudi suggests there may have been some unconscious influence. Having grown up in Jakarta, outside the Javanese world, he lacked the cultural resources to explore the resonance of these ideas. But through conversation with Cindhil, a Garasi member with specialist knowledge of Javanese literature, and the Solo-based contemporary dalang Slamet Gendono, he found the texts and concepts on which to build a production. The concepts were sukerta and ruwat, spiritual pollution and ritual exorcism, and the texts were Murwakala, Sudamala and Watu Gunung. Murwakala is the story played out in wayang performances used for the ritual of ruwatan, Sudamala is a legend about release from a cursed state, and Watu Gunung is a text about the origins of Javanese time. The project itself represents a kind of ruwatan, ritual exorcism, of the condition the Garasi actors were experiencing.

The group travelled to temple monuments throughout Java where these legends are depicted in statues and reliefs, and studied them as texts. They also read many accounts of Javanese history. Experts in Javanese history and literature gave lectures, and helped workshop the play script, which was developed collaboratively by a team of three writers. Yudi reports that in exploring the texts and architectural remains where these ancient stories are represented, the writers and other group members were also seeking to define the nature of Javanese culture. Apa yang disebut Java sesungguhya? – What is Java really?

But even in the most ancient sites they found Hindu elements present. Candi Sukuh, reportedly built to revitalise pre-Indian Javanese culture, is full of lingga and yoni. Not only the epic repertoire of wayang but also the techniques of shadow puppetry performance are from India.

Eventually, acknowledging the false logic of pursuing the pure, authentic essence of any culture, they focused instead on the distinctive sensibility of Javanese culture, its syncretism. Geographical location was a key factor, Yudi suggests. To survive, Java has had to be open to influence from different directions, different cultural flows. But in the 14th and 15th century, with the simultaneous arrival of Islam and the Europeans and the beginnings of modernity, changes came too rapidly to be absorbed. The Javanese fled inland, or metaphorically retreated inwards, in escape and denial. Among the power-holders, each new leader destroyed the legacy of his predecessor, creating his own myths. The Javanese came to be plagued by ‘short term memory’. Events of the past which conflict with the narratives of the current rulers, like the Communist massacres of 1965-1966 during the New Order period, are ‘forgotten’, untellable. Today people are disconnected, unable to interpret their past or imagine their future. With no clear state cultural policy, global cultural influence floods in.

The narratives and images developed from these observations and experiences were worked on by the group in intensive, demanding, highly-disciplined rehearsals, eight hours per day, four days per week, for many months before each of the productions. The resulting stage imagery is abstract, complex and multi-layered; the accompanying dialogue oblique and poetic. Repeated fragments of dialogue, and the blending of images and characters, create continuities between three main narratives, the Murwakala legend, telling of the birth of the monster-god Kala after a forced coupling between the god Siva and his wife Uma, the story of Watugunung, a legendary king commemorated in the Javanese and Balinese calendars, and the coming of the Europeans to Java. Central concepts of these performances, crucially shaping stage imagery are fragmentation and layering – the experience of time as fragmented and discontinuous, the sense of history lived by individuals as a wash of simultaneous layers rather than a linear series of events.

The spare, simple ‘classic’ aesthetic of the first production shows the closest connection with the Indianised Javanese cultural world of the narratives. The actors wear plain white costumes, Indian/Indonesian style sarongs and bare torsos for the males, and often adopt the postures of temple statues or Javanese dancers; there is Javanese tembang accompaniment and symbols such as that of the giant turtle, bearing the world on its back. Subsequent productions emphasise the contemporaneity of myth and history, its existence in the midst of the here and now, through styles of costuming and music, technological devices and a frenetic, complex mix of images and sound. So in the first production the scene of forced sex between the god Siva and his consort Uma as they journey through the heavens commences with acrobatic pursuit of Uma by Siva, simply dressed in black and white, as dreamy Indian-style sitar music plays and other figures perform sensuous hip-swaying dance movements. In the second production Siva wears a wig of red dreadlocks and Uma a black evening gown and long gloves; their interaction occurs simultaneously with a man lying writhing on a hospital bed, another couple dancing, a woman singing a Javanese tembang in front of a flickering fluorescent green globe. In the third production, Siva and Uma's dialogue as they struggle is produced by amplified voiceover, while huge images of the pair, tumbling and soaring through the sky are projected on to a screen. After a furious Uma curses Siva as a dog, and he transforms her into the monstrous witch Durga, in the first production the witch-like costuming and bearing, and eerie, strangled voice of Durga and her alter ego Kali convey a sense of ongoing menace to the world.9 In the third production the Durga/Kali speech occurs against the backdrop of huge filmic images of modern trains, planes and ships, with figures moving forwards and backwards across the screen. A later scene in an airport lounge, with figures sitting waiting and hauling luggage across the stage, shifts into a confrontation between a young man in casual slacks, shirt and hat and the masked, dreadlocked god Kala. Ancient myth, technologically sophisticated modernity and global mobility are layered on top of one another in the here and now.

From production to production dramatic imagery has grown denser and more complex, scenes have been reordered to create a less linear structure, and new material added to a few scenes. Elements in the first production identified by the performers as having contemporary contextual significance have been underlined symbolically in the later plays.10 The overall narrative, however, remains the same. Several key nodes of action occur in linear sequence in the first production, and in jumbled order in later ones – the birth of Kala; Watu Gunung as a child asking for food from his mother Sinta, but instead being struck on the head by her with a giant rice spoon, and running away; Watu Gunung as king unknowingly marrying his mother and her discovering the wound on his head as he sleeps; the arrival on a boat of the first Europeans, bringing a plague of physical illnesses and a dread disease of the mind – amnesia; a battle between Watu Gunung and the god Kala, which Kala loses and is turned to stone. The first production ends, and others commence, with the reading of a genealogy of Javanese kings from Adam and Eve through a long line of Arabic saints to Senopati of Mataram, while simultaneously a voiceover in Dutch describes the two key developments in the modern history of the Indonesian archipelago – the decline of the Hindu/Buddhist kingdoms with the rise of Islamic states, and their eclipse in turn by the sea-power of the west.

Figure 1. Siva confronts Umayi - Waktu Batu II. Photo courtesy Garasi

Figure 2. The Indonesian archipelago and its people - Waktu Batu III. Photo courtesy Garasi

Figure 3. Modern life as perpetual motion – airport scene, Waktu Batu III. Photo courtesy Garasi

Duplication, repetition and other devices create a sense of common, shared involvement in these experiences, and weave threads of connection between them. As a multitude of young Watu Gunung, banging their plates on the ground, demand food from two angry mother figures who tell them to find their food out on the road, a sense of mother-son friction and rejection as the heritage of Everyman is conveyed. In the second production the two actors playing the mother, Sinta, chat together between rebuffs to their sons, discussing what mereka (they), are doing – writing, using machines, producing goods like soap, toothpaste and bread. The Europeans, the ‘they’ of the ship scene, have invaded the everyday realm of the home, filling it with goods. ‘What shall we do?’ one Sinta asks the other, now that they no longer have to cook. In the third production the women are in illuminated glass boxes, one using a mix-master, the other having her hair dried in a salon, as they talk of the new opportunities for leisure and consumption ‘their’ arrival has brought. The distractions of foreign-derived modern technology and affluence connect with and reinforce the rejection of one's own.

Many threads connect the savage fight between Siva and Uma, producing the witch-like Durga and the monster-child Kala, with the confrontation between Watu Gunung and his mother. As Siva's spilt sperm falls into the sea, and nature erupts with loud noise and flashing lights, the actor playing Siva morphs into Kala, declaring ‘My creation was unintentional. … I am disaster, and disaster upon all you who know me’ … ‘I am the coral where the seabirds nest, not the sky where they dance and fly. I am the coral where the birds that cross the ocean collide and crash.’

Likewise when Sinta strikes her son, and a great commotion of cries and percussive beating signal the enormity of her offence, Watu Gunung appears momentarily in his adult persona, repeating Kala's words ‘I am the coral where the seabirds nest… where the birds that cross the ocean collide and crash.’ His mother, Sinta, distraught and grieving, overwhelmed by awesome guilt at what she has done, in turn takes on the form of the demonic Durga. Signifying this fusion, in the first production Durga and Kali join the two Sinta figures, beating out a furious percussive rhythm with rice-pounding poles while their sons perform a crude jathilan dance, plates in mouth. Durga recites with horrifying menace a list of types of people cursed to become her food, prey for her and Kala. Chaos and a sense of impending, ongoing disaster mark the blending together of two archetypal myths of male-female conflict.

In another scene entitled Ruang tunggu Sinta (Sinta's waiting room), in an atmosphere of nostalgic longing, the two manifestations of Sinta and Durga each recount their experiences of waiting endlessly and searching vainly for their absent man. Sinta describes taking a male form borrowed from the gods to roam the world, looking for her son. Durga/Kali tells of her monstrous body being torn apart by thorns in the forest, banished there by Siva's curse. Yet every night she waits for Siva, seeing his image in the darkness and rain, calling to him with furious desire ‘Hey, aren't you bored yet with my body? Come on, make my body tremble! Don't stop! Smash me! Curse me!’

In the first production the setting is abstract, timeless; Durga and Kali attired in witches robes and the two Sinta in white dresses seem like mythical figures. But in the third production they are modern women, sitting on couches, in their nightwear, late at night, smoking as they talk intimately about their past. The familiarity of this contemporary image, the recognisable, ‘normal’ tones of their reminiscences leading up to Sinta's passionate cry, create a powerful sense that these experiences are those of Everywoman. Male-female frictions as ancient as time are very much part of the world today.

Images recalling the Sinta/Durga/Watu Gunung motif recur throughout the performances: Sinta with rice spoon, striking a ceramic head, huge rice ladles, a figure with a rice pot for a head. They feature simultaneously with a myriad of other signs: turtles – both huge, unmoving, world-sustaining and frenetically attacking – hospital beds, corridors, lamps, ships and stones. Together the profusion of signs and aesthetic of multiple layering creates a sense of confusion and complexity which is widely identified as the major experiential effect of the production. Both critics and supporters of the play posit a sense of confusion among audience members, viewed either as failed communication, or as echoing the disorientation experienced by young Indonesians, attempting to interpret their culture and history from opaque signs and conflicting sources. The creators of Waktu Batu likewise speak of themes of time, transition, and amnesia about the past, encapsulated in the fragmentation, repetition and multivocality of stage imagery.

Along with, or perhaps via this experiential sense of confusion, what further reflections on Javanese history and identity may be discerned? One commentator sees in the fragmented, discontinuous form of the play a resistance to essentialism, refutation of the notion of a pure traditional culture and of a fixed contemporary identity. Another perceived suggestion is that of the fragmentation of the Indonesian nation (Bain 2005: 80-81). Historical amnesia is one of the crisis points in Javanese/Indonesian culture frequently mentioned by the creators of the project, signalled in performance by many images of struck, smashed heads and the figure of the dazed Watu Gunung, waking from weeks of sleep on the lap of his wife/ mother, asking ‘Am I dreaming?’ To assist with the process of interpretation, or to make fun of such intellectualising activity, or both, at the 2004 International Arts Festival performance of Waktu Batu in Jakarta, the Yogya literary academic Faruk was invited to address the audience between acts of the play. Describing the performance as one which posed the question ‘Who are we?’ Faruk drew attention to the liberating concept that identity is a matter of choice, rather than something fixed, and spoke of positive and negative aspects of the Javanese trait of adaptability.

To myself as viewer, ongoing male-female conflict and womanly anger come across as particularly striking themes. Another intriguing issue is the role of the performance as a ruwatan, a ritual of expiation and healing. Is there a sense of progression in the shift from the bleak, violent ambience of the first production, ending with the defeat of European rule described through voiceover in Dutch, to the final scene of the third production, where a modern band comes on to the stage, playing pleasant mood music? Figures from previous scenes rush in and out – travellers with their bags, women in nightdresses, a woman holding a head, a child with plate in hand, Siva on stilts. As soothing music plays louder and louder, drowning out other sounds, the frenetic pace of action slows. Several couples dance, Yudi, the director comes onstage and enthusiastic applause begins. Could there be a sense here of celebration, of the acceptance of a rich, mixed, unavoidable heritage of multiple voices and fragmented identities? Or is the reference instead ironic – does the modern music drown out unpleasant contemporary reality, just as Sinta's soothing lullabies to her child/ husband reinforced his amnesia? Are both meanings possible, as alternatives or intertwined? Might celebration of contemporary identity necessarily involve a degree of amnesia?

Meanwhile, as interpretations of the Waktu Batu project flourished in the Jakarta arts centre and among cultural commentators and academics, local and foreign, how was the play being received and understood by its home constituency, audiences in Yogyakarta? A most interesting article in the theatre journal LéBur explores this question in some detail.11 The writer first describes her own reactions to a performance of Waktu Batu II, then records the responses of those around her. To her the representation of Java on stage is very different from its usual form (sungguh tidak seperti biasa). Although familiar with the figures of Kala, Uma, Durga, Siva and Shinta, she finds these understandings ‘of no help’ (tidak berguna). However her memories of watching and reading about wayang, and of high school history lessons, create a sense of connection with the performance, and the overall experience causes her to think about the meaning of being Javanese. Meanwhile, the young viewers around her have brought their own experiences and expectations to the show. She hears them comment admiringly on the sophistication of the production and on the attractiveness of performers. In response to a questionnaire distributed by the author, over 80% of audience members reported that they enjoyed the performance, particularly the visual effects and the acting, although only slightly more than half said that they understood it. In keeping with the author's perceptions, the composition of the audience proved to be overwhelmingly young (75% under 25 ) and predominantly male (61%).

The writer challenges the views of journalists and cultural commentators concerning the experience of audiences at Waktu Batu performances – the assumption of confusion and dissatisfaction mentioned earlier. She cites press reviews which describe the ‘terror’, ‘powerlessness’ and ‘schizophrenia’ inflicted on audiences by the play's fragmented, complex stage imagery and disjointed dialogue. Respondents to her survey, by contrast, report their enjoyment of the multi-layered stories and characters of the performance, and its experimentation with theatre conventions and history texts. One viewer admits confusion about the intended message of the play, but records his delight in the visual effects and staging. These viewers, the author argues, differ from audiences of the past, who came to the theatre with the ‘burden’ of trying to understand the play. These young people come to enjoy. Having grown up in an atmosphere of confusion and constant stimulation, steeped in the global culture of television, they are able to enjoy and appreciate many things happening at once, to experience their totality as a happening, to celebrate the moment. The attitudes to performance of young viewers are often disparaged in theatre circles as shallow and sensation-oriented. Instead, this writer believes, their interest and capacity to appreciate theatre should be nurtured, their involvement promoted.

Projecting from this article, we might envisage one segment of the audience at Waktu Batu performances, knowledgeable about and connected with Javanese culture, who are stimulated by the experience of watching the play to re-think their understandings of Javanese history and personal identity. The majority of viewers, meanwhile, are younger people who engage at a more visual and sensual level with stage imagery. Neither group has the opportunity to identify with familiar stage action and imagery as audiences of Java-based theatre groups did in the 1970s-1990s. There are no wayang-style clowns to laugh with or blustering demon kings to mock. The familiar images of traditional figures have been made strange, and it is their very strangeness and incongruous mixing which provokes thought about Javanese identity. The dense complexity of the worked and re-worked stage images and the fragmentation of verbal references make it virtually impossible to appreciate their meanings fully without repeated viewings of rehearsals and performances.

In creating these performances, Garasi actors have in turn employed a different approach to Javanese theatre groups in the past. Reference to cultural tradition stems not from personal familiarity, spontaneous association and improvisation, but systematic research and constant refinement. Rehearsals are not open, entertaining spectacles but highly-disciplined and programmed. Garasi's engagement with Javanese myth in some ways is more reminiscent of that of a European group employing the myth of Orpheus, Odysseus or Medea as a metaphor for contemporary identity – if one can imagine all three stories and more blended together! Garasi might be seen to have created a new type of theatrical engagement with Javanese tradition, reflective of a more individualised, liberalised and globalised Indonesia. Reference to social context takes the form of highly-crafted artistic reflection rather than the expression of collective consciousness.

Given this shift, the kind of broad social reference associated with theatre in the Suharto years is perhaps hardly a relevant expectation of Garasi's Waktu Batu. The upheaval of political transition after Suharto's demise, and the ensuing crisis of confidence in Javanese cultural values, clearly contributed to the initiation of the project. Javanese ‘tradition’, compromised by its association with discredited powerholders, loosened from its revered status, became newly available for Garasi's project. Contextual factors, personal experience and artistic experimentation worked together. But the sophisticated content and form of the ensuing performances seem unlikely to provide expression of some kind of ‘organic’ reflection on their contemporary social context. And yet … and yet … .

When I spoke to some Garasi members about my perception of male-female hostility as a prominent issue in the play, one of the women actors reported a similar feeling among group members. Talking together, actors had agreed that through the long months of rehearsals and performances it was conflict between men and women and violence of mothers towards children which had come across as the major experiential themes of the play, rather than the more abstract concepts of time and identity highlighted by the director and scriptwriters. Questioned about the significance of male-female conflict in Waktu Batu, and the prominent roles it gives to female figures, the director Yudi responds simply that this theme is present in the original myths. But he happily acknowledges the strength of the women performers in the Garasi group, and the power with which they have been able to represent gendered themes on stage. The actor playing the role of Durga, in particular Sri Qadariatin or U'ung, had discovered within herself the capacity to produce the eerie strangled voice tone, reinforcing her intense, mesmerising stage presence, which conveys so forcefully the sense of elemental, maniacal female anger.12

Central to the portrayal of male-female friction in play, as noted earlier, is its ongoing, interconnected quality – age-old conflicts intertwined and perpetually repeated. To attempt to trace resonances between such motifs and particular aspects of contemporary Indonesian social experience, surfacing in performances independently of the intentions of their male creators, would be a fascinating exercise, but not one I am in a position to undertake here. My aim is simply to point out commonalities between these aspects of Garasi's productions – gendered themes, prominent women performers – and developments elsewhere in contemporary Indonesian artistic and social life. The ending of the authoritarian Suharto regime has both liberalised public expression of gender and sexuality, and given increased opportunity for social and political participation to women, freed from ideological restriction to domestic roles. Meanwhile a fierce backlash from conservative forces produces campaigns to impose new constraints – anti-pornography laws, religious dress codes, rules of traditional custom. For the first time many young women authors write explicitly about sex, and provoke shocked condemnation. Artists also write back against male domination and female repression. The powerful figure of Durga of the Waktu Batu productions, known also as Calon Arang or Dirah, appears in a number of texts and performances, denouncing the male violence which has created her and continues to oppress her.13

Images and voices of women are represented strongly in the struggle to define new directions for Indonesia. Garasi's Waktu Batu performances contribute to this general effort. Not only time, transition, lessons from history, but also possibilities for a new gendered future are part of its reference. This complex, demanding series of performances projects a vision of Javanese identity quite unrecognisable in terms of ‘traditional’ patterns of theatrical reference, but richly innovative and imaginative. And audiences with a cultural identity less essentially Javanese, more pluralistic and globally wired than in the past are stimulated to appreciate, enjoy and think about their past and, present and future.

Notes

¹For example, they chose soundtrack music from the film Apocalypse now to accompany the group-devised production on the theme of violence, Carousel, not as a purposeful appropriation of western culture, either critical or slavishly imitatory, but because this was music they were familiar with, with appropriate resonance for the mood they were attempting to create (Dirmawan Hatta, personal communication).

²Lauren Bain reports on the group's disappointment at this time in a thoughtful discussion of public reception of Waktu Batu (Bain 2005: 77–79), to which my account is much indebted.

³The full titles and performance dates of the three productions are as follows:

Waktu Batu: kisah-kisah yang bertemu di ruang tunggu (Stone time: stories which meet in a waiting room), July 2002; Waktu Batu. Ritus seratus kecemasan dan wajah siapa yang terbelah (Stone time. Rites of a hundred anxieties, and whose face is cracked in two), July 2003; Waktu Batu. Deus ex machina dan perasaan-perasaan padamu (Stone time. Deus ex machina and feelings for you), September 2004.

⁴The volume was published by the Magelang-based literary publisher Indonesiatera. See Latif, et al. 2004. As to why the script of the second in the series of plays had been chosen for publishing Garasi members responded that it was the most ‘representative’ of the project. I am not aware of any plans to publish the scipts of the the first or third production.

⁵In fact the Waktu Batu continues to be performed along with Garasi's other activities in overseas productions. In April 2006 for example Waktu Batu III was staged in Japan.

⁶This term is most usually explained as deriving from sampak, the loud simple tune played by the gamelan orchestra to accompany vigorous dramatic action.

⁷For more detail about these performances and observations on their social meanings see Hatley 2004.

⁸ Sejarah tidak punya signifikansi atas kehidupan saya sekarang. Sekarang, kekinian saya gelap, depan kabur. This comment and others quoted here come from Yudi's account of the Waktu Batu project given in an interview in June 2004.

⁹Two actors representing Durga and Kali, double manifestations of the demonic goddess, engage in an extended monologue, telling of the curse which humankind will suffer into the infinite future, as she comes to embody ever more strongly the horrifying evil man expects of her, becomes the being he has created.

¹⁰The second production is subtitled ‘schizophrenia’ and opens in the ward of a mental hospital, in keeping with the prominence of split characterisation in the first production and a perceived connection with the fragmentation of identity in contemporary society.

¹¹See Alia Swastika (2004) ‘Biografi penonton Teater di Indonesia: yang retak dan bergerak.

¹²The acting skills of U'ung and fellow woman performer Erythrina Baskorowati have taken them beyond Garasi to the world stage – both were selected to participate in Robert Wilson's international production dramatising the Sulawesi historical epic, I La Galigo.

¹³In Toety Heraty's long poem Calon Arang: kisah perempuan korban patriarki (Heraty 2000) Calon Arang symbolises suffering and injustice experienced by widows; Goenawan Mohamad's widow figure is a victim of tyrannical male political power (Goenawan Mohamad 2000); in Ayu Utami's novel Larung (Utami 2002) the image of Calon Arang blends with that of Gerwani, the pre-1965 Communist women's movement, demonised by the New Order. The Balinese performer Cok Sawitri represents Calon Arang as both a victim of political violence (in her performance monologue Pembelaan Dirah) and the embodiment of an alternate female spiritual power marginalised by partriarchal order.