Intercultural Expectations I La Galigo in Singapore Jennifer Lindsay

Intercultural Expectations I La Galigo in Singapore Jennifer Lindsay Labels I La Galigo—a theatrical performance directed by Robert Wilson inspired by an epic story from Sulawesi in Indonesia, which premiered in 2003 in Singapore and then toured Europe, the U.S., and Australia. I La Galigo—a performance of the Bugis epic La Galigo, with music composed and arranged by Rahayu Supanggah; choreography by Andi Ummu Tunru; chanting by Bissu priest Puang Matoa Saidi; performers from Sulawesi, Java, Sumatra, and Bali; and a famous director from America, presented in Jakarta in December 2005 after first touring overseas. I La Galigo—the epic integral to the rituals of the threatened transgendered priests of South Sulawesi in Indonesia, which tells in an ancient language the origins of the Bugis people, now brought to world attention through this staging by director Robert Wilson, with artistic coordination by Restu Kusumaningrum, and text adaptation and dramaturgy by Rhoda Grauer. I La Galigo—a three-hour staging of the Bugis epic La Galigo, directed by Robert Wilson, featuring: lighting design by Robert Wilson, which was the dominant element of the production; traditional music from South Sulawesi and new composition by Supanggah; performers from various parts of Indonesia whose choreographed movement was at times dancelike; a minimal verbal component uttered by the musicians; chanting by a Bissu priest; and sporadic snippets of La Galigo text translated into English and presented as surtitles. I La Galigo—a contemporary staged rendering of a translated narrative summary of the huge corpus of epic episodes collectively called La Galigo, which tell the origins of the Bugis people. I La Galigo—a story of origins previously only sung in poetry by select people from one place, told and retold to other people from that place, now rendered visually by people from other places in a performance devised and directed by people who come from other other places, and performed for many people from many other other other places. Jennifer Lindsay has spent 20 years in Indonesia, as a student, researcher, diplomat, and foundation program officer. From 2003 to 2006 she was Senior Visiting Fellow with the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, teaching in the Southeast Asian Studies Programme, and was previously on the faculty of the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is a translator (from Indonesian into English), and Contributing Editor of Between Tongues: Translation and/of/in Performance in Asia (Singapore University Press, 2006). She is currently Visiting Fellow at the Southeast Asia Centre at the Faculty of Asian Studies, the Australian National University. TDR: The Drama Review 51:2 (T194) Summer 2007. ©2007 60 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.60 by guest on 23 September 2021 However I describe the performance of I La Galigo that I saw in Singapore in 2003, I must choose which elements to include, presuming readers will know some things and not others. I decide that certain words require explanation, and others not. “Bugis,” for instance, or “Robert Wilson.” It depends on where I imagine my readers are from and whether they have seen the performance. We bring our own labeling of “familiar” and “strange” to the performance or this essay, but we also make assumptions of familiarity and strangeness because of the assignment of known labels. Like the label “intercultural,” for instance. The Culture of Interculturalism The words “intercultural” and “interculturalism” have been linked with performance for at least four decades now, and have long since entered common parlance among practitioners, critics, and audiences alike. Introduced by Richard Schechner to contrast with “international,” “intercultural” initially referred to work by and meetings of artists coming from different “cultures” (1983).1 In subsequent nuancing of the concept, interculturalism came to refer to a creative way of working with (or working out) difference. Over the 1980s and early 1990s, there was much debate about the ethics of this, when difference could be interpreted in terms of the appropriation of “third world” cultures by the “first world.” More recently, Schechner has conceptualized interculturalism in relation to globalization (2006:263–325). Implicit within “interculturalism” is the tension between identifying difference on the one hand and seeking commonality on the other. Difference must be acknowledged in order to name the Other as a “culture,” but some transcendence of that difference must be found to allow for “inter”-action. This identifying of difference while seeking commonality has led to a tendency for broad-stroke depictions of culture, such as East and West, North and South, traditional and contemporary. It has also encouraged attention, on the one hand, to a group process in terms of “us” meets “them,” and, on the other, to the visions of individuals, especially theatre directors, in creating a product out of that meeting. “Intercultural performance” is usually portrayed as something that happens among artists, and as something onstage that is shaped by directors and actors. I am interested in thinking about how the attention given to interculturalism shapes audience expectations of performance, both in terms of what they see and hear, and what they do not. What happens when we stop thinking of interculturalism as merely a practice of directors and performers, and turn our attention to the audience? How do audiences bring prior texts of theory, reviews, discussions, and notions of “interculturalism” to their moment of reading a performance? What references, cross-readings, and allusions do they make? To use Julia Kristeva’s term ([1974] 1984), what are the “intertexts” that constitute the audience’s intercultural expectations? What are the “cultures” of an inter-“cultural” performance, and what process of “inter”-action are audiences tuned to observe? And what, I ask, might they then miss? What is the culture of “intercultural performance”? I was stimulated to think further about these issues when I had the opportunity to see I La Galigo, a performance that specifically fits the intercultural bill on the production side. I saw one rehearsal and the final dress rehearsal, plus the opening performance, in Singapore. 1. In an interview with Patrice Pavis, Richard Schechner recalled: Intercultural Expectations I believe I began using [the term “interculturalism”] in the early or mid-1970s, when I was editing a special issue of The Drama Review on the social sciences. I used it simply as a contrast to “interna- tionalism.” In other words, there were lots of national exchanges, but I felt that the real exchange of importance to artists was not that among nations, which really suggests official exchange and artificial kinds of boundaries, but the exchange among cultures, something which could be done by individuals, or by non-official groupings, and it doesn’t obey national boundaries. (in Pavis 1996:42) See also Schechner: “Here we are: North & South, East & West. This is more of an intercultural meeting than an international one” (in Schechner [1983] 1984:252). 61 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.60 by guest on 23 September 2021 I also organized a one-day public forum about the La Galigo epic (which is also known as I La Galigo or Sureq Galigo; henceforth I will refer to La Galigo for the epic, and I La Galigo for the performance) at the Esplanade, held the day after the premiere. The forum was cohosted by the Esplanade and the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore, and involved both production participants and La Galigo scholars. The performance went on to tour Ravenna, Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam, Lyons, and New York before being shown in Jakarta in December 2005. Some of the preperformance writing and reviews from stagings elsewhere reveal similarities to the Singapore case, but this essay focuses particularly on the Singapore performance and media coverage in Singapore and Indonesia. Figure 1. Preparing for epic endurance. Front page of the Straits Times Life! section on 11 March 2004, the day before the I La Galigo premiere. The heading also draws attention both to Singapore’s Bugis links and the Bugis origin of the performance. (Image courtesy of SPH—the Straits Times) I La Galigo is Coming to Town The world premiere of I La Galigo was held on 12 March 2004 at the Esplanade, Singapore’s large waterfront performance venue (dubbed “the durian” for its unusual architecture), which officially opened in 2002. Press coverage of I La Galigo began in Singapore in early March 2004, a few days before the opening. Singapore’s daily newspaper, the Straits Times, published a feature article by Tan Shzr Ee on 11 March 2004, which quoted interviews with Puang Matoa Saidi, Supanggah, Rhoda Grauer, and Restu Kusumaningrum, and provided background information on the production and director Robert Wilson. A huge two-page advertisement for the performance appeared in the Straits Times on 12 March (Esplanade 2004c). The Arts Channel, nominated as the official I La Galigo channel, continually broad- cast a short clip, produced by the Esplanade, advertising the show. This clip was also shown on Singapore’s English-language channels, as well as cable TV (Discovery Channel, National Geographic, BBC, CNN, and

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