A Delicate Balance Negotiating Isolation and Globalization in the Burmese Performing Arts Catherine Diamond

A Delicate Balance Negotiating Isolation and Globalization in the Burmese Performing Arts Catherine Diamond If you walk on and on, you get to your destination. If you question much, you get your information. If you do not sleep and idle, you preserve your life! (Maung Htin Aung 1959:87) So go the three lines of wisdom offered to the lazy student Maung Pauk Khaing in the well- known eponymous folk tale. A group of impoverished village youngsters, led by their teacher Daw Khin Thida, adapted the tale in 2007 in their first attempt to perform a play. From a well-to-do family that does not understand her philanthropic impulses, Khin Thida, an English teacher by profession, works at her free school in Insein, a suburb of Yangon (Rangoon) infamous for its prison. The shy students practiced first in Burmese for their village audience, and then in English for some foreign donors who were coming to visit the school. Khin Thida has also bought land in Bagan (Pagan) and is building a culture center there, hoping to attract the street children who currently pander to tourists at the site’s immense network of temples. TDR: The Drama Review 53:1 (T201) Spring 2009. ©2009 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 93 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.1.93 by guest on 02 October 2021 I first met Khin Thida in 2005 at NICA (Networking and Initiatives for Culture and the Arts), an independent nonprofit arts center founded in 2003 and run by Singaporean/Malaysian artists Jay Koh and Chu Yuan. With the financial support of Dutch, Japanese, and Singaporean foundations, Koh and Chu, through NICA, offered exhibition space and work studios to local artists. NICA also hosted workshops and residencies for foreign artists, facilitating interaction between Burmese, Southeast Asian, and European artists. In 2005, NICA sponsored an international festival of conceptual and installation art called Borders: withIn withOut that featured 24 artists, many of whom presented works concerned with globalization. For example, in his piece Japanese artist Arai Shin-ichi bathed spectators’ feet in the different foodstuffs sent by the United States to postwar Japan, such as inferior grade flour and Coca-Cola. After describing the eventual “7-Elevenization” of his village, he stood on his head crying, “Viva Globalization!” Vasan Sitthiket of Thailand squatted and drew figures of cars, planes, mobile phones, and televisions in a mound of rice grains, saying that we can live without them. He then put on a black balaclava and stood up to reveal he was wearing a bullet belt filled with squashes and cucumbers—a vegetarian terrorist. Similarly, Burmese Nyo Win Maung expressed his antiglobalization sentiments by tearing a map of the world in a continuous strip, like an orange peel, then wrapping it around to encircle himself. He donned a balaclava and held a gun toward the spectators, reminding everyone that they were still in Myanmar and under the government’s constant vigilance. Despite Nyo Win Maung’s performance, globalization resonates differently in impoverished Myanmar, where possessing a television, mobile phone, and especially a car is far beyond the means of most people. Yangon is one of the few Southeast Asian capitals that is not chock-a- block with McDonald’s, 7-Elevens, KFCs, and Starbucks; the appearance of a single foreign franchise is usually hailed in the local press as a sign of progress. While Burmese have hardly tasted the questionable fruits of global capitalism, they have certainly tasted its bitterness as the country’s natural resources are being sold off at a frenzied rate to supply the booming economies of India, Thailand, and especially China; and less openly to Canada, Japan, Korea, Russia, France, and the United States. The money earned props up the military dictatorship as the people helplessly watch their country being leeched. NICA miraculously managed to carry on for four years free from harassment by a government exceptionally paranoid about any foreign activity and rarely allowing nongovernmental organizations to operate. It was a brave and bold experiment to help Myanmar’s artists over- come their isolation, with the intention that the connections made through NICA’s activities would assist them in receiving invitations to work and exhibit abroad. NICA closed its Yangon headquarters in 2007 and Koh and Chu left Myanmar, but they still assist Burmese artists on an ad hoc basis. The trend of opening up more avenues for international interaction in the arts has contin- ued. The Gitameit Music Center, cofounded by American pianist Kit Young and choral director U Moe Naing in 2003, accomplished for music what NICA implemented for the visual arts. The school provides classes and performance opportunities for dozens of young instrumental- ists and vocalists. Gitameit (meaning “music friendship”) has also set up a nurturing space for experimental performances of poetry, music, and dance. Supporting interactions between older established musicians and young students, foreign and local musicians and composers, as well as among other types of performers, Gitameit is another exceptional haven, appropriately housed Figure 1. (previous page) Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, Theatre of the Disturbed. Yangon, 2007. (Courtesy of The Theatre of the Disturbed) Catherine Diamond teaches theatre in Taipei, Taiwan, and writes on the contemporary theatre through- out the Southeast Asian region. She also directs Phoenix Theatre, an English-language company. A flamenco dancer, she has recently directed a flamenco dance-drama,The Daughters of Bernarda Alba, in Taipei. CatherineDiamond 94 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.1.93 by guest on 02 October 2021 in the former offices ofThe Mirror, a liberal newspaper shut down when military junta took over in 1988. Inside, there are no private studios and the young musicians practice side-by-side. But despite the cacophony, Gitameit exudes joy, hope, and a positive sense of the future—which is not a prevalent sentiment among most of Myanmar’s young people. In 2005, Gitameit presented Nya La Ka (Night Moon Dance)1 based on three poems by Nyein Way. The collabora- tive performance utilized Figure 2. Maung Pauk Khaing returns to court to answer the Queen’s riddle the talents of musicians and after he receives help from his parents, who heard the answer from a pair of dancers from India, Thailand, crows. Rehearsed by Daw Khin Thida’s students in Insein. Yangon, 2007. Hong Kong, and New York (Photo by Catherine Diamond) as well as local musicians, composers, dancers, and puppeteers. One segment, “Tawaya La” (Forever Moon), was danced by Shweman Chan Tha, one of Myanmar’s beloved and best-known performers. A professional mintha (literally “prince” but meaning the star/manager of a troupe), Shweman Chan Tha is the performer par excellence of the Burmese traditional zat pwe, an all-night variety show featuring song, dance, comedy skits and modern dramas. The son of Shweman U Tin Maung (1918–1969), the most famous mintha of the late 20th-century, Shweman Chan Tha primarily reprises his father’s famous works while managing the company that his father founded. Usually burdened with the responsibility of keeping the 70-odd-member troupe afloat, Shweman Chan Tha had the rare opportunity in “Tawaya La” to experiment in a personally expressive modern style not often seen in Myanmar. In his mid-40s and solidly built, Shweman Chan Tha danced first in silhouette, using the percussive jerkiness of arms and elbows that usually indicate the Burmese dancer’s imitation of marionette movement, but here suggesting the movements of birds’ wings. His costume, too, was derived from the traditional mintha attire—but the gaudy and glittery costume based on the dress of 19th-century princes was pared down to a simple black pasoe (a leg-length piece of cloth wrapped around the waist and tucked through the legs to allow the dancer more freedom of movement) and gong baung headdress. Dancing to the lyrical music of piano, sax, and violin, Shweman Chan Tha changed tempo when the pat waing—the Burmese drum circle—joined in. Comprising 24 suspended drums, each tuned to a different pitch and set in a wood frame around the player, it is the lead instru- ment in a traditional Burmese orchestra. Shweman Chan Tha rolled on the floor, hung off the edge of the stage, and stepped down into the audience, still sustaining the abstract bird motif. This beautiful piece by a veteran performer thoroughly trained in his traditional technique, but not limited by it, leaned toward modern dance and yet retained distinctly Burmese characteris- Arts Performing Burmese tics. Shweman Chan Tha does not get many opportunities to innovate because he must fulfill his audience’s expectations as well as follow the traditional program set by the 40,000-member national Drama Association. Established in its present formation in 1980, the Drama Associa- 1. Where the original language of a performance was Burmese, the Burmese title has been included when available. 95 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2009.53.1.93 by guest on 02 October 2021 tion not only oversees financial matters such as troupe and performer contracts and the stabiliza- tion of ticket prices, but also monitors the content of the shows as well as individual performer’s behavior onstage. At the end of the program, Shweman Chan Tha returned in his customary mintha costume to accompany Thai dancer Pradit Prasartthong, the director of Makhamporn, one of Thailand’s leading theatre troupes. The two men alternated dancing each others’ classical dances, an exchange that would not seem so unusual unless one knew that hundreds of years of enmity festers between the two countries, stemming principally from the 1767 Burmese conquest and destruction of the ancient Thai capital, Ayutthaya.

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