Introduction Performance in Contemporary Indonesia – Surveying the Scene

Barbara Hatley

This book explores the format and meanings of performance – theatre, along with music, dance and video arts – created and staged today in Indonesia. Performance events have long been central to the life of Indonesian societies in displaying power, affirming social relations and celebrating shared values, while also providing space for social and political critique. To what extent are they continuing to perform these roles in the early years of the twenty-first century? How do they illuminate and contribute to their social contexts? How has the transition from the centralized, authoritarian Suharto regime to a more decentralized, open political system, as global information and cultural influ- ence flows in through the liberalized mass media, impacted upon the domain of performance? In late June 2010 a group of academics, cultural activists and theatre practitioners gathered together in Yogyakarta, on the campus of Sanata Dharma University, to explore these issues. This volume reflects the ideas they presented and discussed.

The Background – Performance in New Order Times

Performing arts and other forms of cultural expression have been regarded as central to Indonesian political life since the founding of the nation. Jennifer Lindsay notes that key government figures attended cultural congresses in the early years of Independence.1 She likewise documents the many cultural missions, comprised of dancers and musicians, sent overseas by President Sukarno’s government in the 1950s and early 1960s, as an expression of “national confidence and pride,” (Lindsay 2012b, 195). Creating a progres- sive national culture for the new Indonesian nation was the common focus during these years, and artists, writers, intellectuals, political organizations and state officials all competed in the struggle to promote their respective visions of the nation and its culture.

1 When the First Cultural Congress was held in August 1948, amidst the chaotic political conditions of that time, just a month before the outbreak of the Madiun uprising, President Sukarno, Vice President Hatta and Armed Forces head General Sudirman all attended both the opening and closing ceremonies of the event, while the Minister for Education and Culture participated throughout (Lindsay 2012a, 6).

When President Suharto’s New Order government took power after 1965, however, and instituted a nation-wide program of top-down economic and social development, cultural activity became the site of centralized control and cultivation by the state. Regional forms, representing the cultural worlds of the rural-based majority population of Indonesia, were nurtured, developed and ‘upgraded’. Government bodies organized festivals and competitions and instructed performers about propaganda messages to be included in their shows; grand performance events were staged to mark official occasions. Such forms were seen to instil values supportive of development such as self- reliance, dedication, simplicity and orderliness,2 and to give safe, a-political expression to regionality within the framework of the unified nation, in keeping with the regime’s construct of idealized Indonesian citizenship. Unruly, unseemly, elements of performances out of keeping with these lofty social roles were suppressed and eliminated.3 Modern cultural expression in Indonesian language, cultivated largely among the educated, urban-based population, was not subject to such government intervention, but faced strict political censorship, and complex permit requirements for performances and other public events. Response to these conditions differed according to performance genres and particular local conditions. Practitioners of traditional, regional performing arts, dependent on state sponsorship, generally avoided direct expression of dissent (Yampolsky 1995, 711), but at times drew on ambiguous multivalent stage conventions and subversive clown humour to express social critique. Modern plays in Indonesian language conveyed social criticism more directly. From its beginnings, teater, modern theatre, like other forms of modern, national culture, had at times conveyed alternate perspectives to state ideology.4 In the New Order period, with the imposition of strict control of the mass media and repression of critical opinion, modern theatre took on an explicitly resistant role, as theatre practitioners allied themselves with students, social activists and other disaffected social group to promote a vision of the Indonesian nation contesting that imposed by the state. While censorship was strict, subtle resistance to state ideology could be conveyed on stage, often

2 These values amongst others are cited in a passage from the 1988 Guidelines of State Policy quoted by Philip Yampolsky (1995, 710). 3 Amrih Widodo provides a very interesting illustration of this process at work in his analysis of the impact of government policy on tayuban dancing in the Blora region (Widodo 1995). 4 Michael Bodden suggests that, reflecting ideological differences among the political elite, “modern national culture often took an antagonistic stance towards the state and its political leadership” (Bodden 2010, 3).