Sad story of would-be king to open in S'pore

Goenawan's 'Panji Sepuh': Sad story of would-be king to open in S'pore

The Jakarta Post, Sunday, November 26, 2006
Blontank Poer

Panji Sepuh, A Remake. Directed by Goenawan Mohamad, choreographed by S. Pamardi. Music Director Tony Prabowo. Stage/artistic design Teguh Ostenrik. Lighting Engineer Iskandar Loedin.

Seven women walk side-by-side, forming a line that resembles the opening of bedhaya, a grand dance unique to the Mataram Dynasty. One by one, they ascend a set of stairs on stage towards an altar. All around is a sense of gripping silence.

The only sound is the wailing of a middle-aged man who is none other than the crown prince -- but the wailing cannot break through the gloom that prevails for the first 10 minutes of Panji Sepuh, A Remake, by Goenawan Mohamad. Instead, it permeates the corners of the "palace" with a heavy atmosphere of sorrow and anguish.

Panji Sepuh (played by S. Pamardi) is in grief.

Reigning a kingdom that is near collapse, Panji Sepuh is a lonely, solitary royal.

On the one hand, he must rebuild the glory of his dynasty, but as a consequence of his duties as king, he will reside in another realm, one that will require him to maintain his distance from everyone: his family, his wife (and concubines), palace officials, even his subjects.

A conflict settles in his mind.

The seven women shift in their roles; sometimes they are consorts (although most are simply concubines) and maids when they accompany the king, but when they are not with the king, they are ordinary women who realize their sense of being, along with their wishes and desires.

The masks (created by painter-sculptor Teguh Ostenrik) the dancers don symbolically distinguish their real and their "other" personalities. In one scene, the women dancers smash their masks on the ground in a show of their rebellion against the shackles of the power the king exerts over them, at the same time rebelling against male domination.

This is the message that is conveyed through the conflict as presented by poet and essayist Goenawan Mohamad through Panji Sepuh, A Remake. The dance performance, which will be presented in conjunction with the inauguration of a performance hall at the National Museum of Singapore on Dec. 8 and 9, is directed by Goenawan, with choreography by S. Pamardi and Sulistyo Tirtokusumo.

Panji Sepuh, A Remake is an adaptation of Panji Sepuh, which was performed in Surakarta, Jakarta and Melbourne 12 years ago. Although the original pangkur -- a type of Javanese poetry -- by Goenawan is still used in this remake, the performance undergoes radical changes. For example, there is no scene about the burning of an umbrella, the symbol of royalty.

In addition, the women are no longer cast as auxiliary objects within a power structure.

"On the other hand, in this remake version, the entire mental conflict of Panji Sepuh all lead to the women," Goenawan told The Jakarta Post.

As women symbolize life, Goenawan presents them as dynamic figures. They adhere to the traditional norms of the palace, but are also capable of rebellion when their existence is threatened and colonized, as is evident in the mask scene in which the women discard their masks of pretense forced upon them by power.

Aside from Goenawan's imaginative use of the character in this dance, Panji Sepuh is originally the name of a dance of Surakarta Palace that is mentioned in the Serat Wedhataya, a manual of classical Javanese dance -- wedha means book, while taya means dance -- and is believed to have been created by Sultan Pakubuwono X (1866-1939).

According to this book of dances, Panji Sepuh contains instructions on movements as well as the philosophy behind them. Almost every movement, including the position of the hands and feet, as well as facial expressions and gazes, are imbued with meaning.

A crown prince is required to dance the Panji Sepuh, a solo piece, and he must perform it in the gedhong pusaka (an heirloom room), where the male symbols of power are kept.

It was the late KRT Kusumo Kesawa, a master dancer of Surakarta Palace, who first interpreted Panji Sepuh in the late 1950s. However, this dance did not develop as well as Panji Anom, which was revived by the late Gendhon Hoemardhani, founder of the Indonesian Dance Academy (now the Indonesian Fine Arts Institute/ISI) Surakarta. Panji Anom is still taught as a dance subject at the institute.

Although Panji Sepuh may not be a singularly popular dance among the repertoire of Surakarta Palace, Sulistyo Tirtokusumo, one of Kusumo Kesawa's students, must be credited for his initiative to reinterpret the Wedhataya.

And Goenawan has re-created from this book the sad story of a Javanese crown prince.

Meanwhile, the heart-rending sound emanating from the strings of a rebab (violoncello) and gender (xylophone) in the score by renowned composer Tony Prawobo lends greater significance to the dance, and the collaborative result is a masterpiece, complemented by Teguh's involvement as artistic designer with lighting designed by Iskandar Loedin.

After observing several rehearsals, it is clear that Panji Sepuh, A Remake will mesmerize the audience in Singapore not only with its captivating choreography, but also in transporting the audience to the mystical, yet philosophical realm of Javanese power in Goenawan Mohamad's version.

It is unfortunate, however, that this contemporary dance performance, which is expected to make up for the stagnant past few years in Indonesian choreography, will not be presented to the local audiences until next year. ***

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Children's Theater

Children's theater: Striving to empower the young

The Jakarta Post, Sunday, July 23, 2006

Tam Notosusanto, Contributor, Jakarta

The Mangkulangit kingdom is in distress. The crown princess is suffering from a rare disease, allegedly caused by a curse. The king orders his two prime ministers, Patih Jalu and Patih Geger, to arrest everyone in the kingdom suspected of practicing black magic.

It's serious business for the two prime ministers, but the two men are anything but serious. They even look funny together: Jalu, the diminutive, energetic guy who, once in a while, does a tumble-and-fall slapstick routine; and Geger, the corpulent state official with his enormous moustache and commanding charisma. Their chemistry recalls Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, even The Blues Brothers.

Yes, this was all a comedy show called When the King and Crown Princess Laugh staged at the Jakarta Arts Hall (GKJ) last March by the theater group Labornitejati -- short for the Theater Laboratory of East Jakarta. The audience, mostly children, were greatly amused by the antics of the actors, who were not much older than themselves. Surya Winata, the 12-year-old boy who played Jalu, is just starting middle school. And Geger was not even male: he was played by a 15-year-old girl named Mawallisa Febrikafi. Their 50 cast mates were about their age or younger.

Fast forward to the group's headquarters this July where they were rehearsing their next show. Surya and Mawallisa had evidently shed their grownup characters and gone back to being children. They spoke with youthful exuberance about their experience on stage. When asked who he models his adult characters on, Surya said, "My mom," pointing to Kartini, a veteran lenong (traditional Betawi comedy show) and screen performer who is one of Labornitejati's administrators. Mawallisa, a charming, down-to-earth teenager who is nothing like the arrogant, oppressive Patih Geger, has no previous experience as an actor. Playing Patih Geger was her first theatrical experience. "Uncle Dorman taught me everything," she humbly said.

The man she referred to is the instructor, writer, art director, songwriter and all-round motor behind Labornitejati. Dorman Borisman has been an actor and director for over three decades, performing with some of the country's prominent theater groups: Arifin C. Noer's Teater Ketjil and Teguh Karya's Teater Populer. He has spent many years acting as foils for comedians and playing supporting roles in Indonesian movies.

He is more familiar to the general public as a sinetron actor, which is how he makes his living. But few people know the 55-year-old actor has been allocating some of his earnings from the entertainment industry to finance his main passion: theater. Teater Jakarta Timur (East Jakarta Theater), the group he established with some colleagues back in 1971, has put on a number of plays with casts comprising both adults and teenagers. Last year, he set up Labornitejati to give children some experience of the performing arts.

"We wanted to develop the talents and resources of children and teenagers," Dorman said. "I do this because it's a spiritual need."

This work requires a lot of dedication. Dorman gets a meager wage from the East Jakarta Youth Arena, the municipality's official venue for children's activities, which accommodates a variety of sports and arts clubs, including his two theater groups. On Thursday and Sunday afternoons, he directs the show together with his associates Kartini and Cak Winarsyowho. Nur Solihin, who helps out with the production, comes to the arena to guide the 60 odd children of Labornitejati through their regular theater exercises.

Children's theater groups exist all over Jakarta. They are mostly community theater groups formed outside schools and some of them are sponsored by the Youth Arenas of each of the five municipalities in Jakarta. A few of them are fortunate enough to be managed by professional performers.

One of the oldest children's theater groups is Teater Tanah Air (TTA), founded 18 years ago by actor-director-poet Jose Rizal Manua, who trains his 80 young disciples every Sunday in a corner of the Ismail Marzuki Arts Center (TIM) in Central Jakarta. Jose, 52, has worked with the country's top dramatists, Putu Wijaya and WS Rendra, and continues to frequent poetry festivals all over the country. He works as an acting coach for some movies and occasionally appears in them. But he never neglects his children's theater group.

"Here's where we nurture their interest and talent," he said. "Through theater, we teach them discipline, self-confidence and social skills."

Jose, who previously worked with another children's theater group in the late 70s through to early 80s, observes that many children's theater instructors do not understand child psychology, and tend to teach children the way they train teenage and adult actors.

"I once went to see them practice," Jose said. "The instructor tells one child to display Angry 1, Angry 3, Laugh 5. The child shows different semblances of anger and joy, but it's all fake."

What Jose does is engage his children in games.

"I tell one child to walk and have her imagine a wasp coming at her, and she has to react to it. Next I tell her to imagine five wasps coming at her, and show me how she reacts to them. Then 10 wasps, then 100 wasps. Every child has a different way of reacting, and it all comes from themselves," Jose said.

Some of Jose's pupils have become renowned entertainers, such as dancer Denny Malik or actors Sylvana Herman and Septian Dwicahyo. Others became bank managers and hotel managers who later went to see Jose to tell him the training helped them professionally.

"I joined the group four years ago," said 15-year-old Ita Puspitasari, a current member of TTA. "Uncle Jose keeps telling me to do stuff in front of the other kids: to improvise, do funny walks, act angry. At first, I was always nervous. But after some time, I become more and more confident."

Some of the young actors' parents notice a difference in their behavior.

"My son used to be extremely shy," said Emmy, the mother of TTA member Rwanda Sutedira. "He has done very well at school and is now beginning high school at age 13. But he spent most of his time in his room, didn't want to go out and play with the neighbors' kids, and would run back into his room whenever we had guests."

She took him to TTA and witnessed a dramatic change. After three months, Rwanda started to open up to people. He became a master of ceremonies at school events and even starred in a television film titled The Little Brigadier.

"He's really changed. "I am not going to push him into the entertainment business, I am just happy he is sociable now. That's why I make the effort of bringing him here every Sunday all the way from Bekasi," said Emmy.

"If children get in touch with art from an early age, they will grow up to have an 'added value' that their peers may not have," said Andi Bersama, writer, director and instructor of the children's theater group Sang Abul, based in Bulungan Youth Arena in South Jakarta.

Andi, a former journalist who is now a stage and screen actor, founded Sang Abul -- short for Sanggar Anak Bulungan or Bulungan Children's Studio -- with some friends in 2003. The group has performed at the Bulungan Arena auditorium and in events at various venues: schools, malls, hotels. Some of these shows were paid gigs, but Sang Abul still has to struggle to finance shows at its neighborhood venue.

Labornitejati, Teater Tanah Air and Sang Abul all charge membership fees, ranging from Rp 10,000 (US$1.10) to Rp 50,0000 ($5.50) a month.

"We implement a cross-subsidy scheme here, because 30 percent of the kids come from poor families," said Dorman. "The well-to-do kids cover their less fortunate friends' fees."

Still, the money doesn't help much when the time comes to put on a show, so the groups' administrators have to ask parents to pitch in. At one time Sang Abul received lunch boxes during rehearsals and show dates from a local restaurateur whose child happens to be in the troupe. Dorman once sent 30 proposals to various institutions and companies to get financial support for a Labornitejati show. He only got a response from three companies, which sent their food and drink products as contributions.

"Our government and businesses have yet to consider the potential in art," Dorman said. "Our society has not made art an important part of life. All we have is the all-instant entertainment industry, which doesn't make us any more intelligent."

Dorman and Jose tell of talent agents who lurk around their headquarters, while Andi has been approached by stage parents who mistake his place as an inexpensive talent agency.

"I was once offered millions of rupiah by parents who wanted me to get their kids shortcuts to TV stardom. I flat out refused them," said Dorman. "I once told one such parent and his child to leave the group."

Andi is more moderate. "My TV connections enable me to link up production companies and child actors," he said. "But I tell parents that's not what Sang Abul is here for."

Their main business is, of course, to get kids to express themselves onstage. Sang Abul was the winner of the biannual Jakarta Children's Theater Festival in 2004. Labornitejati's March show was part of GKJ's Children's Celebrations event. This July, they have been selected by the Jakarta administration's Cultural Affairs Office to represent the city in a children's theater event called Duta Seni Pelajar (Student Art Ambassadors) in Banten from July 17 to 20.

Teater Tanah Air won Gold Medals at the Asia-Pacific Festival of Children's Theater in Toyama, Japan, in 2004 and this July they went to Lingen, Germany, to compete in the ninth World Festival of Children's Theater.

"I realize many people hope to take advantage of what I do for the kids," said Dorman. "But we remind ourselves not to take advantage of the children. It's our commitment to them."

Tam Notosusanto is an actor and director with the community theater group The Jakarta Players.

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Theater makes children strong

'Theater makes children strong'

The Jakarta Post, Sunday, September 10, 2006

Tam Notosusanto, Contributor, Jakarta

You can't question Norbert Radermacher's dedication to children. He had taught theater at a school in a small German town called Lingen for years and still did not feel he had done enough. The former football player, who studied philosophy, arts and drama, felt there was much more to do beyond working within the curriculum and in the classroom.

So he founded Theater Pedagogical Center (TPZ) in 1980 with the support from the Emslandische Landschaft e.V., the governments of the Lower Saxony, Emsland and Bentheim districts, and the municipality of Lingen. Located in Lingen, a town of about 60,000 residents situated in the Northwest of Germany, near the Netherlands border, TPZ is now Germany's biggest academy for theater, play, dance and circus education. Besides offering drama courses for children and young people, it also has workshops, seminars, and training for teachers, social workers and individuals to promote theater as a means of cultural education.

In 1990, Radermacher introduced the World Festival of Children's Theater, where children's theater groups from all over the world perform in front of an international audience. The festival also holds symposiums attended by theater pedagogues from 24 member countries who discuss the latest trends in children's theater work. Established in cooperation with the International Amateur Theater Association (IATA/AITA), the festival has been held alternately in Turkey, Denmark, Japan and Cuba as well as in its home base, Lingen, Germany.

This September he made his first ever trip to Indonesia to give workshops to children's theater groups in Jakarta and Bandung. Here are excerpts from an interview with Radermacher and from his discussion with leaders of children's theater groups in Jakarta.

What was the idea behind the Theater Pedagogical Center?

Twenty-six years ago there were a lot of music schools and art schools in Germany. But there was no theater school. I realized teachers and social workers are looking for such an institution. They work using social methods but those methods don't work for very long because young people need much more. You have to take care of them, you need to push them. How do we do that?

Theater is good to push them. There's no better place for saying what you're thinking, what is on your mind, than onstage. Onstage you are an artist, you can say "we want a better society," or "we don't want war" or "we want freedom." The stage for me is not like painting. With painting, you can do it by yourself, then hang the picture on the wall. Theater needs an audience. So it's wonderful for young people. You can feel it. Children can be powerful when they are onstage, they are strong. The adults in the audience are always amazed, they will say "Oh my God, I didn't know they were strong." If children are strong, they can play an effective role in society.

What have been the challenges of establishing and maintaining it for the past 26 years?

When you start an institution like this, you need well-trained, educated, artistic people. We needed both artists and pedagogues. But not all artists can work with children, and not all pedagogues can teach art. So we did a lot of training and workshops for teachers and artists so that they acquired the balance.

We want to involve as many social workers and teachers, but the problem is, a lot of them have no experience in art. So I brought them to meet artists, for them to hold some forums of dialog to learn from each other.

After 26 years, TPZ now is an academy for theater, dance and circus. We also have theater programs for handicapped children and programs for senior citizens. But our main work is with children. The focus of our drama education is not primarily on the eventual performance or show, but rather, the process leading up to it: training of expression, working within a group and the joy in playing.

Now we have 25 full-time staff, others work on projects for two or three years before they go back to their schools or social work to implement what they learned from TPZ.

How did the World Festival of Children's Theater come about?

Every year, the children of TPZ's theater, dance and circus classes meet for a theater festival named "Children play and dance for children." There they have the opportunity to perform their work and learn from each other. Groups from all over Lingen participated. It became a regular event every January.

The event became the inspiration for a world-level festival. Especially when after I visited the World Theater Festival for adults of the International Amateur Theater Association in Monaco in 1985, I realized there was no children's theater festival in the world. There were already lots of professional theater festivals or puppet theater festivals, but no world children's theater festival.

And so we had the first World Festival of Children's Theater in 1990 in Lingen. It brought children theater groups from all over the world together. Before 1990, we had worked separately, in our respective countries, holding national-level festivals. We did not know one another. But since we did this festival, we've gotten to know one another. We all come to one place on a world level and have been able to compare work between Japan and South America, between Europe and Asia. The network was born and it quickly expanded before I even began to think about it. I've been invited to many countries. I went to India, and I met a person from Pakistan. Next, I got invited to Pakistan. It's like a snowball effect.

If you do a local festival for children, nobody will interview you, no TV will come because it's not that interesting. But an international festival, that's interesting. That will draw a lot of attention.

I do it for the children, because children don't have (an avenue to) lobby. You have to give children the (opportunity to) lobby (for their interests), the possibility to think about something. So we have to build the network. Secondly, we have to give children space in this world.

Theater Tan Air from Indonesia has won first prize two consecutive times at the 2004 and 2006 festivals. What was your impression upon visiting them here?

I'm surprised to hear Tanah Air doesn't have space, any room. (Teater Tanah Air regularly rehearses in the lobby of Graha Bhakti Budaya at Ismail Marzuki Arts Center --Ed.) It's a wonderful group. The children should have room. Jakarta is a big city, I don't understand why the government can't give Tanah Air space for rehearsals. I know a lot of theater groups in South America, in Africa, much poorer countries. They have theater houses. I want to talk about this, I want to make articles. We have to give children space to come together, to communicate with each other, to be creative. Don't just give them computers.

But many theater groups in Indonesia are used to rehearsing in lobbies, in their backyards, on the sidewalk. It's their cultural tradition, they can rehearse anywhere.

Well, it's maybe my European way of thinking. Children should have their own space. Children's theater groups should have their own theater houses. I really want to take the children of Tanah Air to stage a demonstration in front of the city government's building, demanding a room. This just reflects the government's indifference: that Indonesia has a rich culture, as shown by Tanah Air's performance, and that they need space to grow. We need to respect them, talk to them at the same level, not talk down to them. Because we want to make them strong, we want them to play an important role in the future of the country. ***

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