Clap! Clap! Clap!
Dozens of elderly people clap their hands as part of a routine exercise. The director of the retirement home stands in front of them as exercise instructor, fluidly providing an example of the motion. The last clap sounds and the group returns to back stage.
This was the opening scene of Warisan (The Legacy), the 149th production presented by the Teater Koma troupe as a part of its 40th birthday celebration series. The play is being staged at the Gedung Kesenian Jakarta art house from Aug. 10 to 20.
Written and directed by Nobertus “Nano” Riantiarno, Warisan is the story of a retirement home. Once, it was the pride of the city as it provided a shelter for old and neglected residents. Many philanthropists happily made donations to the home.
However eight years later, the retirement home has gradually transformed its social purpose. The management has started leasing the rooms to rich people and the growing number of these newcomers has created social segregation within the home. In fact, the property is literally divided into two sections — one side for the rich and the other for the poor. A tall wall that has no connecting door stands between the two areas.
This review of the 40th anniversary production of the Teata Koma, called Warisan (a word that also translates as heritage as well as legacy), a play written by one of the theatre group's co-founders, Nobertus “Nano” Riantiarno, shows how social economic changes in a globalised world, produce echoes that many communities along the LODE Line will quickly recognise as locally relevant. New boundaries, new divisions, new walls, in places where, previously, there had been connections of one kind or another.
Teater Koma is well established 40 years on from March 1, 1977 in Jakarta when it was founded, and has a good reputation in the Indonesian cultural context as a rare example of a challenging and engaging modern theatre. Teata Koma embraces work that includes a critique of contemporary social realities and also interprets a rich cultural heritage that, for instance, includes the Mahabarata.
In 1990 the performance of a work by a central figure in Teater Koma, N. Riantiarno, titled Cockroach Opera, was canceled due to licensing issues with the Indonesian authorities. However, it was staged by the Belvoir Theatre in Sydney, Australia in August 1992.
The Cockroach Opera
By Nano Riantiarno
Directed by Mark Gaal
Belvoir Theatre, Sydney
Reviewed by Lenore Tardif
Indonesian playwright Nano Riantiarno captures the poverty and oppression of street living in Jakarta, and the corruption of the rich, the military and the bureaucracy.
The heroes are cockroaches — prostitutes, pimps, gangsters. Their common cry is that these are roles of survival against repression and corruption.
True love does not run smooth for stunning, captivating and loving transvestite Julini (Audie Espino) and boyfriend Roima (Darren R. Yap). To finance their life together Roima becomes involved in a subplot of gang initiation, crime and emotional involvement with Tuminah (Jemma Wilks), a young prostitute threatened by her brother when he discovers she has resorted to prostitution during his time in jail.
Julini despairs with every soap opera cliché. A police shoot-out is directed by odious High Government Official, also brothel client (Christopher Pang), whose business interests require the slum to be cleared. Julini is shot, mourned, becomes the focus of slum politicisation and eventually is immortalised as a monument in the city square.
Weaving through this degradation is the Cockroach Spray Seller, spitting out tirades against this omnipresent and indestructible insect.
Espino's performance as Julini is a delight of mincing high camp histrionics and a pathos which is hard to resist.
The action is played out with a brave amalgamation of differing musical styles, some commendable singing, slapstick humour and dance routines from the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre.
"Our production of Cockroach Opera is by way of nature Australian — it is not Javanese theatre but an Australian production of an Indonesian play", acknowledges director Mark Gaal.
This is the riskiest aspect of the production. The cast of non-Indonesian Asians, white and Aboriginal actors playing Indonesians, with interpretations filtered through different cultural frameworks, and the minimal stage setting remove the impact of an Indonesian play.
My Indonesian friend tells me that Riantiarno's treatment of Indonesian issues within his plays leaves the audience to figure out its own conclusions. This version works as an experimental vehicle for actors, dancers and singers from multicultural Australian society and is a brave and worthwhile experiment. But somewhere in the adaptation d audiences, the specifically Indonesian values which inform audience conclusions have been lost.
But for a gorgeous, spangled, wonderfully exuberant portrayal of life, love and survival against all odds, Cockroach endures and proves that monuments can talk and see all.
However, in November 2016, Cockroach Opera was performed at the Taman Ismail Marzuki, popularly known as TIM, or in English as Ismail Marzuki Park, an arts, cultural, and science center located at Cikini in Jakarta, Indonesia.
This is a translation of the text explaining this YouTube video:
When the periphery is compared to a group of "cockroaches" ...!
This video footage is a drama performance performed by N. Riantiarno's coma theater in Taman Ismail Marzuki from 10-20 November 2016 yesterday.
It tells about the love story in a triad of thugs and gangsters, of women prostitutes and transvestites, within the setting of the poorest social conditions of Jakarta, the capital city. In the outskirts of the city the slum dwellers are continually threatened by eviction, and other social conflicts, in their constant struggle for survival.
The ups and downs of the lives of these transvestites prostitutes, and criminal gangs amid the hypocrisy of officials and officialdom, is the subject of this opera performance whose musical compositions were created by renowned artist Harry Rusli.
It's a spectacle that can make the audience sad, moved, laugh and feel sad, all blending into one dramatic experience. When the periphery is compared to a group of "cockroaches" ... When cockroaches are considered something dirty and despicable. That's when the conscience of people begins to be questioned ...
The song "Drunk Jula-Juli Cockroaches"
collapsed ...
in the culverts
Eat sleeping in the gutter
Crawling - crawling in the dark
In the dark, yes dear in the dark
Drunk yes drunk, drunk so drunk
Drunk, dizzy "facing life"!
Who told me to come to Jakarta
Just make garbage, become trash
Hard work and business
Only road if there is a chance
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk
Drunk, dizzy "face life"!
Every day peek when there is a chance
Every time it is thrown back into the sewer,
yes it gets into the sewer
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk
Drunk, dizzy "face life"!
Big, big belly!
Small, small people's stomachs!
Large, large parts
Small, small parts small people
Drunk, drunk, drunk, drunk
Drunk, dizzy "face life"!
Rancid odor, stinky smell
Pus, scabies, phlegm and ringworm
The definite part of our destiny
Our fate, yes dear our luck
Drunk yes drunk, drunk, drunk
Drunk, dizzy "face life"!
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