With the assistance of Arts Victoria, Liminal Theatre and Teater Populer are conducting a collaborative workshop at Teater Populer’s Sanggar compound in Tana Abang, Jakarta. Drawing on traditional Javanese performance styles, and the embodied theatre of Liminal, we are exploring the themes and mythos of the ancient Greek play sequence Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, although the key text is Oedipus at Colonus
I’ve written about the first week of our process, a cultural immersion in Jakarta and Javanese tradition, at my personal site. There’s not much artistic detail there, and the opinions expressed within are occasionally less than professional, so beware! Photos from the first week can be seen in my Picasa gallery.
On this site I’ll be conducting some professional reflections into the workshop process, as a sound designer and company member of Liminal. I’ll be keeping my reflections on content to a minimum, as the work we are creating is in its infancy. Instead, I’ll be writing about context, creation, and process.
Traditional Javanese and Indonesian performance forms, such as wayang kulit or wayang orang are transmitted through practice rather than pedagogy – the act of performing is an act of community rather than of art, and while in some forms the apprentice or student is trained one-on-one by an elder or master, there is a strong tradition of community teaching. A dance performance serves a ritual purpose, originally intercessory (calling to the Hindu gods for a good harvest or rains, for example) and is therefore undertaken at an untrained level, as part of the village, tribe, or communal group. In general, Teater Populer retains these kind of models – our collaborators are not actors in the Western sense of performers trained in conventional stage action. Instead, they are dancers, musicians and performers in traditional and contemporary forms. Some, like Jack, are completely untrained.
From this, we are exploring the movement of bodies in space, the effect of improvised movement on text and meaning, and the resonance that cultural context can give. What are the points of contact between Javanese and Western performance-making? What is the performance we can make in the interstitial space between languages? Between cultures?
For our group of performers (about 16, including musicians) this is proving fertile ground for creation. For myself, it’s difficult to understand my point of entry as a designer. The artistic scene in Jakarta is incredibly fertile, and I am finding the environment greatly inspiring. However, I am a Western sound designer trained in Western theatre practice – which gives creative staff a great degree of freedom and control over the work they produce. In this workshop, however, I am discovering that the traditional Indonesian music practice that operates here in Sanggar is remarkably complete – it uses voice and percussion and steel-stringed zithers and harps in a similar way to my intention as a sound designer. That is, it serves not to dominate or direct the performance but to lift it, producing an embodied and imminent moment for performers and audience.
The musicians – Hendro 1, Aki, Dede – are expert readers of the performative moment. They are able to shift mood, tempo and intensity almost seamlessly, and pay careful attention to the shifts within improvised work. As I said before, the sonic environment is complete – it neither requires nor permits the intervention of outside elements. My task in the next few days is to break into that sonic environment – wish me luck!