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Studies in International Performance
Published in association with the International Federation of Theatre Research
General Editors: Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton
Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define
nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and
among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations.
Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance
series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of
performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces ‘Culture’ which is
institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternate, and treats ‘Performance’ as
either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations.

Titles include:
Khalid Amine and Marvin Carlson
THE THEATRES OF MOROCCO, ALGERIA AND TUNISIA
Performance Traditions of the Maghreb
Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon (editors)
VIOLENCE PERFORMED
Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict
Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case
STAGING INTERNATIONAL FEMINISMS
Matthew Isaac Cohen
PERFORMING OTHERNESS
Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905–1952
Susan Leigh Foster (editor)
WORLDING DANCE
Karen Fricker and Milija Gluhovic (editors)
PERFORMING THE ‘NEW’ EUROPE
Identities, Feelings and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest
Milija Gluhovic
PERFORMING EUROPEAN MEMORIES
Trauma, Ethics, Politics
Helena Grehan
PERFORMANCE, ETHICS AND SPECTATORSHIP IN A GLOBAL AGE
Susan C. Haedicke
CONTEMPORARY STREET ARTS IN EUROPE
Aesthetics and Politics
James Harding and Cindy Rosenthal (editors)
THE RISE OF PERFORMANCE STUDIES
Rethinking Richard Schechner’s Broad Spectrum
Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (editors)
PERFORMANCE, EXILE AND ‘AMERICA’
Silvija Jestrovic
PERFORMANCE, SPACE, UTOPIA
Ola Johansson
COMMUNITY THEATRE AND AIDS
Ketu Katrak
CONTEMPORARY INDIAN DANCE
New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora
Sonja Arsham Kuftinec
THEATRE, FACILITATION, AND NATION FORMATION IN THE BALKANS
AND MIDDLE EAST
Daphne P. Lei
ALTERNATIVE CHINESE OPERA IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Performing Zero
Peter Lichtenfels and John Rouse (editors)
PERFORMANCE, POLITICS AND ACTIVISM
Carol Martin (editor)
THE DRAMATURGY OF THE REAL ON THE WORLD STAGE
Carol Martin
THEATRE OF THE REAL
Yana. Meerzon
PERFORMING EXILE, PERFORMING SELF
Drama, Theatre, Film
Lara D. Nielson and Patricia Ybarra (editors)
NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBAL THEATRES
Performance Permutations
Alan Read
THEATRE, INTIMACY AND ENGAGEMENT
The Last Human Venue
Shannon Steen
RACIAL GEOMETRIES OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC, ASIAN PACIFIC AND
AMERICAN THEATRE
Marcus Tan
ACOUSTIC INTERCULTURALISM
Listening to Performance
Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall, Chris Hudson and Barbara Hatley
THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC
Regional Modernities in the Global Era
Maurya Wickstrom
PERFORMANCE IN THE BLOCKADES OF NEOLIBERALISM
Thinking the Political Anew
S. E. Wilmer
NATIONAL THEATRES IN A CHANGING EUROPE
Evan Darwin Winet
INDONESIAN POSTCOLONIAL THEATRE
Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces

Forthcoming titles:
Adrian Kear
THEATRE AND EVENT

Studies in International Performance

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Theatre and Performance in
the Asia-Pacific
Regional Modernities in the Global Era

Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall, Chris Hudson and

Barbara Hatley
© Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall, Chris Hudson and Barbara Hatley 2013.
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Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Series Editors’ Preface xi
Acknowledgements xii

Introduction: Regional Modernities in the Global Era 1

The Asia-Pacific region 3
Liquid modernity 6
Theatre and performance 8
The structure of the book 9
Part I Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama
1 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 17
Australian colonial modernity: Indigenous dispossession
and white prisons 19
Holy Day: European settlement and frontier violence 20
Transgenerational trauma in the settler community 25
When the Rain Stops Falling: the tears begin to flow 26
Reflecting on modernity 31
2 Modernity and the Self in Singapore: Emily
of Emerald Hill 33
Modernity in the Singapore context 34
Casting off the British: towards a Singaporean theatre 36
The arrival of Emily 37
Emily in a liquefied world 39
Emily’s time out of joint 46
3 Modern Drama and Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 49
Adopting/adapting the modern play 49
Mobilizing ‘tradition’ 51
The Struggle of the Java Tribe 54
Wayang and modernity 56
Modernity differently experienced and performed 59
Into the future 63
4 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 64
Hirata’s theatre and the new modern 65
Tokyo Notes: a synopsis 68

v
vi Contents

The ‘everyday’ in the Japanese context 69

Tokyo Notes: a liquid dramaturgy 71
Tokyo Notes in context: the everyday and the new modern 75
Part II Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities
5 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 79
Solid and liquid modernity: the mixed metaphors of
the mining boom 80
Modernity and performance in East Arnhem Land:
Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin) 81
A Grace for a Grace: identities across time 87
The stalker: ‘deputizing for the devil, incubi, evil spirits,
hobgoblins, the evil eye …’ 90
The good stranger: the asylum seeker 91
Towards an undefined liquid future 93
6 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 95
Celebrating fluid selves: one big street party 95
Another view of the street: Teater Garasi
envisions Indonesia 98
Garasi’s Je.ja.l.an 100
Celebrating the in-between 103
Sex, religion, obsession 106
Reflecting on the contradictions of modernity 110
7 ‘Youth is not the only thing that passes at sonic
speed’: Speed and Private Lives in Okada Toshiki’s
The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise 112
Chelfitsch and liquid modernity 112
The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise 115
Time slipping 117
Time folds: ambient time 119
Dual life 120
Noh plays and Okada’s liminal modernism 123
Passivity is different from abandoning politics 124
8 Dramaturgy of the Liquid: Cargo
Kuala Lumpur–Singapore 126
Rimini Protokoll and the unknown present 126
Cargo to Somewhere 129
Ravi and Ganes: ‘experts of the everyday’ in
South East Asia 131
 Contents vii

The liquid encounters the solid 135

The unknown present and the network of possibilities 138
Part III Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach
9 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 143
Adaptation in theory and practice 144
Australian adaptation of European drama:
the re-turn to Europe 146
The Women of Troy 149
The turn to the Middle East 156
Towards a reflection of diversity 157
10 Performing Liquid Modernity: Chay Yew’s
Visible Cities in Singapore 158
Chay Yew’s theatre 158
Transnational, translocal connections 161
Liquid times and spaces 166
The dark side of liquid modernity 168
11 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 170
Outward flows: authentic, exotic Indonesian
performance goes West 171
Performance flows after Independence: Sukarno’s
cultural missions and New Order neocolonialism 172
Expanding flows, shifting directions 173
International collaborative productions: The Theft of Sita
and I La Galigo 174
Audience responses, international and local 178
The I La Galigo comes home 182
A new form of inward cultural flow? 183
12 Kawamura Takeshi’s Theatre and the Spectacle
of Adaptation 186
Adaptation in Japanese theatre 188
The spectacle of adaptation 189
Reflexive dramaturgies 195

Part IV Regional Flows

13 Cultural Exchange, Arts Festivals and Markers
of Modernity 201
Festivals and managing cultural flow 208
The Dream Regime of globalization 212
viii Contents

What does it mean when we talk about a cross-cultural

collaboration? 214
Conclusion 217

Notes 222
References 226

Index 242
List of Illustrations

1.1 Rachael Maza as Linda, Kerry Walker as Nora and

Melodie Reynolds as Obedience. Holy Day. Adelaide
Festival Theatre. 2001. Courtesy of State Theatre
Company of South Australia. Photo: David Wilson 23
1.2 Neil Pigot as Gabriel York. When the Rain Stops Falling.
Sumner Theatre. 2009. Courtesy of Brink Productions,
South Australia. Photo: Jeff Busby 27
2.1 Margaret Chan as Emily. Emily of Emerald Hill. Singapore
Arts Festival, 11 June 2010. Courtesy of National Arts
Council of Singapore. Photo: Jack Yam 40
3.1 Margesti, in black dress, as the wife, and Zainal Abidin
Domba, as the husband, in Biografi Yanti. Teater Sae,
Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre, Jakarta, 4 December
1992. Courtesy of Teater Sae. Photo: Ging Ginanjar 61
5.1 Chooky Dancers in Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin).
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide, 2010. Courtesy of
Adelaide Festival. Photo: Matt Nettheim 84
5.2 Leroy Parsons as Byron, Kirsty Hillhouse as Grace and Ismat
Akbarzada as Mohammed in Grace. Victoria Hall, Fremantle,
2010. Courtesy of Deckchair Theatre. Photo: Jon Green 93
6.1 Three denizens of the Indonesian street, pursuing
their separate concerns in Je.ja.l.an. Teater Garasi,
Taman Budaya, Yogyakarta, 16 May 2008.
Courtesy of Teater Garasi. Photo: Mohamad Amin 99
6.2 Sri Qadariatin, in the role of dangdut singer/dancer,
struts her stuff before fellow actors and audience
members in Tubuh Ketiga. Teater Garasi, Salihara
Theatre, Jakarta, 12 October 2010. Courtesy of Teater
Garasi. Photo: Mohamad Amin 105
6.3 Salimah the dangdut singer, flanked by a security guard,
appears on stage before her fans in Goyang Penasaran.
Teater Garasi, Studio Teater Garasi, 14 December 2011.
Courtesy of Teater Garasi. Photo: Mohamad Amin 107

ix
x List of Illustrations

6.4 Salimah, in her changed form, after the attack on her

performance, interacts with village men in Goyang
Penasaran. Teater Garasi, Studio Teater Garasi,
14 December 2011. Courtesy of Teater Garasi.
Photo: Mohamad Amin 108
7.1 The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise by Okada Toshiki.
Chelfitsch, Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Yokohama,
February 2011. Courtesy of Chelfitsch.
Photo: Kikuko Usuyama 122
8.1 Converted truck, Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore.
Singapore Arts Festival 14 May 2010. Courtesy of
Rimini Protokoll. Photo: Anja Mayer 131
9.1 Robyn Nevin as Hecuba. The Women of Troy.
Sydney Theatre Company, 2008. Courtesy of Sydney
Theatre Company. Photo: Tracey Schramm 153
9.2 The chorus. The Women of Troy. Sydney Theatre
Company, 2008. Courtesy of Sydney Theatre
Company. Photo: Tracey Schramm 154
10.1 A clothing factory in China with workers wearing mice
heads, from Visible Cities at the Singapore Arts Festival
2009. Courtesy of National Arts Council of Singapore.
Photographer unknown 162
10.2 Lim Kay Tong as a ‘fishhead’ from Visible Cities at the
Singapore Arts Festival 2009. Courtesy of National Arts
Council of Singapore. Photographer unknown 165
11.1 Theft of Sita, directed by Nigel Jamieson. Botanical
Gardens, Adelaide Festival, 2000. Courtesy of Performing
Lines. Photo: Julian Crouch 175
11.2 I La Galigo, directed by Robert Wilson. Lincoln
Center, 14 July 2005. Courtesy of Robert Wilson.
Photo: Pavel Antonov 180
12.1 Prince C (Soeda Sonoko) commits suicide in Hamletclone.
German tour, 2003. Courtesy of Kawamura Takeshi.
Photo: Miyauchi Katsu 191
12.2 Daisan Erotica, ‘The barbed-wire cage is opened by
the hands of dead people’, the final text-projection in
Hamletclone. German tour, 2003. Courtesy of Kawamura
Takeshi. Photo: Miyauchi Katsu 196
Series Editors’ Preface

The ‘Studies in International Performance’ series was initiated in

2004 on behalf of the International Federation for Theatre Research,
by Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton, successive Presidents of the
Federation. Their aim was, and still is, to call on performance scholars
to expand their disciplinary horizons to include the comparative study
of performances across national, cultural, social and political borders.
This is necessary not only in order to avoid the homogenizing tendency
of national paradigms in performance scholarship, but also in order to
engage in creating new performance scholarship that takes account of
and embraces the complexities of transnational cultural production,
the new media, and the economic and social consequences of increas-
ingly international forms of artistic expression. Comparative studies
(especially when conceived across more than two terms) can value
both the specifically local and the broadly conceived global forms of
performance practices, histories and social formations. Comparative
aesthetics can challenge the limitations of national orthodoxies of art
criticism and current artistic knowledge. In formalizing the work of
the Federation’s members through rigorous and innovative scholarship
this Series aims to make a significant contribution to an ever-changing
project of knowledge creation.

Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton

International Federation for Theatre Research

Fédération Internationale pour la Recherche Théâtrale

xi
Acknowledgements

This book is the outcome of a three-year collaborative, interdisci-

plinary research project funded by the Australian Research Council
Discovery Project Scheme. We are grateful to our three institutions:
the University of Melbourne, RMIT University and the University
of Tasmania for their collegial administrative and financial support.
Additional generous funding was provided for the conferences, sym-
posia, public lectures and field trips that helped us gather and present
our findings over the years. These include: the School of Culture and
Communication, the Faculty of Arts and the Macgeorge Fund at the
University of Melbourne, the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT,
the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration at the Australia-
Indonesia Institute, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the
International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures
at Freie Universität. Many scholarly associations have provided stages
for the presentation of the research: the Australasian Association for
Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies; the International Federation
for Theatre Research; Performance Studies International; and Sanata
Dharma University in Yogyakarta.
We are most grateful for the superb research assistance of Melinda
Hetzel and Corey Wakeling. Many people have assisted with the
intellectual labour and preparation of the manuscript: Ian Kendrick
from the Visual Cultures Centre in the School of Culture and
Communication at the University of Melbourne, Corey Wakeling,
Rebecca Leech, Judith Seef from the Sydney Theatre Company, Kristine
Moruzi, Michelle Fotiou from the Adelaide Festival, Kay Jamieson
from Brink Productions, Jasmyn Woodford from Deckchair Theatre,
Pearl Samuel from the National Arts Council of Singapore, Kawamura
Takeshi, Gekidan Kaitaisha, Not Yet It’s Difficult, Seinendan, Chelfitsch,
Manfred Steger, Terrell Carver, M. Cody Poulton, Helena Grehan, Vera
Mackie and Stanca Scholz-Cionca.
Sincere thanks to Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton, the forward-
thinking Series Editors of Studies in International Performance at Palgrave
Macmillan, and to Paula Kennedy, Penny Simmons and Sacha Lake,
the Palgrave Team, for their friendly professionalism.

xii
 Acknowledgements xiii

Deepest gratitude to our husbands, partners, children, friends and

colleagues, who took a great interest in the project, listened to our stories
and supported our work.

Note: All Japanese names in the book are given family name first, as is
the convention.
Introduction: Regional Modernities
in the Global Era

In the Asia-Pacific region, performances range from traditional Javanese

shadow puppet theatre filmed on smart phones to Australian interpre-
tations of European and American realism. Focusing on the region’s
diverse theatre and performance from traditional premodern to con-
temporary postmodern forms, this book provides a view of Asia-Pacific
performance that engages with questions of traditional cultural prac-
tices, modern dramatic form, digital technology and experimental and
avant-garde practice in local settings that are inflected with geographic
and cultural specificities. Drawing on sociological approaches to moder-
nity that see the contemporary period as an era of new, alternative or
‘liquid’ modernity (Bauman, 2000) and on anthropological approaches
to cultural practice that see an expanded role for the imagination in
the social life of the present (Appadurai, 2005: 31), the book advances
an argument for a regional, Asia-Pacific or as yet other unnamed
modernity.
The book offers a series of case studies that explore theatre practice in
Australia, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore, chosen for their contrasting
histories and cultures, to show how theatre produces transformations at
national, regional and global levels. In this sense we work from Benedict
Anderson’s (1991) premise that the nation state is still ‘the basic unit of
political activity in the global era’ (Gilbert and Lo, 2009: 7). Australia,
Indonesia, Japan and Singapore are chosen because each has compelling
aspects of modernity to explore. Australia has a unique combination of
Indigenous and settler cultures with a heritage of European first moder-
nity that constitutes its theatrical canon; Japan as an East Asian culture
with more than 150 years of modernity is a path-breaker for all other
Asian cultures; Indonesia is a recent postcolonial state in which the
reassertion of diverse regional and cultural identities coincides with the
1
2 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

competing forces of Islamic religion and the spread of secular moder-

nity; while Singapore, a former British colony, is now a model of hyper-
advanced modernity. Singapore’s location in what has been a space of
flows for millennia, and its multicultural, multi-ethnic composition,
make it a compelling case study.
We suggest that the diverse performance cultures of the region are
active sites through which new or alternative modernities emerge and
become significant in the global era.
We argue that theatre and performance in the region engages with,
but also challenges the hegemony of British, European and North
Atlantic modernity. The book includes: discussions of the cultural flows
of modernity in key performances across the region in the late twen-
tieth and early twenty-first century; critical analyses of the diversity
of performance from text-based theatre to site-specific performance;
examinations of imaginative constructions of identity and the new
mobilities of the global era; commentaries on new technologies of pro-
duction, transmission and circulation of performance; and analyses of
the sociocultural and political contexts with which theatre engages.
Premodern and contemporary modes of performance are evident
across the region but especially in Indonesia and Japan and within
the Indigenous cultures of Australia. Yet this book does not frame pre-
modern and ancient forms as the antithesis of the modern, nor does it
align their politics with either conservative, nationalist or provincial
politics on the one hand or progressive, grassroots, anti-hegemonic
politics on the other. We contend, however, that cultural practice that
owes little or nothing to European culture offers a regional modernity
based in the continuing specificity of the Asia-Pacific in the present.
We argue that performance is best understood in site-specific locations
and provide readers with contextualized accounts of performance in
each nation state in the region. As contemporary cultural practice in
the region typically mixes premodern, modern and postmodern forms,
both European and non-European, one of our tasks is to track historical,
intercultural as well as contemporary influences. What is of immediate
interest in the region are the ways in which imitations and variations
of the Western theatre tradition sit alongside hybrid forms that par-
ticipate in global flows of aesthetics, technology, artists and audiences
within the economies of finance and cultural production. Indeed, the
book’s narrative flow traces a path from the regional encounter with
modern European theatre, to the assertion of counter-colonial regional
modernities and on to the contemporary fluid or liquid era in which the
boundaries between East and West, Asia and Europe begin to dissolve.
 Introduction 3

The increasing circulation of performance techniques and styles around

a global performance industry and culture contribute to the greater
fluidity of culture that we articulate through the metaphor of liquid
modernity.
A further premise is that transformations in theatre are motivated by
transformations at the level of history, philosophy and society; theatre
is not an autonomous aesthetic sphere but part of the social and mate-
rial world. Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and Australia have significant
contrasting performance cultures that are diverse, highly innovative
and sophisticated and that point to the evolution of a regional moder-
nity. Each country has a relation to the heritage of European modernity
either through colonialism or neocolonialism – the latter in the sense
defined by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak as ‘the largely economic rather
than territorial enterprise of imperialism’ (1999: 3) – or through indus-
trial development and modernization. Moreover, the heritage of region-
specific histories such the Islamization of South East Asia, the impact of
Chinese and Indian diasporic movements, the war in the Pacific from
1941 to 1945, migration and, more recently, the spread of technology
and the transition to the postindustrial economy all contribute to the
region in ways that produce differences from hegemonic Euro-American
culture and society.

The Asia-Pacific region

The book is an exploration of modernity in the Asia-Pacific region. Our

focus is theatre and performance that we view as live contemporary art
forms capable of mediating history and modernity as well as everyday
life and the imagination. This exploration leads to a complex under-
standing of the region that we articulate through the broad concept
of ‘liquid modernity’, although other modifiers such as ‘multiple’,
‘alternative’, ‘reflexive’ and ‘new’ are developed as subsets in the book.
Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity, as we will set out shortly, helps
us engage critically with the impact of globalization in the region that
sees culture, economies and the arts less containable within the defined
geopolitical borders of the nation state or region and caught up in the
tensions that accompany a period of rapid cultural change.
The impact of this changing cultural environment is evident in
theatre and performance cultures that grapple with the shift in outlook
from the local and national to the transnational. In twenty-first-century
Singapore, for example, the old binaries such as colonizer/colonized,
East/West, indigenous/foreign, urban/rural and secular/Islamic have
4 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

been interrogated and revised. The Asian Values debate, which marked
the public discourses of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s, saw the
delegitimization of the West as the role model for modernity, and the
recognition of East Asian societies as alternative modernities (Barr,
2002; Gaonkar, 2001). The enduring dichotomy between tradition
and modernity is complicated in Indonesia by the growing strength of
Islam in a geopolitical landscape vastly altered since the attacks on the
World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon on 11 September
2011, popularly known as the watershed moment of ‘9/11’. Across the
region, the negotiation of identity is now far more likely to be generated
around issues such as flexible citizenship and the cultural logics of trans-
nationalism (Ong, 1999), cosmopolitanism and nationalism (Gilbert
and Lo, 2009; Kahn, 2006) or modernity and its forms of exclusion
(Kahn, 2001). Transformations in the economic outlook of each nation,
including the transition to postindustrial economies, participation in
the global economy and strengthened alignments with global capitalism,
flow into the region’s support for, and engagement with, global theatre
and performance cultures. At the same time, diaspora, the struggle for
representation, the rise of militant Islam, transnational urban practices,
minority claims to legitimacy and the unsettling of patriarchy all have
an urgency that is manifested in the narratives and imagery of theatre
and performance.
In investigating the case for regional modernities in the arts and
culture, this book recognizes that under conditions of globalization,
the nations in the region are moving towards a postnational or trans-
national stage of development that puts pressure on the concept of the
nation state. Indeed, the tensions and anxieties that attend the blurring
of national boundaries and the pressure on such things as national
identity and culture underpin the study. We suggest that the pressure of
transnational movements in the region raises the stakes for the integrity
of premodern or precolonial modes of performance and the viability of
nationalist theatre forms.
The emphasis on regional variations or difference within global
capitalism is not to reinstate the idea of a ‘real’ Asia-Pacific as an object
of knowledge. Rather, the particular benefits of our regional inquiry flow
from the questions we ask about the production of the Asia-Pacific – as
place, identity and sets of cultural practices. We analyse the relationships
between the imagined and material worlds, the stage and daily life, and
performance and context. We ask, for instance, questions about the
nature of the relationship between the imagined worlds of theatre and
performance and the everyday social world of people who live in the
 Introduction 5

areas in which the performance takes place and who variously partici-
pate in its production. Highlighting the variations and diversity in the
spread of modernity across the region, the book points to the ambiva-
lence of new interpretations of the present and of sites of contestation,
dissent and debate.
Our interest in modernity is presented as a further stage in the critical
analysis of culture in our region. We respond to the series of epistemo-
logical shifts that in the 1990s and 2000s saw theatre and area studies
move away from the frameworks of national histories of dramatic litera-
ture and performance, and colonial and postcolonial studies. These shifts
within academic disciplines were towards cultural studies, performance
studies, globalization and cosmopolitanism. The transformation in
scholarship has been so great that the formerly distinct disciplinary for-
mations of Japanese studies, Indonesian studies and Australian studies,
for example, intersect with global theoretical frameworks such as media,
gender and ecology studies.
Understanding modernity in the particular circumstances of the Asia-
Pacific adds to the wider discourse on modernity. In line with the view
of Asia’s distinctive relationship with modernity as embraced by Barr
(2002) and Gaonkar (2001) cited earlier, sociologist Schmuel Eisenstadt
notes that ‘modernity and “Westernization” are not identical; Western
patterns of modernity are not the only “authentic” modernities, though
they enjoy historical precedence and continue to be a basic reference
point for others’ (2000: 3). We propose that our study of Asia-Pacific
modernities in the global era re-examines the historical precedence
of the West and its stance as a reference point for others through the
notion that modernity is now a global phenomenon no longer tied to
one regional power. This is not to say, however, that a region does not
produce distinctive modernities tied to history and place within the
global sphere.
The central question of modernity in the book sits within the context
of the waning of scholarly interest in postmodernism and the uneven
spread of modernity across advanced and developing economies. The
end of history scenario has limited application in the face of the con-
tinuing ‘global spread of modernity and its mutation into multiple
modernities’ in regional and remote areas (Lee, 2006: 358; see also Yoda
and Harootunian, 2006). Yet, the meaning of modernity in the non-
Western sphere is yet to be fully articulated outside the discourses of
postcolonialism. Turning the critical focus on to diverse modes of the-
atrical modernities in the region offers productive ways of understand-
ing theatre and performance that utilize the fragmented, intertextual,
6 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

‘quotational’ style of postmodern stylistics, but addresses new modes

and engagements with the present. The arts, including theatre and per-
formance, not only absorb and synthesize new thinking but also repack-
age it in ways that reflect similar but often quite different responses to
the new in local situations. In this sense, the idea of modernity in the
region shares common points of reference but is able to transform in
unique ways to show states of flow.

Liquid modernity

Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of fluid or liquid modernity is the book’s

key concept and metaphor for describing the social and cultural impact
of global capitalism in the region. As a theory it is European in origin,
but globally oriented in a way that seems especially suited to the mod-
ern economies of the Asia-Pacific. In particular, we use the concept to
develop our discussion of live theatre and performance that engages
with phenomena such as globalization, consumerism, states of rapid
and continuous cultural change, the transition to the postindustrial
economy, the digital revolution, and themes such as democracy, reli-
gion and the family and notions of identity and belonging. Across the
performance spaces of the region we notice characters and figurations
that express new states of consciousness, being, bodily presence, aliena-
tion, unrequited desire and ennui suggestive of transitions occurring
at the micro, existential or personal level of daily life. Bauman draws
the distinction between an older industrial modernity and the present
postindustrial phase on the basis that the present is characterized by
an unprecedented acceleration of the time and pace of change accom-
panied by high levels of mobility and transience. Hence the metaphor
refers to the fluidity of life in the fast-paced digital present, in contrast
to the relative solidity of the object world of industrial modernity.
Liquid modernity, as the term implies, appears to be emancipatory in
the sense that:

Fluids travel easily. They ‘flow’, ‘spill’, ‘run-out’, ‘splash’, ‘pour over’,
‘leak’, ‘flood’, ‘spray’, ‘drip’, ‘seep’, ‘ooze’; unlike solids, they are not
easily stopped – they pass around some obstacles, dissolve some
others and bore or soak their way through others still.
(Bauman, 2000: 2)

But there are losses as well as benefits. The concept articulates, criti-
cally, the ‘new and unprecedented setting for individual life pursuits’
 Introduction 7

but raises a series of challenges ‘never before encountered’ (Bauman,

2007: 1). Liquid modernity is hence a concept and a description of the
‘fluid condition’ in which social institutions, organizational structures
and the routines of daily life ‘melt faster than the time it takes to cast
them, and once they are cast for them to set’ (2007: 1). From this per-
spective, the individual finds him- or herself caught up in global flows
of information, capital and commodities and is fearful about security, of
being left behind by progress, and beset by ‘the mind-boggling pace of
change’ (2007: 11).
Liquid modernity helps ‘articulate the intuition of a radical change in
the arrangement of human cohabitation and in social conditions under
which life-politics is nowadays conducted’ (Bauman, 2000: 10). The
return to Marx and Engel’s idea of the ‘melting of the solids’ (1987: 35),
conceived as a critique of nineteenth-century modernization, marks the
advent of what Bauman sees as a new ‘individualized, privatized version
of modernity’ with power vested in a mobile global elite (2000: 8). In a
recent formulation, Bauman describes the characteristic melting of sol-
ids in postmodern and ideologically neoliberal societies such as Japan,
the United States and Australia:

I use the term ‘liquid modernity’ … for the currently existing shape
of the modern condition, described by other authors as ‘postmoder-
nity’, ‘late modernity’, ‘second’ or ‘hyper’ modernity. What makes
modernity ‘liquid’, and thus justifies the choice of name is its self-
propelling, self-intensifying, compulsive and obsessive moderniza-
tion, as a result of which, like liquid, none of the consecutive forms
of social life is able to maintain its shape for long.
(Bauman, 2011: 11)

We recognize the compulsive logic of liquid modernity in institutional

practices characterized by obsessive deregulation, restructuring, downsiz-
ing, redundancy and review that affects both the private sector and state
and cultural institutions including government, universities and the arts.
But the concept itself refers to its own unstable condition and its elu-
siveness: liquid modernity welcomes and is inundated by globalization,
which is yet another kind of explanatory discourse that has a stake in
articulating the present, and it struggles to take a position on political
and other issues. Furthermore, liquid flows are blocked by institutional
power and state authority, and by resilient cultural and religious prac-
tices as well as family and kinship networks. Liquid modernity may
offer increased mobility and access to communication, but its freedoms
8 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

in the Asia-Pacific region are tempered by the legacy of heavy moder-

nity, especially the era of colonial conquest, imperial rule and neoco-
lonialism. Colonial history lingers in the persistence of memories that
refuse to fade, while in the modern mobile workforce, workers on liquid
contracts experience none of the emancipation of free-flowing life-
worlds. These benefits and losses, as well as the social and personal costs
of mobility, transience, loss of community and individualization, all
feature prominently in the performances we examine across the region.
The ‘hapless’ and ‘vulnerable’ individual (Bauman, 2000: 7) appears, we
argue, in the guise of dramatic characters in that most fluid of the arts,
the theatre, where the fleeting experiences of individuals move across
the stage and disappear.
The book is also concerned with the question of forms that are not
liquid; that is, the points of resistance and blocks of solidity across and
within the region. Local custom, traditional ceremonial performances
and other cultural practices, even languages deemed traditional are
often revivified in hybrid forms that allow for the presence of a distinc-
tive local resonance for participants and audiences. Modernity puts
pressure on the tenuously closed forms of narrative, and religious and
cultural ceremony in the digital era but we also find that the opposition
between tradition and modernity collapses. The limitless reproduction
of the moving image, and the capacity to mix, remix, fuse and hybridize
forms, destabilizes any lasting idea of a fixed tradition.
Baumann’s concept of liquid modernity helps us identify com-
mon concerns among the plays and performances examined in the
book and underpins the kind of modernity that we are interested in
investigating.

Theatre and performance

The book’s distinct contribution is an analysis of theatre and perform-

ance as key indicators of imagined lives and imagined worlds within the
framework of modernity in the Asia-Pacific. The case studies show how
theatre and performance relate to wider social trends and are indicative
of the flows of language, image, music, dance and media across the
region. Modernist interest in the role of imagination and aesthetic expe-
rience in daily life is reconsidered in the light of the greatly expanded
public sphere that has followed the social and economic modernization
of the Asia-Pacific. The book analyses the work of the imagination as
it manifests in theatre and performance in Australia, Indonesia, Japan
and Singapore, locations that we think about as sites within the region
 Introduction 9

rather than fixed nation states or areas for study. Each site encompasses
marked differences in language, performance, history and politics and
variations in the solidity and volatility of its imagined worlds. Yet, it
is the relationship between the imagined worlds of performance and
everyday life that is central to the book’s investigation of modernity in
the Asia-Pacific.
The investigation locates theatre and performance as key sites for
the negotiation of enduring modernist concerns with alienation and
anxiety, tradition and change in the current era. We contend that
these concerns are now those of global modernity too, with questions
of nation and identity, race and religion, tradition and change, family
and community inflected with geographic and cultural specificities. The
book proposes that the concept of Asia-Pacific modernity gives due rec-
ognition to new and creative cultural developments in the region and
argues for a region-specific sensibility across its arts practices.
The book contributes new awareness of the multiple roles of theatre
and performance across the region. Some theatres might have progres-
sive or conservative community propaganda roles; some may be con-
sidered radical in their rejection of Western and/or American cultural
politics while also serving other ruling interests; while other theatres
again might offer forms of resistance to religious orthodoxy or Islamic-
nationalist propaganda and promote modern secular and ‘universal’
values such as interculturalism and respect for difference.

The structure of the book

The book is divided into three parts, each containing four chapters that
discuss the four different sites of theatre and performance. A fourth part
serves as a coda to the whole and is followed by a conclusion. The book
is co-authored but we have opted for a specialist rather than integrated
focus for each chapter in order to develop the detailed analysis of each
site. Hence we offer a site-specific rather than an intercultural meth-
odology, drawing comparisons across the chapters where appropriate
but maintaining the integrity of analysis through our specializations
in each area. Each writer conducted site-specific research before prepar-
ing chapters that were then read and critiqued in a series of writing
workshops that took place over the three-year study. These workshops
were enhanced through our participation in panel presentations at
conferences and symposia in Melbourne, Munich and Yogyakarta. In
this way, we were able to jointly develop the overall structure, approach
and argument of the book, develop a common language of analysis and
10 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

critique and inhabit the pronoun ‘we’ across the book as a whole. The
Introduction, Conclusion and decisions about photographic material
were also collaborative.
In Part I, we examine text-based drama separately in four sites to con-
sider how the solids of iconic representational systems begin to melt in
the era of liquid modernity. The diverse histories of theatre and drama
in each site are discussed in separate chapters but it becomes evident
that even at its most colloquial and banal, the overriding concern is
with modernity’s troubled, conflicted history and the anxieties it gen-
erates. In Part I, ‘Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama’, our central
argument is that the conventions of modern drama liquefy, giving rise
to new modes of dramatic communication.
Chapter 1, ‘Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past’, begins
the study with Australia as the site of an Indigenous and Anglo-European
history, culture and language. It will argue that in the first decade of the
twenty-first century, the conventions of modern drama inherited from
Europe, particularly those to do with the here and now of place and time,
begin to liquefy. It investigates the work of Australian playwright Andrew
Bovell, whose plays open up the closed dramatic form to consider the
legacy of the past on the present and the future. The politics of land rights,
reconciliation, reparation and atonement for the suffering and loss of
Indigenous peoples as a consequence of European settlement reach a criti-
cal turning point in the 1990s. Modern text-based drama breaks open the
unity of time and place in recognition of the conflicted and violent history
that resides within Australian modernity. New modes of dramatic compo-
sition see multiple temporalities and places simultaneously on stage.
Chapter 2, ‘Modernity and the Self in Singapore: Emily of Emerald Hill’,
moves on to Singapore as a second site through the study of Singapore
playwright Stella Kon’s 1985 monodrama Emily of Emerald Hill. Emily
is a domineering matriarch and a peranakan – a fusion of Malay and
Chinese cultures. She is, like Singapore itself, a hybrid identity. Her
world is disturbed by the social and cultural changes that accompanied
the transition from colony to nationhood, but she faces even greater
personal challenges posed by the liquidizing powers identified by
Bauman when her family breaks down and her world disintegrates.
Chapter 3, ‘Modern Drama and Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia’,
draws on two case studies from Indonesia. Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga
(The Struggle of the Naga Tribe) by Rendra, first performed in 1975,
presents an iconic example of the way modern theatre of this period
mobilized local cultural forms and drew on international models to
promote an alternate vision of Indonesian modernity to that of the
 Introduction 11

authoritarian Suharto state. In Biographi Yanti (Yanti’s Biography) staged

in 1992 by the group Teater Sae, the solid structures of the modern play
dissolve into a fragmented, disjunctive theatrical idiom expressing the
feelings of alienation and loss of identity experienced by urban masses
confronting impersonal, repressive political authority and the rapidly
expanding impact of global capitalism and mass media.
Chapter 4, ‘Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern’, investi-
gates Japanese playwright Hirata Oriza’s influential theory of ‘colloquial
theatre’ (gendai kôgo engeki) through a reading of the artist’s groundbreak-
ing theatre piece Tôkyô No-to (Tokyo Notes), written in 1994. With Hirata’s
use of the term gendai or modern in connection to this play he aims
to put it at the very centre of debates about Japan’s modern theatre
(shingeki). The play, set in Tokyo sometime in the near future, begins
with people gathering in the foyer of an art gallery to see masterpieces
by the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer. Stylistically the play mixes height-
ened naturalism and colloquial dialogue with a sense of liquid flow to
create a relaxed, almost ambient temporality. In these flows, coupled
with the situations described in Tokyo Notes, we can see in Bauman’s
terms a ‘melting of solids’.
Part II, ‘Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities’, investigates the-
atrical and performative representations of the Asia-Pacific region as a
fluid space of liquid modernity where theatre and performance stage
pluralities of performed identities, landscape and region. In this part we
consider the dissolution of theatrical representations of space as fixed
to the mise-en-scène of dramatic performance and the emergence of new
mobilities for subjects in locations both real and imagined.
Chapter 5, ‘Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia’,
focuses on performances set in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory
and in the Kimberley region of Western Australia: territories and regions
that brim with unique geographical and cultural features; that are closer
to Asia than to the large population centres of the nation; are both
ancient and modern; and connected to local and global flows of cul-
ture, trade, technology and finance. Solid and liquid modernity cohabit
in these demographically, geographically and economically diverse
regions. The chapter discusses mobile and fluid identities in the widely
touring Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin) which features the Chooky
Dancers of Elcho Island, north of Darwin, and Grace, an epic drama
based on the novel by West Australian writer Robert Drewe, and staged
by Deckchair Theatre, Fremantle.
Chapter 6, ‘Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto’, analyses
the way performance in Indonesia embodies the contradictions of
12 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

contemporary liquid modernity. An exuberant blending of local theatri-

cal forms with international influences gives expression to the multiple,
porous identities flourishing in the freedom of the post-Suharto era.
Yet such celebration is tempered by clashes between identities, and the
threat of dissolution of self and community in the flooding tide of glo-
balization. The theatre group Garasi directly addresses these issues in sev-
eral recent productions. Je.ja.l.an (The Streets) depicts diverse social groups
competing in the absence of a common identity and sense of direction.
Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body) responds to this dilemma by embracing the
notion of a third space, a hybrid, blended identity. In Goyang Penasaran
(The Obsessive Twist), these issues play out at the level of gritty everyday
reality, through the contested body of a female entertainer.
Chapter 7, ‘“Youth is not the only thing that passes at sonic speed”:
Speed and Private Lives in Okada Toshiki’s The Sonic Life of a Giant
Tortoise’, considers Japanese theatre phenomenon Chelfitsch’s Zougame
no Sonikku Raifu (The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, 2011), a play that
concerns the apparent breakdown of a young Japanese couple’s rela-
tionship. However, the narrative and compositional elements of the
performance are extremely fragmented, featuring, for example, radical
shifts in the depiction of theatrical time and space. Stylistically the play
is a remarkable embodied depiction of liquid modernity. The chapter
explores how The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise is a social commentary on
young people’s lives in contemporary Tokyo.
Chapter 8, ‘Dramaturgy of the Liquid: Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore’,
discusses the Swiss-German theatre collective Rimini Protokoll, whose
internationally renowned performances using real people instead of
professional actors often fall into the porous space between reality and
fiction. One series of performances takes place in a converted truck, in
which the audience is transformed into cargo and transported through
cities, both real and imagined. With Cargo Sofia-X – A Bulgarian Truck
Ride through European Cities as the model, Rimini Protokoll has toured a
series of mobile performances through various cities in Europe and the
Middle East. The performance has since relocated to Asia to appear as
Cargo Tokyo–Yokohama and Cargo Shangqiu–Shanghai. While in reality
never leaving Singapore, Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore takes spectators
on a simulated journey that sparks questions of place, identity and
fixity in a liquid world.
Part III, ‘Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach’, traces
the inward and outward flows of modern European-style drama and
Asian performance through the prevalence and importance of tour-
ing, of intercultural collaborations and the rise of transnational,
 Introduction 13

multilingual and multicultural productions. It focuses on case studies

of the trend in adaptation in theatre that represents a further manifes-
tation of liquid modernity. Continuous modernization sees the deter-
ritorialization of the classical and modern dramatic text through free
form adaptations that challenge the primacy of the written text, the
authority of the author/playwright and the original dramatic form of
the work. Adaptation theatre sees a new mobility in the national theatre
as it moves towards transnational identities.
Chapter 9, ‘Australian Adaptations: The European Turn’, discusses
the prominence of adaptation theatre in Australia, exemplifying how
modernity’s theatres ‘do not keep to any shape for long and are con-
stantly ready (and prone) to change it’ (Bauman, 2000: 2). The chapter
argues that a global cosmopolitan outlook underpins Australian rewrit-
ings and restagings of the European canon in ways that do more than
simply localize setting and accent. Focusing on the Barrie Kosky and
Tom Wright adaptation of The Women of Troy performed in Sydney
and Melbourne in 2008, the chapter probes the return of a Eurocentric
vision in works that are almost wholly chosen from the repertoire of
the European dramatic canon. It questions the cultural politics of major
companies, such as the flagship Sydney Theatre Company, that bypass
locations in the Asia-Pacific and head straight to Euro-American cities
such as London and New York.
Chapter 10, ‘Performing Liquid Modernity: Chay Yew’s Visible Cities
in Singapore’, examines Singapore playwright Chay Yew’s Visible Cities
that premiered on 22 May 2009 at the Singapore Arts Festival. A rich
entanglement of ideas links the modern world with Italo Calvino’s ur-
text, Invisible Cities and the thirteenth-century world of Kublai Khan
and Marco Polo. The chapter argues that in a multilingual, multimedia
event that reinvents Kublai Khan’s ‘endless, formless ruin of a city’
(Calvino, 1997: 5) in the formlessness of global flows, Visible Cities high-
lights the nature of the present as characterized by liquidity.
Chapter 11, ‘Performing “Authentic Indonesia” Transculturally’,
focuses on Indonesia’s recent involvement in a new fluidity of perform-
ance flows and adaptations. Indonesian modern theatre artists perform
internationally and transnational touring productions adapt Indonesian
dramatic material for world stages. Yet these large-scale, international
productions and their reception continue to be influenced by old geo-
political solidities and power imbalances. The Australian-Indonesian
adaptation of the Ramayana legend The Theft of Sita combined Balinese
shadow puppetry with contemporary music and multimedia to reflect
on current Indonesian politics in ways much-appreciated in nearby
14 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

Australia but less well received internationally. In his international

production I La Galigo, Robert Wilson interpreted a mythical epic
from Sulawesi in universal terms, gaining great international acclaim,
but much critique in the region for cultural appropriation and local
inaccessibility.
Chapter 12, ‘Kawamura Takeshi’s Theatre and the Spectacle of Adapta-
tion’, examines Kawamura Takeshi’s Hamuretto Kûron (Hamletclone, 2000).
By focusing on questions of adaptation and rewriting classical Western
and Japanese plays in a radical form, it argues that Kawamura problema-
tizes the inherent cultural power of the canon. The chapter also examines
Kawamura as a director whose practice has evolved alongside interna-
tional theatre trends that place a similar emphasis on fostering inventive
aesthetics and political conversations with classical works.
Part IV, ‘Regional Flows’, responds to recent calls for an expansion of
‘inter-Asian theatre research’ that is linked to both the move towards
transnationalism in the region and the move away from Eurocentrism
(Nagata, 2010: 295). We provide a coda to our site-specific study of
modernities within the four nation states that considers the exchanges
between and across the region. The impact of liquid modernity in the
Asia-Pacific is evident in the arts and culture through the circulation of
touring companies and the sharing of repertoire across the region.
The scope of the book thus covers diverse forms of historic and mod-
ern cultural production in specific locations, each with its own particular
political economy, geographical location and cultural history, that do so
much more than adopt or mimic Eurocentric and American concepts of
modernity. Fredric Jameson’s great modernist thematics of ‘alienation,
anomie, solitude, social fragmentation and isolation’ ( Jameson, 1993:
69) are re-examined in the light of contemporary frameworks that
emphasize alternative modernist themes of technology, identity, fluid-
ity and change.
Theatre in the Asia-Pacific aims to delineate a regional, Asia-Pacific
modernity without reducing complexity and difference on the one
hand or reinstating the idea of a ‘real’ Asia-Pacific as an object of knowl-
edge on the other. Rather, we hope that the particular benefits of our
inquiry will flow from the questions we ask about the production of the
Asia-Pacific – as place, identity and sets of cultural practices. We hope
that readers find that the broad concept of liquid modernity – European
in origin but globally oriented – acquires a particular set of characteris-
tics as it flows into and merges with Asia-Pacific performance. Our task
is to articulate and evaluate the modernities in sites that are inflected
with the region’s geographic and cultural specificities.
Part I
Changing Forms of Theatre and
Drama
1
Modern Australian Drama:
Haunted by the Past

Australian drama is a drama of the modern era and is modelled on the

European realist form. As a dramatic form it is primarily constituted
around the figure of the playwright, the written dramatic text and the
theatrical performance of the text. Its evolution as a national drama
has occurred as European themes, language, character and setting are
replaced with local character, situation and voice. By the 1960s, sceno-
graphy and performance style came to reflect Australian locations,
culture and voices. In the twenty-first century, a further change is dis-
cernible in dramatic texts that radically alter the temporality of modern
drama to interrogate the unresolved, perhaps irreconcilable, conse-
quences of the past and to think more critically about the co-presence
of past, present and future. The plays discussed in this chapter, Holy Day
(2001) and When the Rain Stops Falling (2009) by Australian playwright
Andrew Bovell, are but two of a larger body of dramatic works from dif-
ferent playwrights that might equally belong to this category. Bovell’s
plays are chosen, however, for their historicized, epic representations
of European settlement and hence lend themselves to the reflexive
modernities that parallel the rise of more liquid forms discussed in later
chapters. Reflexive modernity is understood here as creative practice
that opposes a colonizing, imperialist modernity from the perspective
of a more contemporary liquid modernity that bears its legacy. Reflexive
modernity is evident in dramatic writing practices that resonate with
Andreas Huyssen’s notion that under the onslaught of modernity,
‘we need both past and future to articulate our political, social, and
cultural dissatisfactions with the present state of the world (2003: 6)
and with Elin Diamond’s concept of ‘modernity’s drama’ that thinks
about and dramatizes ‘historical time’ (Diamond, 2001: 5). The idea of
reflexive modernity also resonates with, although is not the same as,
17
18 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

Peter Boenisch’s spectator-oriented concept of ‘reflexive dramaturgy’

discussed in Chapters 9 and 12.
The shift towards the re-examination of the past is exemplified in the
1990s by Indigenous dramas such as The 7 Stages of Grieving (1996) by
Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman, Stolen (1998) by Jane Harrison and
Yibiyung by Dallas Winmar performed at the Malthouse Melbourne in
2008. The 7 Stages of Grieving, performed by Mailman, is a monodrama
that describes and embodies the impact of European settlement on
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (see Casey, 2005; Gilbert
and Lo, 2009: 61; Grehan, 2001). The rise in the 1990s of a signifi-
cant group of Indigenous playwrights and companies, such as Ilbijerri
Theatre, occurs within a broader Indigenous human and land rights
movement but it is also possible that liquid modernity, like postmod-
ernism, provides a hospitable climate for pluralist voices to be heard.
Indigenous drama changes the Anglo-Celtic form of Australian drama
and challenges both cultural and political institutions, such as theatre
and drama and the nation, to recognize and atone for the past. Hence,
by enacting reflexive modernities that critique the dominant narrative
of progress, modern Australian drama begins to offer more complex
representations of the social, political and cultural impact of colonial
and settler modernity.
It is therefore significant that Andrew Bovell, one of the most promi-
nent of a new generation of leading Australian film and theatre writ-
ers, turns his attention to history. We are not attributing to him a
conscious intervention in the politics of land rights and reconciliation
that reached its most visible global form in the closing ceremony of
the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games (when musicians wore black T-shirts
printed with the word ‘Sorry’). Rather, as a member of the postmodern,
postdramatic and multimedia generation of theatre artists, Bovell makes
the transition from middle-class, anglophone relationship dramas; first,
to collaborative political theatre with Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?
(2000), three interlinked urban social dramas, co-written by Bovell, nov-
elist Christos Tsiolkas, playwrights Melissa Reeves and Patricia Cornelius
and musician Irene Vela. And then, with Holy Day and When the Rain
Stops Falling, he turns to the hidden stories behind European settlement
and the irreconcilable contradictions of Australian modernity. Both
plays exemplify a politicized, historicized, epic form with striking pat-
terns of repetition and coincidence that together affect a change in the
temporality and stratagem of modern Australian drama.
Maryrose Casey’s extensive and ongoing research into nineteenth-
century and contemporary Indigenous theatre and performance provides
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 19

a vast body of knowledge that goes a considerable way towards redress-

ing the erasure of Indigenous performance from modern Australian
history (Casey, 2004; Fensham and Varney, 2005: 199–237). Our study
of regional modernity, while following a different epistemological path-
way, builds on Casey’s research by suggesting that Indigenous drama
has prompted white writers, such as Bovell and John Romeril and others
before them, to think reflexively about European settlement. This form
is not quite liquid – the hegemony of text-based drama endures – but
its emergence coincides with the greater fluidity, shape-changing and
pluralism of culture in liquid modernity.

Australian colonial modernity: Indigenous dispossession

and white prisons

Australian modernity is augmented in ‘the era of territorial conquest’,

a period of ‘heavy’ modernity in which Europe expands into the New
World (Bauman, 2000: 114). The discovery and conquest of the New
World was typically directed at discovering, accumulating, trading and
colonizing human and non-human resources for strategic, geopolitical
or military advantage.
In January 1788, when the British Crown established a colony on the
east coast of Australia, Indigenous peoples were denied prior ownership
or occupation of the land under the European principle of terra nullius –
land that belongs to no one and that can be claimed by a sovereign
state – with devastating effects on a way of life developed over thousands
of years of continuous occupation. Denied sovereignty and land rights,
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders became native subjects of the crown
and subservient to the white population’s plans for the colony. This was
in the first instance to establish a self-sustaining penal colony to house
England’s growing prison population. Land clearing, building, farming
and other industries were established to support the enterprise in which
more than 165,000 British and Irish convicts were transported from
England in the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. Prisoners
served their sentences under brutal conditions and later worked as inden-
tured labourers assigned to free settlers, before being released but not
repatriated to England. Indigenous populations were wiped out by dis-
ease, massacres and the loss of a sustainable way of life or herded into mis-
sions where life resembled those of other ‘stateless’, dependent ‘national
minorities’ that modernity creates (Butler and Spivak, 2007: 12).
In December 1992, Prime Minister Paul Keating delivered the Redfern
Speech at the Australian Launch of the International Year for the
20 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

World’s Indigenous People, in which he recognized on behalf of the

nation state that European settlement had brought ‘devastation and
demoralization to Aboriginal Australia’ (Keating, 1992). As the speech
records with a dramatic gesture, ‘We took the traditional lands and
smashed the traditional way of life.’ (Keating, 1992)
The path from 1788 to 1992 proposes that the arrival and implanta-
tion of European modernity in Australia was marked by the establish-
ment of a British colony whose finer accomplishments are forever
associated with the deterritorialization and massacres of Indigenous
peoples, the virtual enslavement and demoralization of Indigenous
survivors, and the brutality of the penal system. Australian scholars and
artists, including playwrights and novelists, have long represented the
consequences of European settlement in terms of a haunted, anxious
and unsettled modern nation (Davis, 1986; Ginibi, 1999; Manne, 2001;
Tompkins, 2006; Wright, 2006). Bovell’s Holy Day is subtitled ‘The Red
Sea’ in a move that attaches the violence of colonization to the disputed
lands of the biblical era that also continue to haunt the modern era. In
terms of the present of its performance, the ‘history wars’ (Glow, 2007:
39) of the late 1990s seep into the play. These ‘wars’ refer to the his-
tory debates led by conservative Prime Minister John Howard, who in
a 1996 speech repudiated Keating’s 1992 Redfern Speech as politically
motivated and filled with leftist rhetoric:

This ‘black armband’ view of our past reflects a belief that most
Australian history since 1788 has been little more than a disgraceful
story of imperialism, exploitation, racism, sexism and other forms of
discrimination.
(Howard, 1996)

Holy Day and When the Rain Stops Falling counter the solidity of Prime
Minister Howard’s belief ‘on balance’ in the ‘heroic achievement’ of
nationhood (Howard, 1996) by representing the violence at the heart
of nation building. The discussion that follows highlights what we
present as examples of a reflexive modernity that addresses the secret
and haunted histories of settlement.

Holy Day: European settlement and frontier violence

Holy Day begins as a representation of hardship and racial division in

the nineteenth-century colony and descends into a dramatization of
abject horror in which settlers massacre an Indigenous community and
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 21

brutalize the young. The play stages, in visually and verbally confronting
ways, the secret history that haunts historical and literary accounts of
the period but has become the focus of Indigenous, feminist and post-
colonial theatre and scholarship in the last two decades. In the Adelaide
performance, the words ‘Terra Nullius’ are inscribed on a charred cross in
a stark reference to the colonization of Indigenous lands. Representations
of racial and child abuse invert nineteenth-century distinctions between
civilized man and savage; the displaced Aboriginal population bears wit-
ness to the white settlers’ descent into barbarism. Referring to historic
accounts of actual massacres, dramatic characters describe the violence
that takes place, epic style, off stage. By these dramatic and rhetorical
means, the play constructs colonial modernity as the irreconcilable dif-
ference between the project of European settlement and the survival of
the Indigenous way of life. The audience, too, bears witness to the vio-
lent process through which modernity takes root in the spaces of racial
difference and produces two opposing versions of history.
In the play, the white frontier is far removed from town and govern-
ance and is poorly fortified and exposed. It is depicted as a lawless zone
and a space of deep anxiety demarcated by The Traveller’s Rest, a ‘half-
way house between distant settlements’, and the bush where a deterrito-
rialized Indigenous community has regrouped (Bovell, 2001: 1). Bovell
emphasizes the inversions that cross the two zones. Settlers treat the
presence of Indigenous peoples as vestiges of the primitive pre-colonial
era, ‘moving shadows’ who spear both settlers and their sheep (2001: 11),
while for the Indigenous community ‘white men on horses’ are the
harbingers of little other than violent death (2001: 64). The bifurcation
of the nineteenth century into black and white is the backdrop and
logic of the drama that presses its point about the violence of nation
building by focusing on the fate of three children: a missing baby and
two damaged teenagers. Revenge for the supposed kidnapping of the
non-Indigenous baby leads to the massacre at the riverbed, while the
teenagers are without protection in a society that tolerates brutality as
the ‘cost’ of ‘building a nation here’ (2001: 62).
From the settler perspective, ‘here’ is isolated and the wisdom of
building a nation is questionable. In the apocalyptic opening scene of
the play, Elizabeth Wilkes, a Christian missionary’s widow, stands on a
rise with thunder rumbling in the distance, asking the Lord why he has
abandoned her ‘so far away’ from ‘the Holy Day’ (Bovell, 2001: 1). The
question hangs unanswered in both the darkening sky and the secular
modern drama, but it resonates with colonial perceptions of Australia as
isolated, remote and uncivilized. The moral authority she presumes as
22 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

an English woman and a Christian is thoroughly undermined when she

wrongly accuses an Indigenous woman of abducting and murdering her
newborn daughter, as an alibi for her own suspicious behaviour. When
the settlers chain the woman, Linda, to a tree, force a false confession
from her and leave her for dead, Elizabeth watches from a distance, har-
bouring her white mother’s guilt, for it becomes clear she has harmed
her own baby. The settlers’ lust for revenge is easily transferred on to the
Indigenous woman in a race-based case of injustice founded on hatred
of the Other, but the more salient point that emerges from the episode
is how violence unites and underpins the settler community.
Director Rosalba Clemente’s production at The Playhouse, Adelaide
Festival Centre in 2001 emphasizes the enforcement and the constant
collapse of the spatial distance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
communities. When Linda is chained to a tree in the yard of The
Traveller’s Rest, Nora, the Irish-born owner of the establishment, pre-
vents her adopted Indigenous daughter, with the slave name Obedience,
from approaching her (see Figure 1.1). In a move that casts Nora as the
‘Mother Courage of the Outback’, the play makes it clear that her idea of
a better life for Obedience is devastatingly flawed (Bramwell, 2001: 10).
In the final scene, having born witness to the massacre at the riverbed,
the audience is plunged into a tragedy of classical and Shakespearean
proportions when it is reported that Obedience has been raped and had
her tongue cut out. The final image in the profoundly unsettling drama
is of Obedience facing the audience with ‘her mouth bleeding, her stare
vacant’ (Bovell, 2001: 66. Italics denote stage directions).
Between the opening and closing images of the hysterical white
woman and the bleeding Indigenous girl, the performance focuses on
three white travellers – two ex-convicts, the violent Nathanial Goundry,
the decent but weak Samuel Epstein, and a mute boy, the blond-haired
16-year-old Edward Cornelius. Edward’s fate parallels that of Obedience,
whom he befriends and loves, but his story alludes to the violence within
the settler community itself towards its most vulnerable members, in
this case the children. Nathanial, an indentured ex-convict labourer, has
murdered his employers, Edward’s parents, cut out their son’s tongue to
ensure his silence, and abducted and sexually enslaved him.
The double image of Obedience and Edward, the enslaved, raped and
silenced teenagers, resonates in contemporary Australia with the losing
of language of Indigenous peoples and the sexual abuse and silencing of
both Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth. Modernity’s outer reaches
are unflinchingly represented in this play as spaces of endemic violence
coated in silence.
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 23

Figure 1.1 Rachael Maza as Linda, Kerry Walker as Nora and Melodie Reynolds
as Obedience. Holy Day. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 2001. Courtesy of State
Theatre Company of South Australia. Photo: David Wilson

As narrated by Obedience, the massacre at the riverbed, an act of venge-

ance for the loss of the white baby, follows a plan that targets the young:

OBEDIENCE: … They heard the shots coming from the other way. They
looked to see a group of eight men on horses crossing the river. The
two girls who had gone for the children were the first to be shot.
Several younger children fell quickly after. The women ran toward
their children and were shot in turn. The men ran for their weapons
and were cut down. One woman grabbed a small child and managed
to hide her in the bush. But when she went back for another she too
was shot. When the full brunt of the shooting was over twenty-two
people lay dead. Twelve of them children. Another fourteen injured.
Eight had managed to escape in the bush. The old woman was
spared. … This is our history.
(Bovell, 2001: 64)

The genocide motive is clearly set out in the speech, which empha-
sizes the killing of mothers and children, that is to say, the future. The
24 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

detail of the little girl left in the bush resonates with abandonment and
extreme vulnerability. The representation of the violence towards the
mothers and babies and the subsequent rape and mutilation of the wit-
ness, Obedience, confronts audiences with the brutality of the European
conquest of the Australian continent.
In 2001, when the play is first performed, in the period of raised public
awareness of reconciliation, land rights and the increasing self-
representation of Indigenous artists, the narrative can play into a fatal-
ism that naturalizes the Indigenous woman and teenager as victims.
The roles of Linda and Obedience are performed by well-known
Indigenous actors, Rachael Maza and Melodie Reynolds, with the effect
that audiences witness not continued victimization, but quite possibly
an example of ‘cultural performances where Indigenous and non-
Indigenous people are together negotiating a response to what is a
shared history’ (Cohen, Dwyer and Ginters, 2008: 7). The problem of
restaging the Indigenous subject as victim underlines for us the tension
between representational systems that call for identification and empa-
thy with dramatic character and those that narrate historic events.
Identifying Holy Day with the latter, epic mode of modern drama sees
it stage the violence of nation building without its heroism and with
a view to the sequence of events, all preventable and avoidable, that
lead to tragedy.
The play’s unrelenting images of ruined settlements and destroyed
lives are, however, set against an enduring landscape that offers momen-
tary glimpses of the sublime. On this reading, the audience can appre-
hend the way in which the dialectic of modernity plays out in Australia
as the coexistence of barbarism and the sublime, of barbaric human
behaviour and the transformative power of the landscape. These images
attest to the play’s deep involvement in questions of history and moder-
nity. There is no attempt to romanticize the colonial era for contempo-
rary spectators or to trade on nostalgia for the pioneering spirit. Blood,
chains and mutilations conjure an abject history while shadows, storms
and the presence of the inexplicable create an atmosphere of gothic
horror. The gothic here has none of ‘the pleasurable terror of regression
to a premodern, prerational state’ (Stillinger and Lynch, 2006: 21), but
is presented as an expression of the extreme displacement of the early
settlers and their reversion to barbarism. Towards the end of the drama,
station-owner Thomas Wakefield advises a traveller to avert his gaze
from visions that will haunt his waking mind. Audiences are called on
to hold their gaze and critically respond to ‘the modernity bleeding
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 25

through the play’ and leaving its stain on the present (Diamond, 2001:
11). As one critic notes:

This is the uncomfortable theatre that openly states that there are
consequences – material and spiritual – arising from the cruelties of
the past. The Greeks thought it was the business of the drama to
present such notions to their citizenry – and, in this courageous and
plainly written text, Andrew Bovell is right to think that this is still
the case.
(Bramwell, 2001: 10, emphasis added)

Transgenerational trauma in the settler community

There are striking patterns of repetition and coincidence in Holy Day

and When the Rain Stops Falling. Modernity bleeds through the later text,
in which the nineteenth-century convict becomes a modern paedophile
who migrates to Australia, where he attacks and kills a white boy at a
remote roadhouse setting before disappearing in a semi-mystical reverie
at Uluru in central Australia. The child features once again as a figure of
extreme vulnerability in times of transition and change such that the
repetitions and coincidences in the narratives of the two plays reprise
the idea of the secret and shameful history that haunts the nation. The
key figure of the paedophile stands in the performance for the European
settler whose irreconcilable past is felt down the generations.
When the Rain Stops Falling engages with modernist themes of ‘aliena-
tion, anomie, solitude, social fragmentation and isolation’ ( Jameson,
1993: 69) reoriented to the experience of late modernity. According to
Brink Productions’ artistic director Chris Drummond, When the Rain
Stops Falling begins as The Extinction Project out of a sense that:

so many people seemed to be asking the same questions: What to

believe in … to hope for? What faith could we hold for humanity …
or, in humanity? I’d never felt such a shared sense of despair, such
emptiness.
(Drummond qtd in Bovell, 2009: vii, original emphasis)

Drummond traces these sentiments to specific issues such as Australia’s

military involvement in the Coalition Forces in Iraq from 2003, scepti-
cism about climate change and the Australian Government’s refusal to
apologize to Australian Indigenous peoples about their mistreatment
26 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

in the colonial and modern eras. The shared sense of despair and
emptiness resonates with the discussion of Tokyo Notes to follow in
Chapter 4 and The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise in Part II as a key theme
of liquid modernity. While Drummond believes that the play reveals
‘a world eked out of a desire to understand the destructive nature of
humanity and its capacity for compassion, transformation and sur-
vival’ (Bovell, 2009: xii), the performance is bleaker than the sum of
its characters’ journeys, of their melancholic view of life and their bit-
terness. In the discussion that follows, we argue that the performance
shares with Holy Day, as with Emily of Emerald Hill in Chapter 2, Tokyo
Notes in Chapter 4 and The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise in Chapter 7,
an uncompromising vision of modernity in its past, present and future
iterations.
When the Rain Stops Falling deploys a neorealist form to construct
a transgenerational drama in which the secrets of the past, though
unknown to following generations, disturb and distress the living. Bovell’s
dramaturgy opens up the here and now of the family drama to integrate
inter- and transnational space and past, present and future time. The
extended space-time framework of London, 1968, and Alice Springs,
2039, and spaces and times in between, including the remote Coorong
in 1968, imaginatively created by designer Hossein Valamanesh and
lighting designer, Niklas Pajanti, offer audiences the spectacle of the
here and now as a much less solid and autonomous entity than might
be supposed. The play’s frequent references to rain, storms and the
inundation of low-lying continents such as Bangladesh not only reflect
on climate change, but on the liquid form of entities such as self and
family caught in multiple overlapping pasts, presents and futures. The
narrative is set out in the following section.

When the Rain Stops Falling: the tears begin to flow

The play begins in a futuristic Alice Springs, the desert-locked city in

Australia’s centre, where it is raining. It is 2039. Gabriel York, a white
man in his fifties, standing downstage centre in a shower of rain, opens
his mouth and screams. The scream is an ironic display of modernist
angst that is quickly followed by the appearance of a surrealist fish that
falls from above and lands at his feet with a comic thud. After a brief
blackout, the lights come up on the lonely and melancholic man in an
ill-fitting suit and bare feet, who talks to the audience about the miracle
of fish, a species that is now almost extinct, and explains that his adult
son, Andrew Price, who for reasons unknown he abandoned as a child,
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 27

is coming for lunch. Gabriel York speaks of a solitary, affectless life in

a small flat in Alice Springs and of a partially known family history
filled with gaps and phantoms (see Figure 1.2). The commingling of the
biblical rain, the surrealist fish and the father-son narrative hints at the
secrets that course and swirl beneath the surface of the play.
The secret is partially expounded in the following scene that returns
to the past and a moment of discovery that is fatally deferred. It is 1960s
London, where Gabriel York’s grandparents are poised to become victim
and perpetrator of a crime that will have fatal and catastrophic conse-
quences for four generations of the family. In a domestic scene set on
a wet and wintry night, Gabriel’s grandfather, Henry Law, arrives home
from work in a state of confusion and distress. He carries a hat that is not
his own and he has no recollection of how he came to have it, but he
does remember that he masturbated on the way home in the crowded
train. After a visit from the local police, it becomes apparent that Henry

Figure 1.2 Neil Pigot as Gabriel York. When the Rain Stops Falling. Sumner
Theatre. 2009. Courtesy of Brink Productions, South Australia. Photo: Jeff Busby
28 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

has not only found an opportunity for secret pleasure on the crowded
train, but he has also touched a young boy in a public toilet and hidden
a collection of child pornography in a satchel in his wardrobe. Henry
confesses to his wife that he is afraid he will touch his son:

HENRY: I’m frightened, Beth … that I will. (Beat.) What kind of man am I?
What in nature makes a man like me? (Beat.) I didn’t choose this.
(Bovell, 2009: 44)

Henry Law sees himself as an aberrant product of ‘nature’, immanent

and indwelling, afflicted rather than monstrous, but needing, neverthe-
less, to be removed from the ever-present temptations of society. With
an affliction based on paedophilic instincts, Law, like his nineteenth-
century predecessors, evades prosecution. He agrees to stage a virtual
death and migrate to Australia, swearing he will have no further con-
tact with his wife or son. The scene between Henry Law and his wife
Elizabeth is of interest for the way in which Elizabeth chooses Australia
as the place far enough away from London as to ensure he is ‘gone …
out of our lives … out of existence’, noting with gallows humour that he
is ‘not the first Englishman to be sent there in shame’ (Bovell, 2009: 44).
This important scene, set in London in the 1960s, reprises the colonial
view of Australia as an empty space to be filled with Britain’s social
outcasts with no regard for the consequences on Indigenous peoples or
the future of the colony. The narrative makes it clear that Elizabeth’s
decision to assist Henry’s evasion of the law fatally endangers another
woman’s son in a remote part of far-away Australia.
The transgenerational narrative that follows is broken up into episodes
that are arranged in non-chronological and often overlapping sequences.
The generations talk across time and space, can witness the future and
dwell in the past. Rain falls throughout, with references to people
drowning in East Pakistan in 1959 and Bangladesh in 1988 marking
the passing of time but also suggesting a parallel between the constant
dissolution of family relationships and the onset of liquid modernity.
A major feature of the plot is its emphasis on coincidence, contingency,
accident and concealment. Henry Law arrives in Perth, like many British
migrants, and travels to South Australia and then Alice Springs where he
disappears. Twenty years later, his son, Gabriel Law, now a man, arrives
in South Australia to trace his unknown progenitor. He meets and loves
a lonely young woman, Gabrielle York, who lives alone in the family’s
roadside café, a half-way house between two remote coastal towns
linked by road. The young woman gradually reveals a harrowing past
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 29

in which her seven-year-old brother had been abducted and murdered

in the sand dunes on the beach.

GABRIELLE: They found his shoe on the beach … they thought the sea
had taken him. That’s what they hoped. Then a fisherman found his
clothes in the sandhills. Shorts. T-shirt. Underpants. Eventually they
found his bones. They’d been uncovered by the wind. Buried in a
shallow grave.
(Bovell, 2009: 36)

The emphasis on the individual items of clothing, both ordinary and

paradigmatic of childhood, and so obviously not attached to the bones
that are found in the dunes, points to the nature of the crime that, as
Gabrielle explains, sent her mother and then her father ‘over the edge’
(Bovell, 2009: 36). At the time of his death, the boy is the same age as
Henry Law’s son, Gabriel, then a child in London. In a further ironic
demonstration of the past’s secrets and the haunted unhappy present,
Gabriel does not know he stands at his father’s victim’s grave with the
grieving older sister.
These coincidences make connections between not only place and
time but also different sectors of human society whose avoidable
actions affect others in unforeseen but devastating ways. Like the mis-
sionary’s wife, Elizabeth, in Holy Day, whose false accusation of an
Indigenous woman has fatal consequences for the latter and her people,
Henry Law’s London wife, Elizabeth, a white English woman, is deeply
implicated in the colonial narrative of European-Australian modernity.
At the point at which Gabrielle and Gabriel, now lovers, suspect that
Henry Law, Gabriel’s father, is the child’s murderer, Gabriel loses control
of his car and is killed. The accident ripples out across the performance:
with his death, Gabriel never finds out Gabrielle is pregnant with their
child; the child is a boy who is given his father’s first name and his
mother’s surname; and Gabriel York is our melancholic man in Alice
Springs at the beginning and end of the performance. Coincidence and
accident are held in an intriguing and bewildering state of tension as
the past flows across the present and future. Multiple temporalities stand
side by side on stage – the young grief-stricken Gabrielle, performed by
Anna Lise Phillips, is watched over by her bitter older self, performed
by Kris McQuade. The representation of the family narrative responds
to a more mobile, transient, liquid sense of family history, in which
uncertainty abounds and in which family ties no longer bind subjects
to a stable social group. Focusing on European migration, the overall
30 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

concerns of the performance are with the broader consequences of

mobility, distance, what is left behind and what flows into the future.
The presence of the past comes to a head in the figure of Gabriel
York, the Alice Springs man with whom the play begins. As the child
of Gabrielle York and Gabriel Law, the father he never knew, he suffers
unspecified shame and self-doubt. He is estranged from his son, Andrew
Price, because, as he admits with shame, he ‘thought the boy had a bet-
ter chance without me’ (Bovell, 2009: 2). He has spent his life running
from his past in a way that embodies the modern nation’s relationship
with its past (2009: 56). His mental topography is shaped by ‘the undis-
closed trauma of previous generations’ (Davis, 2005: 374), especially the
unatoned guilt of the grandfather, who also stands for the patriarch,
and by extension the nation. Styled within modernity, Gabriel exempli-
fies, as discussed elsewhere in the book, the myriad ways in which ‘the
“modern” is haunted by its own past’ (Punter, 2007: 83) at the level of
identity and being. ‘Hauntology’, to apply Jacques Derrida’s term for
the phenomenon, shapes Gabriel’s existence just as it hovers around
the affective concerns of the performance: the nation’s shared sense of
despair and emptiness (Punter, 2007: 83). Prompted by the unexpected
manifestation of the past, Gabriel York describes the sudden manifesta-
tion of emotion:

GABRIEL: The tears were falling from my eyes, rolling across my cheeks
and gathering in the corners of my mouth. And of course I knew
I was crying because of him, hearing his voice, the voice of an adult
now when I could only remember the child but it felt like I was cry-
ing for so much more.
(Bovell, 2009: 3)

The estranged tears break the surface of a previously unknown place of

memory where ‘so much more’ might be hidden. Aware of little except
a few fragmented memories of the past, a phantom history has taken
up residence in the unconscious, distorting and preventing social and
emotional attachments. In the final melancholic scene of the drama,
the estranged father and son are reunited in Gabriel’s Alice Springs’ flat.
As they sit down to eat the fish that fell from the sky, Gabriel produces
a suitcase that contains the ‘bits and pieces’ of family history that have
been activated throughout the performance (Bovell, 2009: 57). At this
point the ancestors enter, sit at the table and pass around the relics from
one to the other in a gesture that acknowledges the mysteries of the
past. As they sit, ‘they are joined across time and continent’ in a moment
 Modern Australian Drama: Haunted by the Past 31

of reconciliation (Bovell, 2009: 58). In this futuristic scenario, phantom

memories take on the familiar, everyday appearance of the troubled
family – one of the key troping figures of modernity. The future offers
a greater degree of closure than the past as signified by Holy Day and
seems to suggest that the settlement narrative will run its course. This
glimmer of hope is due perhaps to the fact that in the year prior to the
performance, on 13 February 2008, the Australian government issued a
solemn televised official apology to Indigenous Australians for the suf-
fering they endured on and after European settlement. A year later, on
the theatrical stage, Gabriel York asks his son’s forgiveness for denying
him his love (Bovell, 2009: 58).
The generations of the family that gather around the table in the con-
cluding moments of the play leave a powerful impression of a group of
lost, haunted subjects who are both disconnected from, and tied to, the
past. The tiny moment of reconciliation between father and son will be
submerged under the weight of their self-absorbed individual suffering.
The slippages within the multiple overlapping pasts, presents and futures
put the prospect of knowledge and reconciliation in abeyance, in a fluid
space that might contain hope but might equally dissipate. Needing to
bring the performance, but not the issues, to a point of closure, the nar-
rative determines that the rain will stop falling. The characters look up.
It is tempting to imagine that after the tears something has transformed
in the space and time of performance. The audience is perhaps left with
some empathy for those who experience a displaced history full of gaps
and erasures. It might also be left with some hope for reconciliation and
atonement. In this sense the production, to draw on Andreas Huyssen’s
phrase, is a compelling instance of modernity commenting on its
present through the relation with its pasts (Huyssen, 2003).

Reflecting on modernity

In Holy Day and When the Rain Stops Falling, we find a historicized, reflex-
ive socially, and politically nuanced form of modern drama that critically
engages with modernity in the Australian colonial and settler context.
Inflected with renewed interest in modernist themes of alienation and
displacement, the brutal reduction of Indigenous peoples to minorities
and the abuse and neglect of the young, Bovell’s plays remind us of
the cost of building the nation state on those who are swept up in its
momentum. Interpreted as an analogy of colonial modernity, Holy Day
reminds us of the unrestrained force that underpins the modern nation
state, and suggests that the history of invasion, trauma and imposed
32 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

silence haunts the surface of a seemingly emancipated and progressive

present. When the Rain Stops Falling suggests that Australian modernity
is haunted by the persistence of memories that are fragmented, disturb-
ingly out of reach and yet present in the social and familial relationships
that constitute our everyday life. As we have suggested throughout this
chapter, the changing form of theatre and drama in Australia creates a
space for a reflexive modernity to look critically at the legacy of the past
and its impact on the present. In this way, Bovell’s plays run against
the tide of the lightness and flow of liquid modernity to think critically
about modernity’s history.
2
Modernity and the Self in
Singapore: Emily of Emerald Hill

Singapore has been integrated into global modernity since the arrival
of the British imperialist Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819 and the transfor-
mation of the island into a bustling entrepôt colony of Britain. The
island was, along with Penang and Malacca, one of the British Straits
Settlements. Singapore, in particular, was constituted by a vibrant
cultural mélange of indigenous Malays, immigrants from China, India
and elsewhere in Asia, and the British themselves. One prominent
group in this society was made up of the descendants of Chinese immi-
grants who had married into the Malay community, commonly known
as the Babas, Peranakans1 or Straits-born Chinese. The women are usu-
ally called Nyonyas.
The Babas were a comprador class, an English-educated political and
economic elite privileged by British patronage from around the turn of
the twentieth century. Their loyalty to the British Crown earned them
the epithet ‘The King’s Chinese’. Their wealth, ostentatious lifestyles and
manifest allegiance to Britain made them the object of Japanese distrust
and many Babas were killed after the fall of Singapore in 1942 and the
subsequent Japanese occupation; many lost their fortunes. In the postwar
period, their influence and communal identity was profoundly challenged
and by the time Singapore had became a sovereign independent state in
1965, the Babas had lost much of their political privilege and fell into
decline as a distinct cultural group. While the hybrid nature of Baba iden-
tity, and their lavish material culture, have become a source of nostalgia in
recent years – now fixed in time through memorialization in museums –
in the immediate postwar era they occupied an ambiguous, even tenuous,
political position as the colony made its transition to nationhood.
The decade of the 1950s in Singapore was a period of turmoil with civil
unrest, riots, strikes, increasingly virulent opposition to communism and
33
34 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

profound ideological and social change. It is in this political, cultural and

economic milieu, the setting for the first scene of playwright Stella Kon’s
monodrama Emily of Emerald Hill (Kon, 1989), that we first encounter
Emily, the play’s lone protagonist. The wife of a rich Baba, Emily is a
nyonya who lives in a mansion in the upmarket district of Emerald Hill.
She is a representative of colonial modernization, and the globalizing
capitalism that accompanied it. She now finds that not only have the
liquefying powers of modernity made country, culture and family unsta-
ble, but the self is also on shifting terrain.

Modernity in the Singapore context

Singapore has been driven since independence by an instrumental ration-

ality underpinned by a form of Confucian pragmatism adapted to the
current era, and a national ontology defined by a mode of thought with
its foundations in Western bourgeois liberalism. What was once a trad-
ing post in the so-called Far East is, in the twenty-first century, a devel-
oped postindustrial economic powerhouse that has accommodated the
changing demands of a global environment and the accompanying
shifts in the ideologies of modernity. Like most nation states, it is built
on the Enlightenment principles encapsulated in the teleological proc-
ess of progress, modernization, industrialization and the diminution of
tradition – except for the purposes of inventing the historical discourse
on which the sense of the nation’s past is built. The organizational
rationality of the nation as the modern form of political and social
order was exported to Singapore as the privileged political manifesta-
tion of European reason. This was facilitated by what Partha Chatterjee
calls a secularized history as a distinct mode of thought (1999: 9). In
the context of the postwar social order, this has meant that Singapore
developed a national identity and a recognizable and identifiable set
of national values in a population that had, from its founding, always
accommodated multiple cultures and traditions. The possibility that
this plurality would be obliterated by the invention of the modern
nation is, as Ernest Gellner (2006) suggests, one of the effects of moder-
nity that the nation builders were willing to tolerate in the name of a
singular progressive modernity.
The rhetoric of modernization – almost hegemonic in the wake of
Bretton Woods and the establishment of the economic regimes of the
postwar era – embedded in theories of the development of capitalism,
articulated the notion that former colonies could and should achieve
progress as determined by the West. The rhetoric mobilized, as Chatterjee
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 35

has remarked, ‘a discourse in which, even as it challenged the colonial

claim to political domination, it also accepted the very intellectual
premises of “modernity” on which colonial domination was based’
(1999: 30). Singapore sociologists Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan
(1995) argue that Western modalities operate as instruments of power for
the production of local subjects even in post-independence Singapore.
The incorporation of Western modernity in Singapore is reinforced by the
fact that English is the language of government, spoken by some 80 per
cent of the population as more or less a first language.
An important feature of the transition from colony to nation state in
Singapore was the reinvention of the family. The diversity of traditional
family forms which existed in pre-independence Singapore diminished
as discursive constructions of the nation emerged in the 1960s to pro-
mote the nuclear family. Since then, the family has been imagined as
the central social formation that provides for the cohesion of the nation.
Family as the basic unit of society is enshrined in the national ideology
of Singapore. While the family may have been a principal site for the
discursive emergence of a national essence, it could never be the uncom-
promised site of the nation’s spirit, nor the uncontested site of national
modernity. At the same time as the family was being reinvented, the
urban landscape was also being reshaped. Traditional community spaces
such as kampungs (neighbourhoods or villages) were razed and replaced
by Singapore government Housing Development Board high-rise apart-
ment blocks. While extended families might still live in close proximity,
only one nuclear family could be housed in an apartment. Chua Beng
Huat (1995) has described the transformation from life in the urban
village in the 1950s to life in the Housing Development Board flats in
the 1980s. He draws on personal memories of his own childhood to
describe the historical trajectory from the 1950s to the 1980s of the Bukit
Ho Swee village, the urban kampung where he grew up in late colonial
Singapore. In the kampung, traditional shophouses, selling provisions
and providing services to satisfy daily needs, were interspersed with the
more sprawling houses of extended families. The bulldozing of Bukit Ho
Swee in 1960 completed its transition from an urban village to a Housing
Development Board estate. People’s attachment to the kampung may well
have been overly sentimental, as Chua suggests, but with the building of
apartment blocks, a sense of community and belonging was replaced by
a material expression of the modern. In this period of modernization a
national self-consciousness developed, paralleled by the transformation
of self and the development of subjectivities appropriate to a nation in
the early stages of transition from mercantile to industrial capitalism.
36 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

Casting off the British: towards a Singaporean theatre

An English-language theatrical culture has existed in Singapore since

1833, and the near-hegemonic power of European artistic traditions
was such that until the 1950s, most theatrical productions in English
were from the Western repertory. Chekhov, Gilbert and Sullivan, Shaw,
Wilde and, of course, Shakespeare were perennial staples in a thriv-
ing amateur theatre scene. Historical overviews of Singapore theatre
generally describe a pre-independence theatre culture as having a
distinctly colonial flavour in which Anglo-Asian theatre groups staged
productions that had been popular in Europe (Birch, 1997). David Birch
has argued that despite the energetic activities of amateur groups such
as The Singapore Stage Club, these productions should not be seen as
an important part of the Singapore English drama scene because they
might have been staged anywhere in the world and still have been the
same (1997: 23). While amateur theatre groups performing in English
flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century and into the
twentieth century, professional English drama in Singapore remained
underdeveloped until recent decades. The theatre of minority groups
such as the Malays and Tamils, and the Mandarin-speaking Chinese of
Singapore, was more active.
Colonization had produced forms of racial exclusion that could erase
local voices and bodies. These forms still existed as late as the Second
World War. British actors played Asian characters (Birch, 1997: 25), and
when John Gielgud came to Malaya and Singapore in 1945 to play in
Hamlet and Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, the colonized inhabitants of
Singapore were allowed into the theatres only as ushers.
The decade of the 1960s is generally agreed to have been a water-
shed for English-language theatre in Singapore. The emergence of the
Experimental Theatre Club in 1961 turned the spotlight on creating a
‘Singapore theatre’, written and performed by locals and which would
articulate their own values and concerns. In an apparent critique of
the middle-class dramas so often staged as part of the European thea-
tre scene, Kiru Joseph, one of the founders, stated that the club would
‘continue to keep a sharp vigilance against being trapped by quicksands
of irrelevant drawing room drama’ (qtd in Birch, 1997: 25). The stran-
glehold of British expatriates over drama and the predominant attitudes
towards a Singaporean dramatic tradition were further exemplified
when one theatre critic wrote of the difficulty of finding appropriate
props, and lamented the dearth of fire irons, coal scuttles and biscuit
barrels, among other objects alien to the tropics (Birch, 1997: 27). This
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 37

predicament highlights the colonial condition, described by David

Scott, as not so much ‘less Europe, but a differently configured one. Not
a reified Europe, but a problematized one’ (Scott, 1995: 29). While Birch
reports on the ‘annoying irrelevance of expatriate drama in Singapore’
in the early 1960s, the decade of decolonization and the subsequent
emergence of an industrial modernity and an intransigent develop-
mentalist agenda also saw theatrical interpretations of the dilemmas
posed by the transformation from colony to nation. This period was
characterized not only by a rise in national consciousness, but also by
dramatic explorations of themes such as momentous change, the use of
Singapore English, or ‘Singlish’,2 and the search for identity.3
While the decade of the 1980s was a period of increased dramatic
output, observers have argued that it was marred by, among other
problems, a lack of a critical and creative tradition, a general failure to
recognize the value of Singapore and Singaporeans as dramatic themes,
a lingering colonial consciousness, and a level of ineptitude in manag-
ing language, especially local idiom. In 1986, theatre director and critic
Max Le Blond stressed the need for the creation of a truly Singaporean
theatre about Singaporeans, for Singaporeans – a theatrical culture that
would express the validity of the Singapore experience and challenge
the English literary tradition (Le Blond, 1986: 114). He lamented the
colonial view of reality that seemed to be pervasive in English-language
theatre in Singapore. His conclusion was that even as late as 1986
Singaporeans were not yet at home with themselves on stage, and in
particular were not comfortable with local idiom or speech patterns
(Le Blond, 1986: 115).

The arrival of Emily

Emily first came to life in Singapore at the 1985 Singapore Drama

Festival when Margaret Chan played her in a production directed
by Le Blond. The play had won first prize at the Singapore National
Playwriting competition in 1983 but its premier was at the Five Arts
Centre, Kuala Lumpur on 17 November 1984, directed by Chin San
Sooi with Leow Puay Tin playing the first Emily. Emily of Emerald Hill
is frequently referred to as Singapore’s most loved play and Margaret
Chan alone has performed it more than 100 times. Its initial success and
enduring popularity are attributed to the fact that, as a play written by a
Singaporean and produced by Singaporeans, ‘the staging and reception
of “Emily” represented the first time that a totally homegrown theatri-
cal work achieved not only unqualified acceptance but also generated
38 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

an excitement and acclaim, uniting both general public and the most
hard-bitten cognoscenti’ (Le Blond, 1989: iii). It also made extensive use
of code-switching and mixed standard English with Hokkien, Malay
and the hybrid ‘Singlish’ variant. The arrival of Emily was a moment
when Singapore theatre came of age; when the most fully realized, com-
plex human character in the history of Singapore drama in English (Le
Blond, 1989: iii) appeared on stage. Emily was the material manifesta-
tion of the desire for representation.
Jacqueline Lo points to the persistence of the perception that Emily
is not only the Singaporean cultural landmark, but that the protagonist
personifies Singapore itself; she is, like Singapore, a cultural and ethnic
mix and the ease with which she slips in and out of linguistic registers
and codes signifies the modern nation’s hybridity and cultural fluidity
(2004: 111). Hybridity and cultural fluidity are, however, not unique to
Singapore, but characteristics of modernity itself. Homi Bhabha argues
that every nation is an irredeemably plural modern space, in which
national unity consists in the continual displacement of the anxiety
engendered by this plurality (1994: 149). He remarks that the nation
is ‘one of the major structures of ideological ambivalence within the
cultural representations of “modernity”’ (1990: 5). Intransigent plural-
ism is one of its chief characteristics, and any putative unity is forged in
the spaces of difference. All immigrant nations are spaces of linguistic
pluralism, and language-switching is commonplace among its peoples.
Emily’s status as the symbolic marker of Singapore national hybridity is
only the starting point for understanding her persona. What is a more
pertinent approach for us, and one of more relevance to the theme of
this book, is to examine Emily’s process of self-reflection in the context
of the destabilizing of institutions by what Bauman calls ‘the redistribu-
tion and reallocation of modernity’s melting powers’ (2000: 6). Emily’s
personal history is bound up with the emergence of the nation of
Singapore and the inexorable cultural and social changes that accom-
panied it. These included, among others, the eradication of primordial
loyalties, the weakening of traditional communal ties, the demolition
of kampungs and other neighbourhoods and the relocation of com-
munities into high-rise housing developments, and the changing role
of women in the developing economy. Emily faces, however, an even
greater personal challenge because the liquidizing powers identified by
Bauman have invaded individual lives to an unprecedented degree, even
to the level of social cohabitation (Bauman, 2000: 7). The modernity
that Emily encounters – unfolded in her self-reflexive monologue – is
not merely about social change; it speaks of a more profound unsettling
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 39

of the self. Bauman points to the transformation in human relation-

ships and individual alienation:

Ours is … an individualized, privatized version of modernity, with

the burden of pattern weaving and the responsibility for failure
falling primarily on the individual’s shoulders. It is the patterns of
dependency and interaction whose turn to be liquefied has now
come.
(Bauman, 2000: 7–8)

As traditional patterns of dependency dissolve, the responsibility for

failure still falls on Emily’s shoulders as her world disintegrates.

Emily in a liquefied world

Emily Gan’s monologue takes place in the drawing room of her opulent
peranakan mansion, the centre of her world. It is 1950. The narrative
does not follow a linear structure, rather Emily’s self-revelation emerges
as the narrative moves backwards and forwards in a series of temporal
shifts, gliding easily between past, present and future and erasing any
clear difference between the dimensions. Her hair is set in the chignon
style typical of peranakan women, she is dressed in the traditional
sarong kebaya (that is, a colourful sarong and embroidered jacket), and
her body is adorned with the jade bangles, brooches, earrings and other
items of jewellery that mark the identity of the affluent nyonya (see
Figure 2.1).
The room is hung with family photographs and portraits of the
former patriarch and matriarch of her husband’s family. This is a stark
reminder that her own selfhood and social position are products of her
relationship to dead ancestors. As an enduring presence in the perform-
ance, they seem to haunt Emily’s every waking moment. Colin Davis
describes haunting as a form of ‘replacing the priority of being and
presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present
nor absent, neither dead nor alive’ (Davis, 2005: 373). Since Emily is
the sole actor, she speaks to her husband, children, friends, neighbours
and acquaintances only as the unseen, as phantasmal figures from
another dimension. Her dead relatives are present to her throughout the
performance as the spectral, ‘not-quite-real’ ghosts of the past forever
hovering in her reality. Frederic Jameson has linked spectrality to the
illusion of solidity in late capitalism. Spectrality is not about ghosts, nor
about whether the past is alive in the present; rather, it is a reminder
40 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

Figure 2.1 Margaret Chan as Emily. Emily of Emerald Hill. Singapore Arts Festival,
11 June 2010. Courtesy of National Arts Council of Singapore. Photo: Jack Yam

that ‘the living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be:

that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which
might under exceptional circumstances betray us’ ( Jameson, 1999: 39).
As Emily reflects on her life and the modernizing forces that have
engulfed her world – bringing with them the transition to nationhood,
the decline of her community, and the breakdown of her family – she
is ultimately betrayed by a ghostly lack of substance. The solids that
Emily was counting on, and on which she has constructed herself, have
melted. The portrait of Emily as a young bride in full traditional attire,
hanging in a room still decorated in a fading turn of the century style,
reinforces the sense of a lost world, a lost youth, and a lost family.
Emily selectively reveals her life in a rambling and disjointed mono-
logue. We learn that she started life as a poor child, abandoned by her
mother because she was not a boy. From the age of ten she lived with
relatives who did not hesitate to remind her: ‘We took you out of the
gutter when your mother threw you away’ (Kon, 1989: 44). At 14 she
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 41

entered into an arranged marriage to become the second wife of Gan

Joo Kheong, a widower twice her age who is also a distant relative. She
eventually rises to the position of matriarch, despite a hostile mother-
in-law and sisters-in-law. Emily’s life trajectory has been determined by
others, in a series of choices in which she took no part. On the death of
Kheong’s first wife, Emily tells us:

His father decided that Kheong must marry again; but this time he
would marry a poor girl who would be grateful, and humble, and
not cause trouble in the house. Even better, instead of bringing in
outside blood, he should marry a girl who was already related to the
family.… Mr Gan remembered his niece, the daughter of his dead
cousin, a girl with no-one else to care for her.
(Kon, 1989: 8)

As a vulnerable child, married off to help secure financial power in the

family, she is more like an object than a subject – a commodity, an arti-
cle of exchange in an instrumental relationship. Her father-in-law even
chose the names of her children.
Her everyday life focuses on organizing the household and dominat-
ing the lives of her family. Each engagement with the spectral charac-
ters brings a rescripted identity as she changes languages, codes and
styles of address to accommodate relationships with a range of people.
This is, of course, an everyday feature of life in a multicultural society
such as Singapore, and in a globalized environment generally, but the
performance goes beyond that commonplace to present it as a playing
out of Emily’s struggle for self-definition. Despite her apparent matri-
archal power, Emily constructs herself only in relationship to others,
and appears to have little agency outside her role in the family. She has
a voice, through which her self-elaboration is articulated, but there is
deep poignancy in the fact that there is no one there to hear.
The narrative pointedly dates Emily’s arrival in Emerald Hill as a
young bride in 1929. By 1950 she has ascended to the status of matri-
arch. She is imperious, manipulative, status-obsessed and constantly
upstaging others and forcing them to kowtow to her. She is determined
to control her children’s lives and she demeans and abuses them when
they fail to comply with her wishes. To her son Richard she says:

Richard, you did so well in your Cambridge Exams. I have written to

a famous college in London for you to study there. But of course you
will like it in England … Clever boy, Mother is very proud of you.
42 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

You will never do anything to make me sad, will you? … You’ll do

everything I want you to do.
(Kon, 1989: 16)

Demanding Chinese mothers such as Emily have appeared in the

popular imagination in recent years. Made famous by Chinese-American
mother, Amy Chua (see Chua, 2011), they are commonly referred to
as ‘tiger mothers’. Their chief characteristics are ruthless ambition for
their children and extreme competitiveness, reinforced by a regime
of strict parenting in which fun, enjoyment and finding pleasure in
learning are seen as self-indulgent Western follies. Emily combines
these characteristics with what Singaporeans know as kiasu – a Hokkien
term loosely translated as ‘fear of failure’ or ‘anxiety about not coming
first’ – a pervasive feature of social life in Singapore that keeps pres-
sure on people to compete. Richard’s performance at school is com-
pared to his cousin Freddy’s and is used as part of the rivalry for her
father-in-law’s affection and her attempts to consolidate her position
as matriarch against her sister-in-law, Susie. She recounts the following
interaction:

Richard, come show me your report card. Heh, what is this red
mark … for mathematics? Why so bad? You’re not studying hard
ah? A for history and for French. That’s better. What is your class
position – eighth? (Dropping her voice) What was Freddy’s position?
Eleventh? How did he do in mathematics …? Failed also? All right
lah – you did quite well. Good boy, Mamma will give you five dol-
lars to spend … Father, you want to see Richard’s report card? Not
too bad lah – of course, he only came eighth in the class. Ah, Susie,
how is Freddy doing? Has he improved in his mathematics? …
Richard’s maths not strong also, after all he is younger than Freddy.
Father, have you seen Freddy’s report by the way? What was his class
position?
(Kon, 1989: 35)

Emily endeavours to maintain the tradition of ostentatious shows of

wealth typical of Baba culture:

I like to entertain at Emerald Hill. Once in a while we give a big

formal dinner, hire cooks and waiters … I set out the family silver-
ware: it’s engraved with a capital G for Gan, and a jewelled moun-
tain, the Emerald Hill. The old wine-glasses have the symbol too.
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 43

I put out the Nonya china, some of it my mother-in-law inherited

from her mother – must be over a hundred years old.
(Kon, 1989: 16–17)

She recalls the good old days when: ‘Susie and Molly and Kheong and
I were all young … We wore our gowns from Europe or our modern-style
cheong sams; we danced the foxtrot and quickstep’ (Kon, 1989: 33).
The old cheong sams, and other material vestiges of her old life, are
recovered in an attempt to help enforce a stability that is now disap-
pearing. Explaining how she makes patchwork quilts out of remnants
of cloth she tells the audience:

This piece came from a brocade gown that I wore the time the
Governor came to dinner. This is a remnant from my dress for
Mable’s wedding. This piece was from one of my mother-in-law’s old
cheong sams … now after so many years I’ve made quilts for all the
family. Every night, each one of them sleeps all wrapped up in my
patchwork quilt.
(Kon, 1989: 13)

The quilts are almost like charms that turn the ghosts into material
form to protect the family. They are powerful symbols of the force of
tradition that is there to provide stability in an uncertain world.
Despite her attempts to hold on to the past, the family disintegrates.
Her husband takes a lover and moves into her house. Emily juxtaposes
her traditional family role against the modernity of Diana Lee, Kheong’s
lover. Referring to herself as a fine wife and mother, she asks the spec-
tral listeners: ‘What can that Diana do for him? That modern woman
working all day in an office, does she have time to look after him
properly?’ (Kon, 1989: 41). Although she is deeply hurt by this betrayal
and rejection, Emily refuses to divorce him and attempts to revive the
relationship and maintain the role of a traditional peranakan wife. He
eventually returns to the house at Emerald Hill but has little to do with
her, having been repelled by her scheming and domineering. Emily is
incapable of understanding that her success in the role of peranakan
matriarch ultimately separates them. Kheong, Emily tells us, has taken
no interest in the children or their education. There is no small irony
in the fact that he used the hapless Emily to raise sons and look after
the household in the traditional manner, but finds enjoyment and com-
panionship with a modern woman. He finally dies in hospital refusing
to see Emily.
44 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

Despite Emily’s commitment to the role of matriarch, the family can

never be the uncompromised site of her self-fulfilment. Regardless of
the social changes and the transition to a nuclear form, her husband
behaves, it might be argued, like a traditional towkay,4 by continuing
the pre-independence practice of some wealthy Straits Chinese of one-
patriarch-two-household arrangements. Similarly, Emily’s father destroyed
her own family by taking a sing-song girl as a second wife, driving Emily’s
mother to despair.
As an important example of Singaporean-authored and produced
drama, Emily is both postcolonial and modern, a representative of both
the celebration of a hybrid national identity in post-independence
Singapore and of the social transformations of late capitalism. Ulrich
Beck’s discussion of the family in modernity offers a useful approach to
understanding Emily’s predicament. He argues that extreme individuali-
zation has meant that some social institutions fall into the category of
‘zombie institutions’. The family, along with class and neighbourhood,
is a good example (Beck, 2002: 203–4). These zombie categories are –
like the ghosts of Emily’s past – not quite dead but barely alive. Since the
family is one of the key ideological structures of the nation in Singapore,
the level of state anxiety caused by the ‘zombification’ of the family has
not abated since it first emerged in the early 1980s. Singapore has one
of the lowest birth rates in the world, and marriage and childbirth are
highly politicized. Public expressions of extreme anxiety about the fate of
the nation are routine, and there is obvious tension between the individ-
ualism that drives people’s choice not to marry and have children, and
the demands of the nation state. Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew
made an impassioned appeal to the populace in his National Day din-
ner speech on 11 August 2012, in which he suggested that the nation
itself may be in jeopardy if people did not continue to reproduce the
family. Leonard Lim reported on the speech in The Sunday Times under
the headline, ‘Get married, have babies’:

Singaporeans need to marry and have children if they do not want

the country to fold up, Mr Lee Kuan Yew warned last night. …
Mr Lee … said that while getting married and having children are
personal decisions, when Singaporeans do not marry and do not
have children, it becomes a ‘national problem’.
(Lim, 2012: 1)

Emily comments on the shrinking family more than once: ‘Don’t

want any more! You believe in small families, better opportunity for
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 45

them! … Eh, these modern ways of thinking tsk tsk …’ (Kon, 1989:
48). The play suggests that the decline of marriage and the family in
Singapore also haunts the nation.
Emily’s self-reflection and crisis of the self have been precipitated by
the crisis of the family. While she may now be set free from the con-
straints of the family, she is still haunted by it; and freedom has come
at the price of emptiness. Family relationships, like other relationships,
have also become liquefied at the level of the individual. Bauman posits
that even love is liquid and human bonds are frail:

In our world of rampant ‘individualization’ relationships are mixed

blessings. They vacillate between sweet dream and a nightmare …
In a liquid modern setting of life, relationships are perhaps the
most common, acute, deeply felt and troublesome incarnation of
ambivalence.
(Bauman, 2003: viii)

Despite a few expressions of love, Emily’s relationships with her family

are ambivalent, vacillating between the gently oppressive – ‘Richard,
you must not pretend that you don’t care what I say. All I want is for
you to be a good boy and make me proud of you’ (Kon, 1989: 3) – and
the downright tyrannical:

You forget everything I have given you, you throw away all the
sacrifices I’ve made, you drag down all my hopes into the mud! You
trample on your mother’s heart, no love, no gratitude, anak cherkeh
darah, you eat your mother’s blood. I should have hanged myself
first, before I have a son like you!
(Kon, 1989: 23)

Given her traumatic personal history, it is no surprise that Emily seems

incapable of unconditional love.
By the end of the performance, the collapse of her family is complete.
Her son Richard leaves the university in England, where she has insisted
he study law, and takes a job in a riding school. The vituperative, abusive
response to his personal decision, her demands that he quit the job and
her declaration that he has broken her heart are followed by a telegram
announcing his suicide. It is a tragic irony that his love of horses developed
when Emily decided he should take polo lessons in an attempt to upstage
her sister-in-law, ingratiate herself with her father-in-law and increase
Richard’s chances of receiving a bigger inheritance from his grandfather.
46 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

Emily’s daughter Doris rejects the man her mother wants her to marry
and finds her own husband in America. Her son Charlie eventually
refuses to live at Emerald Hill and even suggests she sell it. In a poignant
moment towards the end, Emily turns to the audience and, recalling the
ghosts of the past, says:

Do you understand what made me what I am? Before my breasts

were grown, I learned that a woman is nothing in this world that
men have made, except in the role that men have demanded of her.
Your life is meaningless, you have no value, except as you are a wife
and mother …. Look after your husband and family … do everything
for them …. So that the whole world knows your worth – so that
the screaming girl-child, long ago, may be reassured that her life has
some significance, that no-one is going to throw her back into the
gutter …
(Kon, 1989: 45)

While this is an astute and accurate analysis of the role and worth of
women under this form of patriarchy, she can see no alternative. She is
not even able to comprehend what has happened: ‘I was a good mother
to you! Kheong, I was a good wife! Why did you both hate me then? It’s
all over now. It’s all past, it can’t be changed’ (Kon, 1989: 44–5).

Emily’s time out of joint

As Emily’s narrative becomes increasingly disjointed, it appears that she

has trouble distinguishing between the stages of her life. Elaborating on
Hamlet’s pronouncement that, ‘the time is out of joint’, Derrida explains
that he means that: ‘time is disarticulated, dislocated, dislodged …
deranged, both out of order and mad’ (Derrida, 1994: 18). Just as the
ghost of his father dislocates Hamlet’s relationship to reality and trans-
forms the way he sees his world, the trauma of Emily’s failure to main-
tain the family in the face of modernizing forces unhinges her sense of
time and her grasp of reality. Her conversations with characters from
another temporal dimension, especially her dead son Richard, are an
indication that Emily’s time is ‘out of order’ and she finds herself in
a dimension of shifting realities in her family and in the nation. The
shifts in Emily’s speech register and in the different roles she enacts –
from manjah (childish behaviour to get attention) to despotism – are
also indicative of a fluid personality and inability to achieve anything
like a stable sense of self. There is no one Emily. She is a composite of
 Modernity and the Self in Singapore 47

the variety of personae she has developed to survive and succeed in a

world in transition.
Emily’s domineering manner, apparent disregard for the desires of others,
and overweening ambition would not endear her to many people. And
yet, her manifest vulnerability, her childlike inability to understand
what has gone wrong, her futile refusal to accommodate a changed
society, and her self-infantilization as a strategy to invoke affection,
have not failed to provoke mixed feelings in the thousands of people
who have seen the many performances and interpretations of Emily
since 1985.
Emily appears at the end as an old woman recalling the past. She is by
now bewildered, lonely and embittered. As she recalls the events of her
life through a confused process of remembering and forgetting, at once
romantic and resentful, it becomes clear that her attempts to sustain
what is a premodern familial arrangement have been met with failure;
a failure which, as Bauman suggests, falls primarily on the shoulders
of the individual (2000: 7–8). While Emily seems to have fulfilled her
intended role as wife, dutiful mother and powerful matriarch, her life
has also been a series of crises. With the loss of certainty in her tradi-
tional role, these crises confound her ontological security and there
is little to ameliorate the loss and the melting of certainties. The final
scene shows a confused Emily. She is incoherent and unable to locate
what temporal frame she is in, as she talks to Richard as if he were, like
Hamlet’s father, dead but still present. She has won control of Emerald
Hill, but it is a hollow victory. Only she lives there now and the grand
house has fallen into disrepair. This is all the more obvious as the newly
built high-rise apartment blocks of modern Singapore impinge on the
decaying house and neighbourhood:

We used to have a big front lawn with all kinds of flower beds, with
three gardeners to look after them. At the back there were two tennis
courts and some fruit trees. … Now the garden’s gone and tall apart-
ment blocks press up against the house. The paint is flaking off the
pillars of the front porch.… [T]he big bedrooms stay closed. I just sit
here, very quietly, listening to the noises from the road.
(Kon, 1989: 53)

Her alienation and loneliness point to the conclusion that through all
the travails of her everyday life and attempts at sustaining her role in
the family, she is ultimately the individualized subject of modernity who
is isolated, disconnected and fundamentally alone against the world.
48 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

In Bauman’s terms, the casting of members of society as individuals is

the trademark of modern society (2002: xiv).
As a hybrid, culturally fluid figure, Emily is the embodiment of the
national identity. But, she is also the voice of another Singapore. If
the rhetoric of economic success that is so prevalent an aspect of the
public discourse in Singapore obscures the ambivalence and anxiety
that Bhabha argues are characteristic of the plural modern space that is
the nation (1990: 5), Emily is there to remind us. Like the nation itself,
she inhabits a fluid world, hovering precariously between Malay and
Chinese cultures, tradition and modernity, stability and instability, fam-
ily community and individual, remembering and forgetting, Western
and Asian rationality, and hope and despair.
3
Modern Drama and Postcolonial
Modernity in Indonesia

In Indonesia, modern theatre, in the sense of narrative plays staged

in theatre buildings for public entertainment, emerged as part of the
profound transformation of Indonesian societies brought about by
the impact of Dutch colonialism. The coming of Europeans to the
Indonesian archipelago from the seventeenth century onwards brought
the model of the European play to a world where richly diverse indig-
enous performance traditions had long embodied local values and par-
ticipated centrally in social life. Successive incarnations and adaptations
of this European-derived dramatic model have marked the stages in the
modernization of Indonesian society. This chapter focuses on a time of
vibrant activity in modern Indonesian drama, from the 1970s to the
early 1990s, coinciding with a long period of economic development
and social engineering, as the authoritarian Suharto regime (1966–98)
attempted to implement a programme of classic ‘modernization’. The
chapter analyses the way an iconic text of the time, The Struggle of the
Naga Tribe (1979), represents and resists the structures of this dominant
paradigm of Indonesian modernity. A later play, Yanti’s Biography, staged
in 1992, exemplifies a sense of fragmentation of and alienation from
contemporary social reality, suggesting the progressive dissolution of
the known and the experience of a more liquid modernity.

Adopting/adapting the modern play

The first staging of European theatre in the Indonesian islands has been
identified as a performance of Hamlet by employees of the Dutch East
India company in 1619. Evan Winet speculates that this Hamlet would
have been localized in various ways – through multi-ethnic casting,
multilingual dialogue, and likely local reverberation of its themes
49
50 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

(2010: 23). He goes on to cite other Indonesian productions of Hamlet

over the centuries, each with specific local connection or reference.
These include three notable productions in the modern period, in the
time of the post-1966 Suharto regime, by the renowned actor, poet and
playwright Rendra. These productions, staged in 1971, 1976 and 1994,
each starring the actor himself as Hamlet, reflect intriguingly on politi-
cal conditions at differing periods of the Suharto era and Rendra’s own
position as creative artist and social dissident (Winet, 2010: 153–6).1
Such localization and contextualization of iconic European dramatic
texts can be seen also in Indonesian productions of classical Greek plays –
Oedipus at Colonus, Lysistrata Antigone – and of Bertolt Brecht’s works such
as The Threepenny Opera, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Good Woman
of Szechuan. Albert Camus’ Caligula has likewise inspired a number of
productions, which either present the complete work or excerpt sec-
tions from it to invoke and critique current political conditions.2 Kaspar
by Austrian playwright Peter Handke, depicting a man who has been
isolated since birth being inducted into the world of speech and human
interaction, provided the model for a striking evocation of the forced
ideological indoctrination of Indonesian citizens by Suharto’s authori-
tarian New Order regime.
In addition to productions of European dramatic texts reflecting on
local social conditions, original works on the model of a Western play
began to appear in Indonesia from the late nineteenth century onwards.
The locally developed, hybrid theatrical form Komedi Stamboel, which
entertained the residents of the rapidly growing urban centres of the
time with combined European, Malay and Middle Eastern dramatic
material, began augmenting its repertoire of Arabian Nights stories
and adaptations of European fairy tales with melodramatic recreations
of events from local social life (Cohen, 2006: 277–80).3 Meanwhile
in colonial educational institutions, Indonesian students came into
contact with serious literary drama through their studies of European
literature. Some adopted the model of the European play as the basis
of Indonesian-language works, nationalistically flavoured epic dramas
with historical or mythological settings but contemporary political
reference.
Modern theatre was explicitly promoted during the Japanese occupa-
tion of Indonesia during the Second World War. The Japanese authori-
ties established a cultural centre and a drama school to encourage the
production of realistic propaganda plays, and more than 50 original
plays were written between 1942 and 1945 (Winet, 2010: 126–7).
Realistic, contemporary plays, with dialogue often focusing on social
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 51

issues, remained the norm after Independence was achieved in 1945

(Bodden, 2010: 31).
During the 1950s, theatre, like other modern Indonesian cultural forms,
displayed a shared embrace of modern international trends combined
with nationalist commitment, in keeping with Indonesia’s outward-
looking political stance under its first president, Sukarno, and a common
ideal of creating a new, progressive national culture. Later, in the early
to mid-1960s, as Cold War tensions escalated and local political conflict
sharpened, theatre became involved in a spreading political polarization,
which set groups espousing Western-oriented, liberal-capitalist values
against their leftist, communist-aligned counterparts. Some incorpora-
tion of local indigenous performance occurred in this context, as left-
ist playwrights drew on traditional stories and performance styles to
engage with audiences unfamiliar with modern plays, and some rightist
figures adapted traditional dramatic elements to create new avant-garde
works (Bodden, 2010: 31). Nevertheless realistic, dialogue-focused
plays remained the predominant mode of Indonesian modern theatre
throughout the 1950s and most of the 1960s. A European-derived dra-
matic form, inherited through colonial contact and maintained as a
distinct genre separate from local performance tradition, was mobilized
to convey differing visions of Indonesian national modernity.
Then, in the mid-1960s, a dramatic shift occurred in the direction
of Indonesian politics, the brutal decimation of the left and the instal-
lation of an authoritarian military regime. The changed social and
cultural conditions which resulted were given expression in a new style
of modern play. The narrative, realist model was stretched, reshaped
and reinterpreted to incorporate varying expressions of local cultural
tradition.

Mobilizing ‘tradition’

Where the predominant cultural focus of the Sukarno era, in keeping

with its progressive, nationalist political ideology, was on ‘building the
new’, the decades which followed might be characterized by a preoc-
cupation with re-engaging with local tradition and reinterpreting it
for the present day. The New Order state of President Suharto, which
came to power in 1966, replaced Sukarno’s radical nationalism with a
pragmatic focus on economic development, accompanied by ‘a vast
program of cultural engineering’ (Yampolsky, 1995: 710). Regional
cultural forms were fostered, monitored and mobilized as sources of
values conducive to national development – solidarity, orderliness
52 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

and local pride. Regional traditions, shorn of any dangerous separatist

political implications, were seen to contribute to a richly varied, yet
harmoniously unified, national culture. The conservative hierarchical
values celebrated in traditional literary and performance genres once
cultivated in royal courts were an additional attraction for officials of a
centrist authoritarian political state. Classically modern structures were
set within a rhetorical framework of cultural ‘tradition’.
Modern artists, including playwrights and actors, likewise engaged
actively with local performance traditions, albeit for very different
reasons. One motivation was, as referred to above in relation to the
activities of leftist troupes in the late 1950s and 1960s, to attract wider
audiences, overcoming the gap between modern theatre, often per-
ceived as an elite Westernized art form, and the mass of ordinary people.
Theatre practitioners in the 1970s expressed a desire to tap into the col-
ourful dramatic idioms and energy of traditional, regional performances
and emulate their intimate, dynamic relations with their audiences.
Such efforts were sometimes explicitly framed in postcolonial terms, in
assertions of the need to move beyond Western models and to incor-
porate the revitalizing power of local traditions in order to establish an
authentic Indonesian identity. With the lifting of the constant pressure
to address political concerns in their work, theatre artists were free to
experiment aesthetically, including through the blending of modern
Western and traditional, regional forms.
The ideological environment of New Order society, with its valoriza-
tion of cultural tradition, helped shape these processes. State policies,
in proscribing political involvement, encouraged the focusing of atten-
tion on artistic innovation. Government-provided facilities, particularly
the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts centre in Jakarta, where performances
by both traditional, regional and modern theatre groups were staged,
fostered interaction between traditional and modern, and allowed
space for the resulting experimentation. Yet modern theatre’s engage-
ment with regional tradition developed into a force beyond the con-
straint of state models and activities, reflecting but also challenging
them. The repressive policies that helped direct theatre practitioners to
artistic rather than political activities likewise involved the banning of
political organizations throughout society and the silencing of critical
expression through the mass media. With the blocking of direct politi-
cal expression, modern theatre, as it engaged with and reinterpreted
cultural tradition in ways which diverged from and subverted the domi-
nant representations of the state, served as a vital channel for expressing
social critique.
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 53

The 1970s and 1980s were times of particularly rich theatre activity, as
performances combined the Western model of a dramatic text with local
theatrical elements to construct a distinctive cultural identity, while
conveying the energy and sociopolitical contradictions of contemporary
Indonesian modernity. Several major playwright-directors created their
own particular styles of performance. Arifin C. Noer’s absurdist plays
drew on images and stories from indigenous folk tradition to represent
the struggles for survival of the little man. Putu Wijaya’s bizarre images
and events dazzled and terrorized viewers in a reworking of elements of
the theatre of his native Bali. The colourful satirical musicals of Nano
Riantiarno and his troupe Teater Koma attracted huge middle-class audi-
ences in the capital Jakarta. Meanwhile the towering figure who had
pioneered this new form of modern theatre, whose epic dramas encap-
sulated its artistic and political dimensions most clearly and whose work
exerted a powerful, ongoing influence on the activities of other groups,
was the poet, actor, playwright and director Rendra, whose repeated
performances as Hamlet through the Suharto period were referred to
earlier in this chapter.
Rendra’s own life drama, like his creative work, embodies a combi-
nation of Javanese cultural tradition, international artistic influences
and social thought, and political activism. Originally from the court
city of Solo in central Java, in the early 1960s Rendra attended univer-
sity in the other central Javanese court city, Yogyakarta. Here he formed
a student theatre group which performed plays in the conventional
Western-influenced style and translations of European classics together
with some original Indonesian works. In 1964 he left Indonesia to
study in the heady centre of avant-garde theatrical experimentation,
New York. Returning in 1967, he set up his theatre troupe, Bengkel
Teater (Workshop Theatre), in Yogyakarta and introduced a radical new
approach to contemporary theatre. His first performances were abstract,
non-linear, virtually wordless dramas described as minikata (literally,
‘minimally worded’). Strongly influenced by Euro-American avant-garde
theatre, they emulated its intense physicality while incorporating move-
ments from traditional Javanese dance. Rendra also adapted to a Javanese
context several Western classics, including the aforementioned Hamlet
productions, Oedipus, Lysistrata, Macbeth and The Caucasian Chalk Circle,
using Javanese costumes and musical accompaniment.
In the mid-1970s Rendra wrote and, in spite of difficulties, staged
three landmark original plays, Mastodon dan Burung Kondor (The
Mastodon and the Condor, 1973), Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga (The Struggle
of the Naga Tribe, 1975) and Sekda (The Regional Secretary, 1977). By this
54 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

time Rendra’s politically critical views, embodied allegorically in his

plays and in his involvement with student activism, had attracted nega-
tive attention from the authorities. A ban was imposed on performances
of Rendra’s plays in his home city of Yogyakarta, although, ironically,
his works could still be staged in other cities, and open-air rehears-
als continued to be held in front of Rendra’s house, watched by large
crowds of onlookers. When the prohibition was lifted momentarily for
a performance of Sekda in 1977 and Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga in 1978,
witnessed personally by this author, youthful audience members filled
to capacity the sports stadium where these events were held and roared
with approval at each perceived swipe at state authority.
Of Rendra’s plays, the most famous and frequently cited, translated
into foreign languages and performed internationally is Kisah Perjuangan
Suku Naga (The Struggle of the Naga Tribe). Adopting the model of
wayang, traditional Javanese shadow puppet theatre, it tells the story of
a village community struggling to defend their land against rapacious
foreign developers working in league with the leaders of the kingdom in
which the village is situated. Based on a real-life instance where foreign
interests, working with the Indonesian government, appropriated an
isolated area on one of the outer islands to establish a huge mine, it had
great topical political resonance, and engaged with many other dimen-
sions of contemporary social experience. As a modern play, Rendra’s
work challenges the previous separation of modern, European-derived
drama from traditional performance in Indonesia by incorporating and
reinterpreting local theatre idioms. It also blends these elements with
international discourses and performance references to create a more
fluid, globally connected vision of Indonesian modernity than the rigid
framework imposed by the state.

The Struggle of the Java Tribe

The play opens in the manner of a standard wayang performance, with

a prologue by a dalang, puppeteer-narrator figure, to set the scene of
the story. Here the dalang first emphasizes that the story does not take
place in Indonesia, then describes its location, the fictional kingdom of
Astinam. This name, however, sites the action firmly in contemporary
Indonesia, with critical implications, for Astina is the name of the
‘enemy’ kingdom in the wayang stories well known to Javanese audi-
ences. The scene then introduced by the dalang is situated not in
Astinam, but in a generic overseas industrial kingdom, where a comic
chorus of machines describe how they work to produce an ever-increasing
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 55

volume of goods for the capitalist market. ‘Profit increases capital,

capital increases profit’, they chant. ‘More schemes make more money.
We can’t be held up, we can’t be interrupted’ (Rendra, 1979: 6). Next
a chorus of ambassadors enters, caricaturing the countries they repre-
sent; each introduces himself individually, then they voice in unison
their shared interest in selling goods, exploiting natural resources and
extending progress in the form of modern goods and technology to the
third world. The dalang argues back that what the people of these coun-
tries need are local vegetables and mother’s milk, not synthetic vita-
mins and powdered milk, but the ambassadors simply shout together
triumphantly, ‘Onwards to progress my friends!’ and prance off stage
(Rendra, 1979: 12).
The next scene takes place in the village of the Naga tribe, where the
wise tribal chief, Abivasam, voices the holistic, nature-oriented philoso-
phy of the community and their egalitarian principles of land owner-
ship; his fellow villagers reinforce his words, speaking in poetic chorus.
Abivasam’s son, Abivara, returns home from overseas study, committed
to work for the improvement of his community. His friend Carlos, a
foreign journalist, accompanies him to write about the village and com-
ments in glowing terms on the ‘nature-supporting technology’ of ‘the
irrigation system built by your ancestors’ (Rendra, 1979: 19–20). After
this celebration of social and spiritual harmony and environment-pre-
serving technology, everyone goes off to the fields together to work.
The dalang then introduces the palace of Astinampuram and its queen,
in a subversive parody of the laudatory descriptions of royal monarchs
and their courts characteristic of wayang. The queen, widely understood
as an hilarious caricature of the wife of President Suharto, preens and
poses as the dalang comments critically on her arrogance and artificial-
ity; then she addresses him abruptly and directly, demanding praise for
her fine clothes. The queen’s prime minister and minister of security
present their reports, also complaining of the advanced lifestyle diseases
from which they are suffering – piles, high-blood pressure, gout – and
discussing the super modern hospitals and pharmaceutical factories
being constructed to address these modern problems. A chorus of par-
liamentary representatives appears, expressing their shared avoidance
of debate and subservience to government authority, and endorsing
the security minister’s decree that all social critique must be silenced to
preserve the nation’s safety. Then Mr Joe, the Ambassador of the United
States, puts forward a request by a US billionaire to establish a copper
mine in the region of the Naga tribe, sweetened by the presentation of
a huge diamond as a gift to the queen. The queen and all present agree
56 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

that the mining request must be considered seriously, and happily recite
together, ‘Hullo, hullo, Hallelujah!’ (Rendra, 1979: 41).
The contrast could not be greater between the idealized portrayal of
the Naga tribe’s village in the preceding scene and the behaviour of the
corrupt, self-seeking, self-important denizens of the palace. Subsequent
verbal confrontations take place between Abivasam, the Naga tribe
chief, and mining engineers and palace officials, seeking to neutralize
Naga opposition to the mine plans. In all these skirmishes, seen as
equivalent to the preliminary battle scenes of wayang performances
(Lane, 1979: xx), Abivasam’s calm conviction and wise arguments win
out over his opponents. Eventually Carlos, who has assisted the Naga
tribe’s cause by writing about their plight in the international press,
is expelled from the kingdom. While Carlos pledges to keep on writ-
ing about his friends and defending their shared values, at the end of
the play the Naga’s fate is unresolved – no great final battle occurs to
restore social order, as in wayang. Yet they face the future with courage
and equanimity: ‘Why must you be afraid of defending the balance?’
Abivasam says, facing towards the audience, ‘Defending life brings
serenity’ (Rendra, 1979: 71).

Wayang and modernity

Much commentary on The Struggle of the Naga Tribe focuses on the

suggestiveness of its parallels with wayang. Max Lane, the translator of
the play into English, describes it as a ‘brilliantly effective adaptation of
traditional Javanese wayang (shadow play) structure’ (Lane, 1979: xviii).
He draws parallels between the successive scenes of the play and their
wayang equivalents, suggesting that this familiarity of structure shapes
audience expectations of character and event. In Lane’s view, resonance
with the standard scenes and character types of wayang embodies a
‘reassertion of national imagination’ and exemplifies ‘indigenous artistic
achievement’ independent of ‘inspiration from other societies’ (Lane,
1979: xvii). Both the form and content of the play and the manner of
its production by Rendra’s Bengkel Theatre are seen to illustrate a ‘search
for an autonomous base for artistic development’ (Lane, 1979: xviii).
The wayang frame of The Struggle of the Naga Tribe is indeed central to
its meaning and impact. By invoking standard expectations of interac-
tions between kings, courtiers and ordinary people, then turning them
on their head by portraying society’s leaders as self-seeking buffoons
and humble villagers as highly intelligent and principled, the play
takes on great satirical, critical impact. It represents a quintessential
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 57

example of the mobilization of Javanese cultural tradition to oppose

the dominant approach of the state and to critique contemporary
political conditions. Yet, to conceive of the role of traditional cultural
reference in Rendra’s play in essentialist, nativist terms – to regard it as
recapturing an authentic, autonomous local identity, without reference
to ‘other societies’, in Max Lane’s words – would mean missing a great
deal of what is going on. The divergences from the familiar frame of
wayang and the blending of local with Western theatrical elements and
international political and philosophical discourse give the play much
of its force as a work of modern Indonesian drama.
Explicit divergences from the traditional wayang model and the
values it embodies convey important social lessons. The standard role
of the dalang in wayang is that of a transmitter of tradition, reproducing
the voices of the different characters and relating events. Never does
the narrator figure voice direct critique of the actions of the characters,
or interact with them, speaking with his own voice. In Rendra’s play,
however, the narrator intervenes frequently with critical, satirical com-
ments on the behaviour and motives of characters and he puts forward
arguments about the topics under discussion. Arguably implied here
is the necessity in contemporary times for a more critical evaluation
of inherited tradition and a more active, individualized, participatory
approach to social and political life. Another striking divergence from
the familiar is the deviation from the wayang representation of the peo-
ple as ungainly and clumsy but lovable and loyal subordinates to the
nobility. Rendra portrays the Naga tribe as intelligent, well-informed
and demanding the democratic rights theoretically guaranteed to them
by the nation state.
The intelligence and nobility of the village people as a whole, as
well as their unity of thought and support of their leaders, is conveyed
through their representation as a chorus, speaking together to reinforce
the words of their leader, often in poetic phrases and using dramatic
repetition. The chorus is a new element incorporated into the wayang
frame, where choruses have no traditional role, drawn from the model
of Greek drama, with which Rendra was very familiar, having translated
and staged several Greek classics. The Naga tribe chorus does not nar-
rate background events as in Greek theatre, but instead emphasizes and
amplifies the issues being discussed by the main characters, thereby
helping to create a serious, dignified atmosphere, a sense of reverential
love of nature and commitment to a just, harmonious human society.
The elevation of the ordinary people to noble heroes has a disad-
vantage in performance in the loss of their comic potential. The clown
58 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

servants of the noble figures are a hugely important source of comic

entertainment in wayang, and scenes set among villagers and ordinary
foot-soldiers are full of humorous, earthy interchanges. By compari-
son, the idealized Naga villagers arguably come across as laudable but
rather wooden, colourless figures. Instead, the humour of the play is
supplied by the satirical depiction of the noble figures, the queen and
her courtiers, and by the use of choruses of machines, ambassadors and
parliamentary chairmen. Here Rendra draws on a different model of
the chorus, the lively, singing, dancing and sometimes wise-cracking
choruses of Broadway musicals, thereby adding another international
performance reference.
Rendra counters the state-imposed model of Indonesian modernity
based on capitalism and progress not by reasserting autonomous, indi-
genous social values, but by constructing an alternate vision of moder-
nity that combines international discourses of environmentalism
and anti-development critique with local cultural forms. Passages of
dialogue in which these discourses are directly explicated and debated
have an alienating effect today in their overt didacticism and the worn
familiarity of their arguments. However, in the context of Indonesian
society at the time the play was first performed, when these ideas were
new, exciting and difficult to access owing to government repression,
they added importantly to its critical appeal. The play popularized key
political ideas and social models from abroad as well as celebrating local
cultural identity. The model of wayang was invoked not just to make the
message of the play more familiar to and acceptable by Javanese audi-
ence members, but also to suggest points of difference between past and
present, the need for adjustment of traditional cultural models to new
structures and concepts. Reinterpreting local tradition and combining it
with international influences, Rendra’s work created a more progressive,
fluid interpretation of Indonesian modernity than the dominant, state-
imposed paradigm. At the same time, this vision was asserted through
a modified version of the modern play, and helped inspire political
resistance carried out within the seemingly solid structures of modern
political and social life.
Plays of this type became a dominant mode in Indonesian theatre
from the 1970s to the 1990s. The beleaguered kingdom under the con-
trol of flawed, self-seeking leaders, symbolizing the Indonesian nation
under Suharto’s New Order regime, became an emblem of shared politi-
cal resistance. In the latter years of the Suharto era, however, in par-
ticular sites, the solidity of the vision of Indonesian modernity asserted
in The Struggle of the Naga Tribe began to dissolve, and the fragmented,
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 59

fluid experiences of everyday life could no longer be contained within

the framework of the modern play.

Modernity differently experienced and performed

By the early 1990s, in the big urban centres, particularly the capital
Jakarta, a different, postmodern style of performance had emerged that
was disjunctive, fragmented and highly physical, with texts combin-
ing poetic passages, fragmented quotations and surrealistic images.
These new works expressed both the alienation of mass urban popula-
tions from their dehumanized, commercialized environment and their
feelings of loss of identity and social connectedness amidst the flood of
global cultural influence. The use of fragmented quotation articulated
the emptiness of official rhetoric and a new sense of the inadequacy of
the language of everyday communication. Members of the two theatre
groups Teater Sae and Teater Kubur, who developed this style in Jakarta
from the mid-1980s onwards, were mainly residents of lower-middle-
class kampung (urban neighbourhoods, slums) and were often under- or
unemployed. The theatre group directors, Boedi S. Otong and Dindon
W. S., had both worked with the absurdist playwright-director Arifin C.
Noer, and their first productions were stagings of Noer’s dramatizations
of the lives of poor urban dwellers (Bodden, 2010: 132–3). Both groups
moved on to a new idiom, abandoning narrative form, differentiated
characters and dialogue in favour of an intense avant-garde physicality
and disconnected, non-linear verbal expression.
Teater Sae’s style, reflecting Otong’s collaboration with experimen-
tal poet Afrizal Malna, was intellectual, demanding and infused with
poetic fragments and textual references; Teater Kubur’s performances
were developed from group improvisation and cultivated close connec-
tions with its audiences and social base. Both laid great emphasis on
the experiential involvement of actors. Rather than simply reproduc-
ing an externally imposed script, Otong and Malna contended that
‘Sae actors would play themselves through the actuality of their bodies
in contact with ideas and objects’, experiencing ‘a “self-actualization”
otherwise blocked to them in New Order society’ (Bodden, 2010: 147).
Teater Kubur’s plays were said by their director, Dindon, to draw on the
authentic experience of group members, using the language they them-
selves employed (Bodden, 2010: 173). The swirling, liquid uncertainties
of the new modernity of huge, globalized cities, unable to be contained
and explained by familiar social structures and cultural forms, likewise
defied framing through traditionally flavoured modern epic dramas
60 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

such as The Struggle of the Naga Tribe. Instead, the new fragmented
theatrical idiom was seen to give expression to individual and shared
experience of contemporary modernity.
Such evocation of personal and social experience, along with the
fragmented, disjunctive style of this new form of theatre, is graphi-
cally illustrated in Teater Sae’s 1992 production Biografi Yanti Setelah
12 Menit (Yanti’s Biography after 12 Minutes), based on a text by Malna
drawing on diverse sources ‘including government and UNESCO
reports, Amir Hamzah’s poetry[,]…the Asian Wall Street Journal[,] …
and Malna’s own poetry’ (Bodden, 2010: 160). Here the epic domain
of the nation encompassed by Rendra’s plays has been narrowed to
the family household. A domestic setting made strange is signalled as
the performance opens by the actions of figures who enter and leave the
darkened stage, carrying buckets of water, filling bathtubs and scrub-
bing the floor, while strange, discordant music plays and a woman in
a black dress with short, cropped hair keens in high-pitched tones.
The household workers continue to perform their tasks as background
throughout the play, while attention focuses on three main characters:
a married couple (the short-haired woman and her husband) and a
narrator. All three refer to themselves as Yanti; the husband and wife
likewise call each other Yanti, but the husband also addresses his wife
as Papa (Father) and the wife calls the husband both Papi (Daddy) and
Ibu (Mother). Compounding the complexities of this characterization,
the husband wears a bra and speaks in a high falsetto voice; he, not
the wife, interacts with domestic objects – crouching over a wash basin,
ironing in the air above it, thrusting the basin over his head. The wife,
by contrast, speaks in a low voice, adopts tense, angular, aggressive
body poses and often erupts in violent anger (Figure 3.1). The gender
inversion evokes a sense of slippage and rupture of traditional social
and familial roles.
Fragmentation and confusion of identity is one of the central preoc-
cupations of the play. References to ill-fitting and reduplicated identities,
the suggestion that authentic personal histories are found today only
among characters in films and novels, statements such as ‘In this coun-
try everyone can change their personality at any time’ recur through the
dialogue (Malna, 1992: 8). Juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated ideas
and objects conveys a sense of the feelings of discontinuity and disori-
entation being experienced by the speakers: ‘Take care of your own eyes
because there’s no sugar and coffee today’; ‘Every time I meet an electric
light pole I am amazed: why do people miss other people?’ (Malna,
1992: 4, 7). The wife tells a story about seeing a woman whose face
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 61

Figure 3.1 Margesti, in black dress, as the wife, and Zainal Abidin Domba, as the
husband, in Biografi Yanti. Teater Sae, Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre, Jakarta,
4 December 1992. Courtesy of Teater Sae. Photo: Ging Ginanjar

haunts her, who penetrates her brain, until she feels she is becoming
someone she does not recognize and feels estranged from her own
name. At the end of the play, the now-naked husband, the wife and the
narrator each repeat the same words, at first in turn, then together, ‘My
name is Yanti, like the man in that bath. If you meet me in an office, a
supermarket or in a train, understand that I am Yanti, who hides in the
corner of your biography for 12 minutes’ (Malna, 1992: 18).
Another major focus is the nature of contemporary love and marriage.
At the beginning of the play the narrator, speaking in a monotone at a
lightning fast rate, recites a passage about a mother’s wish for an ideal
marriage for her child. The spouse should be ‘of a good family, success-
ful, moralistic, of the same religion, not too old, if necessary of the same
shirt size’, and their love should be ‘in keeping with national ideals and
the environment, where growth, equality and exploitation of natural
resources will not conflict with one another nor undermine develop-
ment, productivity and our future’ (Malna, 1992: 1). But immediately
after this parodic rendition of Suharto-era reification of the family as
the site of stability, harmony and natural paternal authority, the speaker
reports that the romantic conditions of the past, in which people gave
62 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

their love to just one person, are long gone. Amidst the mobility of the
big city, separations and divorces are very common, and getting mar-
ried is no more important than going to the office. This reference to
the breakdown of marriage under conditions of contemporary moder-
nity recalls similar themes in both Tokyo Notes discussed in Chapter 4,
and Emily of Emerald Hill, the subject of Chapter 2. Dramatic works
from different Asia-Pacific sites reflect on the disintegration of family
relationships under the pressures of modern life. In Biografi Yanti such
disintegration is expressed theatrically through incoherent, fragmented
interaction between husband and wife.
The husband and wife figures relate to one another in a remote, dis-
junctive way. Though addressing their words to ‘papa’, ‘papi’ or ‘Yanti,’
they look outwards at the audience rather than at each other, relating
individual experiences and making observations rather than engaging
in dialogue. When they make direct contact, their interactions are often
violent. Yet their utterances at the time hint only obliquely at the moti-
vations for their actions. ‘I don’t have a knife, Daddy, like you brought
a bucket to the bathroom and your eyes looked at my naked body’, says
the wife as she slaps her husband’s face. The narrator interacts with the
couple in a similarly disjunctive, illogically violent way: as he praises
India’s economic policies taken to protect its farmers’ interests, he
pushes the husband’s face into the wash basin (Malna, 1992: 5).
Amidst fractured dialogue occur nostalgic references to famous loves
of the past – that of Romeo and Juliet, Dante for Beatrice – and to the
difficulties and disjunctions of contemporary marriage. ‘There is some-
thing wrong with the world of couples, like money and sex, or love
and death’, remarks the wife. Later she states, ‘I haven’t touched you
for two years. Being busy has changed us.’ ‘No’, responds the husband,
‘marriage has changed us’ (Malna, 1992: 12). When she asks to hold
his hand, her husband responds that they should each look after their
own hands, or she can hold someone else’s hand; she concludes ‘love
is the business of each of us, not both of us together. “We” and “I”,
Daddy, are two different things in love’ (Malna, 1992: 12). The ten-
sions and dissatisfactions of this situation seemingly fuel the building
emotion of her following speech, until she pulls up her dress to her
hips, thrusts her crotch towards the audience and shouts, ‘Here is my
sex. Where is yours?’ (Malna, 1992: 13). Played by Margesti Otong, the
director’s wife, the portrayal of the wife in Biografi Yanti might be seen
as a highly ironic example of the engagement with actors’ actual experi-
ence valorized by Teater Sae. Both Boedi and Margesti confirmed that
the power of its assertion of raw female anger was grounded in very
 Modern Drama: Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia 63

real personal experience. Their marriage was in trouble at the time, and
they separated a few years later.4 That Boedi is now married to a Swiss
theatre scholar and lives and works in Europe might be seen to evoke
Zygmunt Bauman’s observation of the frailty of personal relationships
‘in a liquid modern setting of life’ (2003: vii) with its conditions of fluid
geographical mobility.
The interventions of the narrator set the experience of the family
household within a wider framework of the financial and other pres-
sures of everyday contemporary modernity. ‘Telephone rings! Electricity
bill! Land tax! Gas bottle empty! House insurance!’ the narrator shouts
after a rapid-fire reading of a love poem (Malna, 1992: 6). At other
times he recites at the same lightning speed, in a flat monotone, statis-
tics about the drop-out rate of students from Indonesian high schools,
wealth inequalities within Indonesia and on a global scale, the destruc-
tion of tropical rain forests and the growth of greenhouse gases. Many
of the issues are similar to those which formed the subject of serious dis-
cussion in The Struggle of the Naga Tribe. Their mention suggests a sense
of crisis extending beyond the family, involving Suharto-era Indonesian
society as a whole and the wider international world. But here no
vision of an alternate modernity emerges. Domestic objects, snatches
of poetry, outbursts of anger and economic statistics are all juxtaposed
with no clear pattern. As official discourse becomes mere rhetoric and
connections between everyday speech and action are ruptured, the
experience is powerfully captured and conveyed in Teater Sae’s Biografi
Yanti, but no transcendent solution can be offered.

Into the future

Teater Sae’s productions, and those of groups with a similar theatrical

approach in Jakarta and the nearby city of Bandung, constituted a
progressive avant-garde fringe rather than the mainstream of modern
Indonesian theatre in the 1990s. Narrative, politically flavoured plays
remained popular, particularly in the regions, and continued to contrib-
ute actively to political opposition up until the end of the Suharto regime
in 1998. But Teater Sae’s works gave expression to the experience of dis-
solution of known structures, in a shift from the narrative modern play
to a more fluid, porous dramatic form, which in other iterations became
predominant in Indonesian theatre in the post-Suharto years. How such
performances embodied the sense of a new ‘liquid modernity’, both
locally grounded and globally wired, after the rigid framework of the
New Order state had been dismantled, is explored in Chapter 6.
4
Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the
New Modern

In this chapter, we explore how the idea of modern or ‘new’ theatre

(shingeki) in Japan was transformed in the 1990s by renewed interest
in authentically representing everyday Japanese social interactions on
the stage. We also discuss some of the relevant historical debates about
Japan’s shingeki. The formation of this modern theatre dates back to the
early twentieth century and developed in contemporaneous fashion
with European theatrical modernity. Shingeki is thus an early expression
of the theme of multiple modernities that this book explores. This is an
important point of contrast to other regional theatres discussed here
and is an immediate example of how modernity itself is distributed
unevenly across the Asia-Pacific temporality of our study.
In relation to this, we discuss the well-known playwright and director
Hirata Oriza’s theory of ‘colloquial theatre’ (gendai kôgo engeki); a theory
that brings debates about theatrical realism and the representation of
everyday life in Japan into sharp focus. This theory gives new impetus to
questions about Japanese modernism. Hirata’s argument about theatre
takes the form of a provocation: although nearly 100 years old, Japan’s
modern theatre is an incomplete, deficient artistic project disconnected
from Japanese cultural experiences. The problem lies in the disconnec-
tions between Japan and the West. Hirata’s critique of the modern real-
ist and naturalist theatre tradition is about language, history and how
Western aesthetics interpolate with everyday life in Japan.
This chapter explores the intersection of modern (gendai) and collo-
quial (kôgo) characteristics of Hirata’s theatre as a staging of the prosaic
everyday and connects this to a reading of the artist’s seminal collo-
quial theatre piece Tokyo Notes (Tôkyô No-to), written in 1994. The form
and content of this play explore debates about Japanese modernity in
terms relating to Japan’s distinctive and volatile theatre history. More
64
 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 65

importantly, the dramaturgy of gendai kôgo engeki – the temporal, ges-

tural and textual ‘architecture’ of Tokyo Notes – connects everyday space
in Hirata’s theatre to considerations of contemporary global moder-
nity. Global modernity is an aspect of what the theatre scholar Uchino
Tadashi calls globality: ‘the sociopolitical actualities of a Japanese society
dominated by neoliberalism’ (Uchino, 2006: 58). This chapter will show
how Tokyo Notes addresses the theme of globality in fluid and quasi-post-
modern terms and compare this to Zygmunt Bauman’s description of
globality as liquid modernity.
In theorizing the modern theatre Hirata’s approach is historicized.
His view of everyday life in modern Japan is similarly informed by his
reading of history. The analysis here will follow two intersecting paths.
The first maps the historical trajectory of the idea of the colloquial in
a reading of Japan’s approach to modernity in the prewar era via the
work of the historian H. D. Harootunian. The second path explores how
the staging of the everyday in Hirata’s play coincides with the idea of
modernity as liquid. Prewar anxieties about modernity happen in the
search for an essentialist Japanese ideal. But while it will be argued that
the transformation of modern Japan turns on facets of Japan’s history –
wartime representing the end of one version of modernity and the con-
temporary era an expression of another – these periods are not separate,
and the conditions underpinning debates about Japan’s modernity have
common ground in iconic figures and institutions such as the Japanese
family and the modern city itself.
Hirata is an established artist who began writing and directing plays
with his youth theatre, Seinendan, founded in 1993 at the International
Christian University in Tokyo. He is also a theoretician and a univer-
sity lecturer, and is active in promoting arts and cultural policy at the
national level.1 Working from a small theatre complex at the Komaba
Agora Gekijô (Komaba Agora Theatre), Seinendan has grown substan-
tially and produces an impressive array of theatre and arts-education
projects in national and international forums. While Hirata works
across many areas of cultural policy and theatrical production in Japan
and Europe, this chapter focuses on his notion of staging the colloquial,
arguably the cornerstone of his work as an artist and thinker and of
critical importance to the formation of modern theatre.

Hirata’s theatre and the new modern

Hirata argues that an intimate social dimension of Japanese com-

munication is absent in modern theatre. Shingeki’s ‘first wave’ at the
66 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

Tsukiji Shôgekijô (Tsukiji Little Theatre) in the 1920s staged new plays
and adapted European-style avant-garde, expressionistic and proletar-
ian political aesthetics. Osanai Kaoru, co-founder of the Tsukiji theatre,
opposed producing local playwrights and considered them artistically
inferior (Powell, 2002: 72–3). Much later, realist theatre prospered in
postwar Japan and the aesthetic–political duality of modernism, where
ideas of democracy and national reconstruction were debated in new
plays written by Japanese playwrights, reached high levels of achieve-
ment. These plays were criticized in the 1960s for their didactic intensity
and overtly Germanic Brechtian influences. Rejecting modern theatre
structures, the 1960s avant-garde (angura, shôgekijô) began drawing from
Japan’s indigenous cultural perspectives for inspiration and gained sig-
nificant exposure in Japan and internationally. Transhistorical, poetic
and mythic plays by experimental writer-directors, such as Kara Jûrô,
Terayama Shûji and Suzuki Tadashi, produced fantastic, dreamlike and
physically extreme theatre (see Eckersall, 2006a; Goodman, 1988).
Modern theatre in prewar Japan developed alongside literature and
visual arts with many artists working freely between artistic mediums.
Murayama Tomoyoshi is one of the best known of the prewar artists
whose work typifies such interdisciplinary and transcultural practices.
He was a playwright, theatre designer, novelist, essayist, visual artist
and choreographer whose career took him to Germany, were he studied
drama at the Humboldt University in the early 1920s. He returned to
Japan and established a proletarian theatre movement that eventually
brought him into conflict with the authorities and he remained an
outspoken critic of Japanese militarism throughout the wartime era. At
the same time as he was writing plays, he was one of the founders of
the influential avant-garde collective MAVO, aiming to break down the
boundaries between art and everyday life through avant-garde design
practices. He designed remarkable constructivist style sets for the Tsukiji
Theatre and together with his wife had a small atelier exploring contem-
porary dance. In 1934, Murayama also wrote a novel, Byakuya (White
Night), but he is mostly remembered for his plays, visual arts and design
contributions.
Murayama is associated with the Taishô era (1912–26), which pro-
duced a wave of modern culture, urbanism, leisure, and capitalist con-
sumption. The fashionable figures of Moga and Mobo (modern girls and
modern boys) symbolized the cosmopolitan transformation of Tokyo
where they gathered at department stores and cafes in the Ginza dis-
trict. Male suffrage was introduced in 1925 and radio became a regular
presence in people’s lives. As will be discussed below, however, 1920s
 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 67

modernism became a point of contention for Japanese imperialists that

viewed its inherent cosmopolitanism and emphasis on individualism
with deep suspicion.
By contrast, postwar theatre’s themes of war, suffering and Japan’s
unreconstructed militarist ideology are mingled with the wider historical
focus on reconstruction, Japan’s alliance with the United States, student
protest and positivist statements about advances in technology and a
substantial improvement of living conditions for Japanese. Still a sense
of longing for a Japanese identity that is less problematically configured
around discourses of the past is evident and, even with Japan’s remark-
able postwar growth, a sense of lack and the theme of a continuing defi-
ciency in Japanese modernity remains an enduring trope in the arts.
In criticizing this history, Hirata’s point is that sociolinguistic interac-
tions form the basis of a collective imagined community and national
cultural space; a point that is not well appreciated by recent Japanese
playwrights. In short, Japan’s modern theatre is deficient because it is
unable to stage the Japanese everyday. It cannot speak ‘intimately’ to
Japanese audiences, nor does it uphold a significant mirror function to
society, for the picture, so reflected back, is bent by historical events and
is out of time and place.
Hirata’s response as a playwright and director is to explore the pos-
sibilities for bridging these historical gaps in culture and language
through authentically staging the colloquial space of the everyday. His
company states that:

Our strategy is to critically reconsider theatrical theories and to recon-

struct delicate and dramatic space on stage. We believe that we can
create such a space by basing our theater on the Japanese language
and life style, while at the same time creating a new theatrical lan-
guage, which is a unified form of both written and spoken language.
(Seinendan, 2010)

Indeed Hirata’s argument for modern theatre rests on coming to terms

with the natural flows of Japanese communication and the capacity for
artists to authentically represent this sense of the local everyday world
as a form of closely observed social contact. Supporting this statement,
Hirata writes:

Most life has nothing whatever to do with what theatre in the past
has liked to portray, but is grounded instead in quiet and uneventful
moments …. We exist as human beings, and that itself is amazing,
68 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

even dramatic. Daily life contains all sorts of rich and complex ele-
ments: it can be entertaining, touching, funny, even stupid. What
I want to do is distil from all those complicated elements an objec-
tive sense of time as it is lived – quietly – and directly reconstruct
that on stage.
(Hirata, qtd in Poulton, 2002: 3)

Japanese literature scholar M. Cody Poulton further describes how:

‘much of Hirata’s drama concerns the establishment or, alternatively,
breakdown of various relationships and alliances – familial, profes-
sional, romantic, territorial …’ (2002: 4). He cites theatre critic Uchida
Yôichi to compare Hirata’s dramaturgy to the ebbs and flows of music
(2002: 3). As the translator of the English version of Tokyo Notes,
Poulton is alive to the connection between text and human relation-
ships in dramatic writing: what is said and, more importantly, the rela-
tions of the telling.

Tokyo Notes: a synopsis

Tokyo Notes is set in Tokyo sometime in the near future.2 People gather
in the foyer of an art gallery showing masterpieces by the Dutch painter
Jan Vermeer (1632–75). Vermeer specialized in painting realistic depic-
tions of families, often locating them in their domestic situations.
Likewise, Hirata’s play aims to show a detailed examination of a domes-
tic family coming together. A war in Europe is obliquely referenced,
and it seems that some of the European masterpieces have been sent to
Tokyo for safekeeping. The main story, among several narrative threads,
revolves around a gathering of the Akiyama family at the gallery café.
In former times, the extended family was the basic social unit of Japan
and familial ties and responsibilities defined one’s place in the world.
Like many countries, however, Japan has experienced the breakdown of
traditional family structures. Most people now live in small family units
in cities cut off from the wider family. Old people in particular experi-
ence loneliness and isolation. Tokyo Notes depicts this situation in the
awkward coming together of the members of the extended family, who
meet in the public space of the art gallery, not in a family home, and
seem to be almost strangers to each other. Other daily life activities take
place around their meeting such as discussions between art curators,
guides and other visitors to the gallery.
Hirata creates dramatic tension by deferring or hiding many aspects
of the story. What is being spoken of at a surface level is often not the
 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 69

actual meaning of what is being communicated and banal everyday lan-

guage covers over some sense of embarrassment, darkness and unstated
anxiety. Hence, the minutiae of family interactions are observed while
the presence of some catastrophic event – the war in Europe, like the
crumbling familial relationships – is suggested only obliquely.
This theme of hidden turmoil beneath an exterior of an unremark-
able everyday world is extended by Hirata’s use of naturalistic conven-
tions, such as having conversations overlap so that the audience can
miss certain information when an actor lowers their voice or refers to
something in an offhand way. The audience enters the theatre after
the actors have begun their performance, as if audience members
themselves are walking into the scene. At the conclusion of the work
the house lights come up, but the conversations on the stage continue
in the same manner until the audience leaves. There is little overt
theatricality and no music or dramatic effects. The most banal con-
versations, such as a man recounting a story of cups falling uncontrol-
lably from the drinks machine, are measured equally with the mostly
heartfelt stories of loneliness and resentments among family members.
As with Hirata’s style overall, Tokyo Notes is said to show Chekhovian
undertones in the sense that what is spoken about is often not what is
important to the drama. The less visible fractures in social relationships
stand for the sociopolitical experiences of the times that are ultimately
more meaningful. Arguably, for Hirata, showing the continual, almost
compulsive, deferral of communication often leads his theatre into an
abstract sensibility that is paradoxically more authentically able to rep-
resent the everyday.
Stylistically this play exemplifies Hirata’s ideas for modern theatre
dramaturgy. The theatrical space, while economical with design elements,
is a realistic depiction of an art gallery foyer. In the foreground there are
some benches typical of a gallery and to the rear, covering a ramp leading
to offstage, is a wall subtly announcing the Vermeer exhibition. Lighting
is soft and non-directional. These stage elements, as well as Hirata’s strict
direction of actors in using colloquial dialogue to create a relaxed, almost
ambient temporality, are key to his idea that Japan’s modern theatre is
only fully accomplished by its capacity to stage the everyday world.

The ‘everyday’ in the Japanese context

Scholars have long investigated the idea of the everyday and its con-
nections to historical and contemporary categories of modernism.
Studies draw attention to the production of everyday moments and
70 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

daily events and debate their consequences. Everydayness is quotidian,

repetitious and rationalized by the integration of social, economic and
technological developments taking place in the home, in workplaces,
among communities and between power elites. Since the time of Marcel
Duchamp, whose readymade artworks broadly introduced the notion
of an everyday in art, artists have been interested in blurring the dis-
tinction between life and art. Put another way, this means that: actors
‘extend reality, and are equally as real; acting explores what is possible’
(Lefebvre, 2008: 136). From the perspectives of scholars and artists who
are working towards a more political understanding of the everyday,
transformations of everyday spaces can be markers of change connect-
ing mass movements and powerful forces with experiences of domestic
space and daily living. Hence capitalism, global movements and mass
cultural shifts are explored for how they enter, integrate and/or inter-
rupt the field of individual practices and the experience of local com-
munity, a prospect that Michel de Certeau famously called The Practice
of Everyday Life (1998).
Hirata’s interest in colloquial forms reverberates in Japan with an
earlier, more controversial history of the modern understanding of
everyday life. To this end, Harootunian’s study of modernity in prewar
Japan traces the everyday as a trope in debates about how political
culture interacts in the shaping of the modern nation. His study of the
infamous nationalist conference on the question of how to ‘overcome
the modern’ (kindai no chôkoku), held in Kyoto in July 1942 in early war-
time, casts light on questions of the everyday as a constitutive feature of
modern life. Harootunian’s work shows how the conference focused on
‘evaluating the meaning of modernity … and Japan’s role in taking it to
its next stage’ (2000: 34). While many scholars focus on debates about
nationalism and Japan’s East Asian imperial destiny, Harootunian’s
work maps debates about the everyday transformations taking place in
the name of modern culture and how these activities were interwoven
with ideology. As he writes: ‘What distinguished this conception of
modern life … was its materiality and embeddedness in a culture of
objects and their circulation’ (2000: 97). Harootunian’s work, in fact,
shows how the culture of new objects, many of them the products of
war technology, produced and distributed in a rapidly evolving rubric
of capitalism and social life, were transforming everyday practices of
modern Japanese society.
Harootunian turns to a discussion of social sciences by scholars grap-
pling with the evident sense of nihilism ‘overcoming’ Japan’s sense of
identity: ‘What this program entailed was a confrontation with the
 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 71

phenomenological present and a recognition that the everydayness of

modan raifu was, at its centre, colonized by the commodity form and
its effects’ (2000: 100). Furthermore, the everyday is described as a dia-
lectical space with ‘capacity to conceal (and thus induce social forget-
ting) [while simultaneously] enabling conditions of production’ (2000:
100). This general understanding that the everyday was characterized
by dynamic changes experienced not from outside daily life, but fully
integrated into everyday activities was widely shared. Commodity form,
the production of new things coupled with an overarching mindset
of materialism – what Slavoj Žižek terms the affirmation of the social
through the production of commodities – was dramatically transform-
ing (1989: 11). Hence conceptions of time, space, geopolitics, identity
and labour were all rapidly changing.
By mapping these arguments about the everyday on to Hirata’s thesis
that modernity was until now an incomplete project, a number of new
possibilities arising from Hirata’s work are suggested. We can observe
the staging of an induced capacity for social forgetting, a profound
cultural amnesia and form of advanced alienation that is foregrounded
in his depiction of everyday social relations. We can see habitual anxi-
eties about the vapid materialism of commodity form. So much of the
between-the-wars thinking towards ‘overcoming modernity’ targets
materialism as the enemy of Japan’s future development. And yet, a
differently situated nonetheless equally critical perspective on material-
ism and the breakdown of Japan’s sense of community is also present
in Tokyo Notes.

Tokyo Notes: a liquid dramaturgy

Often known as ‘quiet theatre’ (shizuka na engeki), a term coined by

Japanese newspaper critics when Hirata’s theatre became popular in
the mid-1990s, this kind of everyday drama pioneered by Hirata argu-
ably draws on the contested history of modernism, and in particular
the ideological concern with everyday life. Its passivity reminds us of
the kind of social forgetting that is identified above as a deep-seated
historical problem. Ultimately, the quiet modality is about historical
silence and an inability to express doubt about the past. Moreover, the
quiet theatre of Tokyo Notes asserts liquid modernity by focusing on
the family at the point of critical meltdown, while meeting in a space
that mirrors the personal story with its own wider dystopian drama-
turgy of the waning of a cohesive rational modernity. Their meeting
in the gallery happens alongside other discontinuous events and
72 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

equally painful human interactions. These events signal the almost

ambient sense of disconnection in society as a whole: young lovers,
fashionable office workers, dysfunctional youths, curatorial staff and
artistic professionals are all estranged. The effect is one that conveys
a sense of being both monumentally apocalyptic and completely
insignificant.
The play historicizes family crisis in modern life in its close referenc-
ing of Ozu Yasujiro’s well-known film Tokyo Story (Tôkyô Monogatari,
1953). This film explores the breakdown of family relationships when
an aging Hirayama couple visit their busy grown-up children in the rap-
idly urbanizing postwar city of Tokyo. The film dissects the busy lives
of the son and daughter, who lack the time and inclination to be with
their parents and fulfil their familial duties. The film shows the gap in
expectations between the elder and younger generations and the lack
of a shared perspective on life. It is not just that the children are too
busy to spend time with their parents, but that each generation views
modern life in profoundly different ways. The young couple spend their
time working and accumulating material goods. Even if the children
wanted to bring their parents to Tokyo, their own lives are depicted as
being too mobile and the social space that once sustained compounds
of intergenerational housing has largely been transformed to preclude
this for all but the very wealthy. Although the tone is restrained, these
differences signal the passing from an older Japan into a postwar capi-
talist modernity.
As with the film Tokyo Story, the play Tokyo Notes shows how people
come to live in strikingly different worlds and have disagreements about
the past. The meeting between the Akiyamas is strained, more so when
family members discuss their responsibilities for looking after their
aging parents. Yumi, who is middle-aged and unmarried, feels that she
has unfairly taken on this burden by remaining in the family’s home
town and sacrificing a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. It also becomes
apparent that her city-based sister-in-law Yoshie is planning to separate
from Yumi’s brother Yûji. While Yoshie is sad about this situation, we
are also led to assume that Yumi resents the freedom that Yoshie will
gain as a result. But even this heightened dramatic moment is under-
mined by the slow march of formal social interactions and everyday
politeness. The scene is briefly introduced in a sequence where Yumi
asks Yoshie if something has happened between her and her husband.
‘No, we’re fine’, Yoshie replies and the script immediately shifts to a
parallel conversation happening across the foyer (Poulton, 2002: 70).
Later, after a specified moment of silence, the focus returns to Yoshie
 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 73

who confesses that she might not see Yumi again (something that she
is not particularly disturbed by):

YOSHIE: I might not be able to see you again, ever.

YUMI: …
YOSHIE: He burst into tears the other day. Yûji.
YUMI: Huh?
YOSHIE: Said he’d fallen in love with another woman.
YUMI: Eh?–
YOSHIE: I was the one who wanted to cry.
YUMI: (pausing) Hm.
YOSHIE: I feel like my battery’s run out.3
YUMI: (pausing) But, there’s Tarô [Yoshie’s child] to think about.
YOSHIE: …
YUMI: I’m really terrible these days. It’s like I take pleasure in other
people’s misfortune.
YOSHIE: No, surely not.
YUMI: Oh well.
YOSHIE: I feel like I’m letting down your Mum and Dad.
YUMI: Hm?–
YOSHIE: They were so sweet to me.
YUMI: Don’t you worry about my parents.
YOSHIE: No, I just can’t help thinking, what am I gonna say to them?
YUMI: Does Shinya [Yumi’s eldest brother] know about this?
YOSHIE: No, I don’t think so.
YUMI: That so?–
YOSHIE: I think–
YUMI: Uh huh.
(A long pause.)
YUMI: I’m feeling kind of hungry.
(Poulton, 2002: 71–2)

At this point, the conversation meanders on to the topic of lunches;

the dialogue is extremely banal, and every interaction is given equal
dramatic attention. In such an ambient flowing style of theatre, how-
ever, small shifts in intensity can be quite shocking. For example, after
discussing the various options for lunch, Yoshie concludes, ‘You know,
we’re a family, so it’s better we all eat the same thing’ and Yumi tacitly
agrees (Poulton, 2002: 73). A commentary on family as the embodiment
of Japanese identity is suggested: even when the family unit is broken
and without hope, it must appear to assert a kind of hopeless unity. At
74 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

the same time, the apparent disconnection from reality is both haunt-
ing and telling. It is an authentic representation of normative social
relations being wrought and constrained by outside forces. There is no
capacity to resist, no agency; people remain disconnected from reality
and trapped by their situation. This ambient sense of despair experi-
enced by people finding themselves at the fringes of modernity is also
discussed in the chapters that follow. The melting of family structures
and confusions about social relationships is one way that liquid moder-
nity has changed society; in particular, how living spaces, work and play
have become both more imbricated and abstract. The resulting sense of
what Bauman terms ‘ambient uncertainty’ is captured by the tenuous
and uneasy depiction of social relations in the play.
A further example of historical convergence takes place in a long
dissertation in the middle of the play that discusses the science of
modern aesthetics. An art curator named Kushimoto Teruo is speaking
to a group of art lovers about how Vermeer used the camera obscura to
draft his paintings. In his long-winded but informative and historically
correct address to his young audience he notes how the camera obscura
was used by Vermeer to mark out detail and perspective, thus giving his
works greater clarity and depth of field. The scene builds from a series
of jokes about cameras and picture taking, and how social gatherings
include a ritual framing of the event in digital photographic form:

KUSHIMOTO: They could actually project images through the lens onto
a flat surface, like a wall or a sheet of paper.
YUMI: Oh–
KUSHIMOTO: To look at things through a lens was really quite a feat in
those days.
YUMI: …
KUSHIMOTO: The seventeenth century was, like, the beginning of the
modern era. You had Galileo and his telescope, and the microscope,
and, I mean, you could use a lens to look at things you couldn’t see
otherwise. All sorts of things, little things, the universe even. Well,
that was their point of view – not like, say, God’s perspective, but
different. In any case, Holland was the centre for the development
of lenses back then. The Dutch philosopher Spinoza whiled away
his time polishing lenses, speculating about God and the universe
and all that. Just polishing his lenses like this, and when he looked
through the lens it was like he could see the whole world. It was,
well, rather a nice time to live, don’t you think?
(Poulton, 2002: 89)
 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern 75

Kushimoto’s comments on perceiving the world have obvious parallels

to the contemporary period. His citation of Spinoza likely points to
Hirata’s own belief in rationality and unity even if this remains an ideal
perspective in his theatre. Like Spinoza, Hirata aims for an impossible
melding of all knowledge in one order of seeing: ‘All sorts of things, lit-
tle things, the universe even.’ The scene functions as a way of encourag-
ing audiences to consider how theatre has a narrative aspect but is also
about the way we watch things and how watching theatre is a cultural
operation.
However, the scene, crucially, is also a parody of the popular civic
understanding of modernity. Sociolinguistically, Kushimoto’s listeners
must defer to his expertise and age but, as in so many Japanese social
interactions, Kushimoto misses the cues that they are not interested in
what he is saying, and the scene ends in an awful shared performance
of embarrassment. Ironically though, this scene is also a kind of mani-
festo for Hirata’s ideas for theatre: ‘I mean, you could use a lens to look
at things you couldn’t see otherwise.’ Improved technologies for seeing
the everyday in Vermeer’s paintings are contrasted meta-theatrically
with a more penetrating, and possibly disturbing, gaze in Hirata’s thea-
tre (see Poulton, 2002: 6). This reference can be understood as motivat-
ing a new ocular on to the everyday.
These examples demonstrate how Hirata uses colloquial language
as a liquid dramaturgy. His close depiction of the everyday comments
on the tendency in Japanese to skirt around the matter at hand, thus
keeping social relations mobile and showing how the use of incidental
behaviours signalled by the colloquial form keep a tenuous grip on
maintaining a sense of everyday calm.

Tokyo Notes in context: the everyday and the new modern

Debates about Hirata’s theatre in the 1990s sometimes questioned

its political perspective, tending to see it as a naturalistic theatre and
thereby exposed to the critique of naturalism as a theatre upholding
the status quo. But in one important way, his theatre has addressed the
very problem that the false unity of the modern stage asserts (Tsuno,
1970: 85). Tokyo Notes is resolute in its fragmented dramaturgy and in
the depiction of everyday experiences of crisis. They unravel gently, as
Hirata wants, but with a growing sense of dramatic power as the many
small interactions accumulate. The theory of colloquial theatre works
when these problems can only be read as representing a sense of crisis
very similar to our own; its small intensifications connect with our
76 Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

sense of the disturbances of the world around us. Importantly, as is typi-

cal in Hirata’s theatre, there is no dramatic resolution to the problems
depicted, as is commonly expected in older models of modern theatre.
Instead, audiences are made complicit in Hirata’s everyday because of
its colloquialism, but this intimacy comes at the cost of not experienc-
ing resolution. Just as Tsuno Kaitaro dismissed the idea of catharsis in
modern theatre as ridiculous – an implausible prospect in the secular
capitalist modernity of postwar Japan – Hirata has seemingly invented
a form of modern theatre without tragedy or catharsis, but one that
implicates the audience in the everyday predicament of contemporary
existence.
This predicament leads us back to Bauman’s liquid perspective on
modernity. We have already suggested parallels between the melting of
solids and Hirata’s watery dramaturgy. The family in the play must deal
with or, more accurately, are unable to comprehend the sociopolitical
and geopolitical realties of liquid modernity. These forces are implied
throughout the play but never spoken about directly. Bauman writes:

Modernity starts when space and time are separated from living
practice and from each other and so become ready to be theorized as
distinct and mutually independent categories of strategy and action,
when they cease to be, as they used to be in long premodern centu-
ries, the intertwined and so barely distinguishable aspects of living
experience, locked in a stable and apparently invulnerable one-to-
one correspondence.
(2000: 8–9)

To experience liquid modernity is therefore to give attention to aliena-

tion and incomprehension of the wider forces at work in the world,
the drives of neoliberal capitalism and globalization in this case. In
Tokyo Notes, the Vermeer paintings being in Japan are symptomatic of a
breaking of the global system. Interrupted by war, the former centre of
modernity might be read in the play as being in the process of becom-
ing peripheral. But this is a possibility that is not comprehended by
anyone in the play. Their own situations remain overcome by the liquid
state of their tiny world.
Part II
Mobile Performance and Fluid
Identities
5
Solid and Liquid Modernities in
Regional Australia

This chapter focuses on mobile and fluid identities in performance in

Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory and in the Kimberley region of
Western Australia: territories and regions with unique geographical and
cultural features; that are closer to Asia than the large population cen-
tres of the nation; are both ancient and modern; and connected to local
and global flows of culture, trade, technology and finance. Solid and
liquid modernity cohabit in these regions in the form of iron ore, cop-
per and gold and in the stocks and shares that circulate ‘free of fences,
barriers, fortified borders and checkpoints’ in the global marketplace
(Bauman, 2000: 14).
Thinking about performance as an expanded form of social and cul-
tural life in the present and as a way of imagining the future, the chapter
discusses two contrasting performances: Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong
Skin) and Grace, both of which premiered at the 2010 Perth International
Arts Festival. Both works are chosen for the way in which they combine
premodern, modern and postmodern forms, both European and non-
European, and for the way they incorporate alternative or counter
regional modernities. Wrong Skin is an Indigenous dance performance,
devised and performed by members of the Elcho Island communities
of Arnhem Land in northern Australia, under the leadership of Elder
Margaret Nyungunyungu and a creative team that includes British-born
Australian director Nigel Jamieson in association with movement direc-
tor Gavin Robins, cultural liaison director Joshua Bond, and film and
video designer Scott Anderson. In addition to the Perth Festival, the per-
formance toured to the Adelaide and Darwin Festivals, the Sydney Opera
House and Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre. Grace is an epic drama based
on the novel by West Australian writer Robert Drewe, and was staged by
Deckchair Theatre, Fremantle, a port city in the south-west of Western
79
80 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

Australia. We will see in this chapter how these two performances

from the complex emergent regions of Australia negotiate in different
ways the pluralist and conflicting identities that flow through digital
media. The intention is not to assert that the case studies are either
representative or exemplary instances of a generalized category called
regional modernity. Rather, they add to the multiple modernities within
Australia that radically destabilize the idea of the nation as it is defined
by east-coast discourses and performance cultures.

Solid and liquid modernity: the mixed metaphors of the

mining boom

Japan, China, Korea and India are the principal markets for Australian
mining commodities from the Northern Territory and Western Australia
that in 2009 generated profits of $A114 billion, set to rise to $A600 bil-
lion over the next decade (Australian Government, 2012a). Contrary
to popular belief, however, the mining boom is not the solid backbone
of the nation’s economy. It typically employs a white fly-in, fly-out
workforce that represents only 2 per cent of the total Australian work-
ing population, while approximately 83 per cent of the profits flow to
foreign investors (Richardson and Denniss, 2011: 2). On this reading,
the solid modernity represented by the iron and mineral commodities
boom transforms quickly into liquid assets that flow out of the region.
Solid and liquid modernity function in the industry as mixed but not
opposing metaphors; a highly mobile workforce operates the heavy
machinery that excavates for minerals while the liquid economy guar-
antees the flow of global capital.
According to the logic of a remote and quarantined industry, the
performances discussed in this chapter represent only the peripheral
presence of the mining industry in the lives of the local people. The
notable absence creates a negative space or void that highlights the
lack of integration of the industry into the social life of the region.
The material connections between the performances and the industry
flow instead through the indirect channels of sponsorship. The broader
point is that the performances take place within the wider regional and
symbolic framework of the resource-intensive economy that is unique
to its locations. This framework has the effect of intensifying interest in
the various artistic responses to the changing economies of production
and the ways in which artists engage with, or disengage from, attempts
to redefine the diverse landscapes and cultural richness of the region in
terms of mineral and commodity assets.
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 81

Modernity and performance in East Arnhem Land:

Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin)

This section considers how modernity as a structure, phenomenon

and a set of values is negotiated within the narrative of a performance
from the East Arnhem Land region of the Northern Territory. Arnhem
Land covers an area of approximately 100,000 square kilometres of
tropical northern Australia from Kakadu National Park in the west to
the Gulf of Carpentaria in the east. The resident population in 2010
is approximately 16,000 people, of whom 10,000 or 62 per cent are
Indigenous (Northern Territory Government, 2011a: 19). The area has
been continuously occupied by the Yirrkala and Yolngu nations for tens
of thousands of years, with the current generations living according to
traditional Law and way of life.
East Arnhem Land, where Elcho Island is located, is home to the
Yolngu people. It covers 33,000 square kilometres, and is situated 4000
kilometres from Sydney and 550 kilometres north-east of Darwin. The
island’s largest community lives in Galiwin’ku, which has a popula-
tion of some 2000 people, of whom the majority are under 21 years
of age. Far away from Galiwin’ku, two Special Purpose Mining Towns,
Nhulunbury on the Gove Peninsula and Alyangula on Groote Eylandt,
host the fly-in, fly-out white workforce that operates the Rio Tinto
Alcan mine for bauxite, alumina and aluminium (Northern Territory
Government, 2011b: 33). These mines occupy traditional lands leased
by the Australian Government to the mining companies, despite oppo-
sition and legal challenges from the Yirrkala people throughout the
1960s (Casey, 2011: 58). A recent report indicates that ‘mining is the
region’s number one industry’, accounting for just under four times
the contribution of other sectors to the region’s economy, but that the
potential of a large Indigenous workforce remains ‘untapped’ (Northern
Territory Government, 2011b: 5). Despite the fact that the mining com-
panies are obliged to pay royalties to the Aborigines Benefit Account
that receives and distributes money to the communities, there is a
significant gap between the gross value of the region’s mining industry,
and the 15 per cent it actually contributes to the local economy. These
figures make it clear that the mining industry in East Arnhem Land is
a white-dominated industry and that 85 per cent of the earnings flow
out of the region.
Young unemployed Indigenous men on Elcho Island could con-
ceivably constitute part of an untapped workforce. The performance
and the documentation that records the making of the work makes
82 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

explicit reference to the problems of living in a remote location that

include the high cost of food, commodities and fuel, housing short-
ages, reduced health and educational services and other social problems
owing to unemployment, poverty and isolation. The community comes
under the Northern Territory Intervention, an Australian Government
programme that since 2007 has imposed welfare management on
Aboriginal communities and towns. Government regulation of the sov-
ereignty of those living on Aboriginal freehold land and the targeting
of Aboriginal families is considered by many to be racist, an infringe-
ment of the right of self-determination and a source of deep distress to
the people affected (Casey, 2011: 63ff; Miliwanga and Clapham, 2012:
118ff; Toohey, 2008). The Intervention is one of the many contentious
issues within Indigenous and non-Indigenous politics that pertains to
the climate in which Wrong Skin was made and toured the nation in
2010 and 2011. The Intervention underscores the fact that the young
in Indigenous communities such as Elcho Island live on a different
economic and sociopolitical plane from that of their generational coun-
terparts in the cities of the nation and are removed from the lucrative
flows of the mining boom in their midst.
In what appears as a counter to the negative political context, Wrong
Skin celebrates the lives and the creativity of the young on Elcho Island
within the framework of traditional and global cultures while also
addressing its pressures. The performance is a contemporary Indigenous
dance theatre piece that combines traditional and modern popular
forms of dance that relate to social and cultural matters and includes a
love story between two young people. Central to the performance are
the Chooky Dancers, the group of young Yolngu men from the island
who achieved instant fame in 2007 with a YouTube video of a version
of the famous Zorba the Greek dance that attracted a global audience of
more than 1.5 million viewers. ‘Zorba the Greek Yolngu Style’ is a play-
ful fusion of popular Greek and traditional Aboriginal dance combined
with contemporary African-American hip-hop and krumping influences
(Varney, 2011a: 212ff). The Chooky ‘Zorba’ first appeared at the Friday
night disco in Galiwin’ku, where young and old entertain themselves
and each other by dancing to recorded music, especially hip-hop, and
mimic music video dance steps (Casey, 2011: 61ff ). The Chooky Dancers
were subsequently invited to perform at the Sydney Opera House, the
Melbourne International Comedy Festival and appeared in the movie
Bran Nue Dae released in 2010. They continue to perform and were
recently invited to the Spring Festival in Beijing in 2011 and the Pacific
Arts Festival in Honiara in July 2012.
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 83

Wrong Skin is the outcome of a decision by the Chooky Dancers’

founder, musician Frank Garawirrtja, manager Josh Bond, and theatre
director Nigel Jamieson to work on a new project for the group. The
resulting multimedia dance performance provides a wider context for
the dancers’ instant celebrity while also recapturing and promoting the
exuberance of the pivotal YouTube moment. It explores in particular the
pressures on Indigenous youth as they negotiate traditional and mod-
ern identity in a culture that is rapidly interacting with the mobility of
fluid identities and modes of being as seen on MTV, YouTube and other
digital sources. The performance incorporates the Chooky ‘Zorba’ into
its structure and features the seven dancers as actors. It is performed in
two languages: English and Yolngu.
The performance is grounded in an internal coherence that is estab-
lished in the opening moments through an exposition that outlines
Yolngu tradition and culture authenticated through the presence of two
song men, Djakapurra Munyarrun and Djali Ganambarr, who enter the
space and remain throughout. The men perform a Yirridja and a Dhuwa
dance each representing the two moieties which make up the Yolngu
world; the audience learns that Yolngu people belong to one or the
other moiety as do ‘all features of the natural and spiritual world, land,
animals and wind’ (Casey, 2011: 62). The Chooky Dancers and other
cast members introduce themselves by name and moiety while totems,
such as the turtle, are projected across their bodies.1 The importance of
the moieties or skin groups becomes clear as the narrative unfolds. As
the programme notes explain:

Within a society of closely interweaving communities and families,

the Laws governing marriage are particularly strong and complex.
The most fundamental of these [Laws] is that all children must
have both a Yirridja and Dhuwa parent. The world is formed by the
interaction of these two different halves. To marry ‘Wrong Skin’ –
someone of the same moiety – is to step outside the very pattern of
life and creation itself; literally to have no place, to become ‘miriyu’ –
nothing.
(Wrong Skin, Programme Notes, 2010)

The exposition sets the scene for the love story to follow in which two
young people from the same moiety, who are forbidden by law from
marrying, elope with fatal consequences. The drama is encapsulated in
the title Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu, in which the first term translates as elope-
ment and the second conveys the prohibition.
84 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

At first, the seamless fusion of traditional and modern is celebrated.

After the elders dance sequence and the show-stopping ‘Zorba the Greek
Yolngu Style’, a further dance sequence cleverly merges a traditional
rain dance with Gene Kelly’s street dance from the musical Singing in the
Rain. But the spirit of celebration is modified in a Bollywood sequence
that includes documentary film footage of the Elcho community, its
derelict overcrowded housing and poor facilities. As the men dance,
Bollywood style, their bare feet and shorts show they are clearly iden-
tifying with India’s village poor rather than its urban middle class (see
Figure 5.1). We see that the promise of transformative celebrity is held
in tension with the material conditions of disadvantage.
The mood becomes more dramatic as the love story unfolds. The
fictional lovers are not from warring families as in Romeo and Juliet or
from different ethnic groups as in West Side Story; rather, the lovers
belong to the same skin group or moiety. With lead Chooky dancer
Lionel Dhulmanawuy as the Romeo figure and Sydney-based Bangarra
Dance Theatre principal Rarriwuy Hick as Juliet, the lovers represent a
charismatic couple with much to lose from breaking the Law, since to
do so is to become ‘nothing’ and to have no place in the eyes of the
people. On the other hand, they also have considerable appeal as rebels

Figure 5.1 Chooky Dancers in Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin). Her Majesty’s

Theatre, Adelaide. 2010. Courtesy of Adelaide Festival. Photo: Matt Nettheim
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 85

whose flirtation with the more fluid mobile identities on offer in dig-
ital media flows have the potential to unsettle the wider community.
Either way, the performance embeds the couple in a tense situation in
which the stakes are high for the lovers, their friends and family and
the broader community. The tension between the apparent freedom of
the individualized modern subject and the duties of the community-
minded member are brought into conflict, but not before the perform-
ance explores the magnetic power of global popular culture on identity
and community.
This tension is given strong focus when Hick performs a stunning
version of ‘I Want to Live in America’, Anita’s song and dance routine
from the musical West Side Story. The film version of the scene is simul-
taneously projected on to a screen on stage as Hick mimes and dances to
it. At this point, the performance stages a powerful encounter between
two apparently opposing modernities: liquid modernity with its fluid,
mobile, individualized rather than communal bonds and Yolngu
modernity that incorporates modern popular culture but reaffirms tra-
ditional Law. The latter is represented on stage through the powerful
presence of Yolngu song men whose live playing of the didgeridoo and
clapsticks contrasts with the cinematic projections and recorded pop
music. Anita’s song is an idealistic representation of American moder-
nity as a space of freedom and emancipation; Anita hopes for a new
life free from the constraints of her Latino family. The song and dance
evokes the state of ‘feeling free to move or act’ meaning to ‘experience
no hindrance, obstacle, resistance or any other impediment’ to what
one wishes (Bauman, 2000: 16). The Latino Anita on screen and the
Indigenous ‘Juliet’ on stage both appear to wish for what Bauman refers
to as ‘an individualised, privatised version of modernity’ that valorizes
free will (2000: 7–8). Hick’s character, who in the next scene will elope
with her ‘wrong-skin’ lover, will be later called on to find a balance
between an individualized identity tied to liquid modernity and Yolngu
identity based on traditional Law.
The immediate performative effect is of liquid flows of global culture
contrasting strikingly with a drama that seeks to reincorporate the
young into the bonds of belonging and identity offered by continuous
culture. As director Jamieson notes, the coming together of traditional
Law and popular culture, including the possibility of same skin people
dancing with each other at the Friday night disco, and of the high
proportion of the Elcho Island population that is under 21, means that
freedom and the Law meet at ‘the sharp edge of what [Yolngu] culture
says and popular culture promotes’ ( Jamieson qtd in Power, 2010).
86 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

Yolngu culture is solid in so far as ‘it persists over time’, yet its vulner-
ability is recognized in the discursive terrain of the performance which
is not ‘negligent to its passage or immune to its flow’ (Bauman, 2000: 3).
Keith Gallasch notes, ‘the dark side is, of course, modernization that
plays havoc with kinship constraints’ (2009: 6). The perceived and
evident vulnerability of the culture, heightened by the Commonwealth
Government Intervention, is addressed in the twists and turns as the
romance narrative plays out.
The denouement of the romance narrative sees the runaway cou-
ple brought back to the community, but not before a fight breaks out
in which ‘Romeo’ fatally stabs ‘Juliet’s’ brother. Distraught, ‘Romeo’
attempts to hang himself. As the situation spirals out of control, the song
man enters to sing the boy back to life and to offer the young people
the chance to return to their respective families. How the lovers, espe-
cially the ‘Juliet’ character, feel about the powerful reassertion of Law is
deferred but there is a strong element of caution in the scene that fol-
lows, which is an extended grieving sequence that includes film footage
of a traditional funeral ceremony on Elcho Island.2 The affective power
of traditional Law is shown to reside in the communal bonds rather than
in any arbitrary moral code or radically individualized identity. It is not
that it is only wrong to marry wrong skin, but to break the Law is to be
separated from its endowments of identity and belonging.
The performance offers an alternative modernity to the reflexive
modernities discussed in Chapter 1. Through the powerful presence
and gaze of the two song men throughout the performance, Wrong
Skin positions communal bonds and solidarities as an alternative to the
modernizing forces that would break the nexus of community, language
and Law in which Yolngu identity is vested. The performance suggests,
however, that new solidarities, such as the formation of the Chooky
Dancers, are desirable as living manifestations of communal bonds.
Gallasch notes that ‘Wrong Skin’s ending – a death, love thwarted, a
community divided – suggests that the Chooky Dancers’ synthesis of
tradition and the new is but one celebratory part of something much
more difficult to resolve’ (2009: 6). Bearing in mind Bauman’s account
of the liquefying forces of modernity, the performance negotiates the
pressure on ‘traditional communities and old communal bonds and
solidarities’ that ‘dissipate under globalizing pressures … and how the
sites were cleared for new identities and new communal loyalties’ and
‘solidarity’ (Bauman and Rovirosa-Madrazo, 2010: 106). If the Northern
Territory’s mining industry responds to the challenge of training and
employing the untapped Aboriginal workforce, then the young men of
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 87

Elcho Island might well move towards the mining towns of Nhulunbury
on the Gove Peninsula and Alyangula on Groote Eylandt. Just what will
happen to what Casey refers to as ‘respect for Law’ remains unknown in
these circumstances (Casey, 2011: 63).
One of the dialectical complexities of the performance is that tragedy
is contained as much in the enforcement of the Law – the posse sent to
recover the same skin lovers – as in its breaking, the attempted elope-
ment. There is sadness and loss in both scenarios. The representation of
kinship in terms of the bonds of culture, place and identity invites the
spectator to consider the liquidizing force of the wider cultural and eco-
nomic framework in which it is located as an intrusion. Yet, the intrusion
is already incorporated into community life at the Friday night discos,
where global culture is freely embodied by groups of dancers. At the same
time, the Northern Territory Intervention sees the Federal Government
impose an instrumentalized modernity that recalls the colonial era in a
way that confounds the idea of progress and emancipation.

A Grace for a Grace: identities across time

The second case study takes us to the Kimberleys in Western Australia,

where the Darwinian obsession with the origin of the species is put into
ironic contrast with the continuity of premodern and modern knowl-
edge. Grace is an epic drama that sets multiple narrative strands into
play in an increasingly fluid presentation of overlapping fictive and his-
torical worlds. These narrative strands traverse the continent from the
Kimberleys in the north-west of Western Australia to Sydney in the east
and spill laterally over national borders breached by the movements
of people across the waters of the Asia-Pacific. The cultural and more
recent economic significance of the Kimberleys is brought into play in
the performance when the ‘new irrelevance of space’ (Bauman, 2000:
117) in liquid modernity draws tourists and fly-in, fly-out workforces
into the region.
The Kimberley region is a national heritage site of ancient country,
pristine wilderness, deep gorges and waterfalls. The historic pearling town
of Broome, whose traditional owners and custodians are the Yawuru peo-
ple, is a multicultural centre that is now a popular tourist destination. No
account of performance in the Kimberleys or Broome is complete with-
out a reference to the work of the Marrugeku Dance Company, whose
co-artistic directors are Rachael Swain and Dalisa Pigram. The highly
acclaimed Marrugeku focus on intercultural and Indigenous performance
that is ‘a manifestation of traditional and contemporary performance’,
88 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

developed in situ through ‘negotiation and collaboration with the

traditional communities (Aboriginal, Malay, Chinese, Indonesian and
Japanese) of Broome’ (Marrugeku, 2012). Their latest work, Burning
Daylight, which toured in 2010, is discussed extensively in a number of
publications (Gilbert and Lo, 2009: 210; Lo, 2010: 51–61; Marrugeku,
2009; Swain, 2010).
In the last decade, the Kimberleys have attracted the attention of
mining companies whose exploration of uranium and liquefied natu-
ral gas resources is currently being negotiated with traditional own-
ers. Overlapping patterns of coincidence and repetition, which might
also be considered a liquid narrative form, touch on prehistoric man,
Indigenous custodial rights, tropical cyclone patterns, mining explo-
ration, wildlife, ecology, migration, refugees and tourism. Clarity is
achieved through the division of the performance into 40 short episodic
scenes that take place principally in the Kimberleys, although Sydney
features in a frame narrative at the beginning and at the end. Humour
and satire break up the grand narrative of human evolution with the
view that history is contested and contingent. Of the many compet-
ing themes, this discussion focuses on the performance’s treatment of
historic Indigenous occupation, modern mining practices, the urban
stalker narrative and the asylum seeker.
The performance begins with a lecture by fictional, Sydney-based,
English-born John Molloy, a renowned anthropologist who declares
that his life’s work is to trace the history of the migration of modern
man and gene flows across the continents of the world.3 In the lecture,
Molloy describes his research in the Kimberleys where his team discov-
ered, quite by chance, the skeletal remains of the ‘first modern woman’,
a young Indigenous woman he names Salt End Woman, who is believed
to have been ritually cremated more than 80,000 years ago making
her the oldest recognized human skeleton in the world to date (Bower,
2010: 13). Of interest is that the discovery of the remains is linked in the
narrative to the precise modernity of science and exploration, but more
particularly to the contingencies of climate. As Molloy explains:

JOHN: We were lucky from the start. We’d never have found her if it
wasn’t for reports from geologists looking for iron ore. Aerial photo-
graphs showed a chain of long-dry lakes. When we got to the site,
Cyclone Betsy had already blasted away the shoreline around the
biggest lake. A month later Cyclone Craig opened up the dune like
a pop-up book.
(Bower, 2010: 11–12)
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 89

The coincidence of modern iron ore exploration and the discovery of

the skull along with middens of oyster shells and ancient stone tools
brings two technologies into the same performance space, condens-
ing time and reminding audiences of the long history of continuous
habitation of the continent. Molloy’s lecture overplays the significance
of the find and his white man’s mastery of knowledge is countered in
two ways (Bower, 2010: 12). First, Indigenous custodians of the land
are shown to have prior knowledge of Molloy’s chance discovery and
second, his own removal from his British parents and transportation
to Australia during the Second World War resonates with narratives of
the Stolen Generations of Australia. Molloy embodies the same mobile
history of the human race that he researches. As he warms to his sub-
ject, he draws the audience into a speculative frame of mind: if Salt
End Woman, also known as Grace, is the first modern woman, then it
follows that continuous Aboriginal habitation of the continent predates
the ‘Out of Africa’ theory of human mobility (2010: 11–12). Just as the
proposition that the Australian continent is the place of origin of mod-
ern man, the scene and the first act changes swiftly into dramatic mode
with the entrance of modern Grace, Salt End Woman’s namesake and
Molloy’s daughter. Modernity’s Grace is in Sydney having trouble with
an urban stalker.
The story of modern man is held in suspension until Molloy’s second
lecture at the beginning of the second act. By this time, the dramatic
action has shifted to an eco-tourist resort in contemporary Broome
where Grace is employed as a tour guide, introducing visitors to the
habitations of crocodiles and mudcrabs. Set against the ancient ecology
of the region, Molloy picks up the story explaining the ancient geo-
logical formation of the continent, the flows of human migration and
theories of the origins of modern man. When a cyclone uncovers a sec-
ond skeleton, Salt End Man, Molloy finds that in the decades since the
discovery of Salt End Woman and the removal of her remains to Sydney
for analysis, custodial rights over Indigenous sites have been returned
to the elders. The scene is set for a clash of values between opposing
knowledge systems. Western science would excavate the burial ground
‘with dignity’, ensure privacy and provide chairs for the elders to
‘watch the whole process’ (Bower, 2010: 74). But Byron O’Malley, the
Indigenous site curator, reminds Molloy that the Dreamtime already
provides knowledge of origins, creation and ancestors. In a scene enti-
tled ‘Laying Down the Law’, Molloy is refused permission to take the
bones for analysis since ‘Salt End Man stays here with us’ (2010: 89).
The ironic counterposing of modern science and traditional knowledge
90 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

liquefies perceptions of the binary difference between the two systems

in favour of their temporal coexistence. As in Wrong Skin and other
examples of Australian performance, liquid modernity is discernible in
the overlapping, fluid sense of the past and the present that overrides
perceptions of modernity as weighted towards embodiments of the new
or the modern. Regional modernity in Australia appears as connected to
the past as much as it is connected to the present.

The stalker: ‘deputizing for the devil, incubi, evil spirits,

hobgoblins, the evil eye …’ (Bauman 2000)

The stalker narrative involving Carl, a young European male who is

obsessed with Molloy’s daughter Grace, points to salient aspects of the
social world of the European characters. The basic gesture of the nar-
rative highlights the category of urban fear in contemporary culture
that in this instance is also tied to gender and sexuality. Carl becomes
obsessed with Grace after seeing her at a magazine stand at a Bi-Lo store.
Fixated on the idea that Grace looks like the actor, Scarlett Johansson,
and that she returns his love, the stalker’s desire is cathected through
the celebrity image on to the woman. He pursues Grace through letter-
writing and unwanted gifts, and then more insidiously, by materializing
at her side in cinemas, bars and swimming pools before finally invad-
ing her home. Grace gradually succumbs to anxiety, insomnia and an
inability to maintain either her career or relationships. When her father
suggests she moves out of Sydney to the Kimberleys because they are
‘about as far away from anywhere as you can get’, Grace packs her bags
and leaves (Bower, 2010: 15). The stalker narrative becomes something
of a thriller in a performative version of the Hollywood movies that
Grace writes about for a cinema magazine. The denouement includes
a climactic scene back in Sydney, in which Grace either manages to
imprison the stalker inside a cabinet (as in the script) or fatally stabs
him with his own knife (as in the performance).
In the era of liquid modernity, the stalker, according to Bauman, is
a figure who ‘in company with prowlers and other loiterers, characters
from outside the place through which they move’, is held responsible for
and explains the logic of people’s ‘unhappiness, humiliating defeat and
life frustrations’ (Bauman, 2000: 93). The stalker thus embodies Grace’s
own radical disengagement from modern life, her unfulfilling relation-
ships and tenuous hold on her career. If stalkers signify the ‘ambient
fears that haunt our contemporaries’ (Bauman, 2000: 93), then in drama
and performance they take on a confronting human morphology. Carl’s
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 91

appearance in the performance speaks to fears of ‘ominous-looking

strangers oozing from dark corners, creeping out of mean streets and
leaking from notoriously rough districts’, interrupting the pleasurable
consumption of city life (Bauman, 2000: 91). The stalker narrative also
demonstrates how space is easily traversed. When Sydney becomes a
space of fear and an increasingly untenable place of residence, Grace
readily drops everything and travels light to the Kimberleys.
Yet, there is an ironic twist in the stalker narrative. As Grace attempts
to escape from Carl’s unwanted attentions, the performance throws
a critical light on her father’s removal of the original Grace from her
burial ground. This point is made more sinister when the audience dis-
covers that Salt End Woman has actually been stored for many years in
the basement of Molloy’s Sydney house, like the victim of a modern-day
paedophile or serial killer. As the narrative loops around its various nodal
points, Molloy stands for the European male who wittingly or unwit-
tingly embodies a set of past injustices. In this sense he is a similar type
of character to Carl the stalker and the English paedophile Henry Law,
that we have seen in Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling in Chapter 1.
The gesturing in these performances towards the opportunistic male
profiting, exploiting, preying on others can be read as a more general
critique of the role of the European male in the narrative of Australian
modernity.

The good stranger: the asylum seeker

While Carl represents a dribbling, oozing encroachment on contempo-

rary life, an abject European, and the embodiment of Grace’s disconnec-
tion from society, the asylum seeker is represented as the good stranger
and an embodiment of her kinder, more connected self. Mohammed
is an asylum seeker who arrives, laden with the highly politicized eth-
nicity of the Middle Eastern Muslim male, at a time when Australians
consider those who arrive without visas on boats from Indonesia should
be either returned to their place of origin or imprisoned in detention
centres. The debate about asylum seekers began shortly after the terror-
ist attacks on the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 (9/11) and
the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mohammed’s dramatic appearance in
the Kimberley mangroves occurs as Grace is showing Mr and Mrs H, an
American tourist couple, the mudcrabs:

(Suddenly a mud-caked creature [Mohammed] crawls from the man-

groves [the audience]. There’s a hubbub of screams and gasps. His face
92 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

is dirty and covered with infected insect bites. He slithers towards Mrs H
and clasps her calves. She wails and flaps her hands in the air.)
GRACE: It’s ok, it’s ok. I’ll take him.
(Bower, 2010: 59)

The comic spectacle of Mrs H’s flapping hands smoothes the entry of
the oozing slithering other and neutralizes the fear it might otherwise
evoke. Mohammed fulfils an important dramaturgical function in the
performance. The same tropical cyclone that uncovers the second set of
Indigenous remains, that of Salt End Man in the second act, has also ena-
bled a mass breakout at the Port Hedland Detention Centre in the Pilbara,
south of Broome. The reference to Port Hedland brings the world’s largest
iron ore exporting port into the frame. Dominated by BHP Billiton’s Iron
Ore Facility, Port Hedland is the largest town in the Pilbara region. The
Port Hedland Detention Centre alternates, as the need arises, as a holding
facility for asylum seekers who arrive by boat from Indonesia and the fly-
in, fly-out mining workforce. Mohammed has followed the waterways and
coastal swamplands up to Broome where he appears out of the mangroves.
His story draws the performance into the politics of asylum in the post-
9/11 period in contemporary Australian society and also into the themes
of land, belonging and mining in the Kimberley and Pilbara regions.
In contrast to the unwanted attention and verbose letter-writing of
Carl, who tracks down Grace in her Kimberley hide-away, Mohammed
is passive and silent. His story is gradually coaxed from him by Grace
and other helpers including a Catholic nun and a lawyer advocate.
Grace’s brief sexual liaison with Mohammed occurs as they share the
experience of being both hunted and haunted: Grace by her stalker
and Mohammed by immigration authorities in the present and, more
harrowingly, the voices of his co-asylum seekers who drowned on their
way to Western Australia. It is also possible that in the liminal space of
the remote motel, fixed identities become more fluid producing what
will be the much-loved child of a single mother that we see in a film
sequence at the end of the performance. The Grace-Mohammed sce-
nario imagines mobile and changing identities for both characters.
These new alliances form as the performance that had centred on
Indigenous custodial rights and urban fear opens up in the second act to
make room for the arrival of Mohammed. The diverse narrative strands
are brought together in a resolution that gestures towards the efficacy of
lateral connections across gender, class, religion, race and ethnicity in the
face of the hegemonic nation state. As the immigration authorities and
the stalker close in, Molloy and Byron, the Indigenous Elder and custodian
 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia 93

Figure 5.2 Leroy Parsons as Byron, Kirsty Hillhouse as Grace and Ismat
Akbarzada as Mohammed in Grace. Victoria Hall, Fremantle, 2010. Courtesy of
Deckchair Theatre. Photo: Jon Green

of the remains of Salt End Woman and Salt End Man, strike a deal. Molloy
agrees to return Salt End Woman to her country and in return, Byron uses
his extensive regional connections to secure clear passage for Grace and
Mohammed to escape to Sydney. Mohammed will then be given safe pas-
sage to New Zealand, a country that is more hospitable to asylum seekers.
Asked why he pulls so many strings to help them, Byron replies: ‘A Grace
for a Grace. That’s the deal. And the boy as well’ (Bower, 2010: 111; see
Figure 5.2). By these means, Byron, who is descended from Kularta, a
legendary warrior with magical powers, embodies in modern form the
leadership, power and agency of his ancestors.

Towards an undefined liquid future

This chapter has focused on performances set in Arnhem Land in the

Northern Territory and in the Kimberley region of Western Australia to
94 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

think about how the north and west represent complex life issues in
the ancient and modern regions of the continent. The aim was to dis-
cuss distinctive social and imaginative kinds of performance that offer
expressions and representations of diverse modernities. The selected
case studies that include Indigenous and non-Indigenous performance
are distinctive for the ways in which they engage with global digital cul-
ture and human migration framed within the changing ecology of the
modern mining industry. While liquid modernity is evident in the cul-
tural flows of image, music and multimedia in performances from the
region, the co-presence of heavy modernity in the form of the mining
industry controls the flow of employment and finance in impoverished
remote towns. In the wider framework sit the rapidly industrializing
economies of China and India and the established economies of Japan
and Korea, all of which consume the raw materials produced in the
region and engage in multilateral flows of information, communica-
tion, commodities and finance. Ironically, the mining sector models
advanced levels of regional modernity that the cultural sector on the
east coast might adapt for its own purposes. For these reasons it is vitally
important that performances made in the north and western regions
tour to the nation’s cities and particular the Eurocentric east-coast cities
of Sydney and Melbourne. They play an important role in dramatizing
and giving form to alternative or counter regional modernities that
include new landscapes, social relations and emergent cultural forces at
the cutting edge of anticipating an undefined liquid future.
6
Staging Indonesian Modernity
After Suharto

Celebrating fluid selves: one big street party

Dignified court dancers and handstanding hip-hoppers, Chinese drag-

ons, stilt-walkers and huge effigies of the Indian elephant god, Ganesha,
and of Mickey Mouse – these images and many more made up the Yogya
Java Karnaval, a grand parade through the main street of Yogyakarta in
October 2009 celebrating the 253rd anniversary of the founding of
the city. These diverse, eclectic images graphically symbolized a new
plurality and porosity of identity evident in Indonesia in these liquidly
modern times, replacing the fixed citizenship models of the Suharto
era, with dynamic live performances giving these identities expression.
Here the city street served as a site of shared celebration for diverse local
participants, in contrast to other performative and real-life instances in
which it can bring together unlike selves in hostile confrontation.
As the parade moved towards the city square and the sultan’s palace,
several hundred invited dignitaries waited in style, entertained by pre-
liminary musical and dance performances. First came speeches from
the mayor of the city and then by the governor of the Special District
of Yogyakarta, who is also the current sultan.1 The mayor expressed
the hope that the parade would become an ‘icon’ of Yogya’s identity
as a tourist centre, while expressing the pride and love of local citizens
for their constantly changing, developing city. The governor-sultan
praised the arts as a site of creativity, adaptation and acculturation,
grounded in tradition and embracing the modern, combining local and
global cultures and strengthening Yogya’s role as a city of tolerance and
multiculturalism. Then the show began.
A musical ensemble visiting from the Middle East, dressed in robes
and fezzes, briefly played stringed instruments. Next came local hip-hop

95
96 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

dancers in white masks, combined with shorts, T-shirts and sneakers in

red and white, the colours of the Indonesian national flag, dancing in
formation to an English-language tape. Women dancers in glittering
skirts and elaborate headdresses performed a slow, graceful court dance,
then sank to the floor in a traditional gesture of homage; another group
entered, dressed in voluminous black fabric from chest to floor, whirling
about and holding out their arms to form black butterfly wings. Then
they discarded the black fabric to reveal elegant satin evening gowns,
again in either red or white. In a stunning recreation of jathilan, a form
of folk dance where performers ride rattan hobby horses, acrobatic
young men with spiked, coloured hair, ninja-style painted faces, striped
leggings and little black boots, danced hip-hop style, then somersaulted,
performed handstands and rode hobby horses to an accompanying rap
song in Javanese language. Then the performers from the different acts
flooded back on stage, to dance together, first in slow, stately court style,
then with gyrating hips and swivelling shoulders, holding out before
them red and white scarves as the author looked on. ‘Unity!’ declared
the female compère of the event, in triumphant tones.
By now the parade proper was entering the square. In the standard
manner of the iconic model of Indonesian street processions, those
marking 17 August, Independence Day,2 it commenced with uniformed
figures marching in military style. Then came palace soldiers, beating
drums whilst executing a hopping, knee-bending dance step, court
dancers and a huge float on top of which stood figures in royal attire
representing the reigning sultan and his consort, as the real sultan and
his wife looked on. A following float exhibited huge effigies of wayang
shadow puppet figures, in celebration of the centrality of wayang to the
cultural heritage of the city. Female students in gold and purple costumes,
each holding a many-coloured lotus flower, symbol of the goddess of
knowledge, Saraswati, and a float bearing a huge effigy of the elephant-
headed Ganesha, god of wisdom, celebrated Yogyakarta as a major edu-
cational centre for the nation.
Community-level performance groups included stilt-walkers striding
across the stage on impossibly high stilts, in costumes made of recycled
materials to convey an environmental message. A group of glamorous
‘female’ figures, some in evening gowns, some in tiny short skirts, repre-
senting Yogya’s transvestite (waria) community, were greeted warmly by
the parade compères. Dancing lions and long, undulating dragons per-
formed by members of a Chinese martial arts and theatre group celebrated
the cultural identity of the local Chinese community, suppressed and
silenced during the long Suharto years. A large contingent of members
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 97

of the Yogya pantomime community, in black tights with bowler hats,

moved in formation, energetically miming everyday actions. A cartoon-
ists’ group appeared costumed as Superman and Batman and parading
effigies of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The parade ended with a
fireworks display, with loud bangs and shooting arrows of light bursting
orgasmically into myriad coloured stars.
Street parades are a common feature of life in Yogya today. Exemplified
by the diverse acts of the participants and emphasized in official speeches
are the city’s pluralism and multiculturalism, its combination of tra-
dition and modernity, the local and the global. Other cities likewise
display their distinctive identities through parades, such as the heroic
defence of the nation during the Independence struggle evoked by the
East Javanese city of Surabaya and the cultivation of cool contemporary
fashion in the regional town of Jember.3 Signalled here are some key fea-
tures of contemporary Indonesian performance as it engages with issues
of modernity, politics, identity and urban space. In the post-Suharto
era, in keeping with the increased openness of expression, public space
became newly available for display of artistic creativity and the cel-
ebration of plural, fluid identities in place of the rigid construct of the
national self of earlier times. The transformation of the political system
from authoritarian central control to regional autonomy, in which
political and economic power devolves to the subprovincial level, pro-
motes a focus on local culture. Performance groups stage stories of local
experience, hold festivals in urban neighbourhoods and train young
people in dance forms blending traditional and local styles with moves
absorbed from global media. Hip-hop and rap fuse with local music and
dance genres across the regions,4 in similar fashion to the exuberant,
eclectic performances of the indigenous Chooky Dancers of Arnhem
Land discussed in Chapter 5. The dominant theatrical style is highly
physical, emphasizes visual imagery and often employs multimedia.
Performances tend to be group-devised, exploring the experiential here
and now rather than constructing a linear narrative from a written text.
In the manner of street parades, the mood is dynamic and the identities
celebrated are multiple and porous.
Such parades ideally bring diverse social groups and genres together in
celebration of a general, shared local identity in one big street party. But
they are, of course, not spontaneous street gatherings but highly con-
structed events, conceptualized and organized by local political leaders
and business sponsors to further their mutual interests. Co-optation by
the capitalist marketplace into an empty celebration of self for its own
sake is a concern sometimes raised by performance groups and their
98 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

mentors. Meanwhile, some identities are more prominently displayed

and performed than others, even in self-styled pluralistic Yogyakarta.
Orthodox Muslims participate only rarely in street parades, festivals and
community performances, instead maintaining their own religious and
cultural activities.5 Performances sometimes become the site of explicit
conflict between devout Muslims and more liberal-minded groups.
Heated controversy and occasional violence has been sparked by the
hybrid Malay-Middle Eastern-Western-influenced popular music form
dangdut, with its provocative, scantily clad female singers, illustrated
most famously in the case of the hugely popular but much-vilified per-
former Inul and her notorious ‘drilling’ dance.6
In such a context, street parades may assert identities and values
combatively, in resistance to perceived threats, rather than as part of
a celebration of shared harmony. This was the case with performative
protests against the proposed anti-pornography law in 2005.7 More
recently, in June 2012, following violent attacks by the Islamic militia
group Forum Pembela Islam (FPI) (Forum of Defenders of Islam) on
arts and intellectual centres, a parade along Yogyakarta’s main street
under the banner of Indonesia Tanpa FPI (Indonesia Without the FPI)
concluded with a ceremony proclaiming Yogyakarta’s explicit commit-
ment to pluralism and the presentation of a charter to this effect to the
sultan and governor.
The street as a performative site and the contemporary Indonesian
social reality it evokes are revealed as complex and volatile. Its par-
ticipating identities are too diverse and fragmented to be merged into
a harmonious, national or local identity by the mere donning of red
and white T-shirts and evening dresses, or the waving of red and white
scarves. Chaotic, plural, liquid Indonesian modernity is not so easily
contained.

Another view of the street: Teater Garasi envisions

Indonesia

The play Je.ja.l.an (The Street), staged by the theatre collective Garasi,
directly addresses this complexity through an alternate imagining of
the Indonesian street. Based in Yogyakarta, Garasi contributes in various
ways to the theatrical life of the city: by assisting individual members
to devise and stage their own shows; providing a performance and dis-
cussion space; maintaining a documentation centre; and publishing a
newsletter. The group also comes together in major large-scale produc-
tions that are intensively rehearsed and highly physical. Extending the
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 99

local focus of much contemporary performance, Garasi’s work addresses

elemental questions in the liquid modern era, such as what does being
Indonesian mean, today and for the future? The group’s three major
post-New Order productions, Waktu Batu, (Stone Time), performed
between 2002 and 2005, Je.ja.l.an (The Streets), performed in 2008–9
and Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body) performed in 2010–11, each explored
these questions in different ways, in a process described by the actors
as viewing contemporary Indonesia through an ever-closer lens. Waktu
Batu takes on the whole sweep of Indonesian history, looking back to
ancient myths and history that continue to shadow the present day.
Je.ja.l.an zooms in on the bustle and struggle, the ‘chaos and creativ-
ity’ in Garasi’s director’s words (Tajudin, 2008: 5), of contemporary
everyday life as played out on the street (Figure 6.1). Research carried
out by Garasi members into life on the streets of Yogyakarta and Jakarta
informed the show, which was developed through improvisations of
interactions they witnessed and overheard, together with press stories
and their own observations. Such reflections feed into the third produc-
tion, as the gaze narrows further to questions of individual identity.
By tracing ongoing themes and recurring, shifting theatrical images in

Figure 6.1 Three denizens of the Indonesian street, pursuing their separate
concerns in Je.ja.l.an. Teater Garasi, Taman Budaya, Yogyakarta, 16 May 2008.
Courtesy of Teater Garasi. Photo: Mohamad Amin
100 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

Garasi’s Je.ja.l.an and Tubuh Ketiga, we see how the group employs the
highly visual, physical, non-narrative style of contemporary Indonesian
performance to move beyond the local, to construct a vision of
Indonesian modernity as a whole.

Garasi’s Je.ja.l.an

Entering the theatre at the commencement of the performance, audi-

ence members encounter an open space styled as a public street. They
mill about and are offered drinks as various figures go about their
business. Workmen erect a street lamp while a singing busker and an
Islamic official in sarong and skull cap collecting donations for the
local mosque compete for crowd attention. Then the noise of drums
announces the start of an Independence Day parade. A group of court
soldiers plays drums and flutes, led by a girl in short skirt and boots,
aggressively twirling a baton, in an ironic combination of court soldiery
and military marching band. The crowd parts to let the little procession
pass. The actor who earlier played the Islamic official, now wearing a
sports jacket, requests that audience members move aside to leave the
street free, apologizes for the lack of seating, and explains the presence,
nevertheless, of some tables for the dignitaries who must naturally
be accommodated. The coming performance, he reports, represents
observations Garasi members have made in the streets. He announces
that these experiences have led them to the feeling that things are get-
ting too complicated and that our environment encourages or perhaps
forces us to move too fast. ‘Can’t we slow the pace?’ he asks, while
a variety of figures – a woman in evening dress, a man swathed in a
Middle Eastern-style headcloth – whiz by, lying on skateboard trolleys,
to the sound of the popular song ‘Slow Down’.
The audience might feel that Garasi members are just wallowing in
old-fashioned romanticism, says the actor. But one fundamental ques-
tion is becoming more and more important: Mau kemana? (Where are
we going?). The lights dim and menacing music sounds. A woman with
a mat held over her head like a Muslim headscarf drops the mat, reveal-
ing black pants and a singlet top. She dances frenetically, then clashes
with the man in Middle Eastern headcloth. ‘We’ve made many roads’,
says the speaker. ‘For what? To where?’
In the following sequence, described in publicity material as seni per-
tunjukan tari (dance theatre), diverse figures from the Indonesian streets
appear and reappear. They dance energetically and perform contorted
movements, often independently, seemingly oblivious to one another,
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 101

sometimes in formation, and at times clashing abrasively. The true story

from the Indonesian weekly magazine Tempo of a small trader, Slamet,
who committed suicide in despair when his business was ruined by
a huge rise in the international price of soybeans, is illustrated by a
spotlighted figure, writhing in agony and desperately grasping at the air.
Throwing himself on the ground, the man twice accidentally touches
the shoe of a posturing figure, a wealthy businessman standing nearby,
who simply brushes off the contamination and moves away. As the
voiceover lists the forces which have combined to bring about Slamet’s
fate – officials of the Department of Agriculture, planting and harvesting
policies in the United States, perturbations of the world market, growth
in demand from China and India – the man beats his head against a cor-
rugated iron sheet. A group of figures dressed in fine suits and glamor-
ous gowns dance together, oblivious, as the narrator describes Slamet’s
fate as ‘a death which went unheard, but was like a scream’.
An impromptu badminton game starts up in the street between a man
with a vertical tube of corrugated iron on his head and racket in hand
and a woman in an apron. But soon a girl on a bike appears, fights the
woman, seizes her racket and takes her place in the game. A microphone-
carrying trader selling sandals and a busker each attempt to drown out
the other. A man urinating behind a corrugated-iron sheet is fiercely
attacked by a woman; bystanders shout out commentary in the man-
ner of a sports match. Then military figures or security guards appear,
blowing whistles and seizing corrugated-iron sheets from people who
attempt to use them as shields.
In a following scene the iron sheets function as shelters or homes.
People stand behind them, then come out to greet one another warmly.
But security guards/military figures again arrive, seizing the sheets, chas-
ing people away and pushing them to the ground. When the scene clears
a number of bodies lie on the ground, covered by iron sheets or mats. The
sandal-seller, sprawled alongside them, comes to, groans and again starts
desperately promoting his wares.
Stages are set up at each end of the street space, marking a local cel-
ebration of a family wedding. A man in a sarong, fez hat and necklace
of flowers stands on one of the stages, with a brightly coloured sign
above it ironically proclaiming, Harta dan Sorga (Wealth and Heaven).
He shakes hands with guests as they file past, and explains through a
microphone that the bride cannot be present as she is in Malaysia where
she is contracted as a migrant worker. On the other stage, a dangdut pop-
ular music band performs. A young man appears, dressed in jeans with
bare torso and cloth-covered head in the familiar image of a Muslim
102 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

extremist. The two men, images of extreme and more orthodox Islamic
figures, approach one another with arms outstretched, ready to shake
hands, But at the last moment a sharp burst of sound like gunfire rings
out and they stagger backwards in retreat. Again they extend hands, but
move past one another rather than connecting.
Later, lively dangdut music spurs urban residents to gyrate their hips
in sexy movements as they go about their daily routines – working
girls undressing, housewives reading the newspaper – as we hear a
street kid’s account of his choice to return to the freedom of life on the
streets in Jakarta, rather than take up his parents’ offer of a settled life
on their village land. As a recording is played of the song genjer-genjer,
infamously linked with the Indonesian Communist Party, a woman
with her head covered in plastic flinches in distress then creeps away,
presumably in reference to those still suffering from the lifelong stain of
their past association with communism. But the rest of the group dance
joyfully on the spot, hands raised in the air as the song changes to one
which proclaims bebas dan bahagia, aku Indonesia (free and happy, I am
Indonesia). A drum sounds, the marching band reappears and the cast
regroups as the audience applauds enthusiastically. The show is over but
the party goes on. Trays of drinks appear and audience members accept
the invitation to come on to the street and dance.
Garasi’s Je.Ja.l.an exemplifies the creativity and dynamic, eclectic
blending of genres of much contemporary Indonesian performance.
The world it represents is likewise full of energy and movement. But
Indonesian streets are also sites of violence and danger, of small daily
frictions – the clashing narratives of buskers and street traders, fights
over badminton rackets – and major eruptions of conflict such as the
riots preceding the fall of Suharto in May 1998. Issues of class difference
find slyly humorous reference in the special tables set up for celebrity
audience members and more serious exposure in the studied oblivious-
ness of elegant elite figures to the story of the suicide of Slamet, the
tempeh seller. Commerce is represented not as a dazzling consumerist
spectacle, but in the relentless tide of globalization and the desperate
struggle of small traders to survive. Security personnel are pictured
as brutal and repressive, denying ordinary people use of the streets.
Muslim-identified figures appear prominently, along with explicit refer-
ence to the controversial social issues of Islamic fundamentalism and
extremism. Within this, however, the framing mood remains festive
as the music and dance continues. The words of the final song – ‘free
and happy, I am Indonesia’ − might be understood as bravely defiant,
or ironic, or both.
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 103

Reference to the overheated pace of contemporary life and the

posing of the question Mau kemana? (Where are we going?) pictures
Indonesian modernity as a headlong, directionless, uncoordinated rush
into the future. Garasi’s director, Yudi Tajudin, confirmed this view of
Indonesia’s contemporary condition (personal communication, June
2009). Following the dismantling of the centrist Suharto state and
its version of the national project, Indonesia faces two options, Yudi
believes – to be swamped by the tide of liquid modernity, overwhelmed
by global cultures, or to cling to a local essentialism. Yet, the strongest,
most widespread essentialist identity in Indonesia, that of orthodox
Islam, is one in which many social groups would not feel represented.
In this situation, Yudi expresses a sense of responsibility, as a creative
artist, to explore and present alternate possibilities to these threatening
binary futures.

Celebrating the in-between

In 2010 Garasi embarked on a new project, pursuing such alternate

possibilities by zooming in from the array of contemporary Indonesian
groupings embodied in the whole ‘street’ to one geographical site to
explore its sense of identity. Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body) takes up the
concept developed by postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha of a space
between: a postcolonial identity beyond essentialisms, neither Western
nor Indigenous, but a third space (1994: 36–9). As Indonesia faces pres-
sures to commit to a single identity, specifically orthodox Islam, the
concept of the third space provides an alternative site of resistance.
Indonesia’s historical hybridity as explored in Waktu Batu and the plural
mixture of cultures presented in Je.ja.l.an are evoked and distilled into
the example of the region of Indramayu, located close to the capital,
Jakarta. Both urban and rural, traditional and modern, Indramayu rep-
resents an iconic third space, celebrating hybridity and resisting essen-
tialism. The exuberant local entertainment genre tarling dangdut, in
which a fusion of guitar with local flute music, tarling, accompanies the
singing and dancing of hybrid Malay-Middle Eastern-Western dangdut,
sets the dominant atmosphere of the show.
As with Je.ja.l.an, audience members enter a theatre set up as a real-life
space, this time that of a village wedding. The new arrivals are greeted as
honoured guests, invited in and plied with drinks and snacks. A compère
in front of a small stage where musicians play lively dangdut music, the
‘people’s music’ celebrated previously in Je.ja.l.an, gives a welcoming
speech. The banner on a decorative arch over the couch where the bridal
104 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

couple will sit, recalling a similarly placed sign in Je.ja.l.an, proclaims

ironically Selamat Menempuh Hidup Baru dalam Era Globalisasi (Best
Wishes on Embarking on Your New Life in the Era of Globalization).
Then the stages are moved, screens part and a wider area opens up, with
painted backdrops of rice-fields, mountains and factory chimneys and,
in the foreground, bags of rice. The setting is Indramayu; the rice bags
refer to the custom of guests donating rice to the family holding the
celebration. A woman sewing up the bags, a performer from Indramayu
who has joined the production, sings joyfully and gives instructions
to the young people who gather up spilt rice and sweep the floor with
energetic leaps and twirls. The mood is festive and expectant. A loud
crash is heard: a parcel containing bottles of mineral water, cosmetics
and other modern consumer goods falls from above and smashes open
on the stage. Unperturbed, the woman performer takes from the mess a
pair of high-heeled sandals and puts them on. Then she dons a child’s
monster-face mask, topped by the traditional Indramayu mask dance
headdress consisting of a string of pompoms, and begins to dance.
Global and local combine incongruously in a spirited celebration of
mass consumption as a defining aspect of contemporary modernity.
In the next segment individual actors narrate scenes and stories writ-
ten by Garasi members in response to an observational field stay in
Indramayu, and other cast members act out the described scenes. As the
Garasi woman actor Sri Qadariatin, known familiarly as U’un, describes
the unbearable heat yet boisterous, joyful atmosphere of a daytime wed-
ding celebrated with a dangdut concert, lively music begins and bodies
begin to sway. Mention of one woman’s experience of becoming poorer
and poorer (makin lama makin miskin), until she decides to go overseas
as a migrant worker, prompts the rapturous, screaming embrace of
a pretty young girl by a group of other women – presumably family
members welcoming the migrant on a visit home. The story of Shanti,
the dangdut queen, is narrated by a performer in a red dress, who then
dances on top of a small float which is pushed into the laughing, clap-
ping audience by a rotund figure modelled on the Teletubbies television
characters. Garasi members had observed a large statue of a Teletubby
erected on the streets of Indramayu, a random, unexplained instance of
global cultural influence. In keeping with the eclectic mobility of con-
temporary performance, a global television image has morphed into a
town statue which is in turn recalled in Garasi’s show.
Suggestions of hardship and struggle appear in some of the narratives –
a meatball-soup seller who dreams vainly of being cast as a king in
the stage melodrama; the woman who has worked for five years in
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 105

Saudi Arabia to pay for her son’s circumcision celebration and who
will return imminently for a further five years to earn enough to fund
his wedding. Physical struggle takes place between a young man and
woman, with hints of domestic violence. But such moments are transi-
tory; the overall mood is upbeat. Reference to the celebration paid for
by the Saudi-based migrant worker gives rise to pounding music, flash-
ing lights and yelled greetings to the crowd from the scantily dressed
actor and dancer, Sri Qadariatin/ U’un. Money rains from above in
reference to the custom of male viewers throwing money to the sing-
ers. U’un moves into the audience, gyrating provocatively, thrusting
her mobile hips and bottom at men in the crowd and inviting them to
dance with her (Figure 6.2). The performance ends with a joyful pro-
cession through the audience, as four laughing, skipping young men
hold aloft an empty sedan chair, symbolizing the absence of any single
dominating authority.
As a performance experience Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body) is pleas-
urable fun. Its blending of different performance genres is lively and
dynamic, with audience members included as active participants in the

Figure 6.2 Sri Qadariatin, in the role of dangdut singer/dancer, struts her stuff
before fellow actors and audience members in Tubuh Ketiga. Teater Garasi,
Salihara Theatre, Jakarta, 12 October 2010. Courtesy of Teater Garasi. Photo:
Mohamad Amin
106 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

event. Yet its celebration of the hybridity and plurality of contemporary

Indonesian identity and its lack of constraint by narrow essentialisms
is seemingly not the end of the story. There are plans for a new produc-
tion entitled Sehabis Suara (When the Voice is Gone). ‘When the party
is over, what next? What happens in the current environment’, asks
Yudi Tajudin (personal email communication, August 2011), ‘when the
state lacks authority and no outside institution is ordering the com-
plexities of social life? What happens inside each person in facing this
reality alone?’ Yudi’s views resonate strikingly with Zygmunt Bauman’s
description of today’s liquidly modern world, in which ‘the favourite
strategic principles of the powers-that-be are … escape, avoidance and
disengagement’ and ‘redemption and doom alike are of your making
and solely your concern’ (Bauman, 2000: 40, 64).
So far the planned follow-up production, probing still deeper into
individual selves and the state of the nation has not eventuated; Garasi
members have been busy with other activities.

Sex, religion, obsession

Intriguingly, in a performance project involving several Garasi members

and some other Yogya actors, Goyang Penasaran (The Obsessive Twist),
the body of a dangdut singer/dancer is the central focus and motivating
force of the show. But in contrast to Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body), here
the dancer’s body is not a symbolic suggestion of a joyous self-assertion
in other spheres of life, but is instead viscerally, concretely real. The
play as whole is straightforwardly realistic in style, engaging with bold
directness with issues of male sexuality, power and religion.
A Garasi member, Naomi Srikandhi, worked together with woman
writer Intan Paramaditha to adapt for the stage a short story by Intan
(Paramaditha, 2012) about a village dangdut singer/dancer whose body,
like that of the famous Inul and many other lesser performers, is the
object of both intense male desire and religious denunciation. Naomi
then directed the resulting play. As the performance opens, Salimah,
the main character in the play – unlike the actor Sri Qadariatin in Tubuh
Ketiga stepping out confidently into the audience, but very much like
women performers on real-life dangdut stages – is seen swaying seduc-
tively on a tiny stage above the heads of a crowd of rowdy men (Figure
6.3). She deftly avoids their waving arms and grasping hands, and parries
their suggestive comments as a uniformed security guard keeps order. Two
drunken audience members chat and tease a proper-looking young man,
Solihin, an aspiring village head who is totally besotted by Salimah.
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 107

Figure 6.3 Salimah the dangdut singer, flanked by a security guard, appears on
stage before her fans in Goyang Penasaran. Teater Garasi, Studio Teater Garasi,
14 December 2011. Courtesy of Teater Garasi. Photo: Mohamad Amin

Then, broadcast over a loudspeaker from the mosque, a space situated

below the dangdut stage, the voice of the religious teacher Haji Ahmad
is heard giving a religious sermon, while Salimah dances on the stage
above. Haji Ahmad rails about the immorality of female dangdut sing-
ers, accusing them of arousing male desire, tempting them into adultery
and offending against the laws of Islam. For a time Salimah dances on
and dangdut music continues to play, competing with the sound of the
teacher’s voice. But then a group of men come forward brandishing
sticks, waving their fists and shouting, ‘Stop! Break it up! Evil, immoral!
God is great!’ They storm the stage and drag Salimah off as Haji Ahmad
looks on.
The following scene depicts some village men gathered at a street stall,
repairing a motorbike, chatting, joking, making misogynous observa-
tions, then taunting Salimah with sexual jibes as she passes by, forced to
leave town. In a flashback scene we find out that Salimah had once been
a star pupil of Haji Ahmad, who had trained her in Koranic reading, in
sessions redolent with barely suppressed sexual desire. The contradic-
tory, hypocritical juxtaposition of sacred text and carnal lust in this
scene suggests a similarly complex, hypocritical motivation for the
108 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

teacher’s later denunciation of the immoral temptation of Salimah’s

dangdut dancing, Intimations that Haji Ahmad has held similar training
sessions with other young girls adds extra bitterness to Salimah’s pain
and resentment at his attack.
When Salimah returns to the village, she is greatly changed (Figure 6.4)
and now wears a Muslim head-covering, with a white face and sav-
age, devouring eyes. Yet, Solihin, now appointed as village head and
married to the daughter of the previous head, remains obsessed by her
and wants to take her as a second wife. When Salimah refuses, Solihin
promises her anything she wants if she will at least dance for him
again, for him alone. She agrees, but the price she exacts is shocking.
During the dance, she opens the bag Solihin has brought and takes out
her prize – Haji Ahmad’s head. Kissing and stroking the head tenderly,
Salimah reveals her own ongoing obsession. Then a crowd of villagers
arrives, pursuing Haji Ahmad’s killer, and beat Salimah to death.
The final scene is surely highly melodramatic and horror-filled – the
original short story from which the play was adapted appeared in a
collection of horror stories (Eka Kurniawan, Intan Paramaditha and

Figure 6.4 Salimah, in her changed form, after the attack on her performance,
interacts with village men in Goyang Penasaran. Teater Garasi, Studio Teater
Garasi, 14 December 2011. Courtesy of Teater Garasi. Photo: Mohamad Amin
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 109

Ugoran Prasad 2002) – as it invokes the clichéd trope of Salome’s dance

with the severed head of her victim. Yet much of the play consists of
impressively convincing portrayals of village men. The colloquial dia-
logue graphically captures their idiom and interactive style; settings and
activities are highly realistic. Two friends provide revealing insights into
everyday male understandings of sexuality and gender and their con-
nections with religion. ‘It’s really hard having an attractive wife’, one
says to another. ‘If you’re away too much she’ll get “itchy” down there.
Better to marry an ordinary-looking woman and get your kicks outside
the house. At home you want a pious wife’ (Paramaditha and Srikandi,
2011: 21).8
They sing together approvingly the lyrics of a popular song by male
dangdut star Rhoma Irama, explaining the disruptions that will be
caused to society if women attempt to gain equality with men:

Men are the leaders of women …

that’s how the Creator made things ….
If you try to change God’s rules
Everything will get turned upside down.
(Paramaditha and Srikandi, 2011: 17)

Then the unemployed, no-account men congratulate one another on

being able to mobilize mass action like the attack on Salimah’s dangdut
concert. They express a boastful pride in thereby maintaining ‘order’ in
their community, which provides a sobering insight into the attraction
of mob violence for men in their situation. As increased freedom of
expression of identity and sexuality coincides with the rising force of
the repressive social attitudes of fundamentalist Islam under Indonesia’s
new modernity, explosive social tensions and anxieties arise, giving
groups of men like these the chance to take on a self-styled role as
‘protectors’ of their communities.
The story writer and director affirm that their aim was indeed to
encourage debate on these issues. They met at a theatre symposium in a
focus group discussing performance in relation to gender and sexuality.
The writer, Paramaditha, talks of a crisis in Indonesian society regard-
ing what is displayed and what may be seen, and of feeling drawn to
write about the interaction of issues of sexuality, religion and the state
(Indrasafitri, 2012). Srikandhi, the director, explains that the casting
of a male actor in the role of Salimah, the sexy singer/dancer, was
aimed at breaking momentarily the ‘mirror’ of the realist mode of the
110 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

performance. Unable to simply indulge in the pleasure of gazing at a

woman’s body, audience members are enjoined to think about the con-
tent and meaning of the play (Indriasari, 2012). The second production
took place at a women’s festival at the Salihara cultural centre in Jakarta.
It was followed by a focus group where artists and non-governmental
organization activists discussed the treatment of issues of gender and
religion in this and other recent works, particularly films. Paramaditha
reports criticism from one participant of the failure of these works to
represent Islam more sympathetically, thereby potentially heightening
the tension between orthodox Muslims and the more secular-minded.
Overall, however, the reactions of reviewers and audience members
were very positive, suggesting to Paramaditha that Goyang Penasaran
(The Obsessive Twist), as ‘a commentary of the secular’ performed in
‘cultural elite’ spaces, had reached largely like-minded social groups.
Yet she feels the play had achieved something new in making edu-
cated, middle-class viewers aware of issues such as their participation
in the everyday ‘hidden violence’ of demeaning sexist conversation
(Paradmaditha, 2012). Meanwhile she and Srikandhi hope to develop
the play further and perform the work more widely; they would love to
have the opportunity to turn it into a film.

Reflecting on the contradictions of modernity

Garasi Theatre portrays on a broad canvas, and on a conceptual plane,

aspects of contemporary Indonesian modernity that other theatre groups
engage with more locally and concretely. It engages with the exuberant,
celebratory idiom of much current performance, and at the same time
also reveals the dark side, the dangers of contemporary freedom of self-
expression. Rather than the shared resistance to the state characteristic
of New Order theatre, Garasi’s approach arguably combines celebration
and resistance at the level of personal and group identity. The group pro-
motes pluralism and resistance to essentialism through vibrant theatrical
symbolism, embodied perhaps most strikingly in the assertive exuber-
ance of the dangdut dancer of Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body).
The performance Goyang Penasaran (The Obsessive Twist) reflects on
similar issues of personal freedom and imposed essentialist discourses,
but in a very different way – by engaging with the actuality of everyday
experience through the medium of a realistic narrative play. The charac-
ters represent known, real-life figures in concrete spaces. And the play’s
themes of sexuality, power and Islamic religion are well-recognized
contemporary social issues, the violence involving dangdut women
 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto 111

performers’ bodies all too familiar. If the project is developed further,

the play made into a film and transported over the seeming dividing
line between live theatre and the committed Muslim population, one
wonders, apprehensively, about its possible reception and social impact.
For now, both the Goyang Penasaran team and the larger Garasi group
are working hard in the service of Garasi’s motto ‘to use art as a media
to offer a fresh view on reality’ (Indrasafitri, 2012). Their productions
reflect creatively on the contradictions of Indonesia’s new modernity –
exuberant celebration of the freedom to express diverse local identities,
and to create dynamic, hybrid local/global fusions, versus the violent
clashes which result when identities collide, pluralism is rejected and
new orthodoxy imposed, along with the fearful, alternate possibility
that self and community might simply dissolve in the overwhelming
flood of the global.
7
‘Youth is not the only thing that
passes at sonic speed’: Speed and
Private Lives in Okada Toshiki’s
The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise

Chelfitsch and liquid modernity

‘If not a good life, a very comfortable life’ (Sonic Life, scene 6). The
work of theatre company Chelfitsch, led by writer and director Okada
Toshiki, is concerned with the lives of young people in urban Japan in
the new century. The company says its name ‘represents the baby-like
disarticulation of the English word “selfish.” It is meant to evoke the
social and cultural characteristics of today’s Japan, not least of Tokyo’
(www.chelfitsch.net). Chelfitsch’s work has been connected to experi-
ences of loss and fragmentation in Japan’s historical identity, to ques-
tions of political inertia – questions that seem to haunt Japan in the
decades of economic malaise since 1991 – and to the everyday encoun-
ter with postmodern culture. Many of Okada’s productions explore
inward looking (naibu) feelings and the shrinking horizons for Japanese
youth. Hikikomori, people who remain homebound, are an extreme
manifestation of this. But much more prevalent are a general sense of
disquiet about the wider world and an internalization of the psyche.
A sense of crisis prevails in ways that are seen in continuing economic
problems and political instability, and many problems have dramati-
cally intensified in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and
nuclear meltdown. While many people commented on the discipline
and resolve of individuals after the earthquake, the administrative sys-
tems in place to respond to such cataclysmic disaster failed abysmally,
and there seems no effective avenue for Japanese people to have their
concerns about this addressed.
Okada does not address these themes directly. Instead, a characteristic
of all of Okada’s plays is to depict young Japanese people as passively
ambivalent and without the expectations of having any meaningful

112
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 113

connection with the wider society. Okada’s main plays for Chelfitsch
include: Sangatsu no Itsukakan (Five Days in March, 2004), Ku-ra (Air
Conditioner, 2004), Enjyoi (Enjoy, 2006), Furiitaimu (Free Time, 2008)
and Zougame no Sonikku Raifu (The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, written
2008, premiere 2011). Characters in his plays inhabit theatrical space
uncertainly and mark time by telling childlike stories filled with discon-
nected conversations. This sense of unease is also represented corpore-
ally through distorted body movements.
An illustrative example is Five Days in March, the play in which Okada
first developed his distinctive ambient dramaturgy. The play shows a
young man recounting the story of meeting a girl in a nightclub and
spending the next five days having sex with her in a love hotel. In the
same five days (20–25 March 2003), the United States begins bomb-
ing Iraq. Other aspects of the story, including two men’s experience of
anti-war protests and how a young woman hopes to meet a guy, are
described in a loose-knit flow of images and sensations that take in the
ambient qualities of Shibuya, an area known for youth culture and con-
temporary arts, and also love hotels.
Five Days in March is a social commentary on young people’s lives in
contemporary Tokyo. The singular momentary actions of people spend-
ing time in nightclubs and drinking are contrasted with the monumen-
tality of the postwar history of US-Japan relations. The Iraq war – itself
a liquid, ambiguous affair – was the first time since the Second World
War that Japan had participated in an international armed conflict,
although the status of Japanese combatants was confusing and they
were unable to initiate combat actions due to the so-called ‘no-war
clause’, Article Nine of Japan’s constitution (stating that Japan is unable
to declare war on another state).
Staged in an open space with simple lighting (the Tokyo production
premiered at the nightclub space Super Deluxe), the banal conversa-
tions of the performers are accompanied by strange movements and
stammers in the body. Inertia seems to overshadow the performance
despite this ceaseless movement and lying herein is a more political
possibility for this work. In Five Days in March, we see a kind of ambu-
latory performance with a ruptured dramaturgical patterning. This
work looks and feels abstract, dance-like and circular with its ceaseless,
quotidian conversations. It has a performance quality that is poetic and
almost hypnotically everyday; a lulling experience that might well be
depoliticizing for audiences. Nevertheless, this work draws a new kind
of reality from the material of bodies and text. Paying such close atten-
tion to the subcultural bodies and colloquial speech as a form of play
114 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

has potentially destabilizing effects as well. While one might be lulled

by these ambient bourgeois experiences, their staging is so fragmented
that the audience is hopefully not lost to more critical and re-energized
interest in the work. In this very economical performance the overt and
slow staging is paramount. Bodies stammer, like the broken world that
unfolds in the story.
Chelfitsch’s 2011 performance, The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, takes
the ambient lifeworld of Five Days in March into a distilled and contem-
poraneous expression of fluid modernity. This chapter reads Sonic Life
in light of these wider feelings of loss in Japan, of which the earthquake
and nuclear accident are some of the latest and most troublesome exam-
ples. Without feelings of hope and given the self-evident failure of the
state to ensure the safety of its citizens, there is an argument that people
begin to lose human sensations (a state compared to zombie bodies),
or they seek to rediscover meaning in their lives through a search for
authenticity and agency. This is essentially a description of the philo-
sophical and ethical concerns of Sonic Life. As an exploration of the
contradictions evident in contemporary modernity, the play looks at
how people find it difficult, if not impossible, to experience sensation
and meaning in their daily lives. Instead, there exists a longing for
something, but only as a form of ambient lack; an uncanny and never
consciously definable sense of something-nothing emptiness is evident.
This is not depicted as an existential crisis, but rather something much
more mundane and everyday.
As chapters on Singaporean and Australian theatre have also shown,
society has become more integrated and connected, yet as this play
explores, feelings of distance and alienation are common factors in
the lives of young people living in materialist neoliberal cultures.
Paradoxically, the young people depicted in the play are unable to resist
the sense of inertia concomitant with their fragmented lives, while the
experience of inwardness is depicted with a passive emptiness that is
also intense and even homely. This points to a seemingly contradic-
tory form of experience that is explored in the play: a fluid hypostasis
of inertia is evident in the actions that are performed by the charac-
ters. More than this, paradoxical effects are seen in the dramaturgy of
the play that show a sense of time folding, with parallel worlds and
storylines that are difficult to keep track of. My analysis considers how
experiences of inward-looking and immoveable experiences of people
in Sonic Life are connected to the notion of liquid modernity.
The company’s performances, which are all written and directed by
Okada, feature an ambient yet pervasive liquid quality since they do
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 115

not seek to intervene in the social conditions of young people. Their

performances are rather more ambiguous and observational. Elsewhere,
writing with a colleague, I have explored the nature of Chelfitsch’s thea-
tre as contributing to an emerging vocabulary in twenty-first-century
theatre that we have termed ‘slow dramaturgy’. What we are looking
for in this discussion of Sonic Life is a combination of ecological and
material perspectives of flow and interconnectivity with perspectives
that posit the material relations between forms and contents. What we
find is theatre that foregrounds ecologic-material dramaturgical intensi-
ties, which trend towards slowness, ambience and connectivity. This,
we suggest, can be considered slow dramaturgy (Eckersall and Paterson,
2011: 179–80).
By reading into Sonic Life an aesthetic of liquid modernity and slow
dramaturgy – thus foregrounding a connection between the material
conditions of Japan and the fluid theatrical dramaturgy of the play –
this chapter aims to show how Chelfitsch broaches a wider sense of
crisis about how modernity is experienced in the new century. As the
art critic Sawaragi Noi reminds us in a review of Sonic Life, the concept
of the everyday is always used in the company’s programme materials
(Sawaragi, 2011: 2). Okada uses this contemporary ‘liquid’ everydayness
in his plays not primarily at the level of signification but as a dramatur-
gical foundation.

The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise

The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise is a meditation on human existence in

the early twenty-first century told as a circular narrative form of a dream
within a dream in a waking moment. Seemingly a love story about the
fading of feelings between a man and a woman, the actual solid bodies
of the couple are not clearly evident, nor is there much information
in the text about the background of the characters. The performance
compounds this ambiguity by having different actors take up the con-
versation without reference to character. In describing the play on the
Chelfitsch website, Okada states that he wants to ‘flee’ from conven-
tional narrative structures:

A couple that lives in Tokyo. They are the main characters in the
new work. Despairingly, they are encountering the difficulties to be
content in their daily lives now. They have no hopes for mentally
content lives, even though they have a partner who loves [them]
from the bottom of their hearts. Is it because of the locked up feeling
116 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

of Japanese society, or of Tokyo? Or, are there any more universal rea-
sons? They cannot find out the reason exactly. They would imagine.
They would imagine about the alternative way of life. Maybe, they
can try to live positively, with all the excitement and enjoyment sup-
plied in this sensational city. Or, maybe they can live, being much
more sensitive to little things that happen in the ordinary lives …

One way of thinking about the characters in this play in relation to the
discombobulating narrative is that they are phantasmic in the sense
that they embody a uniquely interstitial historical space in Japan, one
that is haunted by the turmoil of Japan’s modern experience. The play
asks where the source of discontent is located – in themselves – in their
actual bodies – and in their bonds, however tenuous, with the city, the
nation state or the world? Ultimately the drifting discontentment of all
of these things is pervasive.
Many scholars, notably Marilyn Ivy (1995), Igarashi Yoshikuni (2000)
and, recently, Miryam Sas (2011) have deployed versions of the idea of
phantasm and – connected to Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntology –
the fading of history in their analysis of the periodic traumatic return of
unresolved issues in Japan’s psyche. Hauntology is a relevant concept to
consider for it shows a sense of time being ‘out of joint’, whence one’s
very sense of being is disturbed or interrupted (Derrida, 1994: 19–20).
As Colin Davis writes, Derrida’s theory ‘supplants the near-homonym
ontology, replacing the priority of being and presence with the figure
of the ghost as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead
nor alive’ (Davis, 2005: 363). With a focus on indeterminacy and ‘mak-
ing established certainties vacillate’ (Davis, 2005: 376), hauntology
connects to a view of modernity that is less certain and more liquid, as
Bauman theorizes.
The idea of haunting also relates to the Japanese context directly, both
in terms of theatre (and Okada’s play is discussed below in connection
to Noh plays where the main role is a ghost) and in terms of how thea-
tre with hauntological themes connects to history and society. Indeed,
the title of the play expresses this idea – how does the slow-moving and
famously long-living tortoise experience sonic dimensions? As a shim-
mering thing that is hovering at the edge of perception, one imagines.
It is something that lies just beyond a means of rational explanation
and – referencing Davis’s summary of hauntology – it is a means ‘to
interrogate our relation to the dead … and explore boundaries between
the thought and the unthought’ (2005: 379); it is a move towards an
awareness of other states of being and thinking. These ideas show a
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 117

radical approach to history and modernity that is remarkably prescient

in connecting with the indeterminate structure of Okada’s play.

Time slipping

The performance of Sonic Life consists of 12 scenes or episodes. Among

them are longer dramatic scenes and several short moments when the
text seems to radically diverge and interrupt the dramaturgical flows of
the work. This is especially evident in the tenth scene, an uncharacter-
istically brief section featuring this short abrupt statement:

So next. I returned. Then I went to my boyfriend’s apartment. And

to my surprise, we had aged incredibly, he was 250 years old and had
become bedridden. I stayed for a while, taking care of him. But very
soon, after about 15 minutes or so, he breathed his last breath.
(Sonic Life, scene 10)

This scene shows a number of the key concerns in the play, including
the passing of time, temporal disturbance, and the ironic tone signify-
ing a detached sense of measuring life’s worth. The play begins with
the epigraph: ‘Youth is not the only thing that is sonic. / Youth is not
the only thing that passes at sonic speed.’ Midway through, the action
briefly ages and then reverts to the momentary order of the stasis of
contemporary youth in Japan. It is both passing time and stuck in time,
as in a dream where one cannot wake up. In short, Sonic Life suggests a
dimension of time-space that is infinite but stuck in stasis; everything
is seemingly possible but nothing actually changes. As the narrator says:
‘In my dream I am thinking, I must live feeling this continual wistful-
ness from here on out, for the entire rest of my life, for the next 40, 50,
60 years until I die’ (Sonic Life, scene 2). But the play’s narrative is too
fragmented to move forward in linear time and, in any case, 250 years
pass backwards and forwards in an instant, like an iPod jumping to the
next track on shuffle.
Long passages of text narrate whimsical reflections on existing in
dream and waking space, as well as passing comment on moments
of absurdity and reflecting on the nature of perception, of the city, of
knowledge and of interpersonal relationships. These passages are inter-
rupted by sequences of dialogue performed by actors identified only
as Man, Woman, Person A, Person B and Person Z. The narrator, who
begins the performance, is not identified. He starts with a confession
that what he is about to say, he has never before told anyone – as if
118 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

the audience is to be let in on a secret. But there is no invitation into

the confessional moment and the storytelling conventions of theatre,
of which the idea of sharing something unknown as a way of stirring
the element of pique in the audience is one of the most recognizable,
appear flattened and prosaic. The ensuing sense of defamiliarization is
further developed by the fact that parts of this role are taken by several
actors during the performance. In fact, the idea of distancing (to firmly
place the term defamiliarization in its Brechtian mode) is a characteristic
of many of Okada’s productions. Defamiliarization is a consequence of
what Uchino Tadashi identified in his discussion of Okada’s 2004 work
Five Days in March as a rupture between language and the body that has
produced important changes in Japanese theatre in the last decade:

This rupture itself between language and the body is the physical
reality each performer brings to the performance. The performers try
to speak their lines ‘naturally,’ not according to modern realist the-
atrical convention but according to their own physical realities, i.e.,
according to their ‘lived body’ sensibilities, the bodily sensibilities
that each performer experiences in everyday life.
(Uchino, 2006: 64)

Uchino analyses the political consequences of the last decade’s aesthetic

focus on kodomo shintai or the appearance of waif-like and infantile
‘child bodies’ in Japan’s aesthetic and cultural production. He connects
the prevailing neoliberal ideology with these childlike and flattened-
out, two-dimensional figures. Moreover, if we take the globally promi-
nent Japanese visual arts as a cue (as Uchino does in his essay), kodomo
shintai deploys a cartoon-like abstraction of reality that is termed by the
artist Murakami Takashi as ‘super flat’ – superficial, two-dimensional
and postmodern (Murakami, 2000). Uchino was the first critic to argue
that a sense of rupture in the social space – people disconnected with
their world – was indicative of a paradigmatic shift in Japanese thea-
tre. Our understanding of politics and the body in performance had
changed from an emphasis on revolutionary avant-garde figures of the
1960s–1990s (see Eckersall, 2006a) towards trying to understand how
theatre can ‘find ways to validate politics in the context of a vacantly
apolitical performance culture’ (2006a: 65).
Validating politics implies re-engaging with ideology and political cri-
tique and while this is one of the most important tasks engaging artists,
questions of how this might be done are widely debated. For Okada, the
answer lies not in announcing solid political agendas to an audience,
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 119

but in exploring an aesthetic of disconnection and detachment. It

also helps to explain something about the uniquely affective qualities
of the ambient dramaturgical focus of Chelfitsch’s work, which, in
another context, could be said to be stultifying rather than energetic.
Instead of feelings of disempowerment and inertia being an endpoint
of Chelfitsch’s work, the continual disclosure of ruptures in the waning
of the body’s authenticity signals the need to ‘adequately articulate the
reality of social and political life’ (Lehmann, 2007: 47). In particular, this
gives rise to questions about how bodies are located in time and space in
these performances. The sense that time folds in on itself as the charac-
ters morph and shift from one reality and even one body to another is
one aspect of this rupture. A second aspect is the rupture of the theatri-
cal event itself, what Jacques Rancière describes as breaking down the
opposition between viewing and acting (2009: 13) as a metaphor for a
new political dialectic.

Time folds: ambient time

Brian Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) is used as a recurrent motif through-
out the play and sequences of looping, slowly transforming harmonies
accompany key scenes. Music for Airports is one of the first ambient
sound compositions; Eno coined the term ‘ambient music’ in the notes
accompanying the record’s first release:

… as an atmosphere, or a sounding influence: a tint.… [It] is intended

to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient music must be able to
accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing
one in particular; it must be ignorable as it is interesting.
(Eno, 1978)

Music for Airports blends sonic registers to form extended polyharmonic

musical phrases; a stylistic minimalism that mirrors the emptiness of
the theatrical form in Sonic Life. Ambient qualities compare to the ideas
of phantasm and the everyday experience of ruptures as ways of explor-
ing the dissipated ‘mental state’ (Chelfitsch website) of people’s own
lives in Tokyo.
Music for Airports gestures literally to ideas of travel as a sign of globali-
zation. Travel is also continually mentioned in the play as a means of
mobility and escape, although in fact the actors rarely manage to com-
plete a full circuit of the stage. In the use of Music for Airports we can read
a suggested connection between the ambient space of airports and other
120 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

‘nowhere’ spaces of globalization, such as shopping centres and com-

muter suburbs that are now overwhelmingly the ambient spaces of capi-
talism. We find these spaces with their identical design, global brands
and eager consumers everywhere, a point about which Bauman and
other critics of commodity culture have often commented. Characters in
Sonic Life refer to these ambient ‘non-spaces’ in their conversations and
dream of leaving them by travelling to other places that have a sense of
promising more authenticity. But these other places away from Tokyo –
Paris is mentioned – are also only imagined as commodified global sites.
The reference to Paris is reduced to an image of tacky souvenirs of the
Eiffel Tower being sold by illegal immigrant touts to jaded tourists on
the Champ de Mars. In the minds of the characters, other places all have
similar ambient low-intensity qualities. In the play the idea of travel
offers the possibility of escape but, in fact, nobody leaves, as we see in
the following Beckettian dialogue between two young Tokyoites:

MAN: We want to live a fulfilling life.

WOMAN: I think I could if I could travel.
WOMAN: I want to travel.

(Sonic Life, scene 5)

The actual travel in the play is on the subway – a reference to Tokyo’s

famous worker commute which speaks to a repetitious and arduous
experience of travel from a nowhere suburb to an alienated workplace.
The discussion of travel suggests multiple readings. One can travel
anywhere and experience exceptional dualities and impossible coexist-
ences in the dreamworld of the play. Beginnings and end-times, youth
and death, history and nostalgia, profundity and superficial moments
are mixed in the play as transhistorical, interpersonal fragments about
movement and the passage of time. Travel and the momentum of
human movement are explored as the reason for human evolution and
also from the perspective of localism, inertia and lethargy. This discus-
sion is also extremely ironic given that young Tokyoites typically travel
widely as a sign of their wealth and relative comfort in participating in
global cultures. They have a postmodern and privileged lifestyle that
makes them jaded about travel and inured to its insights.

Dual life

Acknowledging influences from Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett and

playwright and novelist Abe Kôbô (whose works often deal with themes
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 121

of alienation), Okada has developed a performance style that splits

dialogue from the physical gestures of performers. As M. Cody Poulton
writes about Okada’s 2010 production of Enjoy:

[T]he author is finally suggesting that we need to bring language

back to the body. … Okada’s performance method illustrates a dis-
junct between language and the body, one that is reflected themati-
cally in the tendency for Enjoy’s young people to talk and talk as a
strategy to compensate for a lack of physical contact.
(Poulton, 2011: 153–4)

This typically means that narrative and drama are split from the expres-
sive qualities of bodies with the result that two competing levels of
theatrical communication coexist. Signification and theatre’s metaphor
function are broken and instead the stage seems to offer a number of
competing levels of meaning. For example, in the opening sequence of
Sonic Life, the actor speaks the text rapidly as a form of direct address
and shows an open smiling face to the audience. He communicates his
secret of liking the girlfriend of his dreams much more than his real girl-
friend, even going so far as to say that he wishes his real girlfriend would
die. This is one of the shocking brief revelations of the piece that dramati-
cally change the tone of the play and posit arguments about contempo-
rary existence having a deadening or alienating effect on one’s capacity
to live. At the same time as the actor speaks in a fast-paced colloquial
Japanese, his body twists and distorts. His body performs idiosyncratic
repetitious actions that are abstract and seem to have no bearing on
the narrative content. The effect is to disconnect modes of theatrical
signification and create gestural interruptions. The movements are pat-
terned on everyday movement but seem strange, even suggesting in a
cyberpunk way the invasion of the body by some kind of social virus or
repetitive stammer.
Ulrich Beck’s image of zombies as bodies invaded and colonized by neo-
liberal capitalism and forming a contemporary social class, as is discussed
in Chapter 2, is also relevant here (Beck, 2002: 202–13). We can compare
Beck’s idea of the post-capitalist zombie to the disengaged gestures of the
Chelfitsch actors. As Araki Natsumi writes: ‘The words uttered do not
reach their destination, and the subject and person drift ambiguously ….
Likewise the anti-dramatic body motions, which do not follow the actor’s
words, were adopted from typically everyday moments’ (Araki, 2007: 70).
Okada does not have anything to say about this directly; rather he sees
theatrical space itself as a space of cultural contestation. Speaking about
122 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

his approach to staging, Okada points to how he seeks to create multi-

ple ‘claims’ on theatrical space: ‘I want several actors on stage all laying
claim to that space on different levels’ (Okada, 2008: 97). The claim here
is made tenuous by the shifting temporality, it can be everywhere, but
only if it is nowhere at the same time.
These observations are enhanced in the design and lighting of the
space for Sonic Life. The space is largely empty except for an upstage
corner section where the girl in the dream in seated and her face filmed
for projection on to a screen above left (Figure 7.1). Midway stage right
to left is a large H-shaped metallic structure that has no clear meaning.
Looking like a rugby goal post, its thin sleek lines shimmer in cool blue
lights. Lighting and the occasional use of close-up video images of actors
seated on the stage are the main design elements. Sawaragi goes so far as
to say that the play is largely about the use of light to make space. This
kind of light creates a sense of empty, but also striated, space. The result
is that uncanny new relationships between form and content are possi-
ble, but they are always accompanied by many destabilizing sensations.
The dramaturgical patterning of Sonic Life therefore emerges through
repetition and multiple frames of reference.

Figure 7.1 The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise by Okada Toshiki. Chelfitsch,
Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Yokohama, February 2011. Courtesy of Chelfitsch.
Photo: Kikuko Usuyama
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 123

Noh plays and Okada’s liminal modernism

Okada’s play is not a Noh play, but several features suggest a common
ground between the two theatrical styles. Noh plays show transhis-
torical aspects and collapse time and space in ways that compare to
Okada’s blurring of time and character in Sonic Life.1 The protagonist
in Noh may take the form of a ghost appearing in different guises to
tell a story about earthly attachment and karmic retribution. Much of
the performance is by way of allusion and intertextual references. As
plays originally designed to proselytize Buddhist doctrine, Noh plays
can show ‘an experience from the past in the form of a reversal of self’
(Komparu, 1983: 61) and adopt multiple subjectivities and alternate
realities. The idea of possession is also a common theme in Noh, where
characters literarily embody the tortured soul of a person unable to
gain release from karmic pain. Sonic Life has ambiguities that shape its
dramaturgy and create liminal spaces in ways that are comparable to
Noh. Characters who seem to live in a stasis of multiple subjectivities
and cross the borders of time and space are typical in Noh plays, where
they can appear in different guises and forms. In Sonic Life, there are
examples of time bending and people occupying or living in multiple
spaces at once. There are also hopeful references to connecting singular
moments with the universal as a way of imagining a meaningful exist-
ence. For example, the man imagines that his dream girlfriend is able
to experience a Zen-like awareness of her existence in the cosmos. He
imagines that his dream girlfriend says:

Suppose there is one way that I feel the connection that I have with
the world which is that, if I were, for example, like this, lying around,
or leaning up against a wall sitting on the floor, sometimes, I can
sense myself and sense the Earth, of course that’s just my imagina-
tion. There is no actual way I could sense that, but sometimes there
are moments where I feel like I can sense that motion, and when that
happens, I think to myself, oh, the world and I are moving together
at the Earth’s pace right now.
(Sonic Life, scene 5)

This image of collapsing space – leaning up against a wall, sitting on

the floor, sensing oneself in tune with the turning of the Earth – is a
moment of hope in the play. It is philosophical in evoking a naive cos-
mic consciousness or universal awareness. I also read this moment as
pointing to a kind of ecological dramaturgy and signalling interesting
124 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

political perspectives for the play. Una Chaudhuri notes that ecology
can also furnish metaphors for theatre, and this idea applies to seeing
how the connection of Noh theatre aesthetic practices with Okada’s
moveable interconnected image of a cultural system gives new aware-
ness about cultural stasis as an ecological problem (see Chaudhuri,
1994: 26). In fact, the narrator in Sonic Life shows a brief awareness
of how this kind of thinking might be helpful in a passage where he
talks about a ‘tense mood’ of the world: ‘I think that in order for us
not to get tense with each other, we should make an effort to be more
conscious about or think more about all the different events that are
going on in the world’ (Sonic Life, scene 5). This is a fragile percep-
tion of ecology that might also bring into mind the sensibilities of
Noh and ambient music. All of these factors constitute a tenuous
awareness of the transforming qualities of liminal modernism. All
of these in some way arguably embody this idea and it remains only
to think about what kind of politics the liminal/liquid modernism is
responding to.

Passivity is different from abandoning politics

Okada is not a political theatre maker in the conventional sense of the

term. He neither expands on the meaning of his work as a medium of
social commentary nor does the work generally structure itself as an
ideological theory or examination of power. Nonetheless, in the work
of his company there is a sense of political engagement. The over-
whelming sense of disturbance in the bodies of the performers, their
‘non-acting’, fragmented character identity and, in this instance, the
attention to time, non-place and interruptions of the theatrical and
social reality of the piece, come to show a politics of modernity that we
can compare to the idea of liquid power. In an interview Okada argues
that passivity is a form of marking time that has wider implications for
his work as a form that if not political, then certainly as enabling reflec-
tions on cultural critique and intervention:

I’m saying that passivity isn’t apolitical. Passivity is different from

abandoning politics, and doesn’t exactly stand out more than some-
thing that is active. In other words, it comes down to each of us liv-
ing the hours of our lives – how do you decide, or not decide, or have
it decided or not decided? Since politics influences that, it influences
each and everyone of us in a big way.
(Okada, 2008: 97)
 Speed and Private Lives: Okada Toshiki 125

The characters in Sonic Life are marking time. But the momentum of the
work is such that people are drawn into the experience of time passing.
This raises, then, the question of the meaning of the passing of time.
Does the kind of life that is depicted here as simply occupying and fill-
ing time have any purpose?
Towards the end of the play, an image of travel connects to an idea
of an endless commute going ever deeper into the earth; the narrator
thinks that he might eventually die commuting. Tokyo is famous for
long commutes and the city is woven through with train lines of workers
entering the city each morning and leaving each night. The long com-
mute is needed for capitalism to function. The systematic movement of
bodies from domestic spaces into the edifices of work are symbolic of
Japan’s white-collar classes reimagined here ironically as a journey to
the centre of the earth. So travel is finally shown as a spatial metaphor –
to travel to work, passing and caught in time on the train in a crowded
lonely stasis.
But the play twists in its final scene and the previous cogitations on
Zen-like experiences of transporting across space and time and the par-
ticular in the universal turn around this question of work. The narrator
suddenly exclaims: ‘… everyone [that is, the audience, the world, the
imaginary other], you are positioned as if you are looking at me through
my computer screen. I am working very diligently.… [I make the face
of] a very capable worker’ (Sonic Life, scene 12). Thus the play ends on
another note of absurdity and reversal. Uchino argues in reference to
Okada’s earlier works that he ‘seems to point out that we must begin
looking at what is happening to our private selves, to our bodies and our
languages; we should not explore new aesthetics for their commodity
value, but to find ways to validate politics in the context of a vacantly
apolitical performance culture’ (2006: 65). The tables are turned as the
audience is implicated in the theatrical experience and in these broader
questions about theatre. Have we experienced meaningful sensations
and been changed? Or are we also living in a state of liquid moder-
nity where life-giving forces are deadened by ‘perceptual numbness’?
( Jameson, 1971: 76). The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise asks us to think
about duration and to ponder longevity in an age of speed.
8
Dramaturgy of the Liquid: Cargo
Kuala Lumpur–Singapore

Rimini Protokoll and the unknown present

Zygmunt Bauman has identified the ‘permanence of transience’ (2003: 142,

original emphasis) as one of the constitutive tendencies of modernity.
One salient aspect of this mode of being is ‘a looseness of attachment
and revocability of engagements’ (Bauman, 2005: 4). Bauman refers not
only to the frailty of human bonds and the alienation and insecurity
resulting from fragmented relationships, but also to the permanent
transience of our attachment to cultural products and other aspects
of our social lives. He notes Richard Sennett’s work on the creation of
alienated, disengaged subjects under the current phase of capitalism
that valorizes flexibility, risk and short-term goals (see Bauman, 2005).
Sennett describes Bill Gates as the ultimate exponent of an economic
and cultural system in which detachment, flexibility and tolerance of
fragmentation are the hallmarks of a new ontology:

Gates … seems free of the obsession to hold on to things. His

products are furious in coming forth and as rapid in disappearing.
Whereas Rockefeller wanted to own oil rigs, buildings, machinery or
railroads for the long term, lack of long-term attachment seems to
mark Gates’ attitude towards work. … [T]he disposition to bend is
evidenced by his willingness to destroy what he has made, given the
demands of the immediate moment.
(Sennett, 1998: 62)

Perhaps the most significant comments from Gates that Sennett

recounted – and those that best define Gates as a citizen of a liquid world
ready to embrace and exploit the permanence of transience – were his
126
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 127

extolling of the virtues of escaping from the rigidity of the workaday

world and his promotion of the advantages of ‘positioning oneself in
a network of possibilities’ (1998: 62). It would be difficult to think of a
more compelling theatrical reimagining of responses to ‘the demands
of the immediate moment’ and life as a ‘network of possibilities’ into
which one can position oneself than the series of performances by Swiss-
German theatre collective Rimini Protokoll. This chapter examines one
such performance that was featured at the Singapore Arts Festival in
2010. While its exploration of the amorphousness of the networks of
possibility and the fleeting nature of the immediate moment highlight
Bauman and Sennett’s (1998) understanding of life under modernity,
it also points to the limits of the liquid in the face of enduring human
realities.
First appearing as Rimini Protokoll in 2002, a team of designers,
directors and sound and video artists came together under the creative
direction of artists Helgard Haug, Stefan Kaegi and Daniel Wetzel. The
three had joined forces during the 1990s in a practice-oriented theatre
studies programme at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft
(Institute for Applied Theatre Science and Performance Studies) at
Giessen University, Germany, of which Hans-Thies Lehmann and
Andrzej Wirth were key instigators. Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel have
since then worked together in various combinations to produce forms
of ‘postdramatic theatre’ – theatre characterized by a performative
aesthetic that subordinates the primacy of the text to the specific
material realities of the staging. A key feature of postdramatic theatre
is that it ‘no longer represents the world as a surveyable whole’ ( Jürs-
Munby, 2006: 12, original emphasis). Indeed, for the students at the
Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft, ‘the trap of representation was to
be avoided at any price, and was considered at Giessen, more than
anywhere else, the primary cause of all theatrical ills’ (Malzacher,
2008: 14).
Hans-Thies Lehmann has suggested that the aesthetic consistency,
inventiveness and sheer volume of postdramatic works in the last dec-
ade or so justifies speaking of it as a ‘paradigm of post-dramatic theatre’,
where the term ‘paradigm’ does not indicate stability or uniformity
of purpose, but ‘a shared negative boundary demarcating it from the
dramatic’ (Lehmann, 2006: 24). This is now widely recognized as a tes-
timony of the times. Lehmann argues that ‘the category appropriate to
the new theatre is not action but states’ (2006: 68, original emphasis).
Theatre here deliberately negates, or at least relegates to the background,
the possibility of developing a narrative: ‘The state is an aesthetic
128 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

configuration of the theatre, showing a formation rather than a story,

even though living actors play in it’ (Lehmann, 2006: 68). The aesthetic
dimension is determined by the state of being in the everyday world in
the register of the ordinary. It is the incorporation of untrained and non-
professional artists – real people – in their productions that is a defining
feature of Rimini Protokoll’s work. They coined the term ‘Experts of the
Everyday’ to describe the expertise their performers had in particular
experiences, knowledge and skills, and so that they would not be judged
on what they couldn’t do (that is, act), but rather on the reasons for their
presence in the performance (Malzacher, 2008: 23).
The deployment of experts of the everyday has meant that spectators
often come into close contact with a diverse range of strangers. Many
of Rimini Protokoll’s productions that began in Europe have since been
adapted and mapped on to sites elsewhere in the world, thereby provid-
ing an even richer diversity of strangers that have included Argentinean
porters, model train aficionados, senior citizens, unemployed air traffic
controllers, ex-politicians, truck drivers, Brazilian policemen, under-
takers, medical students, muezzins and Indian call-centre employees,
among others. In each case, the moment of encounter goes beyond the
‘civil inattention’ described by Erving Goffman (1971: 385) where one
recognizes the stranger’s presence but has no desire for sustained inter-
action, nor hostile intent. As the experts tell their stories, the bounda-
ries break down and estrangement dissolves.
In his study of documentary theatre in Germany, Thomas Irmer (2006:
26) has pointed out that by locating the political firmly in the quotidian
through the use of techniques appropriated from experimental theatre
and contemporary exhibition aesthetics instead of conventional theat-
rical representation, Rimini Protokoll is able to explore aspects of the
unknown present. Discovering the unknown present can mean being
momentarily drawn into the mundane lives of the actor-experts. The
characters fleetingly lose their anonymity to become part of the known.
It is this known that is a key focus of the collective. In erasing the
boundaries between actor and spectator, the intention is to integrate
the two otherwise separate spheres in infinitely mutable arrangements.
Critics have gone so far as to describe some of Rimini Protokoll’s work as
a ‘New Dramaturgy of the Spectator’ (Arfara, 2009). They are expressly
interested in ‘the knowability of the world, in particular the knowability
of human beings’ (Michalzik, 2006).
Indeed, the exploration of the unknown present locates some of
Rimini Protokoll’s works in a broader cultural frame in which the
linear narrative of time is replaced by new conceptual understandings
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 129

pertinent to the global era. Manuel Castells’s ‘space of flows’ (1996:

448), and Arjun Appadurai’s chaotic and disjunctive ‘global cultural
flows’ (1996/2005) of people, media, finance, images and symbols are
amongst the most well used. Metaphors such as these have become
key figural representations of the fluid, shifting and transient nature
of social life in a postmodern environment. With the removal of the
constraints of the proscenium stage, actors and spectators can respond
to the demands of the immediate moment and locate themselves in the
‘network of possibilities’ that characterizes the liquid society. Rimini
Protokoll’s work as part of Germany’s New Documentary theatre is
based on directors’ projects (rather than defined scripts) and is focused
on ‘the unsolved problems of the present’ (Irmer, 2006: 19). Much of
what they do is unrepresentable and must be experienced. The key to
such performances is unpredictability and a flexible response to the
contingencies of a specific location.
Rimini Protokoll is itself a fluid entity. Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel col-
laborated for a long time as nomads with no designated theatre as a
base; they work alone, as a trio, as a duo or together with other artists
(Boenisch, 2008: 107). They now have a permanent base at the Hebbel
am Ufer Theatre in Berlin. Since they have avoided setting up or making
use of organizational structures, and do not even live in the same city,
they may be seen as part of a diverse network, rather than a unity or col-
lective. Miriam Dreysse and Florian Malzacher’s study of the collective
describes Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel as eschewing any authoritative centre
or fixed roles or job divisions (2008: 9). The tolerance of fragmentation,
or ‘messiness as a feature of the growth of technology’ (Sennett, 1998:
62), to which Gates referred, has its parallels in Rimini Protokoll’s style
of working, which has been described by Wetzel as ‘productive chaos’
(Sennett, 1998: 113). The collective has become a global phenomenon
and has garnered numerous awards including the German Theatre
Award Der Faust (2007), the New Theatre Realities Prize as part of the
Europe Theatre Prize awarded to artists who create new theatre language
(2008) and the Silver Lion at the 41st Theatre Festival, Venice Biennale
(2011).

Cargo to Somewhere

A series of mobile performances devised by Rimini Protokoll began life

as Cargo Sofia–X – A Bulgarian Truck Ride through European Cities. The X
in the title stands in place of any number of European cities since the
‘Sofia-to-somewhere’ model – directed by Jörg Karrenbauer – has been
130 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

restaged in Basel, Copenhagen, Dublin, Berlin, Madrid, Riga, Frankfurt,

Marseille, Barcelona, Avignon, Vienna, Essen, Warsaw, Zagreb, Tallinn
and Belgrade, among others. The template is flexible enough that after
two years of touring in 29 cities in Europe and the Middle East, Cargo
Sofia–X it was reinvented as Cargo Asia. It has appeared at arts festivals
in Asia as Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore (2009), Cargo Tokyo–Yokohama
and Cargo Shangqiu–Shanghai (2011). This chapter focuses on one of
these performances: Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore.
In each case the spectators climb inside a converted Volvo truck for
the performance and travel through a landscape to a destination. The
truck has a cabin at the front for the drivers, with a large box-like space
attached at the back. Inside the box are the rows of spectators’ seats
that can accommodate about 40 people facing not forward towards the
front of the truck, but providing a view from the side of the truck. The
landscape is partly real and partly fictional since it has to accommodate
the impossibility of getting from Sofia to Dublin or any other major
city in Europe in the two hours of the performance. The performance
typically stays in one city, but simulates a longer, transnational journey
by means of a screen that rolls down in front of the viewing window
so that what the spectator sees are views from a video recording of the
route. Rimini Protokoll’s website describes the truck drivers in the Cargo
Sofia–X versions as ‘nomads on motorways’, and the spatial dimension
is foremost in determining the ‘state’ or aesthetic configuration of the
performance (Rimini Protokoll, 2012).
Rimini Protokoll’s site-specific performances – such as the truck routes
in the Cargo series, or the performance Call Cutta, an urban experiment
in which the spectators perform a walk through Berlin while being
directed via mobile phones from a call centre in Calcutta – respond
to the particularities of the sites and make sense only within that site.
While the site is transformed for the performative moment, it should
also be noted that it is merely, as Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks
point out, ‘the latest occupation of a location at which other occupa-
tions – their material traces and histories – are still apparent’ (2001:
23). It is an important point that enduring material traces and shared
histories are coterminous with the transitory individual experience of a
site-specific event; that is, rootedness and transience not only coexist,
but influence and reconfigure each other. While the performance of
Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore takes place in a space of flows that is itself
a product of historical global dynamics, it is a peculiarly Singaporean
moment in its sensibilities and its references to the material realities of
the present.
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 131

Ravi and Ganes: ‘experts of the everyday’ in

South East Asia

One salient feature of Rimini Protokoll’s work, and one commonly

commented upon by critics and reviewers, is the difficulty of discern-
ing where real life ends and fiction begins. This was certainly the case
as spectators waiting for the start of a performance of Cargo Kuala
Lumpur–Singapore at dusk on 14 May 2010 at the Singapore Arts Festival
chatted to two nondescript locals. Parked in the Waterfront Car Park in
front of the Esplanade Theatres on the Bay on Singapore’s Marina Bay
(Figure 8.1), most spectators waiting to board the converted truck would
not have suspected that they were already engaging with the performers
and experts of the everyday: Ganes A/L Ramachandran and Ravindran
A/L Muniandy, two Malaysian truck drivers of Tamil background who
were invited by Rimini Protokoll to participate in the performance.
Ganes and Ravi both grew up in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan, 70
kilometres south of Kuala Lumpur. Both are married and currently live
in Johore Bahru, a town at the tip of the Malay Peninsula linked to

Figure 8.1 Converted truck, Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore. Singapore Arts

Festival 14 May 2010. Courtesy of Rimini Protokoll. Photo: Anja Mayer
132 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

Singapore by a bridge. While they speak Tamil as well as English and

Malay, eat Indian food and generally maintain Tamil traditions, neither
has ever visited India. They first met and became friends in the Pasir
Panjang Container Terminal in the port of Singapore, a quintessential
space of flows where, as in any major port, goods, people and ships
are in a state of permanent transience. Their typical route takes them
to and from Singapore to the Klang Valley and Kuala Lumpur, via
Johore Bahru.1
Once the audience is settled in for the mobile performance, the truck
leaves the car park and the city becomes the stage. Ravi and Ganes,
who are now performatively doing their normal job, shout: ‘Welcome
to Malaysia!’ Their favourite Malay and Indian music begins to invade
the spectator space as they begin a narrative of their everyday lives. As
viewers watch the drivers on closed-circuit television from inside the
truck, a new mode of knowability of the present unfolds and we learn
what Ravi and Ganes’s favourite foods are (‘I like curry only!’), how they
like the night shifts because it means they can avoid the long queuing
at the immigration office at Johore Bahru, and other aspects of their
personal everyday realities. Ganes says: ‘But driving at night is also very
peaceful. Sometimes it is like a breeze and you feel free.’ We are drawn
further into their intimate world when we see photos of their families
on the CCTV system, and Ganes lovingly describes his wife’s cooking
and laments the fact that he has to spend too much time away from her.
We learn that his long-term plan is to go back to Malaysia to become
a farmer, while Ravi says he will continue to drive trucks until his eyes
become too weak. For two hours, as the truck navigates the streets of
Singapore, they talk about the weather, cars, domestic concerns, their
dislike of golf, their fondness for life in ‘JB’ and so on, interspersed
with songs, jokes and banter. This dialogue is delivered in the patois
unique to Malaysia and Singapore that uses modified English syntax
with vocabulary from English, Malay, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese
and Tamil. Ravi and Ganes create an affective familiarity with us, as
they share their everyday expertise of the local culture and cuisine, the
route, the trucking industry, how to negotiate traffic, sleeping in the
cabin, and about earning SGD$44 per night for driving, and up to $100
for loading. The chatter, known in Singapore and Malaysia as ‘talking
cock’ (that is, idle banter and chit-chat), is witty, charming and deeply
engaging. It is punctuated by laughing and the affectionate teasing that
marks interactions between old friends. The discourse of the everyday is
generated by these connoisseurs of the commonplace, specialists of the
mundane and poets of the prosaic.
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 133

Sennett highlights the character traits required of people, such as Bill

Gates, who are successful in the flexible regime where the deadening
routines and unchanging expectations of workers of the Fordist era
are activities of the past. Having the confidence to dwell in disorder
and flourish in the midst of dislocation, as Sennett puts it, are ethi-
cally neutral qualities (1998: 62). Other qualities, however, are required
for the maintenance of relationships on which individual and com-
munity welfare in the workplace depends. These are the virtues of
loyalty, friendship, mutual trust and commitment to others that Ravi
and Ganes display towards each other. While their workplace is largely
mobile and they are required to negotiate the fluidness of modernity
on a daily basis, their attachment to place and to each other is not
characterized by dislocation and disorder. Home, family and friendship
are not the ‘zombie institutions’ and moribund structures described by
Beck (Bauman, 2000: 6). The ability of modernity’s liquidizing powers
to descend to the level of social habitation (Bauman, 2000: 7) is appar-
ently not totalizing; stable orientation points are still possible, and love,
altruism and selflessness have not been erased. Despite their mobile
occupations, Ravi and Ganes are not the ‘nomads on motorways’ that
Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel imagine the Bulgarian truck drivers to be. They
are attached to place (‘I love JB!’), understood in the anthropological
sense as relational, historical and concerned with identity (Augé, 1995:
79). Even in transit through the urban and industrial landscapes of
Singapore and the Klang Valley they stop at familiar truck stops and
habitual truckers’ haunts where they feel comfortably at home. Their
geographical consciousness is dominated by place – unique settings
characterized by deep ties to the locale’s history – in opposition to
spaces of flows that are generic, lacking geographic ties and having a
‘time-free quality’ (Ritzer, 2007: 61).
In investigating the authenticity of Rimini Protokoll’s experts,
Malzacher (2008) points out that while the voices are real, they are
nevertheless the voices of characters and the result of dramaturgy
rather than spontaneity. A feature of Haug, Kaegi and Wetzel’s style of
non-representational theatre is that reality is scripted (Malzacher, 2008:
40–1). This provides for an amorphous discursive space where fact
and fiction synthesize to confound and destabilize the metanarrative
of truth. Wetzel has made their intention clear: ‘In the end we really
are not interested in whether someone is telling the truth, but rather
how he presents himself and what role he is playing’ (Malzacher, 2008:
38). Since authenticity is always uncertain, for Rimini Protokoll the
truth often lies elsewhere, in small details rather than the big picture
134 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

(Malzacher, 2008: 38). While the route is also ‘scripted’ or predeter-

mined, there is, of course, a degree of spontaneity and responses to the
unknown present in driving a truck through urban space. The vagaries
of traffic, traffic lights, police, roadworks, accidents, breakdowns, refuel-
ling stops, human fatigue and bodily needs, and other unknowns, are
just some of the features of the inherent unpredictability of negotiat-
ing traffic. All these contingencies rewrite the script in response to the
moment and render it intelligible only in its site- and culture-specific
context.
The road distance between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore is some 350
kilometres, and takes three to four hours of driving time, depending on
traffic and the amount of time it takes to clear the border checkpoint
at Johore Bahru. To simulate travelling through the Klang Valley and
Malaysian countryside, a screen rolls down in front of the viewing win-
dow and scenes of rural Malaysia appear. In reality the truck does not
leave Singapore, but this reality merges with fiction as we visit Ravi and
Ganes’s favourite truckers’ café, petrol stations and truck parking zones,
and share the simulated experience of immigration and customs control
at Johore Bahru and the interaction with officialdom. The experience
at the border between the two countries and the vague sense of unease
it creates is a reminder that there are constraints on the liquid, and
that the nation is not entirely the zombie institution of Beck’s vision
of modernity. The state and its representatives are generally not known
for their flexibility, especially in Singapore and Malaysia. At one point,
the truck halts and a uniformed man flashing a torch climbs into the
spectator space to check the cargo. It is perhaps the incorporation of
elements of local political systems that distinguishes this performance
from its parallel performances in European settings. Anxiety, even fear,
is a feature of the social landscape in Singapore and a powerful affec-
tive element in political discourse. The use of extreme pragmatism and
instrumental bureaucratic reason has meant government intervention
in almost every aspect of social life has created what some observers
have dubbed a ‘Republic of Fear’ (Lingle, 1996).
En route, the screen is rolled up and down intermittently as Ravi and
Ganes’s patter changes to accommodate the fiction and respond to place.
In fleeting moments of encounter we come across other characters in the
performance. As we ascend the ramps of a multilevel car park we notice
a lone figure. At night this is a soulless place, devoid of plant or human
life and lit by artificial light, but we see an elegantly dressed woman
standing at the side of the ramp singing in Malay and Chinese. The stark
contrast and incongruity of this ‘chance’ encounter – a moment of the
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 135

uncanny – at once humanizes a grim urban landscape and highlights

the alienation of everyday encounters with strangers. We see the same
woman again by the side of a lonely road some 30 minutes later, as if to
stress the unpredictability of the unknown present as strangers appear
without warning or reason.

The liquid encounters the solid

If the border checkpoint reminds us that the state is far from being
a zombie institution better suited to a previous phase of modernity,
we are also reminded that the fluidness of human relationships, trans-
national flows of labour and other transient features of modernity
described by Bauman must daily confront the solid and the enduring.
As the screen rolls down, we are bombarded with statistics about the
number of migrant labourers now temporarily resident in Singapore.
The people to whom the information on the screen refers are semi-
skilled or unskilled workers, who work mainly in the manufacturing,
construction, and domestic services sectors. The majority come from
the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh,
Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Thailand. It is estimated that
one in three Singaporeans is a foreigner, and that there are approxi-
mately 50,000 Bangladeshi workers in Singapore. The screen presents a
story of exploitation, class discrimination and displacement driven by
poverty. Stories of the fate of illegal migrants are central to the textual
presentation. Only some mobile workers are authorized and those who
are not are demonized; border control becomes a public fetish and the
cause of anxiety to citizens. It is a stark reminder that one area of life in
which the state maintains its solidness and ability to infiltrate lifeworlds
is in the strict regulation of movements of people. National borders are
not becoming more porous, as some have argued, and no state grants
equal access to the national space. Eric Neumayer has pointed out that
nation states have monopolized the authority to determine who goes
where, and passports, visa and other requirements of international
travel are an integral feature of national sovereignty. Access to foreign
spaces remains highly unequal (Neumayer, 2006).
After about an hour of driving through the fictional and real land-
scapes of Kuala Lumpur, the Klang Valley and Singapore itself, we enter
a new space as the truck departs from the standard bourgeois precincts
of apartment blocks and shopping malls. We pass a sign declaring that
trespassers and illegal migrants will be handed over to police, and arrive
at Gate 4 of the Pasir Panjang Container Terminal. With the statistics
136 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

on migrant workers, information about penalties for overstaying and

discrimination against migrant labourers and female domestic workers
in our minds, the truck negotiates the container terminals until we find
ourselves in the spaces of a present unknown to most Singaporeans.
Pasir Panjang Terminals 1 and 2, along with terminals at Tanjong Pagar,
Keppel and Brani, function as an integrated container facility under the
Port of Singapore Authority. The world’s largest transhipment hub, it
handled 29.37 million units going to 600 ports globally in 2011.2 This
is, by its very nature, a space of intense flows relying on mobile labour,
mobile goods and transnational connections. The Pasir Panjang termi-
nal, like its counterparts in Hamburg, Hong Kong, Rotterdam, Dubai,
Bremerhaven and so on, is a very tangible reminder that the liquid
cannot completely liberate itself from the substantial and the solid. The
terminal at night is an eerie industrial landscape of thousands of mas-
sive containers in serried rows lit by streetlights; it is desolate, forbid-
ding and dehumanized, ameliorated only by a lone cyclist and a couple
of dogs – part of the performance. The postindustrial, postmodern
cultural economy of twenty-first-century Singapore may ride the wave
of Appadurai’s chaotic and disjunctive global cultural flows (1996) of
people, media, finance, images and symbols, but is reliant, still, on the
industrial solidness of container ports characterized by the manifestly
immobile: gantry cranes, loading bays, winches and rail tracks. The
services offered by the Distripark container terminal include not only
storage facilities, but also cargo consolidation, distribution, logistics
management, surveying and repacking of containers. The customs facili-
ties, the fumigation services and cargo survey, along with the 24-hour
CCTV surveillance of the whole district are vivid reminders that global
flows may not only be chaotic and disjunctive, but also governed and
controlled. This is the realm of heavy industry and the geography of
the solid.
The screen reminds us that labour migrants are part of the largely
concealed infrastructure of Singapore’s economic success. The truck
moves through various spaces, which may be orthodox or unorthodox
spaces, authorized or unauthorized. While this is a present unknown
to most Singaporeans, these spaces are nevertheless populated by real,
albeit largely invisible, people – embodied, tangible, human – a fact that
is reinforced by our arrival at the Jurong Penjuru Dormitory. This is the
space to which the migrant workers, who have no citizenship status in
Singapore, retreat at night. They are usually ferried between the dormi-
tory districts and their workplaces by crouching on the back of an open
tray-body truck. There is, therefore, not a little irony in the requirement
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 137

that well-dressed middle-class spectators pay to sit in the back of a truck

and be carted around Singapore like cargo or migrant workers as part of
the performance.
Jurong Penjuru is a grim and depressing place, reminiscent of a dys-
topic wasteland, struggling to transform itself into a community of
workers through the creation of a vibrant nocturnal urban enclave with
its cafés, small shops for Bangladeshi food and places where exhausted
workers can congregate. While such dormitory precincts cannot become
anthropological places in the sense that Augé (2006) uses the term, given
that they have no history and can never really become ‘home’ in a
world of displaced labour and separation from family, they nevertheless
provide a solid present in their ability to offer communal support and
the material and physical means for sustaining the body. They are also
spaces of the Other, heterotopic spaces of foreign languages, food and
customs separate from the spaces of bourgeois Singapore to be found
in the shopping malls, housing estates and the public transport sys-
tem. One theatre critic who saw Tanjong Punjuru Dormitory from the
Rimini Protokoll truck described it as: ‘every uppity Serangoon Gardens
resident’s nightmare’ (Mayo, 2010), a reference to a government deci-
sion to build a foreign workers dormitory in the quiet middle-class sub-
urb of Serangoon Gardens. This decision was met with major objections.
A petition against the proposal signed by 1400 residents argued that the
presence of foreign workers would increase crime rates and lower their
property values. To appease irate locals, and ensure that the dormitory
would remain a distinct space of the Other, the government proposed
a ‘lifestyle centre’ which was, according to Member of Parliament Lim
Hwee Hua, ‘deliberately carved out to form a buffer between the dorm
and the residential areas in Serangoon Gardens’ (Lim and Ong, 2010).
The parallel world of the dormitory district located in the industrial
landscapes is like a city within a city and recalls Bauman’s identifica-
tion of a new quality to be found in refugee camps. Refugee camps, he
says, are characterized by: ‘a “frozen transience”, an ongoing lasting
state of temporary-ness, a duration patched together of moments none
of which is lived through as an element of, let alone contribution to,
perpetuity’ (Bauman, 2003: 143).
Finally, as the truck returns with the spectators to the Esplanade
car park where it began, we are confronted again with the presence
of the solid and the substantial, the tangible, highly visible products
of mobile labour. We follow the road that runs past Marina Bay Sands
hotel complex, and at close to ten o’clock, spectators could still see the
sparks of welding machines working all night. At that time the Marina
138 Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

Bay Sands hotel complex was still under construction, but it has since
celebrated its grand opening on 17 February 2011. Singapore is a his-
torical product of the nineteenth-century global flows. While it has in
recent decades re-inscribed itself as a postmodern economy dependent
on the commodification of culture, high-rise New York-style structures
are the symbols of modern Singapore, despite its historical position in
the space of colonial flows. It is, it seems, not only the nineteenth- and
twntieth-century industrialists such as Rockefeller who wanted to own
buildings or railroads for the long term, but postmodern capitalists in
Singapore. In an intriguing juxtaposition of the liquid and the solid, the
three 55-storey hotel towers of the complex are connected at the top by
a 340-metre long SkyPark. The park features a 150-metre infinity pool –
a swimming pool which produces a visual effect of water extending to
the horizon and ‘vanishing’ into ‘infinity’. This trompe l’oeil is a fluid
illusion made possible only by anchoring it to the solid.

The unknown present and the network of possibilities

Castells (1996: 442) has argued that the global and regional flows that
now inhabit spatial forms are not merely an aspect of our economic,
political and symbolic lives, but are the processes that dominate it.
He has also recognized the limits of the liquid when he acknowledges
that the space of flows does not permeate to every level of urban envir-
onment and the places of cultural practice (Castells, 1996). Rimini
Protokoll’s Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore is a theatrical reimagining not
only of the spaces of flows, of mobility, of flexibility and detachment,
and of the network of possibilities made available by these features of
this phase of modernity; it is also a reimagining of the very real limits
to the liquid life.
If individual lives have been erased in discussions about flow, then
this performance has refocused on the unknown present of these lives.
Patrice Blaser has pointed out that one of the consequences of Rimini
Protokoll’s style of theatrical production and its presence in the real
world, engaging real people, is that it allows us to suddenly discover
‘something that has always been there, but remained unnoticed in
everyday life, and is made visible only now, with the help of that special
gaze that one has when one observes in an art-context’ (Blaser, 2004).
For critic Rui An, the effect of Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore is that:

We are resensitised to the oft-obscured aesthetics of our built environ-

ment and their embedded meanings: the cold, oppressive regularity
 Dramaturgy of the Liquid 139

of the Merrill Lynch office cubicles, the stringent uniformity of our

phalanx of port containers, the ostentatious expanse of the golf
courses… rediscovering these constructs as living elements of our
contemporary culture.
(Rui, 2010)

Driving through Tanjong Punjuru we are confronted with the reality of

a hitherto largely unknown present of people’s lives. While these lives
may respond, like Gates, to the demands of the immediate moment,
they are far from valorizing risk and the short-terms goals that Bauman
(2005: 4) suggests are a feature of the liquid life. For the construction
workers and for Ravi and Ganes, the immediate moment may be fleet-
ing, but it is nevertheless anchored to the past and future of the endur-
ing human bonds of family and community in their home countries.
Life in the space of flows does not erase the history of their labour – so
visible in the urban landscape of Singapore – nor the future of families
in China, Bangladesh and elsewhere made materially richer by the
financial remittances sent home. While the performance presents itself
as a dramaturgy of the liquid, its refocus on the enduring products of
labour, the strength of human relationships, and the recognition of the
human marks it also as an articulation of the limits of the liquid.
Part III
Beyond Regionality:
The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach
9
Australian Adaptations:
The European Turn

In Part III, we investigate the continuous modernization of classical

and modern texts across the region to show how directors, writers
and/or collaborating artists create radically revised adaptations or ver-
sions of mostly well-known plays. Theorist Linda Hutcheon broadly
defines an adaptation as ‘an announced and extensive transposi-
tion of a particular work or works’ from one form to another such
as novel to film (Hutcheon, 2006: 7). In a more theatre-oriented
discussion, Peter Boenisch attributes the worldwide trend in theatre
adaptation to the postdramatic paradigm that foregrounds ‘presen-
tational, self-reflexive, and experimental mises en scène instead of the
traditional representation of a play-text’ (Boenisch, 2010: 164). In the
chapters that follow we discuss case studies from different locations
across the region especially Visible Cities in Singapore, I La Gilago in
Indonesia and Hamletclone in Japan. This chapter offers a discussion
of the shape-changing form of what we refer to as adaptation thea-
tre before going on to consider Australian director Barrie Kosky and
writer Tom Wright’s modernization of Euripides’ tragedy The Women
of Troy. Their modern adaptation, first performed in 2008, transposes
the classical text into a drama that reflects on modern warfare, the
behaviour of Western forces in the Middle East and the fate of civilian
populations.
In this chapter, we also probe the return of a Eurocentric vision in
Australian adaptations that are almost wholly chosen from the reper-
toire of the European dramatic canon. We highlight the curious fact
that touring companies, such as the flagship Sydney Theatre Company,
bypass locations in the Asia-Pacific and take productions straight to
Euro-American cities such as London and New York.

143
144 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

Adaptation in theory and practice

Adapting oral or written stories for live performance by actors, docu-

menting historical or local events in visual form, recording live songs,
devising film versions of novels, plays and history, transposing fairy-
tale into dance, novel into opera and so on are longstanding cultural
practices now given greater impetus in the digital age. Drawing on an
Indonesian term indicating berserk, out of control behaviour, Linda
Hutcheon captures the proliferation of adaptation in the contempo-
rary period by suggesting that: ‘Adaptation has run amok’ (Hutcheon,
2006: xi). Understanding the pleasure and appeal of adaptations leads
Hutcheon, whose reputation is based on her study of postmodern
parody, to theorize the popular global phenomenon.
Adaptations announce themselves ‘not only as autonomous works’
but as ‘deliberate, announced, and extended revisitations of prior works’
(Hutcheon, 2006: xiv). They are ‘an acknowledged transposition of a
recognizable other work’, a ‘creative and an interpretive act of appropria-
tion/salvaging’ and an ‘extended engagement with the adapted work’,
distinguished from plagiarism, paraphrasing and parody, although strong
parodic elements may be present (Hutcheon, 2006: 8). The relationship
of the adapted work to the original text is better described, Hutcheon
argues, as a recasting, a transformation, a remediation or a rewriting that
has interpretive, intertextual and palimpsestic aspects (Hutcheon, 2006:
8–9). Adaptations assert their relationship to other texts, including the
original and previous adaptations, inviting audiences to compare the one
with the others. Historically, the intertextuality of texts within adapta-
tion poses a challenge ‘to dominant post-Romantic notions of originality,
uniqueness, and autonomy’ in favour of an ‘ongoing dialogic process’
between the stage and the audience (Hutcheon, 2006: 21). In the theatre,
Hutcheon cites Mabou Mines’s Doll-House, an adaptation of Ibsen’s A
Doll’s House directed by Lee Breuer, as an example of theatrical adaptation
for the way in which it uses short-statured male actors in all the male
parts in contrast to the female actors who are much taller, as a means
of making a ‘visual commentary on the play’s infamous sexual politics’
(Hutcheon, 2006: 39). Theorist John Rouse, writing of Heiner Müller’s
postmodern adaptations of classical and Shakespearean texts, attributes
Müller’s textual constructions to a dispersal of ‘the authorial center into
the tissues of the text’, rendering the work ‘permeable’ to alternative
meanings (Rouse, 1995: 153). Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome: A Shakespeare
Commentary, a co-production by the Bell Shakespeare Company and
the Queensland Theatre Company, is typical of the way Müller adapts
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 145

a Shakespearean play, here Titus Andronicus, for the modern stage. The
production is a commentary on, rather than a version of, the Shakespeare
play and its fragile coherence hangs on the visual signifiers rather than
the coherent unfolding of plot. The production is typical of the trend
towards visual- and image-based performance in adaptation theatre.
The idea of layering and patterning suggests the conscious interleav-
ing of texts while the overlaying of the old with the new leads to the sec-
ond major feature of adaptation, the palimpsest. The palimpsest works
on the basis that audiences recognize the intertexts in the new work,
reinforcing the fact that engagements between texts and performances
are fluid ‘extended ones, not passing illusions’ (Hutcheon, 2006: 21).
The final feature that Hutcheon emphasizes is that adaptations are
both a product and a process based on ‘a creative reinterpretation and
palimpsestic intertextuality’ for a purpose (Hutcheon, 2006: 22). While
adaptations of well-known plays make commercial sense, Hutcheon
argues that directors and writers of adaptations often have personal and
political motivation:

It is obvious that adapters must have their own personal reasons for
deciding first to do an adaptation, and then choosing which adapted
work and what medium to do it in. They not only interpret that work
but in so doing they also take a position on it.
(Hutcheon, 2006: 92)

In terms of the themes of this book, writers, theatre directors and per-
formers who engage in the creative process of adaptation often subvert
the original work by deconstructing its aristocratic, bourgeois, patriar-
chal or colonialist perspective. As Hutcheon argues, motivated adapta-
tions are ‘fluid texts’ infused with ‘political and historical intentionality’
and ‘engaged in a larger social or cultural critique’ of the contemporary
world (Hutcheon, 2006: 94–5). Few contemporary artists work under
the onus of fidelity to the original, effectively freeing themselves from
tradition to embrace modernity. Viewed this way adaptations are a fea-
ture of liquid modernity, breaking up the solidity of canonical texts on
the contemporary stage.
The extent to which adaptations differ from the innovative staging
of dramatic texts is not always clear cut, but for the purposes of the dis-
cussion in this chapter the emphasis is placed on the radically revised
version of a well-known play rather than the staging of a new play or
the ‘archeological reconstruction’ of the original conditions of a play’s
first performance (Pavis, 2006: 212). The productions of Andrew Bovell’s
146 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

Holy Day and When the Rain Stops Falling discussed in Chapter 1 are not
adaptations but stagings of new plays. In the chapters that follow, we
consider the significance of radically revised versions of well-known
classical, Shakespearean and modern texts.

Australian adaptation of European drama: the re-turn

to Europe

In the 2000s, a global cosmopolitan outlook underpins Australian rewrit-

ings and restagings of the European canon in ways that do more than
simply localize setting and accent. Australian artists and companies
are extending the global reach of theatre from the Asia-Pacific, exem-
plifying how modernity’s theatres do not ‘keep to any shape for long
and are constantly ready (and prone) to change it’ (Bauman, 2000: 2).
Continuous modernization sees the deterritorialization of the classical
and modern dramatic text through free form adaptations that challenge
the primacy of the written text, the authority of the author/playwright
and the original dramatic form of the work.
Although the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and directors and
writers such as Barrie Kosky and Tom Wright are at the forefront of
adaptation theatre in Australia, artists and co-productions regularly move
up and down the east coast to Melbourne and Brisbane. Transnational
co-productions with the northern hemisphere are also occurring with
increasing frequency, partly through the Arts Festival Circuit and partly
through the entrepreneurial commercial activities of state theatre
companies and the independent sector. The programme of the STC
under the leadership of Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton is indica-
tive of the transnational flows of new adaptations of canonical modern
works. New versions of Hedda Gabler and Uncle Vanya are devised for
Sydney and New York while invitations are issued to international stars
such as Phillip Seymour Hoffman to direct Sam Shepard’s True West
and Liv Ulman to direct Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire,
with the latter production touring to the United States. Ruhrfestspiele
Recklinghausen, the Barbican London and London 2012 Festival co-
commissioned the STC production of British writer Martin Crimp’s new
translation of the German playwright Botho Strauss’s 1970s play, Gross
und Klein. The performance, directed by Benedict Andrews and with
Blanchett in the lead role of Lotte, opened in Sydney in 2011 and toured
to London, Vienna, Paris and Germany in 2012. These co-commissioned,
transnational adaptations and translations give the Asia-Pacific region
an international presence in ways that also challenge the binary of the
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 147

European centre and non-European periphery of modern performance.

In this redrawn performance landscape, the Asia-Pacific is a producer
and consumer within what Bauman refers affirmatively to as ‘the plu-
ralism of modern civilized society’ (Bauman, 2000: 178). For Australian
artists and companies, involvement in transnationally devised touring
productions signifies a transition from provincialism to globalization
that is facilitated by the free trade economies, instant communica-
tions and ‘the new irrelevance of space’ (Bauman, 2000: 117) in liquid
modernity. As we see, classical, modern and even contemporary drama
rapidly assume new forms to feed and satisfy modernity’s appetite for
change and renewal.
The STC commissioned The Women of Troy after the critical success in
2006 of Barrie Kosky and Tom Wright’s The Lost Echo Parts 1 and 2, an
adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. In liquid times, these adaptations
melt the previously fixed relationship between text and performance in
a way that prefigures Boenisch’s comment that the ‘rift’ between the two
forms ‘allows text-based theatre today to facilitate ultimately contempo-
rary encounters even with classic texts’ (Boenisch 2010: 164). The Tom
Wright and Benedict Andrews’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s history plays
into one ten-hour epic performance, The Wars of the Roses, is read as a
contemporary encounter with the decline of a kingdom in such a way
that it ‘resonates acutely with today’s states of war’ especially ‘the Bush-
Howard-Blair war on Iraq’ (Gallasch, 2009: 4–5). However, the updating
of European dynastic histories, on the assumption that these are of
interest to Australian audiences, seems to be in stark denial of the multi-
ple ways in which modern Australia is geographically and economically
connected to the Asia-Pacific region. Not all adaptations can be accorded
political motivation. At the Malthouse in Melbourne, Michael Kantor
and Louise Fox adapted Moliere’s Tartuffe in 2008, while the new artistic
director Marion Potts adapted John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore in 2011
for her debut with the company. Director Simon Stone and Tom Wright
claim to have translated rather than adapted Baal by Bertolt Brecht in
2011 but they empty out the Brechtian politics in favour of a postmod-
ern spectacle. Timeout Sydney comments it was ‘probably more successful
as a piece of contemporary visual or performance art’ (King, 2011). The
programme notes state that ‘to understand Baal, perhaps it is necessary
to forget what you know about Bertolt Brecht’ (Baal, 2011). This would
seem to curtail the opportunity for a meaningful encounter with a clas-
sical or modern text from some new place of performance.
As this brief survey indicates, adaptations performed by the major the-
atre companies in Australian theatre are overwhelmingly of European
148 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

drama. While they speak from and to a transnational, postdramatic,

globalized modernity, they also tread a fine line between contemporary
experimental theatre and the revivification and recentring of local cul-
tural practices that are exclusively Western or European. When Wright
notes that the Australian stage has become ‘more internationalist in
its outlook’ (Wright, 2011), it is clear that ‘internationalist’ means
‘European’. The palimpsestic overlaying of Brecht’s theatrical response
to European modernism with the new global modernity of the Wright/
Stone Baal sees creative reinterpretation ironically take the Australian
stage back to a more culturally homogeneous pre-Second World War
past. The critical point is that while theatre adaptations are often col-
laborative, multimodal and technically brilliant, the proliferation of
European source texts suggests a narrowing of engagements with other
theatre traditions especially within the Asia-Pacific region.
Independent theatre is also active in adaptation theatre. Director
Daniel Schlusser’s The Dollhouse was adapted from the play by Henrik
Ibsen and performed at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2011. Leisa
Shelton and associated artists of Fragment 31 performed Irony is Not
Enough: Essay on my Life as Catherine Deneuve, an adaptation of the
poetry of Anne Carson, in Melbourne in 2010. Director Adena Jacobs
and collaborators adapted Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona for per-
formance at Theatre Works, Melbourne in 2012 while Andrew Upton
and Simon Stone adapted the auteur’s 1976 film, Face to Face for the
Sydney Theatre Company, also in 2012. The extent of the practice sug-
gests that theatre adaptation has become a cultural dominant on east-
coast Australian stages.
We can also note that the concentration of these adaptations in
Sydney and Melbourne sees the two global cities on the eastern sea-
board leading the transnational turn that is at the same time a return
to European roots. It is important for this argument to emphasize that
these are not Australianized adaptations of the European canon. With
minor exceptions, such as the addition of a local narrator named ‘B’,
in Potts’s production of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, the dramatic locations
attempt to erase place in favour of space. Stone and Wright’s Baal
begins in a globalized Western city that could be Sydney or Berlin.
Any signifiers of the German or Australian countryside where Baal
meets his end are replaced with the cool, sleek laminated black stage
floor. The critical question of how adaptations shape transnational
theatre cultures concerns the ways in which they do so in the forms
of the past, recoded for the contemporary era in an ahistorical and
apolitical way.
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 149

Writing in 1996, Ien Ang and Jon Stratton question whether transna-
tionalism can be spoken about from ‘a spatially neutral position’ (Ang
and Stratton, 1996: 17), suggesting that place still matters. Thinking
further, to what extent are adaptations both a response and a failure to
meet the challenges of representing more recent cultural formations? In
Australia, adaptations are rarely of Australian works. Exceptions include
Grace, adapted from the novel by Robert Drewe, discussed in Chapter 5;
Wesley Enoch’s Black Medea, an Indigenous adaption of Medea; and John
Romeril’s work, including Miss Tanaka, an adaptation of a Xavier Herbert
short story, and Love Suicides, an adaptation of the seventeenth-century
Japanese dramatist, Chikamatsu Monzaemon (Varney, 2011b: 130). The
return to the European canon sees artists reattaching themselves to both
a colonial and Occidental heritage that turns its back on more recent
intercultural exchanges with the Asia-Pacific region. Despite the exten-
sive touring programme undertaken by the STC, the company has not
toured to Asia since 1997. Nor does it have any plans to take any of its
current touring productions to Asia. The bypassing of the Asia-Pacific
region is all the more curious in the context of Australian economic
and diplomatic relations with the region in what the Australian govern-
ment refers to as the Asian century (Australian Government, 2012b).
The extent to which Australian theatre lags behind other sectors of the
economy has the undesirable effect that it is neither articulating nor
making meaning out of the new social and economic relations in the
region.

The Women of Troy

Barrie Kosky is based in Europe, where his innovative iconoclastic style

has been seen at the Vienna Schauspielhaus and the Komische Oper,
Berlin. Returning regularly to direct in Australia, he is representative of
one of a number of Australian-born artists with international reputa-
tions who has opened the provincial Australian curtain to global flows
of text, image, music and interpretation. These practitioners, including
Blanchett and Upton at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), participate
in the ‘complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes’
(Appadurai, 2005: 31), that move in and out of the theatres of global
cities. Kosky’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tale, The Tell-Tale
Heart, with Austrian actor Martin Niedermair, exemplifies the new cultural
flow. Poe’s dark tale about the human psyche was initially adapted for the
Schauspielhaus Vienna in 2004, where it was entitled Das Verräterische
Herz; the English version premiered at the Melbourne International
150 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

Arts Festival in 2007 after which it toured to the Edinburgh and Sydney
Festivals before returning to the Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne in 2010.
The darkened stage was dominated by a single staircase that evoked
nineteenth-century Europe but also a transitory in-between space not
tied to any one place.
The Sydney Theatre Company’s production of The Women of Troy was
staged in Sydney and Melbourne in 2008. Euripides’ tragedy, first per-
formed in competition at the Athens Dionysia in 415 BC, is a harrowing
anti-war drama that sidesteps the heroics of Homer’s Iliad to linger on
the aftermath of the Greek destruction of the city of Troy, focusing on
the grieving and suffering of the women of the city. The Kosky/Wright
Women of Troy is a self-described adaptation in which the text is rewrit-
ten in a condensed, minimalist way, characters are omitted, the mise en
scène is contemporary and the choric text is replaced by choric and solo
pieces including madrigals, folk songs, and modern and classical pieces
from John Dowland to Mozart and Schumann. Musicologist Michael
Halliwell argues that music forms ‘the backbone of the production’, yet
it cannot be said that the adaptation turns ‘Greek tragedy into opera’; in
The Women of Troy, unlike opera or classical catharsis, the power of the
music does not uplift the audience or ‘transcend the horror’ (Halliwell,
2011). The dystopic mood is conveyed by a wall of battered, grey metal
lockers stacked vertically and horizontally, some with doors and others
without, that form the backdrop to an open stage space covered with
stained blue carpet. There is scant reference to the place of performance,
be it the Asia-Pacific or a contested multicultural or cosmopolitan space
called Australia: it is neither European nor modern Australian, but has
traces of a global present – the dispatch area of a warehouse, the base-
ment of a modern industrial building or a space of rendition. In contrast
to the bleak stage, spectators sit in seats shrouded in white cloth as if at
a wedding, funeral or ceremonial dinner but the spectacle that unfolds
is the antithesis of entertainment.
The condensed adaptation reduces the large list of characters to five
women and three men. Robyn Nevin is Hecuba and Melita Jurisic, who
has worked with Kosky in Vienna, performs the three roles of Cassandra,
Andromache and Helen. There is a chorus of three performed by sing-
ers Queenie van de Zandt, Natalie Gamsu and Jennifer Vuletic, and
two Greek security guards played by Patricia Cotter and Kyle Rowley.
Menelaus is performed by veteran actor John Dignam in a wheelchair,
reminiscent, as Adrian Kiernander points out, of George W. Bush’s Vice-
President Dick Cheney at President Obama’s Inauguration, ‘impaired
both physically and morally’ (Kiernander, 2010: 113). Critic Peter
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 151

Craven finds Dignam’s Menelaus ‘creepily psychopathic beyond any

human face of vengeance, as if Hannibal Lecter had been merged with
Lord Chatterley’ (Craven, 2008: 18). Nevin’s Hecuba, on the other hand,
is an emotionally heightened, compelling figure whose tragedy circum-
vents comic comparison.
As these comments suggest, critics and scholars note the inter-
textuality of the adaptation. In addition to the Menelaus/Cheney
reference, Kiernander finds the visual references in designer Alice
Babidge’s ‘prison-like environment’ to be ‘explicitly reminiscent of the
horrific digital photographs from inside the Iraqi Abu Ghraib Prison’
(Kiernander, 2010: 110). Critic Cameron Woodhead sees further refer-
ences to George Orwell and Thomas Hobbes:

Barrie Kosky’s production is a cruel and clinical reimagining of

Euripides that owes as much to Orwell as Hobbes. It’s set in a com-
pound bare save for a backdrop of locker doors; the stage echoes with
the sound of intermittent gunfire.
(2008: 23)

One critic called the performance a ‘free-playing and compressed

adaptation of Euripides’, but this description does not do justice to the
performance’s calculated representation of cold, rational institutional
cruelty (Dunne, 2008: 12). Woodhead was sensitive to the ‘meticu-
lously observed, mechanistic vision’ of the performance that suggests
the production’s critical focus is firmly placed on the contemporary era
(Woodhead, 2008).
The production generates immense performative power and is
notable for the high number of walk-outs at each performance. John
McCallum recalls:

Barrie Kosky’s production of Euripides’ The Women of Troy at the

STC in 2008 was one of the most harrowing nights in the theatre
that I have ever spent. It was too harrowing for many – some people
I love and respect refused to see it and there were apparently many
walkouts every night. We’re talking about a show with no interval,
so walking out is a big statement.
(McCallum, 2010)

As the performance begins, the voice of Talthybius, the Messenger, is

heard, but is no longer an embodied stage presence. Instead, his disem-
bodied voice emanates from a loudspeaker on the modern industrial set.
152 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

His terrible recounting of the events leading up to the present of the

performance – of Helen, the siege, the wooden horse and the sacking
and destruction of Troy by the Greek aggressors – and his sympathies
with the women’s defeated state, as articulated in Euripides’ text, is
radically reduced to a series of orders from an unseen power that is
likened to an Orwellian Big Brother figuration. Helen Slaney notes that
Talthybius is a bridge between the stage and the auditorium, a mediator
between brutality and humanity and ‘an intermediary figure’ (Slaney,
2011). His removal from the stage and replacement by a voice on a
speaker introduces ‘a regime of remote surveillance and mechanized,
systemic brutality’ (Slaney, 2011). His words are also the first sign that
the text has been cut, condensed, made blunt and pared-back. The per-
formance runs for a short 90 minutes inclusive of the additional choric
pieces. As Talthybius is heard, Queen Hecuba is carried on to the stage
on a metal trolley, stripped to her underwear and with her head covered
with a black shroud held on by her crown. She is a female Christ-like
figure wearing a crown of thorns but the symbolism is flooded with
meaning possibilities (see Figure 9.1). Critic Peter Craven expands on
the signification of her entrance:

A tiny figure is ushered on to the stage, wearing the intimately

familiar black-peaked shroud, from Abu Ghraib or like a memory of
the auto-da-fe of the Spanish Inquisition or the Ku Klux Klan with a
colour change.
(Craven, 2008: 18)

As the speech continues, the shroud is removed to reveal Hecuba’s

beaten and bloodied face. Marguerite Johnson recalls that ‘Under
Kosky’s direction, she became a photograph that metamorphosed into
a moving image; she was the newspaper “shot” transformed on stage
into television footage’ (Johnson, 2011). Finding the will and energy
to speak, she attends to her task of caring and grieving for family and
country before confronting her own enslavement. Daughter Cassandra
enters and is brutally raped before being packed into a cardboard box
and taken away. Pregnant Andromache enters and endures her tiny son,
Astyanax, being torn away from her. The body of Astyanax is brought
to his grandmother, who laments the cruelty of the conquering Greeks.
Hecuba is packed into a box and dispatched to her new Greek master.
The chorus, whose various physical stances repeat the images of prison-
ers of war at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, are packed into cardboard boxes
and wheeled off stage (see Figure 9.2).
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 153

Figure 9.1 Robyn Nevin as Hecuba. The Women of Troy. Sydney Theatre Company,
2008. Courtesy of Sydney Theatre Company. Photo: Tracey Schramm

The ‘change of frame and therefore context’ (Hutcheon, 2006: 8) of

the adaptation reaffirms the anti-war message of the original. Euripides’
drama has three temporal frames: the legendary Trojan War, the
Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BC and the present of the first perform-
ance, 415 BC, not long after the Greek massacre at Melos. Kosky’s refer-
ence is to the American-led Invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the occupation
that lasted until 2011. While we can discern the transcultural at work in
the actors who speak the local Australian accent, ‘the women of Troy’
no longer have a place. They are beaten and raped, rendered abject and
stateless and marked as Other by the decontamination masks worn by
the two security guards. The change of frame adapts Euripides’ refer-
ences to the Athenian massacre and mass rapes at Melos, with which his
audiences are familiar, to the local audience’s knowledge of the industri-
alized massacres and rape camps in Bosnia, Rwanda, and the behaviour
of allied forces in Iraq. In modern industrialized warfare, civilians are
not randomly injured or executed, but are herded into enclosed spaces
154 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

Figure 9.2 The chorus. The Women of Troy. Sydney Theatre Company, 2008.
Courtesy of Sydney Theatre Company. Photo: Tracey Schramm

for the purpose of targeted and efficient killing. The performers enact
their entrapment at the hands of the Greek captors with alternating
waves of histrionics, terror, pathos and abjection. After she is brutally
raped in one of the horizontal lockers, Melita Jurisic’s Cassandra vomits
yellow bile on to her dress. Her bloodied pants are pulled down around
her ankles. Rape is represented through performative acts of abjection,
violation and outrage in such a way as it also invokes the civilian pris-
oner of war’s destroyed ‘right or entitlement to a livable life’ (Butler,
2004: 224).
Philosophically, the adaptation is of a classical tragedy for moder-
nity, the post-Enlightenment, post-Holocaust era after which audiences
know that instrumental rationality is also the logic of camps, deten-
tion centres and spaces of rendition. The modern industrial setting
clearly underpins this aspect of modernity. The affective power of the
performance is compelling, the brutality is galvanizing, the critique of
modernity is persuasive and the anti-war discourse fills a pressing need
for public debate about the West’s abuse of human rights and its long-
term interests in the Middle East. But the question about who or what
is hidden from view in adaptation theatre and the extent to which it is
produced by way of a ‘dissimulation of the geopolitical other’ (Spivak,
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 155

1999: 334) remains prescient. Kosky and Wright suggest that the figure
of the European woman on stage is the universal symbol of oppression;
she stands for all those who are the vanquished and defeated of war.
The dissimulation is in who is authorized to make this representation
and whose entitlement it is to be assertive on stage. Reading critically
against the affective power is to expose the potential for the re-inscrip-
tion of the white, aristocratic colonial experience as representative of
the community.
The Women of Troy is but one example of the appeal and the limita-
tions of adaptation as it is practised in the modern Australian context.
The renewed interest in the European repertoire does not seem overly
concerned about the ways in which, as Spivak reminds us, Europe con-
solidated itself as ‘sovereign subject by defining its colonies as “Others”
even as it constituted them … into programmed near-images of that
very sovereign self’ (Spivak, 1999: 199). Australian-made adaptations
largely ignore or express little reflexive awareness of the fact that they
might be engaged in the representation of Europe in one of its othered
cultures. Kosky and Wright’s critique of modernity remains blind to the
ways in which the work emanates from and is staged in a place that is
both product and recipient of the brutal colonizing enterprises of the
eighteenth century. Adaptations create alibis: cultural representations
that disguise imperialism, conservatism and a denial of the changing
population of the nation (Spivak, 1999: 6). Like the alibi, they enact
a narrative and a discourse that directs attention from the scene of
the crime, where the crime is the withholding of stage sovereignty to
emerging narratives and subjects.
In a speech given in 2002, former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam,
whose government established diplomatic relations with the People’s
Republic of China in 1972, recalled how in 1963 he had said that:

The captains and kings of Europe have departed from our area.
Britain is being drawn closer and closer to Europe. Forces very largely
outside our control are forcing us into a fundamental re-examination
of our position as an isolated and European community. We are being
driven rapidly to making adjustments from the familiar European
world to an unfamiliar Afro-Asian world.
(Whitlam, 2002)

He noted that in 2001, he was ‘less confident than at any time in the
past 30 years that Australia is progressing purposefully towards that
objective’ (Whitlam, 2002). Certainly the turn to Europe in adaptation
156 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

theatre in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when Asian- and
African-born Australians are increasing in numbers, represents a retreat
from engagements with the Afro-Asian world. Gilbert and Lo attribute
the insularity that Whitlam notes to the ‘aggressively nationalist and
exclusivist notion of Australianness’ that was ‘nurtured in mainstream
society by the decade-long Howard regime’ (Gilbert and Lo, 2009: 208)
from 1997 to 2007. The European turn in Australian theatre appears in
this light as a legacy of a conservative government that identifies with
the powerful nations of the northern hemisphere. The paradox is that
both deferential and iconoclastic adaptations of the European canon
play into the conservative streams of Australian cultural politics.

The turn to the Middle East

The turn to Europe in adaptation theatre includes, ironically, Euro-

American military interests in the Middle East. The visual and embodied
references in the Kosky/Wright Women of Troy to Abu Ghraib prison ges-
tures towards a connection between Australian, European and American
interests in the Middle East. The attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 that mobilized the ‘Coalition
of the Willing’ saw Iraq and then Afghanistan and Pakistan enter the
generalized Western imagination as the signifier of the Axis of Evil,
the Other, the new Orient, and the source of a new instability in the
Western psyche. Australian troops joined the multinational coalition in
Iraq in 2004 and remain in Afghanistan. The issue of what to do with
refugees and asylum seekers from these regions, as we saw in Chapter 5,
has dominated national politics for the last decade.
The effect is that the Middle East has become a powerfully evocative
referent in local performance, a go-to setting for artists to comment
on the moral, ethical and political ambiguities and emotional tem-
perature of the culture. From the point of view of a transnational but
locally made and hence irrefutably positioned performance, and given
Australia’s military involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
The Women of Troy positions the Middle East within the intertextual
assemblage of image and text. As with Chelfitsch’s Five Days in March
discussed in Chapter 7, The Women of Troy addresses new concerns
within the nations of the Asia-Pacific region about Western interests
in the Middle East. Theatrical performances from Australia and Japan
speak on behalf of anxieties about places that are largely accessed
through global flows of media, image and public discourse rather than
any deep engagement or primary research. At the same time, in Muslim
 Australian Adaptations: The European Turn 157

Indonesia, the social and political force of Islam is a very real, concrete,
local issue. Although rarely addressed in theatre due to its controversial
implications, it gives great force to the few performances which engage
with Islamic themes.

Towards a reflection of diversity

In this chapter we have turned critically to the Eurocentrism of the adap-

tation phenomenon in Australian theatre. Kosky/Wright’s The Women of
Troy is but one example of adaptations that act as ‘the harness’ belatedly
tying a postulated community to a shared European heritage or ‘joint
history, custom, language or schooling’ (Bauman, 2000, 169) that has
little to do with the diversity of the nation state today or the cultural
flows across the region in which it is located. These theatre adaptations
reinstate a European aesthetic and focus that is out of step with con-
temporary multicultural cosmopolitan Australia. The argument in this
chapter leads us to the conclusion that the cultural sector lags behind
the economic sector in terms of its engagement with the Asia-Pacific.
What is most disappointing, and short-sighted, from an artistic point
of view is that artists do not take more advantage of their proximity to
the multiple modernities within the region or the opportunity to col-
laborate and share a regional sensibility and identity.
10
Performing Liquid Modernity:
Chay Yew’s Visible Cities in
Singapore

Chay Yew’s theatre

If it is a coincidence that the world premiere of Chay Yew’s play Visible

Cities was staged in Singapore, then it is a fortuitous one. The pro-
duction’s emphasis on portraying the contradictions and tensions of
modernity through cosmopolitan lifestyles and consumption practices,
combined with a critique of the global spaces of production of material
and symbolic goods, could not have coalesced in a more appropriate
location.
Singapore-born Chay Yew, an internationally renowned playwright,
now living in America, was appointed artistic director of Chicago’s
Victory Gardens Theater in July 2011. His opus of scripts and directorial
work on the plays of David Henry Hwang, Lorca and others has always
generated passion, even if sometimes unwelcome. His play Porcelain –
originally a filmscript for a thesis at Boston University – about a man
who murders his gay lover in a public toilet, was so confronting, sala-
cious and violent that no college student would audition for a part
(Drukman, 1995: 59). Yew left Singapore after his play As If He Hears was
banned on the grounds that it treated homosexuality as unexception-
able. The real crime, as William Peterson points out, was not so much
the staging of homosexuality, as its representation as ‘a natural and
acceptable form of sexuality’ (Peterson, 2001: 138). For it to be tolerated
on the stage by Singapore authorities, homosexuality had to appear
to be sufficiently ‘Other’ (Drukman, 1995: 59) or sidelined (Peterson,
2001: 138). As If He Hears was eventually staged in Singapore in 1989,
and Porcelain (also initially banned in Singapore) was staged at London’s
Royal Court Theatre in 1992, followed by a successful production in
Singapore in 2005. With their incisive critiques of social issues and

158
 Performing Liquid Modernity 159

willingness to confront modes of exclusion made possible by regimes

of sexual, racial and class differentiation, Yew’s plays have the power to
unsettle audiences and authorities.
Now identifying as an Asian-American, his work seems to indicate an
ambivalent attitude towards both Singapore and America. He is seen as
a second-generation ‘hyphenated American’ and is said to be heir to the
Asian-American theatrical tradition of David Henry Hwang, amongst
others (Román, 2002). The recurring topic of the shifting boundaries of
Asian or American, and the difficulties of fully identifying with one or
the other, mark Yew as a member of a newer generation of dramatists
who seek to define not the coherent, unified Asian-American identity
that was the subject of mid-twentieth-century drama, but a fragmented,
fluid and mutable identity (Diehl, 2004: 150). This approach is closer to
current understandings of the nature of cultural identity in the space of
global flows outlined by Arjun Appadurai (1996). Hwang expressed the
sentiments of other hyphenated Americans when he voiced his concern
that they had endured for too long images of themselves that were
clearly inauthentic, two-dimensional caricatures, devoid of humanity.
Yet, he continued: ‘what constitutes an “authentic” vision is much
more complex’ (Hwang, 1997: vii). Hwang praised the ‘Third Wave’ of
Asian-American playwrights for exploding the myth of an immutable
cultural identity.
Yew’s typical themes articulate the human condition in an era char-
acterized by the paradoxes of increasing mobility coupled with the
constraints generated by racial stereotyping, homophobia, the limits to
sexual freedom and the concentration of political and economic power.
A corollary of increased freedoms and mobility is alienation and the con-
tinuing search for home and identity. Mobility imposes limits on spiritual
growth and confounds the establishment of a stable cultural identity. For
an Asian-American, the struggle is to ‘negotiate the hyphen’ (Bacalzo,
2012). Yew’s work, however, does more than that. It also theatricalizes
the difficulties of negotiating a range of polarized subject positions: gay/
straight; citizen/immigrant; manager/worker; exploiter/exploited. His
plays have offered innovative and confronting artistic expressions of gay
Asian-American love in the age of AIDS (A Language of Their Own), intern-
ment and the injustice perpetrated against Japanese-Americans during
the Second World War (Question 27, Question 28), the lost dreams and
hopes of queer Asian-Americans (Wonderland), and intergenerational,
interracial relationships that critique demeaning Asian stereotypes
(Scissors). A Beautiful Country chronicled the adversities confronting
generations of Asian immigrants to the United States and featured the
160 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

character Miss Visa Denied, a Malaysian drag queen who appears at

an airport immigration point dressed like the pop star Madonna. Miss
Visa’s Asian queerness compounds the search for home and identity,
with added complexity provided by Yew’s probing of the intersections
of race and gender with the alienation that comes with exile. One critic
complained that the topic of Asians in America was too vast a subject
for one evening of theatre, and that Miss Visa Denied is not an inter-
esting character in her own right since she never actually speaks but
lip-syncs to the voice of other actors and to Madonna singing ‘Vogue’
(Winer, 1998). As a ‘lost, ethereal sensitive symbol’ (Winer, 1998), she is
precisely the sort of character that critic Dan Bacalzo had in mind when
he noted that: ‘Yew is well known as a champion of voices that do not
always get heard’ (Bacalzo, 2012). Other themes that frequently appear
in Yew’s work include such profound human issues as the persistence
of race, class and sexual oppression; the destructive power of alienation
and disaffection; the struggle to survive in a world of risk and moral
hazard; and the search for home in a world of flows of people, culture
and – perhaps more importantly – meaning. Many of his characters are
caught up in what we now refer to as global mobility, a term associated
with the mobility turn (Urry, 2007) and the growing interest in examin-
ing the role that the movement of people, images, commodities, money
and data plays in social life.
The staging of the world premier of Visible Cities on 22 May at the
2009 Singapore Arts Festival was an event of symbolic significance for
Singapore in more than one respect. In the 1980s, Singapore recon-
structed itself as a ‘global city’. The Singapore Arts Festival is a hallmark
event of the city-nation’s strategy to become a key player in a postin-
dustrial cultural economy in which entertainment, the arts and crea-
tivity are packaged as global commodities. This is encapsulated in the
rewriting of Singapore as ‘Global City for the Arts’. A crucial part of the
strategy has been to re-inscribe Singapore as exciting, innovative and
creative – a space of cultural flows. Theatre and drama have played a cru-
cial and sometimes critical role in this transformation. Since Singapore
aspires to be a global city that is open to ‘disjunctive flows of capital,
labour, talent, ideas and images’ (Tan, 2007: 295), it would now seem
incongruous to ban plays about gay Asians, particularly in light of the
government’s agenda to make the city state attractive to global elites,
the creative classes, and to Singapore citizens. The production of Visible
Cities – and other productions circulating on the global festival circuit –
therefore situates Singapore as a postindustrial global city and the site of
the reproduction of the symbolic economy in which the cultural logics
 Performing Liquid Modernity 161

of transnationality, global capital flows, and forms of exclusion from

modernity may be interrogated. Since the story is partly set in Singapore
and one of the central tropes of the narrative is global flows of culture,
finance and labour through the city state, the significance of the pre-
miere of Visible Cities in Singapore should not be overlooked.
While a number of Yew’s plays have been staged in Singapore since
1989, his transition from excluded to respected playwright was com-
plete when the Singapore Arts Festival, together with Italy’s Napoli Teatro
Festival, commissioned the work for the 2009 festival. Yew collaborated
with Italian director Giorgio Barberio Corsetti to produce two perform-
ances, after which the company returned to Italy and the production
was subsequently staged in Naples.

Transnational, translocal connections

Inspired as the play is by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities (1997), the
narrative, the actors, the languages in which the characters speak and
the general dramaturgical values of the production position the play in
the context of globalization, defined as ‘a multidimensional set of social
processes that create, multiply, stretch and intensify worldwide social
interdependencies and exchanges’ (Steger, 2004: 2). Calvino’s Invisible
Cities is an allegorical novel, a fragmented narrative in which Marco
Polo unsettles Kublai Khan’s equanimity and imagination with his
fantastic tales of the magical cities of his travels. A series of dialogues,
or meditative conversations between Marco and the Khan, allows the
Khan to understand the vastness of his own empire and the nature of
home. The novel is itself a narrative of globalization, if it is understood
that globalization also fosters ‘a growing awareness of deepening con-
nections between the local and distant’ (Steger, 2004: 2).
The performance relocated these dialogues into another dimension
when Yew adapted it for the stage and added many other figures in a
similarly fragmented series of spaces and time-frames. Spoken in English,
Mandarin, Italian and a sort of gibberish comprehensible to no one but
indicative of the heteroglossia of global factories, the story tells of the
lives of people caught up in the global fashion trade. Goods that are
produced in China are sent to Italy via Thailand and Cambodia, where
they are labelled ‘Made in Italy’. The traffic in fakes – cheap copies of
Prada handbags, Calvin Klein jeans and so on – is familiar to modern
travellers as a flourishing underground trade. In the opening scenes we
see workers in a factory in Shanghai where hundreds of identical blue
dresses are being manufactured to be sold in Italy. The actors all wear
162 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

masks like mice heads as if to dehumanize them and efface individual

identities (Figure 10.1).
Against the backdrop of the ceaseless sounds of sewing machines, we
learn that the factory is non-unionized and dangerous. Through a con-
versation among the workers we hear that in the Liang garment factory
in Shanghai the workers earn 67 cents per hour for an eight-hour day,
and $1.21 per hour for an evening shift. One woman suffers an injury
to her hand from a hot roller press and is abandoned by the company
and left to fend for herself. (Her bandaged hand is visible in Figure 10.1)
An accompanying narrative is that this woman’s husband is absent
since he is working in Italy to support the family and is therefore not
able to care for her or their children. Family disintegration is one of the
consequences of the increasing demands on people to form a mobile
workforce. Recalling Beck’s description of the family as one of the ‘zom-
bie institutions’ of modernity that functions like a vaguely animated
corpse, Bauman (2000: 6) argues that institutions such as the nation,
the family, and even the state become liquid, and may disintegrate.
Stable orientation points, by which individuals could find direction and
locate themselves have become fluid, and cannot be relied upon.

Figure 10.1 A clothing factory in China with workers wearing mice heads,
from Visible Cities at the Singapore Arts Festival 2009. Courtesy of National Arts
Council of Singapore. Photographer unknown
 Performing Liquid Modernity 163

When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels proclaimed that ‘all that is solid
melts into air’, (1987: 35) they were not arguing that modernity would
bring about the dissolving of solids once and for all, but predicting
the eradication of some solids to make way for new ones. In Bauman’s
account, what is different under the current conditions is that the liquid-
izing powers have moved from the ‘system’ to ‘society’, from ‘politics’
to ‘life-policies’ – or have descended from the ‘macro’ to ‘micro’ level of
social cohabitation. In other words, people’s very lifeworlds have been
liquidized. What we face now is an individualized, privatized version of
modernity, with all the burdens of it falling on the individual’s shoul-
ders (Bauman, 2000: 7). The very patterns of dependency and human
interaction have now become liquefied. For people such as the factory
workers in Shanghai and their estranged family members in Italy, it is
difficult to maintain the unity of the family in dispersed locations. They
are plunged, against their will and without promise of greater freedom
or liberation, into individual lifeworlds that are radically fluid, and
inherently unstable and miserable. As Bauman (2000) suggests, many
find themselves disempowered and isolated in a remote and impenetra-
ble global system in which even human relationships cannot be trusted.
This state of affairs is embodied by the woman with the injured hand.
The exploitation of offshore labour, as seen in the performance in
the number of migrant workers, is a consequence of the globalizing of
manufacturing. The performance did not exaggerate the real conditions
of work in Chinese factories. The effects on Chinese workers of an insa-
tiable global desire for consumer goods was reported in the New York
Times in January 2012:

[T]he workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor
in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants,
worker advocates and documents published by companies them-
selves. … Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven
days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long
that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers
have helped build Apple’s products …. Two years ago, 137 workers
at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were
ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within
seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in
Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple
had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant,
according to a Chinese group that published that warning.
(Duhigg and Barboza, 2012)
164 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

We hear from the ‘mice heads’ that there are eight to ten people living
in a tiny dormitory with one stinking bathroom. This description is not
dissimilar to the real-life conditions in Singapore of foreigners such as
Bangladeshis working in the construction industry and living in dormi-
tories built especially for immigrant labour.
The workers wearing the mice heads at their sewing machines set the
scene for a performance made up of a series of stories linked together in
a way that is not immediately obvious. It becomes clear as the perform-
ance unfolds that they are connected in a fluid world of overlapping
personal narratives. In one story we meet Jessica, an ambitious Singapore
fashion buyer visiting clothing factories in China. She meets Tomaso,
with whom she has a sexual liaison. He is a self-made businessman who
works for the fashion empire of Vespucci – perhaps a not too subtle refer-
ence to Italian fashion label Versace. Jessica and Tomaso lie to each other
in a game of falsehoods, pretences and illusions, as if human relation-
ships built on trust have degenerated into a zombie state.
Overlapping this is the story of Bianca, originally from northern Italy,
who is now displaced and living a lonely and disaffected life in Naples. She
is agoraphobic and suffers panic attacks. Naples is a nightmare for her, and
she is too anxious to venture beyond her door. Her situation is all the more
distressing since she too is without family support and her husband is the
same Tomaso currently seducing Jessica in Singapore. Bianca’s scenes are
reflections of a liquid reality because her addiction to tranquillizers causes
her to hallucinate. In a surreal juxtaposition of real and imagined dimen-
sions, apparitions appear to her when her grip on reality is at its most
tenuous. In a drug-induced fantasy she sees Marco Polo and Kublai Khan
quarrelling. No doubt Yew would have known that, according to Samuel
Taylor Coleridge’s own preface to the first publication of his poem Kubla
Khan, Coleridge wrote the poem on waking from an opium-induced sleep
in which he had dreamt of the beauty of Kublai Khan’s Xanadu.
Bianca’s anxiety is to a large extent caused by sinister Neapolitan
gangsters, violent and rapacious thugs determined to maintain personal
power in an environment where, it seems, law enforcement agencies
have become zombie institutions. They oppress and intimidate ruth-
lessly, for the purpose of making money without regard to the human
costs. The gangsters, whose own institution is a sort of mafia or Italian
triad, appear wearing malevolent and frightening bird masks, remi-
niscent of the grotesque bird-headed monsters in Hieronymus Bosch’s
painting The Garden of Earthly Delight, and designed to terrify the
citizens of Naples. In Yew’s work, the zombie institutions of the state
have been replaced by illegitimate institutions such as organized crime
 Performing Liquid Modernity 165

networks. The deception is deepened when we realize that Tomaso is

involved with these criminal gangs.
Chinese immigrants also work in the clothing factories of Naples
where the fakes are produced. In an expression of the failure of identity
to remain immutable under conditions of modernity, they too wear
masks, this time fish heads (Figure 10.2).
The fish heads and the incomprehensible gibberish they speak mark
them not only as the alien, Oriental Other, but render them, their
language, culture and identities meaningless in the global scheme of
things, apart from their use value as an endless supply of labour. The
remote institutions of global commerce and their insatiable appetite
for cheap labour render the workers faceless and subhuman, in parallel
with the faceless Chinese mice heads.
Despite his alien appearance and their mutually unintelligible lan-
guages, Bianca befriends Fish, one of the faceless Chinese immigrants.
In a coincidence that speaks of fluid networks and intersecting human
trajectories, it transpires that Fish is the husband of the woman injured
in the factory in China. While Jessica and Tomaso’s relationship is
doomed to failure because it is founded on lies, conflicting ambitions

Figure 10.2 Lim Kay Tong as a ‘fishhead’ from Visible Cities at the Singapore
Arts Festival 2009. Courtesy of National Arts Council of Singapore. Photographer
unknown
166 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

and greed, Bianca and Fish find deep affinities in their shared alienation
and loneliness.
The difficulties of discerning what is real and fake in fashion are
reflected in the difficulties of discerning the real from the fake in
human relationships, the meaningful from the trivial and the evil from
the good. Like the trade in fakes, human connections and relationships
may also be counterfeit.

Liquid times and spaces

As a moral critique of modernity’s melting powers, the performance

explores what happens to people’s lives when they are so radically liq-
uefied, when nothing can be solid and fixed, when so much is driven
by the desire for sex, power and wealth. Centring on a blue dress as
the object of desire in a world in which people as well as goods are
commodified, made mobile and engulfed by the increasingly irresist-
ible flow of global processes, the performance drifts in and out of
times and spaces to link the multiple modernities of China, Italy and
Singapore with Marco Polo’s imaginary cities. It is structured as a series
of interconnected stories, paralleling the interconnected stories Marco
relates to the Khan. These stories appear not so much sequential, but as
overlapping, confounding the standard spatio-temporal relationships
of conventional narrative. They are, in Doreen Massey’s terms, places
‘not as areas on maps, but as constantly shifting articulations of social
relations through time’ (1995: 39), or specific envelopes of space-time.
The scenography jumps from one place to another – a factory in China,
a restaurant in Singapore, an apartment block in Naples, Kublai Khan’s
garden – linking the modern world, both spatially and temporally, with
the thirteenth-century world of Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty.
In this performance, time and space are both radically fluid. They
interlock and overlap in a mélange of space-time envelopes that both
confuse and delight the audience. In Calvino’s (1997) text, Marco
recounts the story of the city of Berenice for the Khan. Berenice is both
just and unjust. It has perfumed pools and baths where the unjust
recline and weave their intrigues and where the just, who recognize
each other by their speech patterns and austere conduct, are intimi-
dated by the threat of mass arrests. To intrigue the Khan and confound
any understanding of space-time, Marco cautions him:

From my words you will have reached the conclusion that the real
Berenice is a temporal succession of different cities, alternately just
 Performing Liquid Modernity 167

and unjust. But what I wanted to warn you about is something else:
all the future Berenices are already present in this instant, wrapped
one within the other, confined, crammed, inextricable.
(Calvino, 1997: 146)

While the novel is not directly quoted in the production, Yew has relo-
cated this temporal concentration into the performance and a strange
sort of Berenice emerges on stage when times and spaces separated
by history and geography appear simultaneously by means of screens
behind the main action. In moments of profoundly unsettling incon-
gruity, Kublai and Marco appear on a screen behind the actors arguing
about how the Khan might invade this modern ‘other world’ so that he
can acquire the desired goods, in particular, a blue dress and the Italian
handbags and shoes. The Khan is most interested, he tells Marco, in
the ‘buttery leather’, a reference to the handbags and shoes for which
the other world is famous. The seductiveness of commodities, the vast
sums of money to be made through fluid networks linking cities with
other cities, and the global webs of exploited labour that dehumanize
people, break up families and diminish their lives, are emphasized when
global modernity and the Khan’s empire appear as parallel social and
economic dynamics – both just and unjust. The interruption of the nar-
rative by the Khan and Marco making nuisances of themselves is a key
feature of the dramaturgy. Their constant quarrelling, as backdrop to
the modern exploitation of labour and the production of fakes, speaks
of human greed, capital accumulation and commodity fetishism as
universal and historical motivating forces. Kublai Khan’s Xanadu, with
its ‘stately pleasure-dome,’ and ‘gardens bright with sinuous rills, where
blossomed many an incense-bearing tree’ (Coleridge, 1992: 58–9),
depicted on screens, provides a stark contrast to the inhumane condi-
tions of the factories in China and Italy and highlights not only class
difference, but the exploitation of Asia by the West.
One constant of the mise en scène is the frequent appearance of the
blue dress, the symbol of commodity culture and object of desire. In one
scene, Jessica puts on the blue dress only to find herself surrounded by
dozens of women wearing the same blue dress. They crowd the stage and
swirl about her in an ominous moving mass, all slavishly following fash-
ion. The object of desire has become a nightmare and Jessica becomes
disoriented and threatened, not knowing which is fake and which is
real. Eventually, all the women wearing the same blue dress merge into
one featureless and anonymous consumer, duped by the label and by
the global fashion industry. It is not merely that the consumer cannot
168 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

tell if it is real or fake; the dress possesses no distinguishing features. It is

merely a ubiquitous garment, used to manipulate consumer desires and
ultimately make the women appear like clones of each other, in the same
way that the erasure of self is made possible by fish and mice masks. If
that is the effect, then the ‘realness’ or ‘fakeness’ becomes immaterial.
The dress takes on multiple meanings: it is a symbol of desire, glamour,
oppression, unhappiness, corruption and greed, depending on people’s
relationship to it. The authenticity of commodities and the humans who
consume them, however, is challenged in a liquid reality.
The effect of the fragmenting of times and spaces, life trajectories and
stories is intensified by the use of multimedia, including video, moving
screens and bluescreen creating holograph-like images of Marco and the
Khan hovering over the action. In addition, a number of huge mirrors
framing the action in some scenes creates watery reflections, adding to
the general sense of fluidity.

The dark side of liquid modernity

The mixed reviews the play received in Singapore reveal less about the
failures of the production and more about its impact as a disturbingly
eclectic enactment of a multilayered, polyglottal global environment
riven with complexities and saturated with images. One reviewer,
Adeline Chia, ignored these elements to focus only on what she saw as
disorder and lack of perspective:

Gimmicky does not even begin to describe this play …. The script tried
to incorporate many elements but ended up being confused and over-
wrought. There was enough pointless use of technology in this show
to power a small village in Indonesia …. What little spark that was
found in the actors was completely lost in the high-tech wizardry.
(2009)

While Chia deprecates the confusion and excess of the production,

these features – and others – mark this production as a penetrating rep-
resentation of global modernity, a world in which constant stimulation
and change leave us wondering what is enduring and real.
Mike Featherstone could have been referring to the production of
Visible Cities when he described the culture of our era:

The overproduction of signs and the reproduction of images and

simulations leads to a loss of stable meaning, and an aestheticization
 Performing Liquid Modernity 169

of reality in which the masses become fascinated by the endless flow

of bizarre juxtapositions which take the viewer beyond the stable
sense.
(2007: 15)

In Calvino’s ur-text, when Marco Polo first starts to give his accounts of
the cities he has visited, he can’t speak the Tartar language and instead
performs a series of pantomimes to depict the cities. The result is that:
‘the Great Khan deciphered the signs, but the connection between
them and the places visited remained uncertain’ (Calvino, 1997: 18–19).
Calvino’s (1997) Kublai Khan seems to be remarkably prescient when he
sees beyond the stable sense of his own empire and recognizes the insta-
bility of meaning and the shifting interface between reality and fantasy:
‘In the Khan’s mind, the empire was reflected in a desert of labile and
interchangeable data …. Perhaps, Kublai thought, the empire is nothing
but a zodiac of the mind’s phantasms’ (Calvino, 1997: 19).
The performance, which drew good-sized audiences, reflects this
sense of the ephemeral. Against the background of the global move-
ment of goods, it explores the alienation, exploitation, poverty and
violence generated by the fetishization of commodities that underpins
the economic, political and criminal powers that are able to reach into
the micro worlds of our individual lives to structure and disturb them
at will. With the family, marriage and the state becoming moribund,
the infinite interplay of human desires, erotic encounters, individual
human tragedies of separation, anxiety and betrayal are left in a space
of flows with no stable points. In the words of Calvino’s Khan:

In the lives of emperors there is a moment which follows pride in the

boundless extension of the territories we have conquered, and the
melancholy and relief of knowing we shall soon give up any thought
of knowing and understanding them. There is a sense of emptiness
that comes over us at evening …. It is the desperate moment when
we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of
all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption’s gangrene
has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over
enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing.
(1997: 5)

In a brilliant reinvention of Calvino’s (1997) work, the perform-

ance offers a trenchant critique of the dark side of liquid modernity,
redeemed only by fantasy, humour and love.
11
Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’
Transculturally

Indonesia’s involvement in global performance flows across the Asia-

Pacific has long been shaped by the nation’s colonial past and postcolo-
nial present. Chapter 3 traced the inward flow of modern European-style
drama as a result of Dutch colonization from the late nineteenth cen-
tury onwards, and the importance of adaptations of Western plays in
the development of a modern national theatre. Traditional, regional
performing arts, by contrast, are the source of long-standing outward
flows – of ‘authentic’ ‘exotic’ forms, staged at international theatre
venues, and of expert practitioners, travelling overseas to perform and
to impart to Westerners unfamiliar new skills.
In recent years, the flows have become more varied and multidirec-
tional. Experimental performance groups from Europe, America, Japan
and Korea visit Indonesia and stage collaborative works with Indonesian
counterparts; Indonesian avant-garde theatre groups tour their perform-
ances overseas. Several collaborative transnational touring productions
have taken place, adapting Indonesian dramatic material for world stages.
Yet such international adaptations are arguably staged and understood
within a framework of ongoing colonially inflected cultural expecta-
tions and imbalances of wealth and power.
This chapter briefly reviews colonial and postcolonial flows of tra-
ditional performance out from Indonesia, then describes today’s more
diverse, multidirectional movements. Against this background it analy-
ses two international, intercultural productions drawing on Indonesian
dramatic material and involving Indonesian performers, which are
each shaped in contrasting ways by the patterns just described. The
Australian-Indonesian collaboration The Theft of Sita, adapting the
Balinese version of the Indian-derived legend the Ramayana to engage
with contemporary Indonesian political and environmental issues,
170
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 171

has had varying responses, reflecting cultural expectations in different

international sites. The epic tale I La Galigo, a myth of origin from the
island of Sulawesi transformed into a stage production by renowned
avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson, received great international
acclaim, but much critique within Indonesia due to the imbalance of
power and wealth involved. Indonesian artists were seen to be working
within an outsider’s creative frame to present a story appropriated from
their own literature and myth, to which local audiences were denied
access due to lack of funds and appropriate staging facilities. Then, in
early 2011 came a new development with the announcement that I La
Galigo would be staged in Sulawesi – the epic was ‘coming home’.

Outward flows: authentic, exotic Indonesian

performance goes West

European encounters with the Javanese arts began in the sixteenth cen-
tury: Portuguese adventurer Tome Pires saw shadow puppetry and ‘grace-
ful’ masked dance on the north coast of Java between 1512 and 1515;
Sir Frances Drake heard the ‘very strange … yet … pleasant and delight-
full [sic]’ music of the gamelan orchestra in 1580 (Cohen, 2010: 7). But it
was an intensification of European interest in Indonesian performance
in the late nineteenth century which began the flow of Indonesian arts
and practitioners to the West. Traditional dance, music and theatre
flourished in the Javanese royal courts at this time, displaying cultural
power as a substitute for the political control now ceded to the coloniz-
ers. Dutch scholars were drawn to writing about this rich performance
tradition, and colonial authorities, keen to attract private investment to
the Indies, began to promote their exotic colonial possession through
its arts.
International exhibitions were a key site of presentation of these per-
formances.1 Such events, with their lavish replicas of rural villages
and grand temples from the colonies creating ‘authentic’ setting for
performances, continued to fascinate European audiences through the
first half of the twentieth century. A particularly famous example is the
Paris exhibition of 1931 where Antonin Artaud, the French dramatist,
poet, actor and surrealist philosopher, encountered the wondrous, alien
spectacle of Balinese dance, and conceived his new theory of theatre,
the Theatre of Cruelty.
Indonesian performance fed into Orientalist fantasies of the ‘authentic’
premodern Other, cultivated in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century Europe and America in reaction against the oppressively solid
172 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

forces of contemporary modernization and industrialization. Some

Western performers imitated the movements and took on the perso-
nae of Indonesian practitioners: Matthew Cohen recounts the stories
of various self-styled ‘Javanese dancers’ and their choreographers.
Such performers aimed to entertain, to create imaginative fantasies of
Indonesia, rather than present actual cultural forms. This attitude grad-
ually changed from the 1930s onwards, Cohen reports, as interest in the
ethnological properties of dance grew (Cohen, 2007: 210–26). Yet, as
before, the prized aspect of Indonesian performance was its distinctive-
ness and otherness, as it flowed out to the West, in performances staged
overseas, and in the training of Western practitioners.

Performance flows after Independence: Sukarno’s

cultural missions and New Order neocolonialism

With the achievement of Indonesian Independence in 1945, the flows

of Indonesian culture into the world took on a very different form and
rationale. Under Sukarno, the first president of the new nation, tours by
groups of Indonesian performers, termed ‘cultural missions’, took place
to a wide range of international destinations including socialist countries,
other newly independent states and the United States. Indonesia was
announcing its presence on the world stage through culture and foster-
ing strategic alliances with the countries of greatest interest to it. The
programmes presented included regional dances, constructed or recreated
folk dances and contemporary arrangements of regional and national
songs. As Jennifer Lindsay observes, these programmes ‘portrayed
Indonesian culture as part of a new, young and moving world, not (as in
the colonial world fairs) in contrast to it’ (Lindsay, 2012: 207, 203).
Cultural life was profoundly affected by the violent transition from
the Indonesia of the 1950s and early 1960s – culturally outward-looking,
while riven by internal political divisions – to the enforced stability of
Suharto’s post-1965 New Order regime. The New Order state has been
compared to the Dutch colonial administration in its heavy-handed
control of the population, and valorization of political order and
stability. Its cultural policies, referred to in Chapter 6, might likewise be
described as ‘colonial’ in cultivating traditional, regional performance
genres as embodiments of the ‘authentic’ cultures of their area. Firm
containment of this regional diversity with a unitary whole is symbol-
ized in a major cultural monument of the Suharto era, the Taman Mini
Indonesia (Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park), on the outskirts
of Jakarta, site of traditional houses representing each ethnic group
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 173

in the Indonesian archipelago and of performances of regional music

and dance (Lindsey, 1993: 172). Along with its frequent designation as
‘Indonesia’s Disneyland’, the park also recalls the grand international
expositions of the colonial era where the imperial powers exhibited the
cultural richness of their colonial possessions.

Expanding flows, shifting directions

Gradually, from the late 1980s onwards, performance flows between

Indonesia and the wider world began to open up and diversify.2 The
rise of Japan and Singapore as sites of international, intercultural theatre
activity, with a particular focus on inter-Asian collaboration, have pro-
vided significant opportunities for such activity. Singapore, particularly
the Singapore Arts Festival, has been the site of many Indonesian pro-
ductions. Japan is both a destination for Indonesian touring groups and
involved in frequent theatrical collaboration. The theatre group Garasi
discussed in Chapter 6, for example, performed their three major post-
2002 productions, Waktu Batu (Stone Time), Je.ja.l.a.n (The Streets) and
Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body), in Tokyo and Singapore; Garasi have also
been involved in several collaborative projects with Japanese theatre
groups.
Much lively, varied international interaction in the performing arts
takes place in the local festival events and independent arts spaces that
have opened since the end of the Suharto era. The Salihara theatre in
Jakarta is a key site of performances by experimental theatre, music and
dance groups, touring from Europe and Japan as well as other Asian
countries, and for stagings of local-international collaborations.
International fellowships and residencies, where visual and performing
artists spend time observing practices in overseas countries, and work-
ing with local organizations on attachment, contribute significantly to
international performance flows. Youth culture, such as hip-hop and
rap, is likewise a thriving site of hybrid creation and international inter-
change.3 International performance flows in, out and around Indonesia
are thus much more numerous, multidirectional and collaborative now
than in the past.
Yet the legacies of the past and the forces of power differences linger
on. Indonesian performers undertaking residencies in Western coun-
tries generally focus on acquiring new organizational and artistic skills,
while Western artists in Indonesia give workshops on their own practice
and work with local groups on planning and organization building.
The West remains the domain of modern knowledge and technical
174 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

skills. In international theatre collaborations, Indonesian performers

participate as fellow contemporary artists rather than essentialized,
exoticized Others. Yet here, too, old patterns arguably still reverberate.
Overseas directors organize funding and exercise creative control while
Indonesian performers work within their projects, supplying knowledge
and performance skills.

International collaborative productions:

The Theft of Sita and I La Galigo

In large-scale, international productions such imbalances of power and

artistic input are particularly evident, and often give rise to explicit
debate and contestation. In both The Theft of Sita and I La Galigo,
Euro-American directors devised creative projects, found funding and
invited Indonesian performers to work with them contributing artistry
grounded in Indonesian theatrical traditions. But the way the two
productions were initiated, carried out and engaged with Indonesian
performance and political conditions differed markedly.
The Theft of Sita originated from a commission to Australian director
Nigel Jamieson and musician Paul Grabowsky to mount a production
for the 2000 Adelaide Festival, and their desire to create a work based
on the Ramayana story. Jamieson wrote a script, working in consulta-
tion with a Balinese shadow puppeteer whom he had had previously
invited to Australia for a young performers project. Then collaborative
rehearsals took place in Bali and Adelaide, where Australian musicians
and puppeteers worked intensively with Balinese counterparts, produc-
ing a work combining traditional Balinese wayang shadow puppetry
(Figure 11.1) and gamelan music with innovative new puppets and
musical compositions.
The performance plays out the story of the abduction of Sita, wife of
the hero, Rama, in the Ramayana legend, by the demon king Rahwana.
It commences in the style of a traditional Balinese wayang perform-
ance of the story, introducing princely Rama, delicate, devoted Sita
and other characters, then moves out into a forest being decimated
by huge logging machines, and on to the huge megalopolis of Jakarta,
full of skyscraper puppets and computer-generated images of student
demonstrations. Rama’s comic servants have travelled to this present-
day equivalent of the realm of the enemy king in order to find the
captured Sita. Sita’s story is staged as an allegory of recent developments
in Indonesia, including the destruction of the environment through
development and tourism and the political upheaval marking the end
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 175

Figure 11.1 Theft of Sita, directed by Nigel Jamieson. Botanical Gardens, Adelaide
Festival, 2000. Courtesy of Performing Lines. Photo: Julian Crouch

of the Suharto regime. Sita has become a metaphor for the Indonesian
nation, stolen by the regime but hopefully soon to be returned to the
people through democratic elections. The performance ends as the two
clowns hesitantly approach the ballot box.
The political events depicted in the performance had also shaped its
process of production. The creative team arrived in Bali in late 1999
amidst tensions surrounding the presidential elections which followed
Suharto’s resignation in 1998 and the violence occasioned by the
transition to independence of Indonesia’s former colony, East Timor.
Australia’s active involvement in the latter event, in lobbying for inter-
national intervention in East Timor and leading the peace-keeping mis-
sion eventually stationed there, had attracted considerable criticism and
suspicion within Indonesia. The original shadow puppeteer withdrew
from the Theft of Sita project, evidently discouraged from collaborating
with Australian artists in this context: the eventual performer, I Made
Sidie, more adventurous and internationally experienced, veteran of
several previous intercultural projects, was a wonderfully fortuitous
last-minute find (Laurie, 2000). The production also engaged with
contemporary performance developments and their political applica-
tion in Indonesia. The departures from wayang tradition and the use of
newly created puppets, multiple puppeteers and screens, film projection
and new music accorded with innovations taking place in wayang in
Indonesia itself. The political reference also echoed extension in the late
Suharto era of the once-subtle political allusions of wayang performance
176 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

into blatant, combative critique. Such connections indicate, it has been

suggested, that the production was not wreaking violence on authentic
Indonesian performance tradition, rather reflecting the ongoing, con-
stantly adapting nature of that ‘tradition’ (Laurie, 2000).
The political dimensions of the production give it a particularly
Australian resonance. For Indonesia, although culturally Other, repre-
sents for Australians no distant, mythical land but a close, sometimes
troublesome neighbour whose politics have important local implica-
tions. The Theft of Sita reproduces images of Indonesia as a problem
and threat familiar to Australian audiences through reports in the mass
media – spoiled environment, urban chaos, authoritarian dictator –
along with reference to a hoped-for better future. Responses to the per-
formance within Australia and internationally highlight the political
positioning of the work. Reviews in the Australian press comment, over-
whelmingly positively, on the political and environmental reference
of the show (see, for example, Adamson, 2001; Hallet, 2001; Herbert,
2000). By contrast, British and American press reviews omit mention
of the political and environmental themes or lambaste their simplistic
and didactic treatment.4 Such content is seen to undermine the ‘mythi-
cal spell’ of the work and ‘its remarkable visual artistry’ (Eichler, 2001).
There is a shared concern at such ‘glib politicisation’ (Times, 2001) of
the venerated Ramayana epic. A New York Times reviewer explicitly and
somewhat condescendingly connects the political content of the show
with the context of its production: ‘the two countries involved have
had their tensions, particularly in recent years over East Timor, and
there is a political theme woven into the latter half of The Theft of Sita
that must give it more impact back home’ (Genzlinger, 2001).
For European and American viewers, Indonesia as a remote, relatively
little known Asian country is associated with aesthetically beautiful per-
formance traditions, and ancient, faithfully transmitted religio-historical
epics. To reinterpret such dramatic material to convey commentary
on contemporary politics is seen as a perversion of its authenticity,
a negation of its magic and mystery. In Australia, by contrast, where
Indonesia’s contemporary political relevance is inbuilt, such reference in
performance is accepted as natural.
The intriguing question of how Indonesian audiences would have
reacted to the production unfortunately remains answered. The Theft of
Sita never reached Indonesia. While Nigel Jamieson and the performers
reportedly wanted very much to stage the production in Jakarta, they
were unable to obtain the necessary funding to do so (Martin, 2001).
And ironically, the topical political reference that gave the work vibrant
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 177

immediacy a decade ago now connects it with past events in a way

likely to discourage future performance.
In contrast to the close yet problematic engagement of The Theft of
Sita with contemporary Indonesian performance practice and political
conditions, the aura of I La Galigo is that of timeless myth and universal
human experience. Unlike the Ramayana, which has a central role in
Balinese and Javanese cultural expression and is performed theatrically
in wayang shadow puppet theatre and dance drama, I La Galigo is not
widely known in contemporary times and has no associated perform-
ance tradition. Instead, the epic exists as a vast collection of individual
texts in various private and public collections, written in an archaic
language understood by very few. The process of adapting it for interna-
tional performance was often described as ‘rescuing’ an almost forgot-
ten heritage and taking it to the world.
Whereas for Nigel Jamieson making The Theft of Sita was part of an
ongoing involvement in collaborative and politically engaged thea-
tre in the Asia Pacific region, also illustrated in his work Wrong Skin,
discussed in Chapter 5, the cosmopolitan, avant-garde director Robert
Wilson first had his attention drawn to the far-off island of Sulawesi
and its epic tradition by a film-maker colleague. American film maker
Rhoda Grauer became interested in the epic while making a film about
the bissu, the transvestite priests of South Sulawesi, who regard the I La
Galigo manuscripts as sacred objects and draw on them in ceremonies.
Creating the performance required extensive research and workshop-
ping with an all-Indonesian cast. The result was a dramatic production
drawing on Indonesian dance and movement, games, rituals, artefacts
and musical forms, reworked, then ordered and animated by Wilson’s
distinctive creative vision.
The epic is played out among generations of gods and humans. Gods
from the Upper World and the Lower World meet in and populate the
Middle World, the domain of human life. Trouble threatens when the
wife of Batara Guru, the first god to descend to the world, conceives
twins, a boy and girl. While still in the womb, the twins express their
love for one another and their reluctance to be parted through birth.
Once born, they are quickly separated to avoid the disaster that an inces-
tuous union between them would bring upon the world. Eventually,
the heroic Sawerigading meets and falls in love with his twin sister,
We Tenriabeng, but she persuades him that their cousin, the princess
of China, is even more beautiful and a more fitting wife. Sawerigading
travels to China in a ship made from a sacred tree and wins the princess
in battle. Although she refuses to look on her husband, thinking of him
178 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

as a barbarian, they conceive a child in the darkness. Sawerigading then

brings up his son, I La Galigo, alone. As a young man, I La Galigo hears
of a grand cockfight being held in China, and both father and son enter
the contest. Seeing her husband for the first time, and impressed by
his cockfighting skills, the princess falls in love with him, and mother,
father and son are reunited. But somehow the stain of human fault is
not excised; I La Galigo does not grow into a flawless noble hero, but
a ‘rogue and a scoundrel’ (Cohen, 2005) who steals other men’s wives.
The supreme being in the Upper World decrees that all the descendants
of the gods from the Upper and Lower Worlds should return there. Only
a few figures are left in the Middle World as the ancestors of humans,
and the bridges to the worlds above and below are sealed off.
The staging underscores and celebrates the monumental, mythic
dimensions of the work. High scaffolding towering above the stage and
stairs leading down to imagined caverns below simulate the three levels
of Upper, Middle and Lower Worlds. Godly figures move between the
two, most notably Batara Guru in a spectacular, upside-down descent
along a shaft of bamboo on to a stage awash with red light. The imperi-
ous Chinese princess appears on her palace balcony, a platform halfway
up. The use of lighting is central to the creation of a sense of magic,
wonder and awe. Images of the unborn twins, shifting and intertwin-
ing, are projected as shadows on a gauze screen held aloft by their
parents; red light flooding the stage suggests the bloody carnage that
would result if their tabooed mating were to take place. The presence
on stage throughout the performance of a bissu priest, reading from a
text and chanting, projects a sense of ritual import that ‘infuses the
performance with sacred energy’ (Cohen, 2005: 148). The fact that char-
acters do not speak, but instead dialogue is voiced by chanting narrators
and projected as surtitled text, adds to a sense of their existence in a
distant mythical realm rather than the world of the everyday. Yet there
is also colourful action, vibrant, varied music and lively humour in the
antics of Sawerigading’s comic retainers, who row him across the sea
with energetic paddling gestures, and accompany him on his multiple
adventures in the manner of servants to the heroes in many forms of
Indonesian theatre.

Audience responses, international and local

Audiences responded enthusiastically to the spectacle and wonder of

the performance in its many international stagings,5 and critical reviews
were generally very positive. A New York Times reviewer described
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 179

the 2005 New York production, for example, as a ‘stunningly beauti-

ful music-theater work’ in which ‘universal archetypes are given an
Indonesian aura’ in the playing out of the age-old motif of the promise
and dangers of twins (Rothstein, 2005). Another review of the same
production commented on its ‘smorgasbord of acting, dancing, sing-
ing and instrumental styles adapted from the Indonesian cornucopia’
and praised its humanism: ‘For all its amplitudes … I La Galigo was
not Wagnerian, not overwhelming, but humanistic…. One cared what
would happen to these people, to their children and their children’s
children even after Wilson doused the last lights’ ( Jackson, 2005).
Theatre scholars also responded positively to the performance, com-
menting approvingly on its energy, stunning imagery and lively pace,
as well as inclusive aspects of its organization – the all-Indonesian cast,
the openness of the early rehearsal process and the respect shown to the
bissu priest and his ritual practice (Cohen, 2005; McKnight, 2007). The
wondrous music created by the musical director, Rahayu Supanggah,
blending traditional Sulawesi rhythms and melodies with styles from
all over Indonesia, was singled out for particular comment. That the
production brought together and created ongoing ties among perform-
ers from different parts of the archipelago in presenting ‘an epic that
is felt as less Buginese than Indonesian’ is seen as another strength
(Cohen, 2005: 148). But such discussion is inflected by awareness of
negative responses to the production from within Indonesia and among
Indonesians.
One problematic issue was the staging of the first performance of I
La Galigo in nearby Singapore. Premiering the production in this site
arguably expressed recognition of both the ‘Asian-ness’ of the work and
the importance of the Asian region as a centre of theatrical activity.
Singapore’s existence as a ‘cosmopolitan hub’ located in South East Asia,
a ‘Global City for the Arts’ as described in Part IV, facilitated Wilson’s
intercultural project. But reviews by Indonesians convey a sense of
‘thinly veiled envy’ that neighbouring Singapore should be judged tech-
nically and artistically advanced enough to host the production, whereas
Indonesia was ‘relegated to the domain of the technologically challenged
“third world”’, unable to supply a suitable international-standard theatre
venue (Lindsay, 2007: 70). The choice of location allowed a large con-
tingent of Indonesians to attend who would have found it much harder
to travel to Paris or New York to see the show, but seemingly aggravated
the humiliation of Indonesia’s exclusion from hosting ‘its own’. When
the show was eventually performed in Indonesia, not in Sulawesi but at a
theatre in Taman Mini Indonesia, the colonially inflected Jakarta theme
 180

Figure 11.2 I La Galigo, directed by Robert Wilson. Lincoln Center, 14 July 2005. Courtesy of Robert Wilson. Photo: Pavel
Antonov
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 181

park mentioned earlier, which had been fitted out with the necessary
stage equipment at Indonesian expense, critics attacked the enormous
outlay for the production, beyond the wildest dreams of local theatre
practitioners, and the astronomical price of tickets (Prasad, 2006: 93).
On the issue of ownership, concerns were expressed over the tak-
ing of ‘unjustified and perhaps unauthorised liberties with material of
local significance and sensitivity’ (McKnight, 2007: 145), and involving
performers from regions of Indonesia outside the I La Galigo’s ‘home
territory’ of South Sulawesi. Within Sulawesi, debate raged over who
was consulted and who was excluded in preparations for the production
(Lindsay, 2007: 71).
Indonesian reviewers of the performance often found the show flat
and lacking in emotional depth. They referred to its dance and move-
ment using the term sendratari, a recently developed form of Indonesian
dance drama, based on traditional dance, staged ubiquitously at public
celebrations of all kinds. Such spectacle, they suggested, lacked inten-
sity of feeling, while the words of the translated text had little poetic
resonance (Lindsay, 2007: 69). One critic wrote that the performance
in Jakarta reminded him of a dance programme on state television or a
performance at his former high school (Prasad, 2006: 94).
Such disappointment has been interpreted as arising from mis-
placed expectations of I La Galigo as intercultural theatre. The intense
pre-performance publicity for the production had stressed its epic
qualities, with constant reference to the Indian Mahabharata and
sometimes explicit mention of the famous intercultural production of
the Mahabharata by British director Peter Brook. Brook’s Mahabharata
has itself stirred intense controversy and debate, viewed as a prime
example of ‘hegemonic intercultural theatre’, as defined by Daphne
Lei (Lei, 2011), drawing on the work of Rustam Bharucha and others,
in which ‘Eastern’ performance traditions and labour are mobilized
within productions devised, directed and financed by the wealthy,
powerful West. Yet, as such an iconic, widely known work, Brook’s
production had created among viewers of Wilson’s I La Galigo expecta-
tions not fulfilled by an intercultural creation based on a very different
original source. I La Galigo, as a series of narrative episodes, lacks the
philosophical grounding of the Mahabharata, as well as the rich the-
atrical traditions through which it has long been performed (Lindsay,
2007: 69).
Aside from specific comparisons with the Mahabharata, more general
issues of cultural flow help explain why Indonesians were less enchanted
by the wondrous spectacle of the I La Galigo than international audiences;
182 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

why they found the dramatic idiom flat rather than appreciating its
innovation in translating written narrative into a visual dramatic
form. Dramatic elements experienced as exotic and magical by view-
ers in Europe, the United States and Australia were familiar fare for
Indonesians; while they were combined in novel ways, the mixing of
such elements to create a performance spectacle, to stage a sendratari,
is common practice. As in the past, exotic performance ‘raw materials’
had flowed out from Indonesia into the Euro-American theatre world.
When the resulting intercultural performance flowed back in, local
audiences expected to see the transformation of those elements into
complex, sophisticated, contemporary theatre, modern drama on a
world scale. But the colourful spectacle interpreted internationally as an
embodiment of universal human themes to Indonesian critics seemed
one-dimensional; familiar and yet not their own.
Yet such disappointment with the aesthetic qualities and power
imbalances of the I La Galigo production was not the end of the story.
The saga continued…

The I La Galigo comes home

In February 2011 came news of a dramatic impending event. After five

years ‘roaming the globe’, the ‘world-class theatre production of the
I La Galigo’ was about to come home, to ‘anchor in the town of its birth,
Makassar’ (Sinurat, 2011). A prominent Makassar businessman and
former minister of industry in the national government, Tanri Abeng,
had initiated the event, and raised much of the funding, along with the
South Sulawesi provincial government. On 23 and 24 April 2011 the
Robert Wilson I La Galigo would be staged outdoors at the historic Fort
Rotterdam in Makassar. In press reports of the announcement, Tanri
Abeng is quoted recalling his pride at seeing I La Galigo performed in
New York, acclaimed on the world stage. Now he wanted to develop
this ‘state asset, particularly for the people of South Sulawesi’ in its own
environment (Ujungpandang Ekpres, 2011). Besides the performance,
he would also commit money to the development of an I La Galigo
museum and library. There was talk of attracting tourism, and the mayor
of Makassar expressed the hope that the performance would attract the
interest of young people and improve the image of Makassar city.
The current Indonesian political and social context, where regional
governments have much greater control over local finances and admin-
istration than in the centralized Suharto era, and regional and local
identity is vigorously promoted, had evidently attracted a new level of
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 183

attention to the Wilson I La Galigo and a new agenda for its perform-
ance. Bringing the local epic home in its much-acclaimed global form
was expected to enhance the prestige of Makassar and South Sulawesi,
boost local pride and hopefully bring ongoing cultural and economic
benefits. A story of human universals was to be integrated into a very
specific local political context.
Commentary on the eventual performance focused prominently
on such issues. Dignitaries from Jakarta honouring the event with
their attendance were listed in detail and Robert Wilson’s own pres-
ence noted with pride. The number of foreign and domestic visitors
attending the performance was cited, and the hope expressed that they
would promote the show at home and attract more tourists to Makassar
(Tempo Interaktif, 2011). Wilson himself is quoted as suggesting that
‘art and culture when developed to the maximum and appreciated by
their own people can bring significant economic progress’. I La Galigo
should become identified with Makassar, as the Louvre and the Eiffel
Tower are with Paris. His own creation is still imperfect, but he will
leave it as a contribution to Sulawesi culture to be developed and per-
fected by local artists. ‘We have planted a seed and the tree is in Bugis
soil. My hope is that the seed will grow in its own land’, he says (qtd
in Harifuddin, 2011).
There are reports of great public interest in the event with almost all
tickets sold out and enthusiastic audience response, with thousands of
viewers giving the cast a standing ovation and breaking into thunder-
ous applause when Wilson was sighted. Reviewers mention that certain
spectacular effects of the production were undermined by the limita-
tions of the outdoor setting, but overall the mood is upbeat, celebratory.
There is a sense of appreciation of the strengths of the performance and
of Wilson’s contribution to Sulawesi culture through its creation. One
article responds delightedly in English to Wilson’s hope that the ‘seed’
he has planted will flourish and I La Galigo become an icon of South
Sulawesi identity. ‘Thank you so much Mr Wilson! We are so proud of
you as we are proud of our hero I La Galigo’ (Maula, 2011). The mayor
of Makassar is frequently quoted as stating that I La Galigo would be
staged annually with funding specially allocated from the provincial
budget.

A new form of inward cultural flow?

Might this suggest a new model of intercultural theatre, in which origi-

nal Indonesian dramatic elements are combined and transformed in an
184 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

intercultural work which is then brought back and developed further in

its local setting? Might the increased influence and prominence of the
regions in Indonesia provide a context where national sensitivities, East/
West divisions and postcolonial tensions can fade into the background,
allowing more flexible global–local cultural flows to take place?
At a theoretical level the prospect is interesting and thought-provoking.
But the current reality of regional politics in Indonesia, involving con-
stant competition for power, influence and money, hardly seems to offer
the required stability and breadth of vision. In the I La Galigo case, the
plan for an annual staging of the epic has not (yet?) come to fruition;
the 2012 performance promised by the Makassar mayor, involving
Robert Wilson and producer Restu Kusumaningrum as advisors, did not
eventuate. A year on, provincial and city governments apparently had
other priorities.
Attempting to get some sense of the response to the 2011 Makassar
I La Galigo among local artists, performers and culture-lovers, I asked
this question in an email to an artist friend, Firman Djamil, creator of
several contemporary interpretations of the I La Galigo. Firman replied
that experts in, and lovers of, Buginese literature had welcomed the
Robert Wilson production for putting I La Galigo on the world stage,
illustrating ‘how a local literature can be introduced globally through
representation in a work of theatre’. Even more useful would be for
Wilson and his backers to establish a museum in Makassar containing
the properties and the documentation from the performance as an edu-
cational resource available to all (Djamil, 2012).
But Firman also wonders, ‘If it weren’t for the prestigious name of
Robert Wilson, would this interpretation have been accepted globally?
What if a local Bugis artist had made such theatre, would it have been
received in the same way?’ He himself would love to continue his work
on I La Galigo which began with study of the ancient texts,6 inspired
a 1996 performance artwork critiquing current political authorities
through depiction of the greed of characters in the epic,7 and a recent
installation in an international environmental art project in Taiwan.8
He is very keen to develop these ideas further in new ‘more progressive’
large-scale performance. But these are only dreams; he has no hope of
acquiring the finance and network of support required.
Indeed in big transnational stage productions, destined for the major
arts festivals, differentials of power, funding and artistic reputation will
presumably continue to ensure that Indonesia supplies the raw mate-
rials of performance rather the innovative, transformative ideas. In
adapting Indonesian theatrical material for world stages, international
 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally 185

theatre directors are more likely to seek out masters of traditional forms
rather than creators of conceptual new artworks.
Yet, as cultural flows expand and political conditions change, new
connections are being made. Existing hegemonies of wealth and power
have shaped such interestingly different transnational adaptations of
Indonesian theatre as The Theft of Sita and the I La Galigo – the former
intentionally engaging with regional politics and performance, the lat-
ter framed in universal terms, achieving global acclaim, then ‘appropri-
ated’ within an agenda of local political and cultural resurgence. So far,
Indonesia would seem to lack the economic and institutional power to
produce a new, non-hegemonic theatre practice of the kind advocated
by Daphne Lei, in which the ‘East’, ‘abandoning the outmoded Oriental
persona’, will participate ‘as an equal partner in the creation of intercul-
tural theatre’ (Lei, 2011:585). But if in time such a model emerges, and
spreads and flows through the Asia Pacific region, Indonesian artists,
informed by their varied experience of transnational, collaborative per-
formance, drawing on richly diverse local theatre practices, will surely
contribute creatively and dynamically to its development.
12
Kawamura Takeshi’s Theatre and
the Spectacle of Adaptation

Jürgen Habermas’s theme of aesthetic modernity marks modernism

with the sense of a ‘new time consciousness … acceleration of history
[and] discontinuity in everyday life’ (Habermas, 1983: 3). As such, it is
an outstanding description of modern life in Tokyo, depicted in The
Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise (discussed in Chapter 7) where just such an
uncanny sense of the folding of time was explored. But Habermas also
predicts tensions and resistance to what he calls the ephemeral quali-
ties of transhistory, qualities that he identifies as finding a powerful
voice in neoconservative political rhetorics. The articulation of this is,
as Habermas notes, couched as a ‘longing for an undefiled, immaculate
and stable present’ (1983: 3). A violent insistence on stability, however,
is soon upended by the transformative privatizing power of neoliberal
economics, and the idea of a history that might bring a sense of stability
to the political-national consciousness is both downplayed and overem-
phasized. Neoconservatism, writes Habermas, ‘shifts onto cultural mod-
ernism the uncomfortable burdens of a more or less successful capitalist
modernization of the economy and society’ (1983: 6). In doing so, it
struggles to address its own internal tensions, as the overarching logic
of the cultural economy produces a modern cultural space that is seem-
ingly without a sense of history; instead, we see insistent attempts to
forge a political inertia by focusing on mythic-totemic national causes
and racial essentialism.
This can be described as a kind of ‘history after history’ (to paraphrase
Francis Fukuyama) or seen in a more critical light, history without com-
plications. A primary example of this is the doctrine of American excep-
tionalism mirrored in the ugly racialized discourses of the Howard era
in Australia (as discussed in Chapter 5). In Japan, where a long drawn-
out economic recession has tempered the narrative of postwar growth,
186
 Kawamura Takeshi’s Spectacle of Adaptation 187

history has largely been unable to address the experience of that fail-
ure. Instead, a version of national cultural essentialism (nihonjinron) is
ineluctably connected to conservative political groups’ maintenance of
power. While neoconservative groups flounder to explain the failures
of the postwar economy, they hope to foster Japanese exceptionalism
through the constant reassertion of Japan’s wartime ‘victim status’ and
an unexamined, constructed history of the imperial house as the eternal
embodiment of Japanese culture.
The question for modern theatre in its liquid, discontinuous forms
becomes one of trying to understand how best to critique these econo-
mic and political-historical trends. Habermas evokes Adorno’s politicized
theoretical understanding of the cultural formation of the aesthetic, a
point that is helpful in theorizing modern theatre (shingeki) in Japan
after the Second World War for example. Going further, we might
continue to rupture the ideological constitutive power of history in
order to critically reflect on the contemporary cultural condition. This
would need a form of aesthetics to go beyond what Habermas notes is
a ‘young conservative’ recapitulation of ‘decentred subjectivity’ (1983:
12). To stretch these contractions requires the reawakening of history
in the form of a dialogue rather than its recapitulation as an imaginary
endless present or personal narrative. It is with this idea in mind that
we consider the radical adaptations of canonical texts by Tokyo-based
playwright Kawamura Takeshi.
Kawamura has undertaken to make adaptation and rewriting diverse
aspects of the canon a key part of his practice as an artist, stating that he
had begun to think about performance more in terms of re-enactment
and film. The outcome of this, he argues, is an important role for thea-
tre to remake and editorialize already existing stories (qtd in Eckersall,
2006b: 45). For Kawamura, processes of adaptation include the idea of
a ‘director’s cut’ where a work can be re-examined – effectively remade
in order to explore how canonical ideas and forms can engage with
contemporary themes and issues. The link to Habermas is seen through
aesthetic modernity as a ‘new time consciousness’, but one that rejects
the neoconservative view of a stable present by its dramaturgical sense
of pulling stories apart. In other words, Kawamura views the fragmenta-
tion of history as a way of reflecting on history; it is a way for him to
join metatheatrical processes with the sense of an activist critique of
Japan, something that Kawamura has consistently done throughout his
career since the early 1980s. As Peter Eckersall notes elsewhere: ‘With
a dramaturgy of citations, manifestos, and cinematic references to the
recent dystopian past, Kawamura dramatizes and denaturalizes the
188 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

spectre of unease in contemporary life in Japan. … [T]heatre is a source

of social and cultural memory and a way of reviving the past in order to
consider its attributes’ (Eckersall, 2011: x). Before considering this point
further, we need also to think briefly about the context of theatrical
adaptation in Japan as it also pertains to Kawamura’s work.

Adaptation in Japanese theatre

An emphasis in Japanese theatre on reworking stories and aesthetic

vocabularies is evident from the earliest of times. There are many exam-
ples of stories adapted from Buddhist scriptures and historical events for
the production of Noh plays in the Muromachi era (1338–1573), and
Noh performances were commonly adapted for the medieval bunraku
(ningyôjôruri) and kabuki theatres. Indeed, the idea of adaptation in his-
torical terms can be compared to the systems of lineage and patronage
(iemoto) that sustains many traditional arts practices in Japan. The idea
that one learns a practice from a teacher and to a large degree transmits
that practice by following in the footsteps of that teacher is a highly
developed and codified cultural economy. This is not to be compared
to the negative connotations associated with copying in Western styles
of artistic production after the medieval period, when notions of origi-
nality gradually hold sway over academic or school-based models of
production. Rather, the opposite is the case, and an artist who clearly
shows the transmission of a form is highly regarded. That is not to say
that innovation is not present; the idea of gradually innovating in a
performance form through a process of adaptation is greatly valued and
expected of eminent artists.
The theme of adaptation is more complicated in the modern theatre
because of the tensions about authenticity and voice that have been
connected to Japanese theatre and its adaptation of Western stories,
aesthetics and ideological traits. Scholars trace these tensions back at
least to the Meiji era (1868–1912), a time of rapid modernization and
national reform. M. Cody Poulton, for example, argues that questions
of Japanese modernization can best be understood ‘according to the
paradigms of adaptation and translation … [and] the creation of a new
conceptual vocabulary for theatre’ (Poulton, 2007: 23). While many of
these issues were last tackled in the 1960s, when overt attempts to cre-
ate a syncretic theatre with aspects of Japan’s theatrical past combined
with new avant-garde subjectivities were evident, Japanese theatre con-
tinues to feature modes of adaptation in a range of styles from realism
to contemporary dance. Tokyo Notes, referencing the film Tokyo Story
 Kawamura Takeshi’s Spectacle of Adaptation 189

and Hirata’s deep interest in the work of Anton Chekhov, for example,
has already been discussed in Chapter 4. As we have seen in previous
chapters, questions of adaptation have also moved into arenas that
address, in addition to language and translation, platforms for compo-
sitional hybridity and new media technologies – ideas that will be seen
to factor centrally in Kawamura’s work as well.
Arguably, adapting plays from other sources in contemporary theatre
is now commonplace, but there is no singular reading of the context of
adaptation. Each playwright makes choices about the explicit or implicit
medium of adaptation. Consequently, the meaning of adaptation proc-
esses in cultural terms takes on different possibilities depending on the
context of the work under consideration. Ninagawa Yukio’s famous ver-
sions of Shakespeare’s plays that have enjoyed great popularity in the
United Kingdom (an example of recentring globalization, discussed in
the final chapter) have different interpretive flavours to more overt and
politically complex questions of adaptation in the work of other writers.
When theatre is overtly adapted, the question of adaptation is interest-
ing, for the resulting work lifts the process of adaptation out of a strictly
dramaturgical process and makes it available for cultural comment. For
Japanese theatre makers, adaptation is sometimes a way of estranging
the established order of modern theatre. Such examples of adaptation
are overtly questioning the process of adaptation, using it as a lens by
which to consider issues of cultural appropriation, cultural authority
and power in an age of liquid modernity. Hence we need to think more
theoretically about adaptation as a process of modernity and, in rela-
tion to Bauman and others, as an exemplar of various kinds of flow in
economic, political and cultural spheres. The interesting thing about
some theatrical adaptations is how they embody this kind of interstitial
modernity with clarity, but also with the tension of something that is
evidently in dialogue with, and wanting to contest, the authority of an
original text.

The spectacle of adaptation

Adaptation takes theatre into questions of intermedial and transna-

tional states (see Chapter 9). Working with aspects of the global canon
also leads to questions about local history because the canon is a crea-
tion of history and, as we explore in this chapter, part of history’s spec-
tacle. This chapter considers Kawamura’s approach to the canon as a
spectacle of adaptation that, in contrast to the deterritorialization that
is evident in other examples, can be seen to reterritorialize theatre in the
190 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

sense that Kawamura’s work relates his adaptations to local themes and
issues. As noted above, Kawamura fragments canonical texts in order to
question their authority. At the same time, however, as analysis of one
of his most important adaptation plays, Hamuretto Kûron (Hamletclone,
2000) will show, he uses the energizing spectacle of history to make
statements about Japan in the present day.
By spectacle, we mean an overwhelming force that mediates the
expansion of capitalism and deforms history as outlined in Guy Debord’s
The Society of the Spectacle (1995). In developing his thesis, Debord
argues for society to urgently re-engage with history as a polemical
undertaking (Debord, 1995: 29). As he writes: ‘To reflect upon history
is also, inextricably, to reflect on power’ (1995: 98). History is flattened
by the spectacle, and Debord remains somewhat sceptical about the
possibility of this changing. He was often critical of art having illusory
oppositional tendencies, for example. Yet his intellectual practice aimed
to show the mechanisms of the spectacle through processes of exten-
sion and inversion. Arguably, this energy of the spectacle can also apply
to Kawamura’s work, since he uses adaptation to drive a similar sense
of struggle. In his depiction of transhistorical moments as fragments,
he enables a view of the mechanisms of historical power and provides
spaces for critical reflection and commentary. His plays are forceful
energetic texts with abrupt citations of canonical sources. The drama-
turgical consciousness permanently upends history. Furthermore, the
way that his characters ‘occupy’ history in his plays, sometimes includ-
ing the author figure of Kawamura (even sometimes himself playing
that role in productions), compares to what Debord calls the demand
‘to live the history time creates’ and to become activated by and visible
in history (Thesis 143, 1995: 106). This, Debord argues, ‘signals a pos-
sible point of departure for a new historical life’ (1995: 106). Thus, the
idea of a spectacle of adaptation links Kawamura’s use of history and his
characteristically energetic and fractured dramaturgical techniques to a
position of rethinking history as critique.
A good example of this is Hamletclone (Figure 12.1), a play that draws
on Heiner Müller’s play Die Hamletmaschine (Hamletmachine, 1977) for
inspiration (and Müller’s postmodern critique of theatre and society is a
well-known reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet). Hamletmachine is
a palimpsest of interludes, found texts and references to episodes from
European history. As the name suggests, Kawamura’s play is a mutat-
ing clone, an imperfect copy of an already famously unstable text. Like
Müller’s text, Kawamura uses the idea of Hamlet as a divided multiply-
ing subject and agent of power, and the play soon moves into a series
 Kawamura Takeshi’s Spectacle of Adaptation 191

Figure 12.1 Prince C (Soeda Sonoko) commits suicide in Hamletclone. German

tour, 2003. Courtesy of Kawamura Takeshi. Photo: Miyauchi Katsu

of short scenes narrating a potential military coup by neo-nationalist

forces.
In the background to this idea is novelist Mishima Yukio’s failed coup
attempt and suicide by means of seppuku in Tokyo in 1970. To commit
seppuku, one uses a sword to slice open one’s own belly. It was a ritual-
ized form of death employed by samurai in various contexts in medieval
ruling-class Japan. Ritual suicide as a ‘noble sacrifice’ was subsequently
adopted by Japanese militarists during the Second World War, a point
well demonstrated by the figure of the kamikaze, for example. Seppuku
was romanticized by Mishima as part of the code of honour (bushidô)
representing what he saw as a unique and enduring aspect of the
Japanese spirit, a perspective that was memorably explored in his short
story Yûkoku (Patriotism, 1960). In an uncanny moment of ‘rehearsal’
for his eventual demise, Mishima played the role of the young solder
in a film version of Patriotism made in 1966. In the story, the recently
married military officer hears that a nationalist coup attempt launched
by his comrades has failed. As his comrades are to be executed, honour
prescribes that he also must die. The story shows the man telling his
wife the news of the failed coup, and they immediately set about pre-
paring for their deaths. They consummate their plan by writing their
192 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

death poems and making love, a scene that segues into a melodramatic
and eroticized sequence in which the seppuku is enacted. Mishima
ended his life on 25 November 1970, when, together with members of
his small private militia the Tate No Kai (Shield Society), he organized
a meeting with the commanding officer of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces
regiment in suburban Tokyo. The small group took the commander
hostage, and Mishima made a speech to the amassed armed forces call-
ing them to join him in a coup d’état. When they refused, he and fellow
Shield Society member Morita Masakatsu committed suicide. Mishima’s
concerns were typical of many rightist-nationalist groups in Japan who
lament the lost of Japan’s ‘fighting spirit’ in the aftermath of the war. In
particular, they identified the postwar constitution of Japan – including
the infamous Article Nine prohibition on Japanese belligerency – with
a loss of cultural identity. Mishima and others connected this with the
postwar reframing of the Emperor as a constitutional monarch whose
civic function was now largely ceremonial. Consequently, in the minds
of rightist thinkers, he was disembodied and no longer the enduring
figurehead of the nation, nor was he any longer able to be the mystical
source of Japan’s identity.
Kawamura’s play begins with a parade of historical figures, including
Mishima, who announce their presence and are shot down by guards in
the auditorium; they are soon replaced by other figures and there is sense
that while individuals may die, the polemical gesture of what Walter
Benjamin calls divine violence will remain (Benjamin, 1978). Mishima pro-
posed a military dictatorship that would restate the figure of the Japanese
Emperor as the mythical god-ruler of Japan and a figure of transcendence
and eternal presence. The play attempts to understand why such ideas still
hold currency among sections of the population. As noted in the introduc-
tion to the translation of Hamletclone, the play shows how:

Hamlet’s split personality and hopelessly dysfunctional family

embody recent social, economic and political troubles suggestive of
Japan’s postwar history.… Troubling events and crimes taken from
the daily newspapers are mentioned. Rapes and murder, attacks on
homeless people, suicide, and the Aum cult’s attempt to stage a coup
by gassing the Tokyo subway are linked as interconnected conse-
quences of the Japanese condition at the turn of the millennium.
(Eckersall, 2011: xviii)

The play is episodic and stages short brutal scenes in which rival forces
attempt to gain control of the Japanese nation. At the centre of the
 Kawamura Takeshi’s Spectacle of Adaptation 193

action is the character of The Old Gay Prince, who sits at the back
of the auditorium throughout the play wearing faux Shakespearean
russet and pantaloons and giving commentaries about the events tak-
ing place. Kawamura, who plays the character of The Old Gay Prince,
intends that it/he will serve as an interstitial figure, someone who is
positioned inside and outside of the play, just as the figure of the Prince
of Denmark resides in these texts as a literary trope that is inside and
outside of history. The Old Gay Prince signifies the writer as well as
the transcendent figure of Hamlet – transcendent because he is present
throughout the ages and endures.
In the penultimate scene a startling image of a new order of power is
imagined in a projection of a surtext that represents the disembodied
voice of The Old Gay Prince. The text is projected in large letters on to
the back wall of the stage while a sequence is enacted in which some
of the main Shakespearian characters (Laertes, Horatio and Prince B,
a cross-dressing clone of Hamlet) are rounded-up and executed. The
text reads:

The attempted coup by the National Defence Force organized by the

young man was a failure. Of course, the agitation and disruption
never reached even a single soldier in the inner circle. History was
repeated as comedy. Even so, his act of hara-kiri was not a meaning-
less death. In the confusion over the hara-kiri, the women’s White
Stalk Party started a civil war and occupied the seat of government ….
That a lot of politicians, bureaucrats, and financial power brokers
from the old system were arrested gave the people hope. The women
carved lines from Shakespeare and Müller on to my body. I became
a perfect woman.
(qtd in Eckersall, 2011: 162)

Hara-kiri literally means stomach-cutting and is another term for sep-

puku: in this way the scene comments on the failure of Mishima’s
actions in 1970 to reach the inner circle of power. In fact, 1970 was a
watershed year in Japan that saw the closure on a decade of radical stu-
dent protest and the end of mass agitation for change. It is remembered
as a time of peace and prosperity with a remarkable optimism about
what the modern future would hold. 1970 is remembered in Japan
for Expo ’70, the Osaka World Fair (banpaku), which had a theme of
‘Progress and Harmony for Mankind’ and was attended by more than
64 million people. Amid the science fiction-like metabolist architectural
pavilions, popular exhibits included rock samples from the Moon and
194 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

multi-projector surround cinema displays. Mishima’s suicide was seen

by many as disturbingly anachronistic and an unwanted wartime ges-
ture returning to remind Japanese of the by now invisible militarization
of the body – the point of fascination for Mishima and the rightists.
Kawamura shifts the mood in the later part of the scene to a poetic
image of embodied gender ambiguity and desire for Hamlet to become
Other. The intersexed Hamlet figure is first seen in Müller’s text when
Hamlet puts on Ophelia’s clothes and she makes his face up like a
whore. Kawamura wants to propose a new political sensibility through
this hybrid figure – a constellation of power that imagines women and
the interstitial possibilities of queer sexuality in ways that might sug-
gest a new kind of agency. The carved lines on the body of The Old Gay
Prince, lines that are imagined as traces from literary history and autho-
rial tropes, seem to suggest that new forms of subjectivity are sculpted
from the history of war. This figure may represent transformed history,
although the final sense of this is extremely uncertain, more so because
the Old Gay Prince is shot in the final scene of the play. The Old Gay
Prince speaks the closing lines:

I was Hamlet. A prince of depravity and corruption who was born of

depravity and corruption. The ruins of Japan lay at my feet …. [He is
shot]. Then I collapse. Shot by a nameless assassin. The bullet pen-
etrates my left lung and a new emptiness is born. My autobiography
is now complete. The title is The Birth of the Nation.
(qtd in Eckersall, 2011: 167)

Finally, the idea of The Old Gay Prince as a hybrid figure is made impos-
sible by the return of national history. The individual subject-figure of
Hamlet dies, but the autobiography of the transcendent ruler remains.
The play reminds the viewer of Mishima’s fascination with the fetishized
male body as the embodiment of Japanese spirit. Kawamura’s Old Gay
Prince shows the ridiculousness of this idea. Instead of Mishima’s fascist
rendering of ‘pure’ masculine corporality, Kawamura’s figure is more
like an old pantomime dame. Perhaps Kawamura is suggesting that
Mishima’s story is similarly melodramatic; that his love of the trappings
of military power: the uniforms he designed, and the solidarity of men
that he extols in reminiscences about training with his Red Shield Corps
(more farm boys than fellow intellectuals from the right) show a bizarre
combination of dress-ups and reality.
The play reminds the viewer not only of Mishima, but of the Aum
Shinrikyo, an apocalyptic cult who released toxic sarin gas into the
 Kawamura Takeshi’s Spectacle of Adaptation 195

Tokyo underground on 20 March 1995 with the resulting deaths of 13

people and many more serious injuries. In the subsequent trial, the
state prosecution argued that Aum leader Shoko Ashara intended that
his followers take control of Japan’s political institutions and that he
himself would become the Emperor. Hence the meaning of the line
‘The ruins of Japan lay at my feet’, an image after the apocalyptic
return of the transcendent, always-everywhere, in-all-times, figure of
the Emperor. This image is more likely found in ancient mystical texts
and in prewar versions of the ideo-religious concept of State-Shinto
than in any authorized version of modern intuitional power in Japan.
Yet, it remains an abiding point in this play to explore the transcend-
ent image of the god-ruler that returns like the historical image of
Hamlet to haunt Japan’s modern political consciousness, a conscious-
ness that is revivified by these actual events that stain the recent his-
torical memory and question the limitations of the normative image
of Japan as a state leading the charge towards technocratic global
modernity.

Reflexive dramaturgies

Shakespeare was a modernizing trope in Japan’s early modern history.

Parts of Hamlet were being adapted for the Japanese stage from the
1880s onwards and the scholar Tsubouchi Shôyô completed the first full
translation of Hamlet in 1903. Moreover, these plays travelled and by
mid-decade, the theatrical impresario Kawakami Otorjirô was touring
his productions of Shakespearian plays to Europe and North America.
Japan was the first modern non-Western colonial power as well: not
only exporting cultural productions in the early twentieth century, but
establishing imperial outposts in Taiwan in 1895 and Korea in 1905,
and eventually colonizing swaths of mainland China and South East
Asia. Figures such as Mishima remind us that Japanese modernity was,
and to a large degree still is, complicated by imperial adventures and
the paradoxical desire to ‘overcome modernity’ in order to foster the
persistent image of an imperial essence of Japan.
One final question to consider, however, is the Müller-Kawamura
conundrum. Does Müller’s view of modernity differ from Kawamura’s
and is the spectacle of adaptation inflected in different ways in their
plays? As Denise Varney notes, Müller’s plays are known for their com-
parative frames of the history of modernity wherein the redemptive
power of knowledge is absent (2003). The concern with history’s spec-
tacle is strongly evident, so what does Kawamura’s play have to say that
196 Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s Global Reach

is different? Perhaps the answer lies finally in the different experiences

of modern history. In the end, Hamletmachine offers a potent image of
the revolutionary subject in the figure of Electra, who can ‘walk through
our bedrooms’ and private domains ‘carrying butcher’s knives’: she is a
figure akin to the terrorists who successfully destroyed the World Trade
Center in 2001, knowing that their actions would be broadcast globally
via surveillance cameras and media around the city. In other words,
the phantasmic images in Hamletmachine arguably finally cohere into
a revolutionary subject that is capable of action even if that action will
always be intensely zoned acts of violence.
In contrast, Kawamura’s modernity must deal with what Peter
Boenisch calls the endless negotiation of representation and presence
with no possibility for resolution (Boenisch, 2010: 172). The dilemma is
not between world systems but a Japanese modernity that is persistently
premodern and phantasmic. Hamletclone (Figure 12.2) shows the merg-
ing of these contradictory forces: adapting Hamletmachine but using the
mystical transforming image of the body to critically reflect on Mishima
and the very much present ghosts of an already repressed and forgotten
imperial order. The play shows contradictory forces: the embodiment of

Figure 12.2 Daisan Erotica, ‘The barbed-wire cage is opened by the hands
of dead people’, the final text-projection in Hamletclone. German tour, 2003.
Courtesy of Kawamura Takeshi. Photo: Miyauchi Katsu
 Kawamura Takeshi’s Spectacle of Adaptation 197

the ideals of aesthetic modernity – an immaculate and stable imperial

present – and an impending and violent sense of upheaval. But nei-
ther state of affairs moves forward in the play – a point that relates to
Chelfitsch’s The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise as well. The very question
of momentum and the assumed evolutionary trajectory or life force of
modernity is unresolved in these plays. This is the fractured-stasis-like
spectacle that Kawamura takes to be a Japanese modern.
Part IV
Regional Flows
13
Cultural Exchange, Arts Festivals
and Markers of Modernity

Thus far we have examined regional modernities and their representa-

tions in theatrical texts and performances. We have highlighted the
ways that modernity has been reimagined as a process of flow and
in the final chapter of this book we consider this factor in relation to
cultural interactions across the region. If, as we have argued, contempo-
rary cultural production is a marker of new modernities, then it is also
important to consider the rising prominence of regional transnational
forms of cultural exchange.
Many artists participate in and foster regional cultural exchange but
there is no general agreement about the means, activities and expected
outcomes of this kind of work. That theatre and performance par-
ticipate in regional cultural flows has been an evident factor in cultural
diplomacy, formally and centrally, since the early years of independence
of the countries of the region, the advent of the Korean War (1950–53)
and the wider Cold War. Hybrid and contemporary theatres – which
can include aspects of dance, puppetry, visual design and music – have
been active in fostering artist-to-artist cultural exchange, often drawing
strength from Homi K. Bhabha’s forward-thinking theories of cultural
hybridity (Bhabha, 1994). Artistic exchange has been funded by non-
governmental organizations such as the Ford Foundation, with its
agenda of support for cultural development programmes globally, and
Melbourne-based Asialink, as well as by national statutory agencies such
as the Japan Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts. With an
aim to promote international cultural exchange, the Japan Foundation
has played an important role in developing cultural programmes in the
region, including providing funds for Japanese and inter-Asia theatre
productions and programmes that introduce artists from the region to
Japanese arts and cultural practices. Asialink is one of the largest NGO
201
202 Regional Flows

cultural brokers in the region and has funded nearly 700 in-county
exchanges by Australian and Asian visual and performing artists, writers
and cultural producers since being established in 1991. This gives some
sense of the scope of regional exchange in the arts. The organization’s
aim of promoting ‘public understanding of the countries of Asia and
of Australia’s role in the region’ (Asialink, 2012) is characteristic of the
view that cultural exchange promotes internationalization and transna-
tional communication.
However, just as cultural agencies endeavour to support regional
artistic production, they can also act to promote the values and inter-
ests of specific groups and individuals. Agencies are sometimes less
benign than on first appearance and, in a more formal sense, the scope
of what they are able to do is changing. Organizations using the arts
to promote the idea of national interest, for example, or corporate-
philanthropic support for the arts are platforms for the advancement of
national values and/or particular financial concerns. There has been a
view in recent times to see the arts more narrowly in these terms and,
as will be seen here, this is to the detriment of a cosmopolitan outlook
that values artistic exchange for its own means. For example, the Japan
Foundation has experienced significant financial constraints in the last
decade and was restructured in a move that was seen by many to reflect
hostility towards supporting a platform of diverse cultural production;
the restructure was seen as a plan that was mooted by nationalist politi-
cians. A similar tendency was evident in the former Australian govern-
ment’s decision in the late 1990s to close cultural sections of Australian
Embassies in the region; a decision that has not been reversed by the
current government. In fact, the range of activities and cultural flows
that have been highlighted are only one part of the story. Geopolitically
the perspective in many cases has shifted from one espousing the posi-
tive attributes of cultural exchange as a manifestation of first-wave glo-
balization strategies, to the current myopic focus on border protection.
In this context the arts find themselves running against the grain of
revivified nationalist and parochial discourses.
Illustrative in this regard is the current ‘Australia in the Asian Century
White Paper’ (Australian Government, 2012b). In fact, the paper gives
scant attention to the complexities of cultural production in the region
and barely acknowledges the long history of theatre companies partici-
pating in collaboration and dialogue (2012b: 270). Beyond giving some
generic attention to the need to be ‘better in encouraging cooperation
and exchanges of expertise and specialists in the region’, there is no
specific proposal developed in the report. There is no attempt to present
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 203

the full complexity, or indeed show the extensive history of arts and
cultural exchange in the region, and the report does not attempt to
address the fact that national cultural agencies have largely evacuated
the region in the last 15 years; a point clearly demonstrated in a recent
study by Carroll and Gantner (2012) and also discussed in Chapter 9
in the context of Australian theatre’s disengagement with Asia over
the same period. Tellingly, the one example of Australia-Asia cultural
production that is highlighted is neither an entirely artistic project nor
a collaboration. Instead, the report chooses to highlight a digital media
game called ‘Fruit Ninja’, developed by a Brisbane-based game-software
company. The report praises the success of the game as ‘the no. 1 played
application in Taiwan, Germany and Russia, and the no. 2 in China, the
United States and Australia’ (Australian Government, 2012b: 270). We
do not criticize the gaming company, but the message implies that cul-
tural relations should only aspire to, and be limited by, market-driven
outlooks. We have argued that such administrative hyperbole is flawed
in not acknowledging the true diversity of cultural production that
actually takes place. The White Paper is also flawed in failing to consider
the vast economic and cultural differences in the region that come to
light when transcultural activities develop. Indeed, the White Paper
offers only an impoverished view of culture that seems almost wilfully
ignorant of the sense of a legacy of regional cultural interactions, even
to the extent of ignoring the considerable financial and diplomatic
investments that were made in the past.
Competing interests clearly factor in a consideration of cultural exchange;
there are often contrasting expectations for these interactions that high-
light different cultural understandings of the performing arts and give
rise to questions about participation, freedom of expression, inequitable
access to resources and widely divergent expectations about the out-
comes. This makes considerations of cultural exchange in the region a
complicated task that can take many different methodological turns.
We might consider the intrinsic ‘value’ of cultural exchange and arts
residencies as a source of professional training and aesthetic innovation,
alongside material outcomes of cultural diplomacy and the view that
cultural exchange brokers soft power and supports internationaliza-
tion and the expansion of national culture industries (Gilbert and Lo,
2008: 117; Nye 2004). Our focus on modernity leads us to consider the
question of cultural exchange as a marker – as a way of engaging with
modernity and expanding on its meanings.
We will always struggle to identify the full gamut of these meanings
and their implications for modernity. Instead, we show that a partial
204 Regional Flows

and situational sense of understanding is now commensurate with

contemporary modernity itself. With the rapid expansion of regional
intercultural practices over the last two decades, we can see what
Terry Smith notes is an intricate interplay of cultural developments:
‘Multiple temporalities are the rule these days and their conceptions
of historical development move in multifarious directions’ (2008: 5).
Moreover, critical considerations of exchange span diverse fields of
analysis. Nikos Papastergiadis’s recognition that cosmopolitan con-
temporaneity makes visible the tangled ‘multiple endings of moder-
nity’ (2008: 375) is helpful in showing how this diversity manifests
itself through new responses to modernity’s view of globalization.
What his colleagues in visual culture studies call the contemporane-
ous phase of art as an ‘acceleration, ubiquity, and consistency of radical
disjunctures of perception, of mismatching ways of seeing and valuing the
same world’ (Smith, 2008: 8–9, original emphasis) shows comparison
to our observations about the liquid-modern outlook of regional per-
forming arts. Moreover, the generative potential of arts exchange is
also important and influential in underpinning many assumptions
about the productive role of arts in the region. In this light, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak’s plea for aesthetic education, what she terms ‘the
lineaments of a social practice of responsibility based on an imperative
grounded on alterity’ (Spivak, 2012: 346, original emphasis) is another
important insight. Interestingly, all four of the perspectives noted here
(intrinsic value, culture industry, multiple temporalities and aesthetic
education) call on the arts to address questions of alterity and differ-
ence and view the arts as productive sites of intercultural creativity,
wherein negotiations of power can be reimagined and sometimes
resolved.
Responses to these ideas in the field of intercultural/global theatre
studies range from theorizing the generative power of culture to pro-
mote harmonious relations to critically evaluating artistic exchange
as a form of cultural imperialism. Daphne P. Lei has even created an
administrative category for the latter in a term that she calls ‘hegemonic
intercultural theatre (HIT) … a specific artistic genre and state of mind
that combines First World capital and brainpower with Third World raw
material and labor, and Western classical texts with Eastern perform-
ance traditions’ (2011: 571). This idea draws on the critique of intercul-
turalism going back to the work of Rustom Bharucha who, in a series
of influential texts, argued the need to theorize the politics of location
and of material production in articulating responses to live performance
(Bharucha, 1993, 2000). Warning of the ‘didactic cultural agenda’ that
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 205

is implicit in many NGO-funded theatre projects, Bharucha notes the

need to create:

a new synergy around intermediary structures in which the spokes-

persons of culture and development are obliged to learn from each
other. What we need are new imaginaries, instead of predetermined
agendas. While I reject the elitism which assumes that imagina-
tion is the prerogative of artists alone, I also resist the statistically
determined instrumentalism of the development world. We need
languages which can challenge the existing indices of ‘measuring’
the developmental content of art practice. Only when funding agen-
cies can create new evidence-based indices which can show that the
arts do make a difference in the social and political world can the
economist priorities of state-driven development be meaningfully
countered.
(2009)

Bharucha has been making and theorizing intercultural performance

since the 1980s. His statement shows precisely how cultural exchange
is both an extension of the global economy – imperial domination by
cultural means – and a real and durable manifestation of grassroots
activism that promotes resistance to capitalism and fosters intercultural
solidarity. This speaks to the complicated imbrications of local and glo-
bal spheres of culture now rapidly transforming in an age of cheap air
travel and new media communications.
This all begs the question: precisely what does a theory of regional
intercultural-transnational modernity look like? Lo and Gilbert’s the-
ory of differentiated hybridity (2002: 46–8) aims to recognize the cos-
mopolitan attributes of theatre by paying attention to its dramaturgy
and critically analysing language, spatial semantics, bodies, race and
gender, costume, and the framing of the event (2002: 46–8). Their cri-
tique is further developed in their book Performance and Cosmopolitics
(Gilbert and Lo, 2009, already discussed in Chapter 5) where they note
how intercultural theatre, especially in light of the way that globaliza-
tion has been transforming theatrical production, is more productively
viewed through the rubric of cosmopolitanism. Like Papastergiadis’s
comments in respect of the region’s visual arts (although Papastergiadis
has written more extensively about global ‘south’ configurations of cul-
tural exchange and multiculturalism), Gilbert and Lo find the ‘concep-
tual slipperiness’ of theories of cosmopolitanism helpful in grappling
with the ‘ethical, political, and intellectual challenges of cross-cultural
206 Regional Flows

and transnational encounters in contemporary life’ (Gilbert and Lo,

2009: 5).
Erika Fischer-Lichte has taken the critique of interculturalism full
circle by re-engaging with questions of theatre and modernity and
proposing a theme of ‘interweaving multiple modernities’ (2009: 399,
2011: 1–16) that describe the historical, political and aesthetic inter-
actions of contemporary theatre. Her work shows how intercultural
flows are an aspect of modernity itself, hence rendering ‘any attempt
to draw a clear line between “ours” and “theirs” futile’ (Fischer-Lichte:
2009: 399).

We are dealing with the interweaving of cultures as part of the proc-

ess of modernization. Admittedly, a tension exists between the idea of
multiplicity and cultural difference (whereby cultures are conceived
as monadic entities), on the one hand, and the notion of histori-
cal and contemporary processes of interweaving on the other, both
Western and non-Western and within these cultures.
(Fischer-Lichte, 2011: 3)

Fischer-Lichte’s perspective is helpful in reframing the discourse of

intercultural theatre in ways that reconnect it with theories of global
modernity. She also recognizes the extent to which contemporary
theatre is largely concerned with responses to modernity in ways that
address the impact of globalization. Her analysis is further evidence for
making the case that modernity and globalization are closely related, if
not entirely part of the same operation. Fischer-Lichte argues that inter-
weaving is now so evident in theatre that it takes us into the encounter
with global modernity itself. It ‘transfer[s] spectators into a state of in-
betweenness or into a “third space”, that is, an effect similar to that of
globalization’ (2009: 398).
While all of the approaches discussed here are grappling with the
sense of theatre’s shifting ground, the recognition that interweaving and
its imbrications, tensions and contradictions are taking spectators into
a greater awareness of globalization is extremely significant. As Farfan
and Knowles argue, the trend is for: ‘globally syncretic and historically
grounded understandings of intercultural performance as something
that did not begin or end with Western modernism, and that does not
simply involve Western appropriations of the Other’ (2011: iii). But the
shift away from the Eurocentric intercultural theatre model means that
there is also a need to make finer distinctions about the intra-regional
meanings of theatre and its contexts of dissemination.
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 207

One important distinction is the sense of shrinking of time and place

evident in our thinking about regional modernities. In Bauman’s terms:
‘Time is no longer the “detour to the attainment”, and thus no longer
bestows value on space. The near instantaneity of software time augurs
the devaluation of space’ (Bauman, 2000: 117–18) as a liberated and
creative site of activity. This commentary is relevant not only in light of
the intense acceleration of time, a point widely recognized as a charac-
teristic of new modernities; Bauman’s theory is also helpful in pointing
to people’s relative and situated experiences of time-space exposures
that can be markedly different and shaped by factors such as class, gen-
der, religious affiliation and the widespread commodification of space,
all factors that apply in this study as well. The descriptor ‘software time’
is cognisant of time-space distortions: it reminds us that the temporality
of Chinese, Malay or Bangladeshi factory workers – who form a large
part of the international low-wage labour force that makes most of the
world’s computers – is contradistinctive to Asian and Australian arts
practitioners and their avant-garde ideas of extending time. The fac-
tory worker must perform tasks quickly and without complaint; their
time-space is owned and regulated. Artists, by contrast, tend to access
privileged spaces, where they can contemplate slow time and develop
performances as a means of exploring what Eckersall and Paterson call
slow dramaturgy (2011).
Another consideration is that many regional arts projects quickly
find audiences beyond the region, making the point that the region
itself is now an important source of global arts and cultural production.
In other words, along with the contradictory temporal implications of
‘software time’, we note that globalization has shown aspects of what
Ulrich Beck has called a reverse colonization effect (2010: 3). To this
end, Wan-Ling Wee has theorized the idea of ‘globalized Asia’ in which
the arts have played a significant role in fostering an élan of cosmo-
politanism, making the overall awareness of Asia more outward looking
and influential in global terms (Wee, 2010: 92). This factor is seen in
many of the examples included in our study: Chelfitsch have found
a particularly responsive audience for their work in Germany; Rimini
Protokoll’s Cargo Asia series follows on from successful European and
Middle Eastern versions that were adapted for local conditions in Japan
and Singapore; Hirata Oriza’s recent robot plays, made with roboticist
Ishiguro Hiroshi, can be performed in English or Japanese depending on
the audience and have been widely seen around the world (the robot
could potentially speak in any language by using lines recorded by a
local actor); Robert Wilson has used intercultural encounter as a means
208 Regional Flows

of extending his compositional visionary theatre style in collaborating

with local artists to bring an ancient Indonesian epic on to the world
stage. In fact, pretty much all of the examples discussed in the previous
chapters show that questions about how regional modernities in theatre
have reconnected with global modernity are just as important as ques-
tions about cultural productions that have not done this. A key locus for
exploring these connections is the rise of the arts festival as a principal
site for the transaction of intercultural flows.

Festivals and managing cultural flow

The proliferation of arts festivals in the last decades of the twentieth

century parallels the emergence of global financial, media, entertain-
ment, information and communication technology industries, amongst
others. In postindustrial economies cultural capital is a mode of eco-
nomic power and a key factor in the development of local and national
modernities. The role of cultural production and consumption in the
transformation of cites and the branding of postindustrial cities as sites
of both national and global significance has been well established in the
West (Crewe and Beaverstock, 1998; Zukin, 1995) and more recently in
Asia (Chang and Yeoh, 1999; Hee et al., 1998). In her study of South
East Asia, Brenda Yeoh points to the creation of ‘globalness’ through
the integration of economic and cultural activity involving the arts,
architecture, fashion, food and entertainment (Yeoh, 2005). The role
of cultural industries in the creation of paradigms for understanding
the new global order has also been well argued (Hesmondhalgh, 2002;
Singh, 2010). As an important means by which the nation positions
itself in the postindustrial global economy, the hallmark arts festivals
are also key sites for the development of the multiple or alternative
modernities to which we refer.
Cultural exchange and the intense cultural flows generated by arts
festivals have resulted not only in a decentring of Western cultural
power, but, in Iwabuchi Koichi ’s terms, a ‘recentring’ (2002: 17). There
is no shortage of examples to substantiate the significance of cultural
practices that recentre globalization and promote non-Western moder-
nities. In an ironic mirror image of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century international exhibitions where European imperialist powers
showcased exotic performance spectacles from their Asian colonies,
the China Shanghai Arts Festival annually invites a Western nation to
showcase itself during the festival. In 2009 Chinese national spectacles
were staged alongside Dogville, the Bavarian theatre academy’s stage
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 209

adaptation of Danish director Lars von Trier’s movie of the same name;
Cendrillon, a world premiere by Les Ballets de Monte Carlo; a concert by
the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; and a concert by the Deutsche Radio
Philharmonie conducted by Christoph Poppen, amongst others. The
website for the 2009 Tokyo Festival announced:

The theme of the first edition of Festival/Tokyo … was ‘Towards a

new real’ …. Launching at the same time as festivals in Seoul and
Shanghai, we seek to contribute to the creation and distribution of
Asian performing arts on a long-term basis. By this means, it also
forms part of an intention to establish the autumn as a ‘season for
Asian performing arts’.
(Festival Tokyo, 2009)

In 2009, the Pan-Asian Festival was also held in Tokyo with the cities
of Delhi, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul and Taipei participat-
ing. Its umbrella group is the Asian Major Cities Network 21, the aim
of which is to foster creative and cultural ties across the region as well
as a developing a market for the performing arts in Asia. We also note
that Australia is often absent from the region, neither present in terms
of repertoire (as we argue in Chapter 9), nor contributing to a regional
organization presence.
By the 1990s a large number of arts festivals and visual arts biennial
and triennial events in East Asia and Australia were showcasing Asian
artists. Wee calls this factor the distillation of an ‘Asian Modern’ that
finds its most creative articulation through the arts (Wee, 2007: 2). Arts
festivals are sites where potentially conflicting modes of modernity may
be appreciated; they have, on the one hand, destabilized and disassem-
bled national and global modernities, and on the other hand, reassem-
bled them in a new mode as concentrated, condensed, but nonetheless
fluid spaces of cultural intensity. This repudiates any lingering attach-
ment to the idea of a binary opposition between the West and Asia in
a world in which flows have dissolved categories that might once have
been solid.
Singapore is paradigmatic of this trend. Its elaborate strategic move to
create a symbolic economy and invent a localized version of global cos-
mopolitanism was to rebrand itself as ‘Global City for the Arts’ in 2000
(Ministry of Information, 2000). The centrepiece of this strategy was
the Singapore Arts Festival, a month-long festival attracting hundreds
of international, regional and local performers. The 2009 Singapore Arts
Festival saw the premiere of Singapore-American playwright Chay Yew’s
210 Regional Flows

Visible Cities, the subject of Chapter 10. The programme included 26

core productions, two world premieres and two Asian premieres, and
involved 2581 artists from 26 countries. The National Arts Council of
Singapore reported an audience reach of 800,000. Street performance
and other activities were programmed in sites across the city for the
month, thus transforming public spaces into sites of the aesthetic and
the imaginative.
The essential strategic focus of the Singapore Arts Festival is made
clearer by the justification for a 2013 interregnum to review the fes-
tival to ‘ensure greater alignment to the objectives presented in the
Arts and Culture Strategic Review’ (Singapore Arts Festival, 2012).
Authored by the government’s Advisory Council on Culture and the
Arts in February 2012, the review emphasizes two strategic directions:
(i) to bring arts and culture to everyone, everywhere, every day; and
(ii) to build capabilities to achieve excellence (ACSR, 2012). The review
promotes a wholesale expansion and concentration of Singapore’s
cultural policy into a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week modality designed
specifically to merge culture industries and the everyday into a new
economic paradigm. The council aims to ensure that the arts reach an
increasing audience base. Importantly, this intimates a sharper focus
on ideologically populist and ‘family-friendly’ kinds of entertain-
ment with wide appeal to Singapore’s middle-class audiences. It has a
likely intended result of discouraging arts with more critical aesthetic-
political orientations.
The second aim articulated in the report, to value excellence, is com-
municated through a series of clearly directed statements regarding the
development of cultural institutions, investing in talent and working
with partners in the cultural sector. It suggests a focus on the manage-
ment of culture and employs neoliberal terms stressing the role of the
arts in fostering investment and economic growth, brokering sponsor-
ship deals and building the innovation capacities of the nation. This
shows a marked preference for what Paul Rae calls Singapore’s ‘perform-
ance and knowledge economy aesthetics’ (Rae, 2008), an aesthetics
that is regulated and directed to safeguarding of the values of the state.
Moreover, as Wee notes, arts and culture in Singapore ‘used to mean
race and the ethnic cultures linked to the so-called CMIO (Chinese,
Malay, Indian, Other) model of ethic-cultural management in the city-
state’; now the arts and culture signify the celebration of ‘hip’ capital-
ism (Wee, 2012: 1).
The focus on applied outcomes for the arts in the report – outcomes
that the festival must align with hand in glove – are by no means
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 211

limited to the Singaporean context. Festivals across the region are

routinely expected to provide multiple outcomes such as partnering
with the private sector, providing family-friendly entertainment and,
above all, avoiding controversies that might offend socially conserva-
tive, religious and political groups. The importance of festivals having
‘value-added’ capacity is stressed, and their success is measured by
these instrumental economic indicators. Critical evaluation of artworks
showcased at festivals has become secondary to the strategic manage-
ment of culture.
Outcomes are never wholly one-sided, however, and the concentra-
tion of artworks at festivals can result in an unpredictable sense of
hybridity. For example, the ninth Shanghai International Arts Festival
in 2007 saw 55 events from 40 countries performed in a month-long
programme. In addition to performance in theatres, there were 3000
street activities, carnivals and school events attracting an audience of
more than 1.5 million people (Shanghai International Arts Festival,
2007). The Shanghai festival produced innovative performances such
as Hamlet: The Clown Prince (2009), a reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet by The Indian Cinematographic Company from Mumbai, and
directed by the famous Indian actor, Rajat Kapoor. The 2011 Melbourne
International Arts Festival staged The Blue Dragon by Canadian direc-
tor Robert Lepage. The performance, presented in English, French and
Mandarin, drew the audience into an imagined new half-Western,
half-Asian modernity, with its dramatic treatment of fixity/mobility,
dislocation/belonging, and ambivalence/uncertainty in a multimedia
event (Hudson and Varney, 2012). These are examples of how the fluid,
imaginative spaces of festivals encapsulate the supposedly benign face
of liquid modernity in the region to promote a discourse of openness
and racial tolerance. In fact, Aleksandar Dundjerovic and Navarro
Bateman claim that the international festival circuit is crucial to the
development of culturally hybrid works and point to Lepage, who
typically ‘devises performances for an international audience based in
metropolitan urban centres and whose experiences reflect the sameness
of global transnational cultures’ (2009: 414). More than merely provid-
ing product for what Dan Rebellato and Jen Harvie refer to as a ‘United
Nations of theatre’ (2006: 145), Lepage’s work responds to the cultural
groups for which it is made. Works such as those by Lepage, Kapoor
and Yew that appear at international arts festivals increasingly escape
the confines of the national culture to create new fluid and imaginative
worlds using multiple languages, multiple artistic forms, intertextuality
and novel combinations of media.
212 Regional Flows

The Dream Regime of globalization

[A] single quality that may nonetheless be described as irreducibly

cosmopolitan: an experience of theatrical spatiality that expresses
the intertwined experiences of place and identity in an age of com-
plex global connectivity.
(Rae, 2006: 10–11)

Arguments about artistic exchange being a regulated form of cultural

interaction point to the tendency for intercultural theatre to smooth-
over the sense of fractures and cultural difference that can be the
after-effects of such projects. Wary of this, and factoring their own
understanding of the cultural history of the region, some artists have
developed approaches to collaboration that aim to show difference
rather than the idea of meeting at some mid-range cultural experience.
For example, the Journey to Confusion project (1999–2003) by Japanese
theatre group Gekidan Kaitaisha and Australian-based Not Yet It’s
Difficult, made in the context of an escalating sense of distance between
cultures, sought to explore how the inequity of cultural interaction
might be expressed in performance (Eckersall, 2004: 7–22). Kaitaisha
has since developed a corpus of work around rethinking transnational
cultural exchange under the rubric of a series of works that it calls
Dream Regime.
Gekidan Kaitaisha means Theatre of Deconstruction. Through using
repetitive and sometimes violent physical movements, ideas of testi-
mony and vast projections of military surveillance images, the group
aims to make visible the violence that is enacted on our bodies by
regimes of power. As Kaitaisha director Shimizu Shinjin comments: ‘In
today’s society, there is coercion at work, but in terms of what people
say and do, that coercion is hidden. Physical theatre is no exception to
this situation. We want to reveal this fact in our theatre’ (qtd in Nishidô,
2002: 177). Dream Regime aims to explore the marked bodies of a coer-
cive modernity. Bodies are marked by the realities of global capitalism,
a marking that may not be immediately visible in the wealthy centres
of growth but becomes more prevalent at what Shimizu sees as ‘the
borders’ of the first world. The idea of borders is both literal and imag-
ined in works that deal increasingly with dispossessed and dislocated
bodies that are to be found trespassing in global space. The most recent
workshops and performances of Dream Regime, dating from 2004 until
the present, are produced in partnership with more than 30 artists,
academics and guests from countries including East Timor, Indonesia,
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 213

Spain, the United States, England, Japan, Korea, Australia, Germany

and Russia.
According to Shimizu, Dream Regime broaches:

questions of translation and language: how a spoken gesture can

become a performed gesture, a physical action, a remembered action,
and perhaps how this can relate to shared and different histories ….
As the project evolved … it was quite quickly established that glo-
balization exists everywhere and in each local context are histories
which pertain to questions of migration, as well as those more unre-
solved issues of the marginalized, the oppressed and those who exist
as or are made to become invisible.
(2010a)

Thus the work evokes images of refugees, victims of war and people dis-
placed from their homes and territories. Performances of Dream Regime
vary. They are vessels to enable experiences of working together and
to make statements about the daily life experiences of globalization.
People enter the space as themselves and make personal statements
that are sometimes in their own language, and not always translated.
The stage seems to be a series of juxtapositions, testimony to places,
bodies and performance vocabularies. Dream Regime is also a forum of
corporeal research for the company and a way of working that broaches
political statements about the body and globalization. Shimizu hopes
that Dream Regime can give witness to the transforming power of glo-
balization while also exploring questions about how performance can
be a form of protest, or even, more apocalyptically, a mode of survival
in modern global times. While Dream Regime includes disturbing dysto-
pian images, it aims to counter this with the highly active presence of
bodies and of a community of artist and activists who come together to
work on the project. As vanguard performers they aim to create a ‘con-
tinually renewing, calming silence of hope’ from their work together
(Shimizu, 2010b).
Kaitaisha’s revelatory and didactic intercultural dramaturgy is helpful
to consider on a number of fronts. First, Dream Regime features high lev-
els of abstraction; it seems to counter the overwhelming way that global
capitalism regulates individuals in society with an aesthetic sensibility
that is almost nebulous – a fragile expression of selfhood that never
quite coheres into a material form. This strangely ethereal and uncanny
example offers us a possible counter proposal to liquid modernity’s
aestheticization of theatre as a super commodity and neatly packaged
214 Regional Flows

figment of diversity. Kaitaisha’s work is unable to be absorbed by mate-

rial culture or by regional cultural institutions. In fact, the company
intentionally works outside of these frameworks by approaching their
work as a form of gathering and of research. They bring elements of what
might appear to be almost premodern rites to their work, suggested, for
example, in a 2011 performance of Dream Regime where a performer
used fire to light the space and draw bodies of the other performers
towards him. At the same time, the work is too postmodern, too cogni-
sant of how the body is constructed through socialization and power,
to be anything like an evocation of a premodern ritual. The images of
contemporary warfare, for example, that include video feeds taken from
US drone attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, are not part of a premodern
imaginary; they stand for a new temporality of global surveillance and
remote targets. Kaitaisha asserts its own temporality in the way that it
constantly returns to these images to extend and reconceptualize them.
In Dream Regime it is possible to imagine a different kind of temporal-
ity, one that resists the collapse of time and space into a new capitalist
modernity. Whereas we have argued that liquid time is compressed into
software time, this project seems to extend time and imagines a project
taking place over many years. Where space is made ambient, Kaitaisha
particularizes it by showing diverse languages, bodies and fragments of
identity that can be restructured in the performance almost at random.
Whereas art is justified as the evocation of excellence, consumption
and play, Kaitaisha works with anyone who wants to work and makes
performances that provoke disturbance and can be seen for little or no
money.

What does it mean when we talk about a cross-cultural

collaboration?

One final example of flows within the region to consider is the 2012
production of Doku Rai (you, dead man, I don’t believe you), a collabora-
tion between the Melbourne-based Black Lung Theatre and Whaling
Firm, and two collectives from Timor-Leste: Liurai Fo’er, an art and
installation-making company, and Galaxy, a contemporary Timorese
rock band. This multimedia performance was made during a two-
month residency in East Timor, where the groups lived together in a
remote abandoned colonial hotel. Doku Rai was originally conceived
during the filming of Balibo (Robert Connolly, 2009), which told the
story of five Australian journalists killed by the Indonesian military
immediately prior to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. For
 Cultural Exchange and Festivals 215

Doku Rai, actors from Black Lung worked alongside Liurai Fo’er artists
in the film that was shot in Timor-Leste, now an independent nation
after the Indonesians withdrew their armed forces in 2002 at the end
of a long independence struggle. Doku Rai premiered at the Darwin
Arts Festival in 2012 and was followed by a sold-out season at the Arts
House, Melbourne. It was restaged for the Adelaide Festival of Arts in
March 2013.
Producer Alex Ben-Mayor describes the genesis of the collaboration:

In the show we started looking at a whole range of things. One of

them was ‘what does it mean when we talk about a cross-cultural
collaboration?’ You know, you’re bringing artists from two very dif-
ferent worlds together, what does that mean? How do you negotiate
who does what, who’s [sic] ideas get taken up, who’s [sic] voices are
heard?
(2012)

Describing the performance-making process, Ben-Mayor, who travelled

to East Timor with the Australian cast and crew, recalls how they drew
on the mythical elements of the personal stories of the performers and
wove them into the fable. The performance overcame the language
barrier with live music and video footage of East Timor. The narrative
begins with a variation of the folkloric practice of doku or the placing
of a death curse by one community member on another, in this case
brother on brother. A dinner is held in which the older brother, played
by actor and co-director Osme Gonsalves, knows he is condemned
when he sees that his bowl and glass are turned upside down. When the
older brother refuses to die despite the violence inflicted upon him, the
younger brother becomes increasingly frustrated and is gradually driven
insane. The metanarrative reflects on the cross-cultural collaborative
process, with the Australian director comically and ineffectually inter-
rupting and dominating the making of the work.
Critics commented on how the Black Lung’s signature style of ‘raw
anarchic energy, frequent narrative derailment, meta-theatrical interjec-
tions, and physical violence’ (Burge, 2012) came together with Timorese
folklore and music with the design inspired by the island, 90 minutes
from the capital Dili, where the performance was made and set. The
narrative can be read as an allegory of both the nation’s violent strug-
gle for independence from Indonesia and the tense contemporary rela-
tionship with Australia over contested and lucrative oil reserves in the
Timor Sea.
216 Regional Flows

Cultural exchange as a marker of modernity ‘grounded on alterity’

(Spivak, 2012: 346, original emphasis) is explored in this project. Doku
Rai negotiates support from culture industries such as festivals, produc-
tion houses and film companies, while also occupying the borders and
fractures of global capitalism. Unlike Kaitaisha and Dream Regime, it
retains the element of story and has a strong sense of theatricality. It
uses myth to explore complex problems of history and international
relations. Perhaps most of all, it address the struggle over natural
resources that underpins much of the contemporary international poli-
tics in our region. This gives a sense of the future of modernity in the
region, where questions of conservation, access to resources and flows
of population are increasingly the topics of our time.
In closing we argue that Dream Regime and Doku Rai are examples of
recent transcultural performance that show different, and likely more
productive, markers of modernity in comparison to the commodifica-
tion of the arts that has become the raison d’être of national cultural
polices and signature arts festivals in the region. Perhaps, as well, Doku
Rai’s environmental theme gives us a helpful symbol for our work.
Scientists theorize global ecology as an interactive system. Moreover,
the environmental movement has long developed practices of sustaina-
bility that can be summarized in the phrase: ‘think locally, act globally’.
Seen in this light, the examples of Dream Regime and Doku Rai are radi-
cal provocations to the questions of power that we have discussed in
respect of theorizing global modernity. They are both characterized by
small gestures, improvisation and abstraction. They are multi-authored
and they are works that develop and change as they are reperformed
in different places, with different members of the company and for
heterogeneous and changing audiences. They work between languages
and do not temper the experience of difference. They each include a
focus on individuals connected with the global sphere even when this is
posed as a challenge to subjectivity and freedom. The singular moment
intertwined with the complexity of the global – to paraphrase Rae
(2006) – these works make a case for a return to avant-garde perform-
ance that is also fundamentally a localized expression of modernity.
Conclusion

Theatre and performance in the Asia Pacific display qualities of both

adaptability and resilience in the face of liquid modernity whilst retain-
ing the ability to make distinctive statements about, and present physi-
cal embodiments of, local problems in the contemporary era. The speed
of travel and communications, the state of constant change, the global
flows of image, music, movement, language and media, the compulsion
to consume, the privatization of services and the individualization of
work and social life – the hallmarks of Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of
liquid modernity – are highly visible themes in the theatre and perform-
ance of the region. Parallel to the many ambivalent representations of
the social and personal impact of liquid modernity, theatre and per-
formance have developed a flexibility in form and deep connection to
place that makes the art form, ironically, one of the abiding, more solid,
constants of social and cultural life.
One of the central premises of the book has concerned the dissolution
of the centre–periphery discourses of old modernity in which the Asia
Pacific was imagined as the target of European Enlightenment. Now
there are global city centres – Berlin, London, New York, Singapore,
Sydney, Tokyo – and revalorized peripheries – Elcho Island in Arnhem
Land and Yogyakarta’s Java Karnaval – that gesture towards a new kind
of authenticity based on the value of being local and the out-of-the-way.
As we have seen with the Elcho Island Chooky Dancers and Javanese
jathilan groups, the growth of alternative peripheries gives new impe-
tus to artists and audiences. In our case studies, localized Indonesian
and Australian performances use global mechanisms to comment on
the highly regional (site specific) mechanics of cultural production.
They share concerns with local history, resources, indigenous themes
and identity. In contrast, urban Australian, Singaporean and Japanese
217
218 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

performances exemplify a trend to take the local scene to a regional

and/or global setting.
A new confidence in the global significance of the region as a whole
is reflected in the intensity with which performance engages with the
wider forces of modernity. These include the growing power of the rap-
idly industrializing economies of China and India and the established
economies of Japan and Korea, all of which consume the raw materials
produced in the region and engage in multilateral flows of information,
communication, commodities and finance.
Performance in the Asia-Pacific region, as elsewhere, exhibits the dis-
solution of the boundaries of text and performance, of live action and
multimedia and the increasing mobility of theatre and performance,
including its immersion in numerous city spaces. As such, we see the
incorporation of the cultural flows of liquid modernity but we also see
an abiding relation to place. Moreover, performance offers a counter-
point to the seeming ease with which content is created in the era of
digital reproduction across the region and beyond. The Sonic Life of a
Giant Tortoise, for instance, bases its critique of modernity in the coun-
ter-temporality of duration as it asks audiences to think about longevity
in an age of speed. Many of the performances reflect the importance of
competence with access to technology as a determining feature of pub-
lic and personal life, artistic relationships and mobility. Examples range
from the spectacular scenic effects of Robert Wilson’s I La Gilago to the
Chooky Dancers’ parodic use of mobile phone technology. Yet as the
histories of these two vastly different performances indicate, the heady
mix of technology and performance remains grounded in solid founda-
tions of capital and finance, which continue to be unevenly dispersed.
The mystique of liquidity, manifested in the seamless, unfettered flows
of cultural products, always conceals the enduring inequality in the
distribution of resources and wealth.
Performances such as Rimini Protokoll’s Cargo Kuala Lumpur-Singapore
and Chay Yew’s Visible Cities point to the deregulated space of the
global workforce and show how degrees of liquidity matter. These
performances focus on the way of life of some of the most liquefied
subjects in the region – male and female migrant factory workers – with
oppressive contracts, if they have contracts at all, that bind them to
a non-unionized, deregulated transnational and invisible employer,
‘absentee landlords’ who are ‘thousands of miles apart from the labour
they hire’ (Bauman in Dawes, 2011: 145). These employers include
the new Kublai Khans – corporate moguls, financial institutions and
contractors and aspiring ‘mum and dad’ shareholders across the globe.
 Conclusion 219

Both performances are distinguished by their ironic representation of

a workforce that is free to follow the dictates of mobility, flexibility
and detachment, but may never be fully accepted as citizens of their
adopted home. New forms of exclusion accompany immigration and
multiculturalism, with its implied respect for difference. The experi-
ence of private life with family, home and community becomes part
of the melancholic banter that fills the long working day or night.
Giving expression to the contradictions and ambivalences of liquid life,
Malaysian drivers Ravi and Ganes claim, on the one hand, that ‘driv-
ing at night’ is ‘very peaceful. Sometimes it is like a breeze and you feel
free’ and, on the other, that they spend too much time away from their
wives’ cooking (Cargo Singapore–Kuala Lumpar, 2010). In this context,
performance plays a crucial role in critiquing the production and exclu-
sion of mobile identities that populate the unregulated workforce of the
postindustrial global economy.
The contradictions and ambivalences of liquid modernity are also
strikingly represented in Wrong Skin, the Australian Indigenous perform-
ance from the Northern Territory of Australia, in which the coexist-
ence of global technology and the lasting effects of eighteenth-century
British colonialism reinforce the idea that the solid and liquid phases
of modernity are ‘locked, inseparably, in a dialectical bond’ (Bauman in
Dawes 2011: 132). In the Western Australian drama, Grace, the paradox
of Salt End Woman, portrayed as the oldest Indigenous remains yet
discovered, bears further critical reflection on the dialectical bond that
ties the present to the past. When cyclonic winds uncover prehistoric
remains, the drama that ensues makes the point that Australian moder-
nity is liquid in ways that Bauman may not have anticipated: the past
continually reappears to rewrite the history of the nation. This view
of the present as haunted by the past is also forcefully suggested by
Andrew Bovell’s Holy Day and When the Rain Stops Falling, in which the
past and future are inseparably and dialectically linked.
In Indonesia recent political democratization has seen the assertion
of diverse, competing identities expressed theatrically in a thriving per-
formance scene. Garasi Theatre of Yogyakarta reflects explicitly on the
contradictions of Indonesia’s new modernity. Our discussion analysed
how their performances convey exuberant celebration of the freedom
to express diverse local identities and to create dynamic, hybrid global-
local fusions yet also depicting the violent disruption which results
when diverse identities collide. Hinting also at the alternate, haunting
prospect that self and community might simply dissolve in the over-
whelming flood of the global, Garasi’s work displays a sophisticated
220 Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific

grasp of the potential for transience and loss of identity within hybrid
local fusions.
Theatre and performance across the region articulates conspicuous
tensions to do with the pressure mobility exerts on family and com-
munity. Much theatre activity expresses concerns about the loosening
of bonds of family, community and kinship in the face of obsessive and
continuous modernization. The representation of family, community
and kinship in states of crisis, however, does not attest to their dissolu-
tion or irrelevance in liquid modernity but, on the contrary, to their
increased importance. The family and the community emerge as sites of
resistance to the pace of change, and to the proliferation of life and con-
sumer choices, which are seen to create crippling complexity on the one
hand or the malaise of inertia on the other. Many performances convey
a reflexiveness about social and personal states of malaise around loss,
anomie, destruction and demoralization, as in Okada Toshiki’s Five Days
in March, which represents affluent young consumers in Tokyo as disaf-
fected, enervated youth, disconnected from place and purpose. Such
fleeting, temporary communities are shown to provide little comfort or
continuity and serve only to enlarge the impact of the breaking of the
bonds of family and social life.
In relation to the question of new modernities and multiple moderni-
ties, our study shows that Asia-Pacific modernity has never really been
a matter of a binary function of centre–periphery. While this older state
is a factor in the historical formation of culture in the region, there are
too many variants for this to be an overarching theory. In fact, regional
modernities and counter-modernities are evident in the history of
theatre in the region: in Japan’s first wave of modern theatre; in mod-
ern theatre in Australia and Indonesia, both influenced by European
trends but also forming local responses; and in the global era, regional
modernities are an inherent feature of globalization, be it in relation
to Japanese technology, Indonesia’s Islamic resurgence, Singapore’s
attempt to develop authoritarian free market capitalism or Australia’s
retreat from identification with the region; all are strategies that are
responses to liquid modernity.
Our comparative study of theatre and performance in the new condi-
tions of liquid modernity, in which global movements of capital, ideas
and people transform national identity and cultures, expands and deepens
our understanding of the region and its place in a rapidly changing world.
Here we present the Asia-Pacific as a performative construct – tenuously
assembled, diverse and contingent. Understanding the Asia-Pacific as
performative is not to ignore its simultaneous existence as a diplomatic,
 Conclusion 221

geopolitical or trading bloc, but to bring to attention self-referential

entities that repeat, recycle and remix inherited and new repertoires of
sound, movement and image. These insights are a product of our focus
on contemporary performing arts, but they also apply to the way we see
premodern forms interacting with globalization even as the concept of
an immutable cultural identity appears less tenable than ever.
In the final chapter of Liquid Modernity, Bauman reaffirms the value
of ‘the pluralism of modern civilized society’, in which we note that
the word ‘society’ appears to resist liquefaction. Ideally, a pluralist soci-
ety is a co-production of the ‘joint achievement of the agents engaged
in self-identification pursuits’ and ‘put together through negotiation
and reconciliation, not the denial, stifling or smothering out of differ-
ences’ (Bauman, 2000: 178). Theoretically, the fluid conditions of liquid
modernity allow for negotiation and reconciliation, albeit a more con-
tentious issue in the region, to take place. Theatre and performance in
the Asia-Pacific, which critically negotiate the cultural impact of social
change, participate in the co-production of modern society by suggest-
ing ways in which individuals and communities might engage in more
open, pluralist relations with the world.
Notes

Part I Changing Forms of Theatre and Drama

2 Modernity and the Self in Singapore:

Emily of Emerald Hill
1. Peranakan, broadly speaking, means locally born, or descendant of immi-
grants to South East Asia.
2. ‘Singlish’ is a creole with its roots in English, but with a vocabulary comprised
of Hokkien, Malay and Mandarin words as well as English. It also features a
mixture of syntactical structures from the contributing languages.
3. For a comprehensive review of what was staged in the decades since inde-
pendence, see David Birch (1997).
4. Towkay (Hokkien): head of the family; patriarch. A common term of address
for men of high social standing in the Straits Chinese community.

3 Modern Drama and Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia

1. The simple set and costuming and relatively straightforward political refer-
ence of the 1971 production accorded with the improvisational style and
boldly critical political stance of Rendra’s work at the time. By 1976, Rendra
had experienced increased government pressure and repeated bannings of
his plays. His Hamlet production of that year expressed a conscious political
caution, and used Javanese costuming and musical accompaniment in keep-
ing with the embrace of a more local, traditional theatrical style, as discussed
later in this chapter in relation to his 1975 play The Struggle of the Naga Tribe.
Rendra’s portrayal of young prince Hamlet in the 1994 production, at the age
of 58, was critiqued by some as vain and self-indulgent, while others found in
it an added layer of political meaning – an aging actor in blue jeans waving a
Javanese sword urging Indonesians to shake off their Hamlet-like vacillation
and stagnation and recover their progressive culture (Winet, 2010: 151–6).
2. Such critiques range from reference to the recently deposed despot Sukarno
and the atheistic dogma attributed to the reviled Communist Party in a pro-
duction of a full translation of Camus’ play staged in late 1966, to the shared
‘madness’ of the late Suharto era in productions by Teater Sae in 1991, Teater
Garasi in 1995 and Payung Hitam in 1996 (Winet, 2010: 156–62, 166–73).
3. Popular theatre continued to thrive through the first half of the twentieth
century, with active involvement of and support from Eurasian and Chinese
communities (Winet, 2010: 44–68).
4. Boedi and Margesti Otong, personal communication (see Hatley, 1995).

4 Hirata Oriza’s Tokyo Notes and the New Modern

1. In October 2009, Hirata was appointed as a counsellor in the former
Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio’s secretariat for culture, education and

222
 Notes 223

international affairs. See: http://mainichi.jp/select/wadai/news/20091016k

0000m010104000c.html (accessed 8 November 2009).
2. Originally the play’s setting was 2004. The year is updated to keep the sense
of something that has not yet happened.
3. This is a reference to a previous conversation where Yoshie recounts that Yûji
will not buy battery-operated toys for their child because batteries always run
out and the toy becomes useless.

Part II Mobile Performance and Fluid Identities

5 Solid and Liquid Modernities in Regional Australia

1. For an extensive discussion of the role of kinship and moiety in the perform-
ance see Maryrose Casey, 2011.
2. The funeral is of the Chooky Dancer’s visionary mentor, Frank Garawirrtja.
3. Molloy is most likely based on the famous anthropologist, Alan Thorne
(1939–2012), who used DNA testing on ‘Mungo Man’ and ‘Mungo Lady’
to reset the date for modern man’s presence on the Australian mainland to
between 56,000 and 68,000 years ago. This predates the movement of Homo
Sapiens out of Africa. Mungo Man, Thorne argued, probably evolved out of
Asia (The Age, 2012: 18).

6 Staging Indonesian Modernity After Suharto

1. The original charter for the establishment of the Special Region of Yogyakarta,
consisting of the city and four surrounding districts, provided that the positions
of governor and vice-governor be held respectively by the reigning sultan and
the head of the junior royal house of Yogya. The current sultan thus also holds
the position of governor. The fact that the renewal of this charter, including the
conditions of the governor’s position, has been the subject of drawn-out
government deliberation and vigorous public debate gave added suggestive-
ness to the sultan’s contribution to, and representation in, the parade.
2. See Barbara Hatley (1982, 2008) on the performance of nation and commu-
nity in Independence Day celebrations over time.
3. The Jember Fashion Carnaval, an initiative of local fashion designer Dynand
Fariz, in which hundreds of local young people create and display spectacular
costumes, on new themes each year, has been held annually since 2003. For
the event’s history see its website, http://www.jemberfashioncarnaval.com/
main.php?com=about.
4. See Barbara Hatley (2012) and Paul Mason (2008) for examples from Java and
West Sumatra respectively.
5. Religious proselytizing sessions by skilled religious orators are very popular
among these social groups. The monthly gatherings of the Maiyah move-
ment, led by the renowned religious and cultural figure Emha Ainun Nadjib,
consisting of prayers, religious talks, open discussions and innovative musical
performances by Emha’s gamelan group, kyahi kanjeng, give a strongly per-
formative cast to such sessions, which move ‘back and forth between artistic
performances, sacred spiritual expressions, and pragmatic meditations and
discussions of worldly affairs’ (Daniels, 2009: 138).
224 Notes

6. See Ariel Heryanto (2009) on the Inul story in its connections with key
divisions in contemporary Indonesian society, and Ceres Pioquinto (1995),
Susan Browne (2000) and Andrew Weintraub (2010) on dangdut.
7. On the issue of the anti-pornography law and resistance to it, see Pam Allen
(2003); for discussion of the local-level impact of its eventual introduction in
2008, see Jennifer Lindsay (2011).
8. ‘Susah emang punya bini cakep. Kalo sering ditinggal mulai gatel-gatel tuh… diba-
wah, Mending cari bini yang biasa-biasa aja, Di luar boleh cari yang semok-semok.
Di rumah, cari isteri yang soleh.’

7 ‘Youth is not the only thing that passes at sonic speed’:

Speed and Private Lives in Okada Toshiki’s The Sonic
Life of a Giant Tortoise
1. Reading Sonic Life in connection to Noh was suggested by performance
theorist Stanca Scholz-Cionca.

8 Dramaturgy of the Liquid: Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore

1. The former British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak were
formally merged on 16 September 1963 to form the new nation of Malaysia.
The merger was short-lived, however, and Singapore was expelled from
the federation in 1965 and forced to form its own sovereign state. The two
nations share more than a history as British colonies. Both are multi-ethnic.
Malay, Tamil, Punjabi, English and various Chinese dialects are spoken in
both countries and cross-border traffic is constant.
2. http://www.internationalpsa.com/factsheet/pdf/Singapore.pdf

Part III Beyond Regionality: The Asia-Pacific’s

Global Reach

11 Performing ‘Authentic Indonesia’ Transculturally

1. Indonesian performing arts represented the colonial possessions of the
Netherlands at international exhibitions held in Amsterdam in 1879 and
1883, Paris in 1889 and 1900 and Chicago in 1893 (Cohen, 2010: 10).
2. In 1988 Rendra’s Bengkel theatre group travelled abroad for the first time
to perform his work Selamatan Anak Cucu Suleiman (A Ritual for Suleiman’s
Descendants) at the first International Festival of the Arts in New York City.
In 1990 Bengkel went to Japan to stage the same play within the Japan
Foundation’s Contemporary Theatre programme.
3. See the example of an Australian-Indonesian collaborative hip-hop festival
held in Yogyakarta and Jakarta in 2010 (Dewan, 2010; Richards 2010).
4. In an exception to this pattern, a review of the London production in
the Guardian newspaper commends the fact that despite the Australian-
Indonesian political frictions recalled in the anti-Suharto critique of the work,
artists from the two countries have collaborated to ‘produce both a celebra-
tion of theatrical craft and a scathing attack on unrestrained market forces
and environmental destruction’ (Billington, 2001).
 Notes 225

5. The production was performed from 2004 to 2011 in Singapore, the

Netherlands, Spain, France, Italy, New York, Jakarta, Melbourne, Taipei and
Makassar.
6. From 1990 onwards Firman was involved as a volunteer artistic assistant in
a university-led project compiling Bugis and Makassarese texts and is able to
read and write the ancient Bugis script.
7. Titled Mencari Benua I La Galigo yang Hilang (Searching for the Lost Continent
of the I La Galigo), the work involved a huge, tiered bamboo installation and
depicted the tragic felling of the tree of life, the Pohon Walenreng, for human
use, simply to create a boat for Sawerigalang to travel in.
8. Entitled Chenglong Spiral, this work consists of spirals of bamboo on the
surface of a swamp, representing the branches of the genealogical tree of the
characters in the epic.
References

Plays cited
Bovell, A. (2000) Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?, in Melbourne Stories: Three
Plays (Sydney: Currency Press).
Bovell, A. (2001) Holy Day (Sydney: Currency Press).
Bovell, A. (2009) When the Rain Stops Falling (Sydney: Currency Press).
Bower, H. (2010) Grace. Adapted from the novel by Robert Drewe (Fremantle:
Prickly Pear Playscripts).
Davis, J. (1986) No Sugar (Sydney: Currency Press).
Enoch, W. and D. Mailman (1996) The 7 Stages of Grieving (Brisbane: Playlab
Press).
Harrison, J. (1997) Stolen (Sydney: Currency Press).
Hirata, O. (1995) Tôkyô No-to (Tokyo Notes) (Tokyo: Banseisha).
Hirata, O. (2002) ‘Tokyo Notes: A play by Hirata Oriza, translated and introduced
by M. Cody Poulton’, Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1–120.
Kawamura, T. (2000) Hamuretto Kûron (Hamletclone) (Tokyo: Ronôsha).
Kawamura, T. (2011) Hamuretto Kûron (Hamletclone), in P. Eckersall, Nippon Wars
and Other Plays, ed. and trans. P. Eckersall (London and Calcutta: Seagull
Books).
Kon, S. (1989) Emily of Emerald Hill: A Monodrama (London: Macmillan).
Malna, A. (1992) Biografi Yanti Setelah 12 Menit (Yanti’s Biography After 12 Minutes)
(unpublished playscript).
Okada, T. (2008) Zougame no Sonikku Raifu (The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise)
(unpublished playscript).
Paramaditha, I. and N. Srikandi (2011) Goyang Penasaran (The Obsessive Twist)
(unpublished playscript).
Rendra (1979) The Struggle of the Naga Tribe: A Play by Rendra, trans. M. Lane
(St Lucia: Queensland University Press).

Performances cited
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Dir. Liv Ulmann. With Cate
Blanchett. Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre, 5 September 2009.
Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome: A Shakespeare Commentary by Heiner Müller.
Trans. Julian Hammond. Dir. Michael Gow. Bell Shakespeare Company, The
Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, 8 October 2008.
Baal by Bertolt Brecht. Trans. Simon Stone and Tom Wright. Dir. Simon Stone.
Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1 Theatre, 7 May 2011.
Biografi Yanti Seletah 12 Menit (Yanti’s Biography After 12 Minutes) by Afrizal Malna.
Dir. Boedi S. Otong. Teater Sae, Taman Ismail Marzuki Arts Centre, Jakarta,
4 December 1992.
Black Medea by Wesley Enoch. Dir. Wesley Enoch. Beckett Theatre, Malthouse,
Melbourne, 27 April 2005.

226
 References 227

Burning Daylight. Dir. Rachael Swain. Marrugeku Dance Company, Goolarri

Outdoor Venue, Broome, 28 October 2009.
Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore by Rimini Protokoll. Dir. Jörg Karranbauer and
Stefan Kaegi. With Ganes A/L Ramachandran and Ravindran A/L Muniandy.
Esplanade Waterfront Carpark and sites around Singapore, 13 May 2012.
Cendrillon by Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, 14th Shanghai International Arts
Festival, 2009.
Dogville adapted and performed by the Bavarian Theatre Academy, Germany,
14th Shanghai International Arts Festival, 2009.
Doku Rai (you, dead man, I don’t believe you) by Black Lung Theatre and Whaling
Firm, Liurai Fo’er and Galaxy. Dir. Thomas M. Wright. Darwin Festival and Arts
House, Melbourne, 29 August 2012.
The Dollhouse. Adapted from the play by Ibsen by Daniel Schlusser. Dir. Schlusser.
Fortyfive Downstairs, Melbourne, 21 September 2011.
Dream Regime by Gekidan Kaitaisha. Dir. Shimizu Shinjin. Various sites, 2004–12.
Emily of Emerald Hill by Stella Kon. Dir. Jeremiah Choy and Margaret Chan. With
Margaret Chan. National Arts Council and Orangedot Management for the
2010 Singapore Arts Festival, Victoria Theatre, 11 June 2010.
Face to Face. Adapted from the film by Ingmar Bergman by Andrew Upton and
Simon Stone. Dir. Stone. Sydney Theatre Company, Walsh Bay, 11 August 2012.
Goyang Penasaran (The Obsessive Twist) by Intan Paramaditha and Naomi Srikandi.
Dir. Naomi Srikandi. Teater Garasi, Studio Teater Garasi, 14–16 December 2011;
Salihara Theatre, Jakarta, 19–20 April 2012.
Grace adapted by Humphrey Bower from the novel by Robert Drewe. Dir. Chris
Bendall. Deckchair Theatre, Victoria Hall, Fremantle, 11 February 2010.
Gross und Klein by Botho Strauss. Trans. Martin Crimp. Dir. Benedict Andrews. With
Cate Blanchett. Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1 Theatre, 19 November 2011.
Hamuretto Kûron (Hamletclone) by Kawamura Takeshi. Dir. Kawamura Takeshi.
Daisan Erotica, Asahi Square, Tokyo, 12 January 2000.
Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen. Adapted by Andrew Upton. Dir. Robyn Nevin.
With Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving. Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1
Theatre, premiere 27 July 2004.
Holy Day by Andrew Bovell. Dir. Rosalba Clemente. State Theatre Company of
South Australia, Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, 21 August 2001.
I La Galigo adapted by Rhonda Grauer from Sulawesi myth. Dir. Robert Wilson.
The Arts Centre, Melbourne, 26 October 2006.
Irony is Not Enough: Essay on my Life as Catherine Deneuve based on the poetry
of Anne Carson. Fragment31 Performance Collective, Arts House, North
Melbourne, 16 November 2010.
Je.ja.l.an (The Streets). Dir. Yudi Achmad Tajudin. Teater Garasi, Taman Budaya,
Yogyakarta, 16–17 May 2008.
Journey to Confusion by Not Yet It’s Difficult and Gekidan Kaitaisha. Dir. David
Pledger and Shimizu Shinjin. Not Yet It’s Difficult and Gekidan Kaitaisha,
Open Stage, Melbourne, 1999; Morishita Studios, Tokyo, 2000; Melbourne
Next Wave Festival and Dance House, 2002.
Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga (The Struggle of the Naga Tribe) by Rendra. Dir. Rendra.
Bengkel Teater, Kridosono Sports Stadium, Yogyakarta, 1978.
The Lost Echo by Barrie Kosky and Tom Wright. Dir. Barrie Kosky. Sydney Theatre
Company Actors Company, Sydney Theatre, 9 September 2006.
228 References

Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin). Dir. Nigel Jamieson. Performing Lines,

Malthouse, Melbourne, 20 March 2010.
Persona based on the film by Ingmar Bergman. Trans. Keith Bradfield. Dir. Adena
Jacobs. Fraught Outfit in association with Theatre Works, Theatre Works,
St Kilda, 18 May 2012.
Sangatsu no Itsukakan (Five Days in March) by Okada Toshiki. Dir. Okada Toshiki.
Chelfitsch, Superdelux, Tokyo, 2004.
Tartuffe by Moliere. Adapted by Louise Fox and Michael Kantor. Dir. Matthew
Luton. Malthouse Theatre, Melbourne, 15 February 2008.
The Tell-Tale Heart adapted by Barrie Kosky from the story by Edgar Allan Poe. Dir.
Barrie Kosky. Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse, Melbourne, 19 November 2010.
The Theft of Sita. Dir. Nigel Jamieson. Botanical Gardens, Adelaide, Adelaide
Festival, 2000.
Thyestes after Seneca. Adapted by Simon Stone, Thomas Henning, Chris Ryan
and Mark Winter. Dir. Simon Stone. The Hayloft Project, Tower Theatre,
Malthouse, Melbourne, 16 September 2010.
’Tis Pity She’s a Whore by John Ford. Dir. Marion Potts. Malthouse Theatre,
Melbourne, 1 February 2011.
Tôkyô No-to (Tokyo Notes) by Hirata Oriza. Dir. Hirata Oriza. Seinendan, Komaba
Geikjô, Tokyo, 1994.
True West by Sam Shepard. Dir. Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Sydney Theatre
Company, Wharf 1 Theatre, 2 November 2010.
Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body). Dir. Yudi Achmad Tajudin. Teater Garasi, Salihara
Theatre, Jakarta, 11–12 October 2010.
Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov. Adapted by Andrew Upton. Dir. Tamás Asher.
With Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh. Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf
1 Theatre, 9 November 2010.
Visible Cities by Chay Yew. Dir. Giorgio Barberio Corsetti. With Ali Ahn and
Gabriele Benedetti. Singapore Arts Festival and Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, in
co-production with Fattore K., Drama Centre Theatre, Singapore, 22 May 2009.
Waktu Batu (Stone Time) Dir. Yudi Tajudin. Teater Garasi, various sites, 2002–5.
The Wars of the Roses. Adapted from Shakespeare’s history plays by Tom Wright
and Benedict Andrews. Dir. Benedict Andrews. Sydney Theatre Company,
Walsh Bay, 5 January 2009.
The Women of Troy by Euripides. Adapted by Tom Wright. Dir. Barrie Kosky.
Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1 Theatre, 22 September 2008.
Yibiyung by Dallas Winmar. Dir. Wesley Enoch. Company B and Malthouse
Theatre. CUB Malthouse. 30 October, 2008.
Zougame no Sonikku Raifu (The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise) by Okada Toshiki.
Dir. Okada Toshiki. Chelfitsch, Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Yokohama, February
2011.

Novels cited
Calvino, I. (1997) Invisible Cities (London: Vintage).
Drewe, R. (2005) Grace (Ringwood: Penguin/Viking).
Ginibi, R. L. (1999) Haunted by the Past (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin).
Wright, A. (2006) Carpentaria (Artarmon, NSW: Giramondo).
 References 229

Filmography
Bran Nue Dai (2010) Dir. Rachel Perkins. Prod. Robyn Kershaw and Graeme Isaac.
Roadshow Films.
Tôkyô Monogatari (Tokyo Story) (1953) Dir. Ozu Yasujirô. Prod. Takeshi Yamamoto.
Shochiku.

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Index

Page numbers in bold refer to figures.

A Beautiful Country (Chay Yew) ‘Arts and Culture Strategic Review’

159–60 (Singapore Arts Festival) 210
Abe Kôbô 120–1 arts festivals 208–11
adaptation and adaptation theatre As If He Hears (Chay Yew) 158
13, 143, 143–57; Australia 143–57; Asialink 201, 201–2
and cultural economy 188; Asian Values, debate 4
definition 143; director’s cut Asia-Pacific region 14; colonial
187; dissimulation 154–5; history and 8; confidence 218;
Eurocentrism 143–57; I La cultural environment 3–6;
Galigo 177; Indonesia 13–14; epistemological shifts 5; impact
intertextuality 150–1; Japan 14, of globalization 4; modernity 5,
186–97; limitations 155; 220; performance range 1; as
motivated 145; motivation 147; performative construct 220–1
and the original text 144–5; asylum seekers 91–3
and originality 188; overt 189; audience: as active participants
reflexive dramaturgies 195–7; 105–6; empathy 31; Tokyo Notes
Shakespearean texts 144–5, (Hirata) 69
147, 189, 190–5, 191, 195–7, Australia: apology to Indigenous
211; Singapore 158–69; Australians 31; asylum
spectacle of 189–95; theory seekers 91–3; closure 31;
and practice 144–6; traditional colonial modernity 18,
performances 170; and 19–20, 21, 31–2; contradictions
transnationalism 149; turn within 18; convicts 19;
to the Middle East 156–7; cosmopolitanism 13; and cultural
updating 147; see also Women of exchange 202–3; culture 1;
Troy, The development of drama 17;
aesthetic education 204 dialectic of modernity 24–5; East
aesthetic modernity 186, 187, 197 Arnhem Land 81–2; and East
Air Conditioner (Ku-ra) (Okada) Timor 175; Elcho Island 81–2;
113 European inheritance 10, 220;
alienation 11, 25, 31, 39, 47–8, 71, European realism 17; European
76, 114, 119, 159–60, 160, 164–6, settlement 18, 19, 20–5, 28;
169, 220 fluid identity 79–94; frontier
alternative peripheries, growth violence 20, 20–5; historic
of 217–18 Indigenous occupation 88–90;
amateur theatre groups 36 history wars 20; imposition
ambient dramaturgy 113–14 of modernity 87; Indigenous
ambient music 119–20 actors 24; Indigenous culture
Angewandte 83; Indigenous custodial rights
Theaterwissenschaft 127 89; Indigenous dance performance
Appadurai, Arjun 129, 136, 159 79, 82–7, 84; Indigenous

242
 Index 243

dispossession 19–20, 20–5; Birch, David 36, 37

Indigenous politics 81–2; Black Lung Theatre and Whaling
Indigenous theatre 18, 18–19; Firm 214–16
Indonesia as Other 176; Blanchett, Cate 146, 149
international collaborative Blue Dragon, The (Lepage) 211
productions 174–85; involvement body, the 119; child 118;
in War Against Terror 156; construction of 214; female
Kimberley region 79, 87–8; 106–10, 111; fetishized 194; and
liquid modernity 11, 80, 90, language 118; marked 212;
94, 218; mining 80, 81, 94; subcultural 113–14
Northern Territory 79; Northern Boenisch, Peter 18, 147, 196
Territory Intervention 82, Bond, Joshua 79, 83
87; performance culture 3, borders 134, 135–6, 212
10; Perth International Arts Bovell, Andrew 10, 17, 18, 19, 21,
Festival 79; reconciliation 24; 25, 26, 28, 145–6, 218; see also Holy
re-examination of the past 18; Day; When the Rain Stops Falling.
regional modernity 90; solid Brecht, Bertolt 120, 147
modernity 80; Sydney 2000 Brook, Peter 181
Olympic Games 18; symbolic Burning Daylight (Swain and
framework 80; text-based Pigram) 88
drama 10, 17–32; touring Butler, J. 19
companies 143; transgenerational
trauma 25–6, 32; unemployment Caligula (Camus) 50
81–2; see also Holy Day (Bovell); Call Cutta 130
Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin); Calvino, Italo, Invisible Cities 13,
When the Rain Stops Falling 161, 166–7, 169
(Bovell) capitalism 55, 58, 70, 76, 213;
Australia Council for the Arts 201 development of 34–5; late 39–40;
‘Australia in the Asian Century regional variations 4
White Paper’ (Australian Cargo Asia 130
Government) 202–3 Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore 12,
authenticity 59, 133–4, 159, 167–8, 218–19; background 129–30;
170, 171 border crossing 134, 135;
Axis of Evil, the 156 context 126–9; dialogue 132;
experts of the everyday 131–5;
Baal (Brecht) 147–8 journey’s end 137–8; Jurong
Bacalzo, Dan 159–60, 160 Penjuru Dormitory
Balibo 214 136–7; migrant labourer
Bangladesh 26, 28 sequence 135–7; moments of
Bauman, Zygmunt 3, 6–8, 13, 19, encounter 134–5; Pasir Panjang
38–9, 45, 47, 48, 74, 76, 85, 86, Container Terminal 135–6;
87, 90–1, 126, 137, 146, 147, 156, performance 131–9; performance
162–3, 207, 217, 221, 1, 63 space 130, 131; route 134–5;
Beck, Ulrich 44, 121, 133, 134, 162, spontaneity 134; start of the
207 journey 132
Bengkel Teater (Workshop Cargo Shangqiu–Shanghai 12, 130
Theatre) 53, 56 Cargo Sofia-X – A Bulgarian Truck Ride
Bhabha, Homi K. 38, 48, 103, 201 through European Cities 12, 129–30
Bharucha, Rustom 204–5 Cargo Tokyo–Yokohama 12, 130
244 Index

Casey, Maryrose 18–19, 87 and national cultural agencies

Castells, Manuel 129, 138 201–3; and national interest 202–3;
Chatterjee, Partha 34, 34–5 value of 203
Chay Yew 13, 158–61, 218 cultural flows 2, 160–1, 218; global
Chelfitsch 112–15, 119, 156, 197 129, 136; inward 183–5;
Chenglong Spiral 25n8 managing 208–11; participation
Chia, Adeline 168 201; traditional performance
China 3, 94, 218 170–85
China Shanghai Arts Festival 208–9 cultural hybridity 103–6, 201
Chinese mothers, demanding 41–2 cultural identity 2, 159
Chooky Dancers 11, 82–7, 84, 218 cultural practice 1, 2–3, 8
Chua, Amy 42 cultural sector, engagement with the
Chua, Beng Huat 16 Asia-Pacific 156
civilians, and war 153–4 cultural space, national 67
Clemente, Rosalba 22 cultural tradition 52; mobilization of
climate change 26, 28 56–7
coercive modernity 212–14 culture: clashes 81–7; fluidity of 3;
Cohen, Matthew 24, 172, 178, 179 traditional 85–6; vulnerability 86
Cold War 201, 51 custodial rights, Indigenous 89
colloquial theatre (gendai kôgo engeki)
64–5, 75–6 dance 11, 82–7, 84, 96, 100–1, 172,
colonial condition, the 37 218
colonial modernity 18, 19–20, 21, dangdut singers 98, 101, 102, 103–6,
31–2, 34 105, 106–7, 106–10, 107, 111
colonial modernization 34 Davis, Colin 30, 39, 116–17
colonialism 3, 8, 36, 155, 218 defamiliarization 118
commodification and commodity dehumanization 162, 162
culture 166–8, 169, 216 Derrida, Jacques 30, 46, 116
communal bonds 86–7 deterritorialization 189–90
communication, access to 7–8 difference, highlighting 212–14
community, loss of 8 Dignam, John 150–1
community propaganda 9 Dindon W. S. 59
commuting 125 Djamil, Firman 184
Confucian pragmatism 34 Dogville 208–9
consumerism 6, 167–8, 169 Doku Rai (you, dead man, I don’t believe
Corsetti, Giorgio Barberio 161 you) 214–16
cosmopolitanism 4, 13, 158, 205–6 Drake, Sir Frances 171
cross-cultural collaboration 214–16 Dream Regime 212–14, 216
cultural agencies, national 201–3 Drewe, Robert 11, 149; see also Grace
cultural appropriation 13–14, 189 (Drewe)
cultural exchange 201–8; and Drummond, Chris 25–6
Australia 202–3; cross-cultural Duchamp, Marcel 70
collaboration 214–16; Dream
Regime 212–14; funding 201–2; East Timor 175, 176, 212, 214–15
and globalization 212–14; Eckersall, Peter 115, 187–8, 192, 194,
highlighting difference 212–14; 207
as imperial domination 205; ecology, as theatre metaphor 124
managing 208–11; as a marker of Emily of Emerald Hill (Kon) 10,
modernity 216; meanings 203–4; 26, 40; arrival of 37–9;
 Index 245

conclusion 46–8; family gendai kôgo engeki (colloquial theatre)

disintegration 43–4, 45–6; first 11, 64–5
scene 34; language use 38; gender 90–1, 109
monologue 39–46; as national genocide 23–4
identity 48; personae 46–7; Gilbert, H. 156, 205–6
protagonist 34, 38, 39; reactions globalization 4, 6, 76, 206, 207, 220;
to 47; setting 39–40; status and cultural exchange 212–14;
37–8; time out of joint 62 and liquid modernity 7–8;
empathy 24, 31 recentring 189, 208; travel as
Enjyoi (Enjoy) (Okada) 113, 121 119–20
Enlightenment principles 34 globalized Asia 207
Eno, Brian, Music for Airports 119–20 Gonsalves, Osme 215
Enoch, Wesley 18, 149 gothic horror 24–5
environmental destruction 174–7 Goyang Penasaran (The Obsessive
Eurocentrism 13, 14, 94, 206; Twist) 12, 110–11; aims 109–10;
adaptations 143–57 context 106; criticism 110;
everyday, the 69–71; discourse ending 108–9; flashback
of 132; and imagined worlds sequence 107–8; performance
4–5, 8–9; and perception 74–5; 106–10, 107, 108
representation 67–8, 71–5; Grace (Drewe) 11, 79, 93, 149,
representing 64, 65 218; the asylum seeker 91–3;
exclusion 4, 218; modes of 159 context 87–8; ending 92–3;
Experimental Theatre Club 36 Molloy’s first lecture 88–9;
experts of the everyday 128, 131–5 Molloy’s second lecture 89–90;
exploitation 161–8, 169 narrative strands 87; opening
sequence 88–9; stalker
family, the: breakdown 43–4, 45–6, narrative 90–1
62–3, 71–5, 220; in Indonesia Grauer, Rhoda 177
61–3; liquefied 45; in Singapore Gross und Klein (Strauss) 146–7
35; size 44–5; as zombie
institution 44, 162 Habermas, Jürgen 186, 187
Fariz, Dynand 223n3 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 49–50, 53,
fashion trade 161–8 195
Featherstone, Mike 168–9 Hamlet: The Clown Prince 211
Five Days in March (Sangatsu no Hamletclone (Kawamura Takeshi) 14,
Itsukakan) (Okada) 113–14, 118, 190–5, 191; comparison with
156, 220 Hamletmachine 195–7
fluid identity 11, 79–94, 97 Hamletmachine (Die Hamletmaschine)
Forum Pembela Islam (FPI) (Forum of 190, 195–7, 196
Defenders of Islam) 98 Handke, Peter 50
Fukuyama, Francis 186 Harifuddin 183
funding, cultural exchange 201–2 Harootunian, H. D. 65, 70–1
Furiitaimu (Free Time) (Okada) 113 Haug, Helgard 127, 129, 133
Hauntology 30, 116–17
Galaxy 214–16 hegemonic intercultural theatre
Gallasch, Keith 86, 147 (HIT) 181, 204–5
Garawirrtja, Frank 83 Hirata Oriza 11, 64–5, 65–8,
Gates, Bill 126–7, 129, 133, 139 70, 222n1; see also Tokyo Notes
Gekidan Kaitaisha 212–14 (Hirata)
246 Index

history: fragmentation of 186–8; immigration, experience of 159–60,

opposing versions of 21; 165
secularized 34; shared 24; and India 3, 94
spectacle 190 Indian Cinematographic
history wars 20 Company 211
Holy Day (Bovell) 17, 18, 23, 29, Indigenous actors 24
146, 218; closing images 22; Indigenous custodial rights 89
and colonial modernity 21, Indigenous dance performance,
31–2; dialectic of modernity 24–5; Australia 79, 82–7, 84
frontier violence 20–5; gothic Indigenous peoples: culture
horror 24–5; Indigenous actors clash 81–7; dispossession 19–20;
24; massacre at the riverbed 22, historic occupation 88–90; as
23–4; and nation building 21–2; victims 24; violence against
Obedience 22–4; subtitle 20; 20–5; vulnerability 86
white travellers 22 Indigenous theatre, Australia 18,
human condition, the 159–60 18–19
human relationships, strength of individualization 8, 44, 45, 85, 163,
139 217
Hutcheon, Linda 143, 145, 153 individualized subject, the 47–8
Huyssen, Andreas 17, 31 Indonesia: adaptation theatre
Hwang, David Henry 158, 159 13–14; anti-pornography law 98;
cultural hybridity 103–6;
I La Galigo (Wilson) 14, 171, 174, cultural identities 1–2;
180, 184, 218; adaptation 177; cultural missions 172; cultural
audience responses 178–9, 181–2; tradition 52; dangdut singers 98,
Indonesian performance 179, 181, 103–6, 105, 106–10, 107, 111;
182–3; music 179; narrative democratization 218–19; Dutch
177–8; narrators 178; ownership impact 49–50; experience of
concerns 181; premiere 179 modernity 59–63; the family
I Made Sidie 175 in 61–3; identity 95, 97,
identity 30, 106; 106; international collaborative
Asian-American 159; productions 174–85; inward
and belonging 85–6; performance flows 170; Japanese
changing 41; clashes 12; occupation 50–1; jathilan
conflicting 80; cultural 159; dance 96; liquid modernity
dehumanization 162; fluid 11, 11–12; local-international
79–94, 97; group 110; collaborations 173–4; local
ill-fitting 60; individualized 85; performance traditions 51–4;
Indonesia 95, 97, 106; modernity 58–9; Muslim
Japanese 67, 70–1, 73; Japanese population 98, 102, 110, 111;
historical 112; in Je.ja.l.an New Order society 51–2, 59,
(The Street) 99; loss of 11, 172–3; New Order theatre 110;
219, 59, 60–1; national 34, openness of expression 97;
44, 48; polarized 159–60; outward performance flows 171–4;
postcolonial 103–6; search performance cultures 3, 10–11;
for 37; Singapore Baba 33 performative protests 98; post-
Ilbijerri Theatre 18 independence performance
imagination, role 1, 8 flows 172–3; postcolonial
imagined worlds 4–5, 8–9 identity 103–6; postmodern
 Index 247

performance 59–63; productions Mishima Yukio’s coup attempt

of European dramatic texts 50, 191–2; and modernity 65,
53; Sita as metaphor for 174–7; 70–1; modernity 195,
staging modernity 95–111; 196–7; modernization 188;
Suharto regime 95, 102, 172, national cultural essentialism
175, 222n2, 49, 50, 51, 58, 63; (nihonjinron) 186–7; Noh plays
Sukarno regime 172, 51; Taman 116, 188; performance cultures 3;
Mini Indonesia (Beautiful Indonesia reconstruction 67; role of
in Miniature Park) 172–3, 179, theatre in 187–8; sense of
181; Taman Ismail Marzuki 52; community 71; seppuku 191–2,
text-based drama 10–11, 49–63; 193–4; shingeki (‘new’ theatre) 64,
theatrical culture 97, 49–54, 63; 65–6; spectacle of adaptation
diversification of performance 189–95; text-based drama 11,
flows 173–4, 183–5; see also 64–76; theatrical culture 64,
Struggle of the Naga Tribe, The 65–8, 220; Tokyo underground
interculturalism 9, 12–13, 205–6 sarin attack, 1995 194–5;
international collaborative Tsukiji Shôgekijô (Tsukiji
productions, Indonesia 174–85 Little Theatre) 66; US-Japan
International Year for the World’s relations 113; young people
Indigenous People 19–20 112–13, 114–15; see also Sonic Life of
intertextuality 144, 145, 150–1, 211 a Giant Tortoise, The (Okada); Tokyo
Inul (dangdut singer) 98, 106 Notes (Hirata)
Invisible Cities (Calvino) 13, 161, Japan Foundation 201, 202
166–7, 169 jathilan dance 96
Irama, Rhoma 109 Je.ja.l.an (The Street) 98, 99, 103–4,
Iraq, invasion of, 2003 25, 113, 153, 173; commencement 100;
156 context 98–100; dangdut
Islam and Islamization 3, 4, 109, singers 101, 102; energy
110–11, 157 and movement 102; and
Iwabuchi, Koichi 208 identity 99; Mau kemana?
(Where are we going?) 100,
Jameson, Fredric 14, 25, 39–40 103; Muslim-identified
Jamieson, Nigel 79, 83, 85, 174, figures 102; performance 100–3;
176–7 seni pertunjukan tari (dance
Japan 94, 173, 218; adaptation theatre) sequence 100–1
theatre 14, 186–97, 188–9; Joseph, Kiru 36
avant-garde (angura, shôgekijô) Journey to Confusion project 212
66; constitution 113,
192; culture 1, 112; early Kaegi, Stefan 127, 129, 133
Shakespearean adaptations 195; Kapoor, Rajat 211
the everyday 69–71; and the Kara Jûrô 66
family 73; feelings of loss 114; Karrenbauer, Jörg 129–30
Hikikomori 112; historical Kaspar (Handke) 50
identity 112; identity 67, 70–1, Kawamura Takeshi 14, 186–97;
73; impact of history 65; kabuki adaptation context 188–9;
theatre 188; kodomo shintai child comparison with Müller 195–7;
bodies 118; Komaba Agora Gekijô Hamletclone 14, 190–5, 191;
(Komaba Agora Theatre) 65; liquid processes of adaptation 187–8;
modernity 12; militarism 66; reflexive dramaturgies 195–7;
248 Index

Kawamura Takeshi – continued local performance traditions 51–4

spectacle of adaptation 189–95; local connections 49–50
version of modernity 196–7 local-international
Keating, Paul 19 collaborations 173–4
kinship 87 localization 50, 53
Kisah Perjuangan Suku Naga (The loneliness 47–8, 164–6
Struggle of the Naga Tribe) (Rendra) Lost Echo Parts 1 and 2, The 147
10–11 Love Suicides (Chikamatsu ) 149
Komedi Stamboel 50
Kon, Stella 10; see also Emily of Mahabharata 181
Emerald Hill (Kon) Mailman, Deborah 18
Korea 94, 218 Malaysia 134, 224n1
Korean War 201 male sexuality 106–10
Kosky, Barrie 13, 143, 146, 147, Malna, Afrizal 59, 59–63
149–50, 155 Malzacher, Florian 127, 129, 133–4
marriage 61–2
Lane, Max 56, 57 Marrugeku 87–8
language 35, 64, 67, 83; and the Marrugeku Dance Company 87–8
body 118; colloquial 75, 121; Marx, Karl 163
patois 132; Singapore English 37; Masakatsu Morita 191–2
switching 38; traditional 8; masculinity 194
translation 213 Massey, Doreen 166–8
law, traditional 86–7 Mastodon dan Burung Kondor
Le Blond, Max 37, 38 (The Mastodon and the Condor)
Lee Kuan Yew 44 (Rendra) 53
Lehmann, Hans-Thies 127–8 meaning, loss of 168–9
Lei, Daphne 181, 185, 204 Melbourne International Arts Festival
Lepage, Robert 211 2011
Lim Hwee Hua 137 melting of the solids 7, 11
liminal modernism 123–4 Middle East, turn to the 156–7
linguistic pluralism 38 migrant labourers 135–7, 163–4,
liquid dramaturgy 71–5, 126–39 218–19
liquid modernity 1, 3, 106, 213–14, minikata (literally minimally worded)
217, 221; Australia 11, 80, 90, 94, 53
218; blocks to 8; concept minority groups, theatre 36
6–8; dark side 168–9; and Mishima Yukio 191, 193–4, 194, 195
despair 26; globality as 65; and mobility turn, the 160
globalization 7–8; impact 14; modern realism 64
Indonesia 11–12; irrelevance modernity: aesthetic 186, 187,
of space 87; Japan 12; limits 197; and arts festivals 209;
of 139; and the past 90; and Asia-Pacific region 5, 220;
performance 218; performing 13, blocks to 8; coercive 212–14;
158–69; Singapore 13; and Sonic colonial 18, 19–20, 21, 31–2, 34;
Life of a Giant Tortoise 114–15; and colonial modernization 34–5;
the stalker 90–1; and Tokyo Notes contradictions 110–11, 114; cost
(Hirata) 76 of 21; cultural exchange as a
Liurai Fo’er 214–16 marker of 216; cultural flows 2;
Lo, Jacqueline 38, 156, 205–6 dialectic of 24–5; drama 17;
local essentialism 103 drives 76; emergence of new 2;
 Index 249

European-Australian 29; America’ routine 85; Indigenous

experience of 59–63; half-Western, dance performance 79;
half-Asian 211; heavy 19; language 83; love story 84–7;
hyper-advanced 2; imposition of modernity encounters 85;
87; individualised 85; opening sequence 83; origins 83;
Indonesian 58–9; industrial 6; performance 82, 83; Programme
Japan and 65, 70–1; Notes 83; tension 85; title 83
Japanese 195, 196–7; liquid, Niedermair, Martin 149
see liquid modernity; melting Ninagawa Yukio 189
powers 38; and narrative 8; outer 9/11 terrorist attacks 4, 91–3, 156
reaches 22; performance of Noer, Arifin C. 53, 59
59–63; postindustrial 6; privatized Noh plays 116, 123–4, 188
versions 163; reflexive 17–18, non-narrative style, see Je.ja.l.an
32; regional 1, 2–3, 90; and the (The Street)
Self 10, 33–48; solid 11, 79, 80, non-representational theatre
94; spread of 5, 5–6; staging 133–4
95–111; and tradition 4; non-spaces 120
Western 5, 35 Northern Territory Intervention,
moral authority 21–2 Australia 82, 87
Müller, Heiner 144–5, 190, 195–7 Not Yet It’s Difficult 212
multi-ethnic casting 49–50 nowhere spaces 120
Muniandy, Ravindran A/L 131–5 Nyungunyungu, Margaret 79
music 119–20, 150, 179
Music for Airports (Eno) 119–20 Okada Toshiki 12, 112–15,
120–1, 124–5, 220; see also Sonic
Naples 164–5 Life of a Giant Tortoise, The
narrative, and modernity 8 (Okada)
nation building 21–2 Olympic Games, Sydney 2000 18
National Arts Council of oppression 160
Singapore 210 organized crime 164–5
national identity 34, 44, 48 orientation points 162
national interest, promotion of Osanai Kaoru 66
202–3 Other, the 137, 171–2, 176
national minorities 19 Otong, Boedi S. 59
nationalism 4 outcomes, evaluation of 210–11
naturalism 64, 75 Ozu Yasujiro 72
neocolonialism 3
neoconservatism 186–7 Pakistan 156
neoliberalism 65 Pan-Asian Festival 209
Neumayer, Eric 135–6 Paramaditha, Intan 106, 109–10
New Documentary theatre 129 Paris exhibition, 1931 171
New World, European expansion passivity 124–5
into 19 past, the: consequences arising from
Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu (Wrong Skin) 11, 25, 29–31, 32; holding on to 42–3;
79, 218; Bollywood sequence 84; and liquid modernity 90;
and communal bonds 86–7; re-examination of 18
context 81–2; creative team 79; Paterson, E. 115, 207
dialectical complexities 87; patriarchy 46
ending 86; ‘I Want to Live in perception 74–5, 117–18
250 Index

performance 8–9; Asia-Pacific queer sexuality 194

regional range 1; and conflict 98; quiet theatre (shizuka na engeki) 71
and liquid modernity 218;
local traditions 51–4; of racial exclusion 36
modernity 59–63; modes of Rae, Paul 210, 212, 216
2–3; postmodern 59–63; Rahayu Supanggah 179
site-specific 130; symbolic Ramachandran, Ganes A/L 131–5
framework 80; technique reality: loss of 168–9; scripted
circulation 3; touring 94 133–4; super flat 118
Performance and Cosmopolitics (Gilbert realness 167–8
and Lo) 156, 205–6 reconciliation 24, 31
performance cultures 3, 10–11; see reflexive dramaturgy 18, 195–7
also theatrical culture reflexive modernity 17–18, 32
performance flows, traditional refugees 88, 137, 156, 213
170–85; audience responses 178–9, regional modernity 1, 2–3, 90
181–2; I La Galigo 171, 174, religion 106–10, 110–11
177–85, 184; international Rendra 10–11, 50, 53–4, 56, 58; see
collaborative productions 174–85; also Struggle of the Naga Tribe, The
inward 183–5; local-international representation: authorization of 155;
collaborations 173–4; desire for 38; negotiation of
outward 171–4; ownership 196–7
concerns 181; The Theft of Sita Riantiarno, Nano 53
170–1, 174–7, 175, 185 Rimini Protokoll 12, 127–8, 130,
performance industry, global 3 133–4, 218; see also Cargo Kuala
performance landscape 146–7 Lumpur–Singapore
performance space 130, 131; the Robins, Gavin 79
street 95–8 Romeril, John 19, 149
performative protests 98 Rouse, John 144–5
permanence of transience 126–7 Rui An 138–9
Pigram, Dalisa 87–8
Pires Tome 171 Sangatsu no Itsukakan (Five Days in
place, attachment to 133 March) (Okada) 113, 113–14,
pluralist society 221 118
politics 118–19; and passivity Sawaragi Noi 115, 122
124–5 science, and traditional knowledge
popular culture, Indigenous peoples 89–90
and 81–7 Second World War: fall of
Porcelain (Chay Yew) 158 Singapore, 1942 33; war in the
Port of Singapore Authority 136 Pacific 3; Japanese occupation of
postcolonial identity 103–6 Indonesia 50–1
postdramatic theatre 127–8 Seinendan 67
postindustrial modernity 6 Sekda (The Regional Secretary) (Rendra)
postmodernism 5 53, 54
postmodern performance 59–63 Self, the: crisis of 44–5;
Poulton, M. Cody 67–8, 73, 121, definition 41–4; desire for
188 representation 38; and
poverty 104, 169 modernity 10, 33–48; and
power 106–10, 110–11, 189, 194, racial exclusion 36; search for
214; soft 203 identity 37; unsettling of 38–9
 Index 251

self-actualization 59 Singapore Drama Festival 37

self-fulfilment 43–4 Singapore Stage Club, The 36
Sennett, Richard 126–7, 129, 133 Singing in the Rain (film) 84
seppuku 191–2, 193–4 site-specific performances 130
7 Stages of Grieving, The (Enoch and slow dramaturgy 115, 207
Mailman) 18 social forgetting 71
sexual desire 107–8 socialization 214
sexual oppression 160 Society of the Spectacle, The (Debord)
sexuality 90–1, 110–11; male 190
106–10; queer 194 soft power 203
shadow puppet theatre 54, 56, 56–9, software time 207, 214
96, 174–7, 175, 54 solid modernity 79, 80, 94
Shakespearean texts, adaptations solidity, illusion of 39–40
144–5, 147, 189, 190–5, 191, 195–7, Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise,
211 The (Okada) 12, 26, 112–25,
Shimizu Shinjin 212, 213 122, 186, 197, 218; ambient
shingeki (‘new’ theatre) 64, 65–6 music 119–20; and the body 118,
Singapore: adaptation 158–69; Babas 119; characters 115–16;
33, 42–3; birth rate 44; capitalism comparison to Noh plays 123–4;
220; changing cultural environment context 112–15; design 122;
3–4; Chinese immigrants 33; dramaturgical flows 117;
civil unrest, 1950s 33–4; colonial ending 125; lighting 122; liminal
modernization 34; Confucian modernism 123–4; and liquid
pragmatism 34; context 34–5; modernity 114–15; narrative
cultural economy 136; cultural form 115–16; narrator
flows 160–1; Experimental Theatre 117–18; and non-spaces 120;
Club 36; fall of, 1942 33; the opening sequence 121;
family in 35; as Global City for passage of time 117, 125;
the Arts 209–10; housing 35; and passivity 124–5; and
hyper-advanced modernity 2; I La perception 117–18; performance
Galigo premiere 179; integration 117–19; performance style 120–2;
into global modernity 33; Jurong and politics 118–19, 124–5;
Penjuru Dormitory 136–7; signification 121; staging 121–2;
kiasu 41–2; language 35; themes 112–13, 114, 115–17,
liquid dramaturgy 126–39; 117–19; and travel 119–20, 125
liquid modernity 13; space: fragmentation of 166–8;
Malaysia border 134; migrant irrelevance of 87
labourers 135–7, 164; and space of flows 129, 139
modernity 34–5; National Arts spectacle, the 190
Council of Singapore 210; spectrality 39–40
national identity 34, 44, 48; Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 3, 19,
Nyonyas 33; Pasir Panjang 154, 155, 204, 216
Container Terminal 135–6; Srikandhi, Naomi 106, 109
performance cultures 3; rise stalker, the 90–1
of 173; text-based drama 10, state, the 134, 135, 157, 162, 164,
33–48; theatrical culture 36–7; see 169, 205, 210, 224
also Cargo Kuala Lumpur–Singapore; Steger, M. 161
Emily of Emerald Hill (Kon) Stolen (Harrison) 18
Singapore Arts Festival 209–11 Stone, Simon 147
252 Index

Strauss, Botho 146–7 Theft of Sita, The 13–14, 170–1,

Street, The. see Je.ja.l.an (The Street) 174–7, 175, 185
street parades 95–8 third space 206
Struggle of the Naga Tribe, The 49, 53; tiger mothers 41–2
the chorus 57; the dalang 54–5, time: experience of 207;
57; depiction of noble figures 58; fragmentation of 166–8; out of
divergences from wayang joint 46, 116; passage of 117,
model 57–8; humour 58; 125
mobilization of cultural Tokyo Festival 209
tradition 56–7; narrative 54–6; Tokyo Notes (Hirata) 11, 26, 62,
opening sequence 54–5; 64, 74, 188–9; audience 69;
skirmishes 56; status 54; vision conclusion 69; context 75–6;
of modernity 58–9; wayang dramatic tension 68–9;
shadow puppet theatre model 54, and the everyday 69–71;
56, 56–9 family breakdown 71–5;
suicide 101, 191–2, 193–4 lack of resolution 76; liquid
Suzuki Tadashi 66 dramaturgy 71–5; and
Swain, Rachael 87–8 liquid modernity 76; and
Sydney Theatre Company (STC) 143, perception 74–5; setting 68;
146, 149, 150 synopsis 68–9; theatrical space
69; themes 64–5, 69; translator
Tajudin, Yudi 99, 103, 106 68
Tan, K. P. 160 Tokyo Story (Tôkyô Monogatari) (film)
Teater Garasi 11, 98–100, 102, 72, 188–9
110–11, 173, 218–19, 222n2; see touring 94, 172
also Je.ja.l.an (The Street); Tubuh touring companies 143, 149
Ketiga (The Third Body) tradition: mobilization of 56–7;
Teater Sae 11, 59, 63, 222n2 and modern science 89–90; and
Teater Koma 53 modernity 4; performance 51–4;
Teater Kubur 59 reinterpreting 58
technology, access to 3, 218 traditional ceremonial
Tell-Tale Heart, The (Poe) 149–50 performances 8
Terayama Shûji 66 traditional performance flows
terrorism: 9/11 attacks 4, 91, 156; 170–85; audience responses 178–9,
Tokyo underground sarin attack, 181–2; diversification 173–4; early
1995 194–5 171; I La Galigo 171, 174,
text-based drama: Australia 10, 177–85, 184; international
17–32; European realism 17; collaborative productions 174–85;
Indonesia 10–11, 49–63; Japan inward 183–5; local-international
11, 64–76; Singapore 10, 33–48 collaborations 173–4; outward
theatre 8–9; transformations in 3 171–4; ownership concerns 181;
Theatre of Cruelty 171 post-independence 172–3; sites
theatrical culture: English- 171; The Theft of Sita 170–1,
language 36; Indonesia 49–54, 174–7, 175, 185; transnational
63, 97; Japan 64, 65–8, 220; 170
Singapore 36–7; see also transgenerational trauma 25–6, 32
performance cultures transhipment hubs 135–6
theatrical realism 64 translation 213
theatrical space 69, 121–2 transnationalism 4, 13, 149
 Index 253

travel: as globalization 119–20; as a Wijaya, Putu 53

spatial metaphor 125 Williams, Tennessee 146
Trier, Lars von 209 Wilson, Robert 14, 171, 177, 183,
Tubuh Ketiga (The Third Body) 12, 99, 184, 207–8, 218; see also I La Galigo
103–6, 105, 110, 173 (Wilson)
Winet, Evan 49–50
Uchino Tadashi 65, 118, 125 Winmar, Dallas 18
United Nations of theatre 211 Wirth, Andrzej 127
United States of America: Asian women: anger 62–3; power 194;
immigrant experience 159–60; role of 46, 47
US-Japan relations 113 Women of Troy, The (Kosky and
Wright) 13, 143, 153–4,
Visible Cities (Chay Yew) 13, 154; adaptation 149–51,
218–19; background 158–61; 153–6; cast 150–1; change of
blue dress 166–8; cultural frame 153–4; chorus 150,
flows 160–1; and the dark side 152, 154; commissioning 147;
of liquid modernity 168–9; intertextuality 151;
language 161; performance 161–8, message 153; mise en scène
162, 165; premiere 158, 160–1, 150; music 150; opening
209–10; reviews 168–9; space-time sequence 151–2; performance
envelopes 166–8; themes 158, 151–2, 153, 154; turn to the
160, 169; transnational, translocal Middle East 156–7
connections 161–5 workforce mobility 135–7, 163–4,
218–19
Waktu Batu, (Stone Time) 99, 173 Wright, Tom 13, 143, 146, 147,
war, and civilians 153–4 147–8, 155
War Against Terror 156 Wrong Skin, see Ngurrumilmarrmiriyu
wayang shadow puppet theatre 54, (Wrong Skin)
96, 174–7, 175, 54, 56, 56–9
wealth 42–3 Yanti’s Biography 59–63, 61
Wee, Wan-Ling 207, 209, 210 Yeoh, Brenda 208
West, the, delegitimization of 4 Yibiyung (Winmar) 18
Western modernity 5, 35 Yogya, Indonesia 95–7
Wetzel, Daniel 127, 129, 133 YouTube 82, 83
When the Rain Stops Falling (Bovell) young people 112–13;
17, 18, 20, 27, 91, 146, 218; closure alienation 114–15
31; and colonial modernity 31–2; youth culture 174, 220
and European-Australian modernity Yûkoku (Patriotism) (Mishima
29; narrative 26–31; opening Yukio) 191–2
sequence 26–7; themes 25–6;
transgenerational trauma 25–6, Žižek, Slavoj 71
28–31, 32 zombie institutions 44, 133, 134,
Whitlam, Gough 155–6 135, 162, 164–5