| In varying degrees since the 1980s, Indonesian directors have been shifting from producing marginalised kampungan theatre towards producing gedongan theatre. Kampungan theatre is politically and economically marginalised by the gedongan world, just as Mestizo and Indonesian-Chinese performance in Batavia was pushed to the political, economic, and cultural periphery by the Europeans. The fundamental shift has occurred because the audiences of kampungan directors consisting of established directors and the public (through the mass media), are placed in the gedongan world. If kampungan directors like Rendra of the 1970s adopt the standards imposed by the gedongan, their messages of social critique become dilute. If, like Dindon, they resist such standards, their social messages will not be heard.;In their efforts to be heard by established theatre authorities such as Rendra, directors like Riantiarno have adapted the humour of traditional kampung stage performance in their own productions. In his hope to gain recognition from the cultural elite who criticise him for accepting sponsorship and, in so doing, to appeal to audiences of the politically and economically elite, he incorporated the clown figure, the traditional voice of social criticism, into his productions. Following Rendra's example, he reveals in Suksesi an awareness of the logic behind Indonesian humour and its direct link with national politics.;Riantiarno's adaptations, as seen in Suksesi, are reminiscent of Rendra's theatre of the 1970s. It was in the 1970s that Rendra extracted the conventional clown figures from kampung performance and placed them into modern kampungan theatre. In the kampung setting, the clowns' harmless humour and the mocking of their masters, was accepted by both the courts and the villagers. Rendra, however, gave the clown servants a subversive voice. Riantiarno's co-optation of the kampung clown in Suksesi evokes the same voice as Rendra's works of the 1970s.;A study of modern drama therefore cannot afford to disregard the oral tradition which resounds on Indonesian stages in dramatic codes relevant to the political context of the times; it does so at the risk of distorting both the voice and the spectacle it endeavours to understand. |
