Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces

by Winet, Evan Darwin

• ISBN13: 9780230546882
• ISBN10: 0230546889
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Drawing examples from as early as a 1619 production ofHamletand as recent as 2007 performances by Indonesia's most famous presidential impersonator, this book considers how theatre functions as a uniquely effective medium for representing the contradictions of Indonesian identity in the urban colonial/postcolonial metropole.

Author Biography

EVAN WINET spent six months as a Fulbright scholar to Indonesia in affiliation with the Jakarta Arts Institute. He currently serves as co-convener of the National Identities/National Cultures research group of the American Society for Theatre Research and emerging scholar adjutant for the Association for Asian Performance. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Series Editor's Preface	p. xi
Preface	p. xii
Introduction: Colonial Foundations and Precessions of Postcoloniality	p. 1
Spectral genealogies	p. 1
Between Batavia and Indonesia	p. 8
The first Indonesian Play	p. 20
Absent faces	p. 33
Unimagined Communities: Theatres of Eurasian and Chinese Batavia	p. 38
Neighborhoods and buildings	p. 38
The foreign metropole	p. 40
Mestizo nationalism and Komedie Stamboel	p. 44
Karina Adinda	p. 48
Chinese Batavian theatre	p. 58
The Living Corpse	p. 61
Jakarta 2039	p. 65
Sites of Disappearance: Expatriate Ghosts on Ephemeral Stages	p. 69
Jakarta after 1949	p. 69
Cryptic memorials for distant homelands	p. 73
The Schouwburg Weltewreden	p. 77
The Death of Jan van Schaffelaar	p. 80
A zoological garden and an empty frame	p. 85
Tableaux at the ephemeral centers of struggle	p. 95
Soekarno's theatre in exile	p. 98
Eccentrics at Parangtritis	p. 103
Despite Their Failings: Spectres of Foreign Professionalism	p. 108
The last two luminaries	p. 108
'Gifted queer' amateurs and professional actresses	p. 110
Mina Kruseman and the nativization of modern theatre	p. 116
Dr Samsi and Dewi Dja	p. 120
The Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere	p. 124
The first (amateur) Indonesian troupe	p. 128
Indonesian method acting	p. 134
Hamlet and Caligula: Echoes of a Voice, Unclear in Origins	p. 141
The wandering woman	p. 141
'A stretch of beach binding dry land to a spiritual sea'	p. 146
Rendra, pemuda of Denmark	p. 150
Caligula in the wake of Soekarno	p. 156
...and in the twilight of Suharto	p. 164
Umat as Rakyat: Performing Islam through Veils of Nationalism	p. 174
Devotions of the revolutionary youth	p. 174
The limits of anti-theatricalism	p. 177
The nationalist as perfect man	p. 179
The lonely path of the liberal infidel	p. 186
An actress haunted by martyrs	p. 190
Teater Reformasi: The Lingering Smile of the Absent Father	p. 196
Performing the face of Suharto	p. 196
The haunted graveyards of Payung Hitam	p. 204
President of the Republic of Dreams…	p. 208
…and bridegroom to global capitalism	p. 213
Conclusion: forgetting the monotonous nation	p. 216
Appendix: A Timeline of 'Indonesian' and 'Batavian' Histories	p. 219
Notes	p. 226
Works Cited	p. 240
Index	p. 252
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