Communities of Imagination: Contemporary Southeast Asian Theatres

Conclusion

309 Conclusion Any society that hopes to be imperishable must carve out for itself a piece of space and a period of time in which it can look honestly at itself. This honesty is not that of the scientist, who exchanges the honesty of his ego for the objectivity of his gaze. It is, rather, akin to the supreme honesty of the creative artist who, in his presentations on the stage, in the book, on canvas, in marble, in music, or in towers and houses, reserves to himself the privilege of seeing straight what all cultures build crooked.1 The nation-states of Southeast Asia, emerging from the colonial empires of Europe and America, and then wartime occupation by Japan, and impacted once again by their proximity to the growing power of China, the Middle East, and India, are the site of both superficial adaptations of cultural difference, and a profound layering of historical fusions. The theatres that stem from such crossfertilization reveal their own as well as their societies’ conscious applications and unconscious penetrations, and the accommodation and resistance to such influences . Now marginalized by societies that are infatuated with electronic communications and entertainments, the theatres reenvision the national and global images, challenge the commercial and political narratives, as well as negotiate the role for the new self in a world teeming with other clamoring selves. These coalescences of writers, directors, performers, and the audiences who attend their work utilize their collective creativity and artistic camaraderie to form new “communities of imagination” that strive to express the complex totality of the Southeast Asian’s individual, communal, national, and cosmopolitan self. A NICHE ON THE MARGINS Southeast Asian theatre strives to find its niche both on the world stage as well as within regional contemporary society. Singaporean dramatist Kuo Pao Kun insisted that theatre’s proper niche was on the margins of society: 310 | ConClUSion I think the modern, contemporary life makes theatre or the live performing arts an indispensable activity. We know the outlines of the history of development in theatre say in the last 100 years, against the background of the rise of radio broadcast, film or television. Over the years, when these forms hit the market, we see a drop in the popularity of theatre. But theatre always came back, finding its own niche. It’s an irreplaceable niche.2 Their niche being neither stable nor constant, theatre practitioners seek new ways to reconnect with the public. While they may believe that their art is necessary to the community, they have to continually remind and convince the community of that need because in contemporary society the production and reception of art has become extrinsic to social life, rather than a deeply rooted expression of it. In Southeast Asia one finds a spectrum of theatre’s niches: at one end, in Bali there is no word for “art” because artistic activities are still fully integrated into people’s way of being; at the other is Singapore, the most “modernized” of Southeast Asian states, where art is at its most separate and commodified, and its functions most controlled by the state. If the Singaporean government sees a niche for the performing arts then it is either as an adornment to its economic prowess, or as a safety valve for restless social elements that might otherwise seek more dangerous, i.e. political, forms of expression. In between, many troupes prefer to operate on the fringe, where they are freer to follow their own inclinations and develop their own métier that might appeal more to audiences abroad than at home. They do not “find” a niche; it is not a given, but must be carved out. Often the most interesting place for Southeast Asian theatre is at these junctions of the local and transcultural, not swinging between the polarized epochalist and essentialist extremes that effect government policies toward the arts, but imaginatively synthesizing them. Between the strain of accommodating a modern consciousness with an unconscious “traditional mind,” actually the condition of previous acculturations, and where the two appear to make mutually exclusive demands upon individual psyches, lies the space where the contemporary theatre is most illuminating. There it depicts and probes the rational and irrational responses to the topical. Three developments exemplify the theatres’ expressions of contemporary modernity. First, during the 1990s, the theatre explored the altering relationships between rural, urban, and cosmopolitan communities, especially after the 1997 economic crisis that caused a severe devaluation of most of the region...