The Social Role of Popular Theater of Southeast Asia

THE SOCIAL ROLE OF POPULAR THEATER OF SOUTHEAST ASIA* IN SOUTHEAST ASIA, THEATER HAS EVOLVED within three main traditions : a folk tradition, a court tradition, and a popular tradition. Looked at in historical terms folk theater began in the dim pre-historic past, court theater developed and flourished between the tenth and the nineteenth centuries, while popular theater is a product, by and large, of the twentieth century. These traditions mutually influenced each other to a very great extent, and often a theater form which evolved within one tradition was taken over into another tradition. Recognizing that these traditions are not wholly distinct from each other, nevertheless it is useful to compare their general characteristics in order to arrive at an understanding of the unique role which theater in the popular tradition plays in Southeast Asian society. The earliest forms of folk theater must have arisen in conjunction with animistic religious worship. Before the coming of the great Asian religions-Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam-the early settlers of Southeast Asia were animists-regardless of whether they lived in Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand , or Vietnam. In common they practiced similar animistic rites to cleanse a village of evil spirits, to celebrate the planting of rice or harvest time, to placate a troublesome local nature spirit. Folk performances of music, dance, and mime of two-thousand years ago were undoubtedly simple, even crude, but from them many folk performances of today have descended. Spirit dances, dedicated to one of the thirty-six nats or animistic spirits, are widely performed in Burma, and comprise a separate genre of theater. For centuries lakon iatri dance-drama performers of southern Thailand have been known as much for their efficacy as spirit mediums as for their theatre art; lakon iatri is still the major theatrical form performed on important religious occasions in southern Thailand. Animistic elements can be seen in folk dances and folk plays of Bali in Indonesia. Among the 200,000,000 people of Southeast Asia there are uncounted thousands of folk troupes who today perform in dialogue, dance, and mime stories that owe their very existence to animistic beliefs (now, of course, mixed with later beliefs as well). Court theater is one of the artistic glories of Southeast Asia. For·This article is a revision of material which appears in several chapters of Theatre in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), by the author. 396 1%7 POPULAR THEATER OF SOUTIIEAST ASIA 397 centuries royal courts in almost every country supported troupes of musicians, dancers, actors, and puppeteers. In Java and in Bali, the shadow drama (wayang kulit) and dance-dramas were lavishly patronized at princely courts from at least the tenth century down until the Second World War. Delicate female dance was raised to a high art at the Cambodian court between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries; reliefs of the Angkor Wat attest to the beauty of the dance. Later, Cambodian dance was transplanted to the Thai court and from there to the Burmese court. Both female dance (lakon nai) and male masked dance (kkon) evolved into elaborate dramatic spectacles. The Indian epics-the Ramayana and the MakabkaratOrwere adapted to local customs and became the chief sources of dramatic material for court theater in Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Laos. In Vietnam, Chinese opera was adapted to the Vietnamese language and Vietnamese music, while retaining most of the Chinese artistic characteristics. The resulting Vietnamese opera-kat boi-was assiduously cultivated by Vietnamese emperors at their courts from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Court theater reached its zenith during the late nineteenth century; today only two court troupes remain. One is the Royal Cambodian Ballet, supported by the Cambodian royal family and housed at the palace in Phnom Penh; the other is the Lao Royal Ballet, somewhat smaller in size, but similarly supported by the King of Laos at his palace in Luang Prabang. Popular theater troupes may have existed for centuries past, but except for scattered evidence, of this we cannot be certain. However, regardless of when popular theater troupes may have. come into exist... ence, the major development of theater in the popular tradition has occurred within...