The legacy of Rendra for Indonesia
Cikarang, West Java | Sun, 08/09/2009
The leading Indonesian poet and playwright, W.S. Rendra was buried in his very own backyard in Citayam, a relatively poor hamlet, near the town of Depok, West Java on Friday afternoon, Aug. 6, 2009. He is survived by his third wife, Ken Zuraida, 11 children and 10 grand children. Thousands of his friends, including ministers and the Indonesia vice president to be, Boediono, attended his funeral. The nation has lost their "peacock" - the most flamboyant author ever born in the archipelago.
Rendra was 73 years old. He is widely known not only for his poems, plays and cultural essays, but also his social and political activities. When the country was in trouble during "the age of reform" in 1998, Rendra and his supporters were noted as leading humanitarian activists. They distributed basic supplies, food, medicine and clothes to the needy. They advocated peaceful changes and defended the environment from the bad effects of development and modernization.
For more than five decades Rendra was a voice for the Indonesian voiceless. He has spoken for and about millions of uneducated children, oppressed workers, and the hungry and marginalized grassroots. From the 1950s his poems and plays became the heartbeat of the Indonesian struggle toward the freedom of expression and the aspiration of the powerless. He underlined the rights and just treatment for prostitutes, pickpockets and other unfortunate compatriots.
In his thirties, during the late 1960s, he led "Kaum Urakan" - literally The Uneducated - as a symbolic attack of the establishment. He and his group produced cultural and political criticism that made regular headlines in the 1970s. Although he developed and modernized Javanese gamelan music as the main orchestra of his performances; he remained critical of Javanese feudalism.
As a result of his courage and creativity he was banned from performing in Yogyakarta and that gave birth to his fame. Daulat rakyat di atas daulat tuanku - people power above the ruler's power, was widely understood as the core of his struggle. Rendra encouraged the young generation to think, to judge and to select traditional values. He promoted equality among the rich and the poor, teachers and students, the powerful and the powerless. He even said that fortune and disaster are the same - bencana dan keberuntungan sama saja.
Rendra broke a record of paid poetry readings when he received US$10, 000, - in a single two-hour performance in 1976. He and his group *Bengkel Teater' (Theatre Workshop) created a self-proclaimed world record by performing Bertold Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle at Jakarta's main sports hall, Istora Senayan. The show ran for six hours and was attended by more than 3,000 people.
Undoubtedly Rendra was the giant not only in Indonesian poetry, but also on the stage of South East Asian performing art through the 1970s and 1980s. He and his group also traveled to the US and Europe to perform his plays Struggle of the Naga Tribe and Children of King Salomon. Rendra pioneered the contribution of modern Indonesian plays abroad, and trained many actors as well as directors that flourished in hundreds of theater club at home.
His *Bengkel Teater' - Theatre Workshop became the leading alma mater for many Indonesian playwrights, including Chairul Umam, the late Arifin C. Noer, and Putu Wijaya. His poems inspired the development of narrative poetry and ballads. He called his protest poems puisi pamphlet addressed to the authoritarian government. When Soeharto imprisoned hundreds of students in the late 1970s, Rendra was also among them.
Rendra was very proud that he and his group were purely supported by local resources, instead of international funding commonly identified as the source of (in his words) "frustrated" NGOs. He also believed the stigmatized novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, had received much more foreign support than he did. On many occasions Rendra appeared as a great patriot, more than just a simple nationalist who blindly loved his country. For example, he launched a press conference to attack the British humanitarian activist, Bob Geldoff, when he criticized the Indonesian public for pirating his music.
Rendra defended the rights of the poor more than the interests of the recording industry. "The peacock of Indonesian literature" has left his countrymen with the courage to fight for the poor and the right to live in dignity. He was born into an aristocratic family in Solo, Central Java that was once ruled by Pakubuwono X, the emperor of Java. His mother, Ismadilah was a royal dancer, while his father Suwandi Broto was a school headmaster. Rendra was raised traditionally and educated as a devout Javanese Catholic. Some of his earliest poems are still used in church and school prayers.
He lived a dynamic and colorful life, based on a clear vision of the importance of love and fairness. He hated hypocrisy and lived an honest life. He followed his self conscience more than any teaching and any other influences. Thus, the most important legacy of Rendra to his people and country is a strong sense of morality and being honest. He has proven that a member of once feudalistic and old fashioned family could lead the movement of the uneducated, the Kaum that rebelled against the establishment.
Shortly before he died, Rendra expressed his regret and sorrow for what he saw as the current self-centered political fights. He was unhappy to witness that most Indonesian political figures fought only for power, instead of serving the people. To his close friend, Bakdi Sumanto, he recently said, "We must pay more attention and help our powerless friends" .
Eka Budianta is a poet and an adviser at the Jababeka Multicultural Center, in Cikarang, West Java.
(From:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/08/09/the-legacy-rendra-indonesia.html)
Obituary: Farewell WS Rendra, Poet, Playwright and Father of Indonesian Theater
Poet, writer, dramatist, cultural activist and theater director, WS Rendra, died on Thursday night, approaching the age of 74, after battling heart and kidney problems for around a month. Indonesia has lost one of its most talented artists.
Rendra rose to fame as a poet in the 1950s and remained the most influential poet in the country until his death. He is also credited as the man who brought modern Indonesian theater to its maturity through his experimental works with Bengkel Teater (Theater Workshop), which he founded in 1968. Before Rendra and his Bengkel Teater, modern Indonesian theater was simply a copy of that in the West, but Rendra brought traditional expressions into a modern context.
Born to a Roman Catholic family and baptized as Willibrordus Surendra Broto, he changed his name to Wahyu Sulaiman Rendra when he embraced Islam in 1970 on his second marriage to Sitoresmi Prabunigrat from the Yogyakarta palace. Rendra leaves behind eleven children from three marriages.
During the repressive New Order era, Rendra was one of the few creative people in this country who had the courage to express dissent. When the novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer was returned from Indonesias gulag the prison island of Buru he said Rendra was one man who has the courage to resist the power of Suharto, under his own name. If you cannot respect that, you should learn to.
Rendras plays and poetry during the Suharto era were very critical of the ideology of development and his performances as a poet or with Bengkel Teater were often banned.
I learned meditation and disciplines of the traditional Javanese poet from my mother who was a palace dancer. The idea of the Javanese poet is to be a guardian of the spirit of the nation, Rendra once said. Because of his poetry readings and his sexy performances on the stage, he was dubbed the Peacock by the press.
In 1979, during a poetry reading critical of development in the Ismail Marzuki art center in Jakarta, Suhartos military intelligence agents threw ammonia bombs on to the stage and arrested him. He was imprisoned in the notorious Guntur military prison for nine months, spending time in solitary confinement in a cell with a ceiling too low to stand up and only mosquitoes for company. When he was released, without ever having being charged, his body was covered with sores from mosquito bites.
His experience in Guntur prison inspired him to write the short poem:
Thunder beats and hammers/ Life is forged on stone/ Harsh thunder is my teacher / The sun always shines and also the ballad Paman Doblang (Uncle Doblang), which was later set to music by the rock band Kantata Takwa. The ballad tells the story of Uncle Doblang, who is sent to a dark cell for voicing his conscience, and ends with the lines:
Conscience is the sun/ patience is the earth/ courage forms horizons/ and struggle is the implementation of words.
After he was released from prison he was banned from performing poetry or drama until 1986, when he wrote, directed and starred in his eight hour long play Panembahan Reso, which discussed the issue of the succession of power that was a taboo at that time. Before the performance at the Senayan sports center, he told his cast of 40-something actors: Pack your toiletries, because there is a chance that we might get arrested. The play took six months to prepare and was performed for two nights. Modern Indonesian theater has no infrastructure. We must create it ourselves, he used to tell his performers.
Rendra studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, the same school as Marlon Brando, but when he graduated, he chose to return to Indonesia and in 1968 founded Bengkel Teater in Yogyakarta. The group quickly fascinated audiences with works that were artistically experimental and politically critical.
In 1969 he created a series of dramas without any dialog where actors employed their bodies and simple sounds such as
bip bop, zzzzz and
rambate rate rata. The journalist poet Goenawan Mohamad dubbed these experimental performances as mini-word theatre. During the 1970s, his plays such as Mastodon and the Condors and The Struggle of the Naga Tribe and The Regional Secretary were often banned because they openly criticized Suhartos development programs that often alienated indigenous people and tended to side with multinational corporations.
Rendra was also a great admirer of Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht, and he translated and performed Hamlet and Macbeth. A keen student of the traditional Indonesian martial art
pencak silat, Rendra always looked a lot younger than his age and he played Hamlet when he was well into his sixties.
He translated and performed Brechts Caucasian Chalk Circle, as well as Sophocles Oedipus trilogy. In the process of embracing Islam, he translated and directed the traditional Islamic poems telling of the life of the prophet Muhammad, in his play comprising drums and poetry, Qasidah Barjanzi. His works have been translated into many languages and performed all over the world.
Rendra, who was born in Solo on Nov. 7, 1935, will be missed by creative communities all over Indonesia. He was a dedicated mentor who was always willing to help younger artists. He will be remembered for many things, especially by members of his Bengkel Teater. For them, he was a dear friend, a teacher and a father figure.
Bramantyo Prijosusilo is an artist, poet and organic farmer in Ngawi, East Java. He was a student of WS Rendra at Bengkel Teater.
(From :
http://thejakartaglobe.com/home/obi...right-and-father-of-indonesian-theater/322679)
