In September 1970 when I began college at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, it was as a Fine Arts and Theater major—a choice for which I was underprepared, especially when compared to my classmates, all of whom had graduated from large urban schools where a career in the arts was deemed to be a viable, even noble, goal, and “the arts” were a well-funded part of high-school curricula. Not so at Weston Union, the lonely, one-storey school on a barren hill halfway between the two-street towns of Cazenovia and Lime Ridge, where I and the other students were urged to pursue vocational careers.
At Weston, “Home of the Silver Eagles,” whose student body numbered no more than 200 during the years I was there (1966–1970), most boys chose as electives such subjects as Automotive Mechanics and Farm Management. Girls opted for Home Education, Consumer Economics, and the like. For extracurricular activities, participation in a sports team and membership in the F.F.A. (Future Farmers of America) were the primary choices for boys. Girls were in the school’s Glee Club or the F.H.A. (Future Homemakers of America). I was an atypical male student. Typing, Spanish, and Art were among my electives and as for extracurricular activity, while I did participate in sports—Wrestling!—I also joined the school’s very small clubs that were devoted to drama and forensics (i.e., argumentative discourse).
Being one of the few males in these clubs meant that there was almost always a slot for me in performances and events but it also meant that I was often cast in roles far beyond my ken and acumen: orating a speech by Robert Ingersoll on free thought and humanism; enacting James Thurber’s masterful monologue, The Night the Bed Fell, (in which I forgot my lines half way through); reenacting the role of Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace which Cary Grant had popularized on screen; and performing as Romeo, 95-pound weakling that I was, to a ravishing Juliet who would have spurned my affections anywhere but the stage. Despite the poverty of my performances, it was through this activity I came to more greatly appreciate the art of drama and the power of the spoken word.
Very soon after my arrival in the big city of Milwaukee, I became aware of the fact that, in socio-economic terms, I was a member of the underclass—a farm boy whose parents were unable to provide any financial assistance and who, unlike my classmates, had to work nights and weekends just to make ends meet. When shelving books in the bowels of the U.W. library as part of my work-study program, I often recalled my father’s imprecations against shady statesmen and the well-at-heel who conspire to keep the “have-nots” in place. Until that time I had not realized that my father abjured the status to which he’d been cast within the larger socio-economic sphere and that it had been for that reason, perhaps, that he had raised his children to believe that with a curious mind and the will to work hard, there were no obstacles one could not overcome.
So it was that with my penchant for drama and as a draft-age male vehemently against the war in Viet Nam, I became a diehard fan of Berthold Brecht, whose play Mother Courage and Her Children is definitely one of the greatest anti-war plays of all time. I avidly read English translations of Brecht’s work; drove across the country, from Milwaukee to New Haven, with a trio of Brecht-besotted friends just to see the first U.S. production of his 1929 play, Happy End; and, in 1972, enthusiastically accepted the offer to play a role in a local production of The Threepenny Opera. Brecht’s plays, with their thumb-in-nose attitude towards authority and blatant support of the underclass, struck an immediate cord.
On August 1, 1992, three days after the Australian premier of Cockroach Opera on July 28 at Belvoir Street Theatre in Sydney, friends of Teater Koma and Lontar were hosted gathered at the home of Ian and Dewi Fraser in Melbourne. From left to right: Nano Riantiarno, Peter Barnett, Ian Fraser, Siti Nuraini Barnett, Goenawan Mohamad (partially visible), Barbara Hatley, Adila Suwarmo, Ratna Riantiarno, JHM (crouched), Lanita Idrus, Dewi Anggraeni, Umar Kayam, Brian Belcher (squatting), Fikri Jufri
A decade later, in July 1982 I went one night to Taman Ismail Marzuki to see a performance of Time Bomb (Bom Waktu), a new play by Nano Riantiarno. Watching the play, I saw in the script a bit of Shakespeare—the play is partially a love-story and the leading characters are “Roima” and “Julini”—but a lot of Brecht as well. This tragicomedy, populated by members of the underclass—prostitutes, transsexuals, migrant workers, and thieves—and self-serving public officials as well, told me that the playwright was on the side of the underclass, an assumption confirmed for me the following year when he staged his adaptation of Brecht’s Threepenny Opera under the title Opera Ikan Asin, and then reaffirmed time and again in the years ahead when Teater Koma, his drama troupe, bravely raised issues on stage that were not being given sufficient coverage in the mass media: presidential tenure (Suksesi), ethnic discrimination (Sampek Engtay), bloated government bureaucracy (Opera Sembelit), nepotism (Konglomerat Burisrawa), the plight of the marginalized (Opera Julini), and many more.
Since the time Nano established Teater Koma in 1977, the company has forever been at the forefront in the struggle for a more egalitarian Indonesia and, with the unflagging assistance of Nano’s wife and partner, Ratna Madjid, is today one of the most popular and long-running theatrical companies in Indonesian history. I am honored to have worked with Nano and Ratna several times, starting in 1992 with the publication of Time Bomb and Cockroach Opera. In 1994, I subtitled Nano’s television screenplay, Onah and Her Dreams (Onah dan Impiannya), whose subject was a new underclass, i.e., victims of AIDS. Most recently, in 2018, Teater Koma participated in Lontar’s “Hadhrami Festival,” reading segments from the play Fatimah, whose focus is women’s rights.
As Berthold Brecht demonstrated through his companion plays, Der Jasager and Der Neinsager—The Yes-Sayer and The No-Sayer—there will always be different points of view, but I would like to think that as Nano has done on stage through Teater Koma, I have attempted to do through Lontar, giving voice to the underclass, in this instance, Indonesia’s literary underclass because, in terms of global literary reach, Indonesian literature does indeed fall in that category. This is not for of lack of quality but as no doubt my father would have pointed out, for lack of curious minds and the very hard work that it takes to change engrained conditions.
John McGlynn
john_mcglynn@lontar.org