Category: Asian Theatre Journal

From the Editor
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii

A quick glance at this issue’s table of contents will immediately make clear the preoccupation of most authors with issues of some political import. S. Shankar’s translation of Koman Swaminathan’s award-winning Indian play Water! is as overtly political as a play can get, dealing as it does with the oppression of penniless peasants who have to fight obtuse authorities for every drop of water their parched village can scrounge. Swaminathan’s play offers a direct link to Darren Zook’s essay on the problems of developing appropriate methodologies of creating Indian political theatre, especially in regions where the efforts of theatre artists are subverted by the irony of the sociopolitical conditions under which they must exist. Xiaomei Chen takes us to contemporary China to examine the difficult problems of finding the appropriate mix of form and content in the modern spoken dramas of post-Mao communist society, while Wenwei Du seeks to discover how classical dramas of the Yuan era, revived in today’s China, can have social and political relevance for contemporary audiences.

Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 18, no. 2 (2001)”

SPECIAL ISSUE ON PUPPETRY, Guest Editor, Kathy Foley

Editor’s Note, p. iii

PLAY

The Origin of Kala: A Sundanese Wayang Golek Purwa Play by Abah Sunarya and Gamelan Giri Harja I
Translated and introduced by Kathy Foley, p. 1

These scenes from a performance done on December 24, 1978, at Cibintinu near Bandung in West Java were presented in the style of wayang golek purwa–a wooden rod-puppet theatre telling Ramayana and Mahabharata stories that is popular among the Sundanese-speakers who live in this region of Indonesia. The dalang (puppetmaster), Abah Sunarya, was at that time one of the foremost popular performers in West Java. In this genre intricately carved doll puppets dance to the music of the gamelan orchestra on a temporary stage set up in front of the house of the person who has hired the troupe. The dalang does the narration, singing, and dialogue with occasional comments or questions added by the musicians, especially the lurah sekar (head musician). The puppeteer and troupe perform on a raised stage; in front of it is a banana log placed horizontally to form the playboard where the puppets present the play. The play is at once an entertainment and an exorcism. As the performance progresses, the puppets on stage all have their counterparts in the ritual. But rather than a play within a play, this is a play within a ceremony where the script and ritual action intersect at key points. While the mantras are efficacious regardless of the entertainment or educational value, there is no doubt that being able to point out parallels between the mythic monsters and members of the Suharto family won this performer the rapt attention of his audience. Perhaps it was his renown as a dalang who did exorcisms that prevented the censors from stopping his performances.

Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 18, no. 1 (2001): On Puppetry”

Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii

PLAY

Ehon Gappô ga Tsuji: A Kabuki Drama of Unfettered Evil by Tsuruya Nanboku IV
translated and introduced by Paul B. Kennelly, p. 149

Early nineteenth-century Japanese theatre was dominated by the kabuki playwright Tsuruya Nanboku IV, who seized on the fascination with evil and the vendetta in contemporary literature to create a new type of kabuki play. This genre–of which Ehon Gappô ga Tsuji is the finest example–focuses on the role types of the handsome young villain (iroaku) and wicked woman (akuba).

Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 17, no. 2 (2000)”

Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, p. iii

PLAYS

Yoritomo’s Death: A Shin Kabuki Play by Mayama Seika
Translated and introduced by Brian Powell, p. 1

Kabuki, while being one of Japan’s three great classical theatre genres, has also benefited from dramatic works written especially for it by a variety of playwrights in the modern period. These are referred to as shin kabuki or “new kabuki.” Mayama Seika is one of the best known shin-kabuki playwrights, and many of the plays he wrote in the 1920s and 1930s are still performed today. He is noted for introducing dense dialogue into kabuki, but he was also a practical playwright who knew well the capabilities of the actors for whom he was writing.

Yoritomo’s Death focuses on the efforts of the shogun Yoriie (1182-1204) to learn the truth about how his father, the great general and first shogun Yoritomo, met his death. We the audience know, because we are told in Scene 1, and three other people close to Yoriie know, but Yoriie himself does not know. For him discovering the truth becomes an obsession, and his inability to force or persuade the three to tell him proves to him that his political and military power, clearly demonstrated at the beginning of Scene 2, is illusory. And because he has chosen to define himself as an individual by his acquisition of this piece of knowledge, it also destroys him as a person.

Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 17, no. 1 (2000)”

Editor’s Note

Gunji Masakatsu: A Drama Scholar Like No Other
Laurence Kominz, p. iii

PLAYS

The Incantation of Semar Smiles: A Tarling Musical Drama by Pepen Efendi
Translated and introduced by Matthew Isaac Cohen, p. 139

Many of the rich cultures of Indonesia have yet to receive adequate attention by scholars. This translation of “The Incantation of Semar Smiles” provides an introduction to one of these genres–tarling, performed primarily in north-coastal West Java. This musical melodrama, with book, lyrics, and music by Pepen Effendi and released by the audiocassette company Prima in 1994, represents a new development in the history of the theatrical form. Dialogue for all previous live stage productions and recordings is largely improvised and songs are stock. In contrast, Fendi’s operetta of jilted love and magical revenge is almost completely prescripted and musically through-composed.

Continue reading “Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 16, no. 2 (1999)”