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A Spectator’s Tale: Recap of English Nite Universitas Airlangga Performances 2013-2017

A Spectator’s Tale: Recap of English Nite Universitas Airlangga Performances 2013-2017

Published by Antariksa Akhmadi on 2018-08-19

This post is originally written on my LINE timeline. I amended some parts due to the error on my part.

Yesterday marks the fifth time I’ve gone to watch EDSA’s English Nite performance. The first time I went to the event back in 2013 was also the first time English Nite got performed outside campus, which was in the Cak Durasim Theater. I’ve been coming to this event every year since. Now I have graduated from the English Department, I still came to the event yesterday all the same. But that time, I felt that I hadn’t done something I ought to have done all those past years.

To tell you the truth, I’ve been meaning to write about this experience every year. Since I’m no longer a student, I think I have to write this now. I might not be able to write this thing in the future for the next performances, anyway. No one’s been doing this thing either. So, if no one is doing it, I have to do it.

Just a heads up: I’ll go into a rant explaining what I see in each performance and what I think of them. I also added a table displaying features of each production, where they all get similar and where they differ.

Okay, let’s roll.

2013: Sitti

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Source: EDSA Airlangga.
  • As the title suggests, this is all about Sitti Nurbaya. Or… is it?
  • You know the drill about that classic tale. A guy named Samsulbahri fell in love with a girl named Sitti Nurbaya, who happened to be betrothed with an elderly merchant called Datuk Maringgih. Being star-crossed lovers and all that, Samsulbahri tries hard to fight his heartbreak and Sitti struggles against her forced marriage to Maringgih, and in the end both lovers die.
  • The play started ordinarily, with Sitti’s parents betrothing their daughter to Maringgih, against Sitti and Samsulbahri’s wishes to remain together. However, in a twist, Maringgih suddenly allows Sitti and Samsulbahri to marry each other. In secret, he offered a condition to Samsulbahri for this to happen. It turns out that the secret condition is that Samsulbahri has to fulfill the desires of Maringgih, who is found to be homosexual. In the end, due to desperation and jealousy, Sitti kills both her husband and the man who takes him away from her. She then kills herself. The end.
  • That was brilliant, wasn’t it? I still think this is the best story among the others.
  • The execution was also amazing, too. All the music scores and songs delivered by the talents are original. Yes, the stage production team composed all the songs and scores by themselves. This was an achievement that no subsequent productions had matched.

2014: Beast

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Source: EDSA Airlangga
  • This was also an adaptation. In fact, we can call it a triple adaptation, since this play was an adaptation of the film Beastly (2011), which is an adaptation of a novel of the same name (published 2007, which in turn is also an adaptation from the French tale The Beauty and the Beast.
  • In this play, though, the story is set in the present time, where the handsome, popular, party animal guy gets cursed by a witch to have a horrendous face. To break free from that curse, the guy must obtain the true love of a girl who can overlook his looks (sorry for the pun). Luckily, the guy with the horrendous look hits up a pretty girl afterwards, after some complications. I couldn’t remember the rest, but in the end the witch gets killed by the girl and the guy’s face returns to normal and the couple returns to a happy relationship. The end.
  • The play was also a musical production, with several characters singing, even though the songs are renditions to existing songs. But, this was still great, and those talents really know how to sing.

2015: Memento Vivere

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Source: EDSA Airlangga
  • Of all the English Nite plays, this was the one I remembered least. Sorry. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t remember the story very well. If you happen to know more than I do, I’ll be very happy to hear from you.
  • If I’m not mistaken, the play deals with inconsistent memories and split personalities, borrowing parts of Christopher Nolan’s (you heard it) Memento (2000).
  • In a departure from the previous two productions, there were no musical performances this time.
  • Again, if I’m not mistaken the story is told from the perspectives of two different girls, which at the end is revealed to be the same person. The only part I remember is the final scene, in which the protagonists shoot some guy. Other than that, I really can’t recall.
  • I think the difficulty with this play is that it tries to adapt something that should belong on the screen (all of Nolan’s works are like this, I think). Plays are basically different from cinemas. Since this play deal with memories and thoughts, I think it needs a whole world of innovation to portray such a play in a theatre. And previous experiences don’t seem to support this creative direction.

2017: The Verse

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Source: EDSA Airlangga
  • This production had to be postponed until 11 March 2017, but when it was performed, the Cak Durasim Theater was in a much better shape.
  • Maybe as a reaction to the previous production, this time the team was determined to present something that can trigger reaction from the audience. They needed a story that the audience can relate to. Originally, the writers intended to put forward an adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. However, someone in my class year (2013) had an idea of a storyline about a mother’s sacrifice to her son. Again, the goal was to be relatable, so the writers eventually worked on that idea, resulting in a play entitled The Verse.
  • The Verse, the title I mean, is a reference to W.B. Yeats’ poem The Cloths of Heaven.
  • Alan, the only son of the widowed Petunia, aspires to be a musician. He dreams of having a guitar and enjoying a successful career in a band. However, his family, which now only consists of two people, is not very well off. Alan and his mother have a great deal of argument throughout the play. Long story short, he then meets a girl who later becomes his wife. Later, some friend of his gives him a guitar, which enables him to be active in music. As his mother becomes older and sicklier, Alan enjoys a good life with his wife and his rising career. He is confident with all the work that he puts in. Then, his mother died. It is later revealed to Alan that his mother had been keeping a book, in which she makes a checklist of what her son should achieve in his life. In turns out that every good thing that has ever happened to Alan is due to her hard work in communicating with his future wife and buying Alan a guitar and then asking his friend to give it to him.
  • It’s worth mentioning that among the five English Nite productions, The Verse is currently the only one in which nobody is killed.
  • There were one or two songs performed in this play, all renditions from existing songs.

2017: Left

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Source: EDSA Airlangga
  • The second English Nite play in 2017 was performed just yesterday on 11 December 2017.
  • Will, whose mother apparently died from suicide when he was 12, is now living only with his father, Ben. His temperament has changed since his mother’s death, and he frequently suffers from episodes of trauma. During a New Year’s Eve party in his campus, he gets to one of those episodes and is helped by Jane, the popular girl. Shortly after, the two get tangled in a relationship. Jane’s friends warn her not to hang out with the mysterious and weird guy. One of Jane’s friends bullies Ben and insults his mother. This triggers Will into having an episode. Will kidnaps the guy and ties him. He intends to kill the guy for making fun of his mother. Luckily, before Will slices the guy’s throat, he is again visited by his mother’s ghost, who reveals that her death is actually not from suicide. Will’s friends, who have known him since children, are beginning to worry about their friend, who don’t talk much to them about his condition. Jane begins to suspect on her own that Will’s mother didn’t die from suicide. She suspects that it’s actually Will that killed his mother. Ben knows about this, and invites Jane to a meeting to discuss the truth. When the two meets, Ben reveals that it is him who has murdered his wife. Not wanting the truth to spread, Ben shoots Jane dead. Will suddenly breaks into the scene, and after finding his girlfriend dead, shoots his dad during one of his traumatic episodes: first on his knee, and then on his chest. Will’s friends, who are worried about their friend not showing up for their appointment together, finds him on the scene. Still in his episode, Will tries to kill his friends before killing himself. Now crying over their dead friend, they don’t realize that Ben is still alive and is rising to get to them. The end.
  • Wew. This play was intense. But what’s making it even more intense is the lights and sound effects. They really built the tension. Props to those guys working with those.
  • I don’t know about the scriptwriting process, but I suspect that Left is a thinly veiled adaptation of, you guessed it, Shakespeare’s Hamlet. All the ingredients are there: 1) some borderline insane guy gets visited by the ghost of his parent (but it’s the mother who’s dead in this play rather than the father), 2) the main character’s love interest gets sucked into the guy’s dark past and is killed because of it, 3) in the end, all the main characters die (or seem to be), leaving the main guy’s friends to be alive at the scene (for a while, I suppose).
  • Okay, that was just my opinion. Maybe the writer will protest after this.

Now, recapping this recap

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Comparison of themes and devices used in EDSA’s English Nite plays

To end this awfully long rant, I have to say that I couldn’t afford to see these performances, who all had endured long periods of rehearsals, preparations, and sacrifices, just end up as mere one-time entertainment pieces.

Theater performances are art works, and the worst thing to happen to art is for it to be forgotten. All art that is forgotten is useless. Therefore, I just want to say that all this English Nite thing is not useless, after all.

Is anyone still there?

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Dramaturgi XIII: Cerita tentang Omong Kosong

Dramaturgi XIII: Cerita tentang Omong Kosong

Published by Antariksa Akhmadi on 2018-08-17

[catatan: belum di-edit betul. mohon masukan pembaca sekiranya ada yang perlu diperbaiki atau bisa ditingkatkan lagi. terima kasih.]

poster dramaturgi.jpg

1. Mukadimah

Malam kemarin saya menonton pentas lakon Matahari di Sebuah Jalan Kecil. Naskah drama Arifin C. Noer ini dibawakan kembali oleh mahasiswa Sastra Indonesia UNAIR di Gedung Cak Durasim, Surabaya, pada 29 Desember 2017. Baru sekali ini saya bisa datang untuk menonton pertunjukan tahunan jurusan Sastra Indonesia yang tahun ini bertajuk Dramaturgi XIII. Seperti bayangan saya, memang dari sisi pelaksanaan dan teknis, drama ini sudah sangat rapi. Aktor-aktornya bisa terdengar jelas meski tidak pakai mikrofon yang ditempelkan ke wajah. Kesalahan teknis seperti nyala lampu, tata suara, dan lain-lainnya juga bisa dibilang nihil. Saya bisa saja berkomentar soal bagaimana pembawaan aktor dalam menghantarkan naskah yang umurnya sudah puluhan tahun itu. Namun, hemat saya, sebetulnya sudah tidak ada yang perlu ditanggapi lagi. Yang membuat saya berpikir adalah isi drama itu sendiri.

2. Ini cerita tentang apa?

Matahari di Sebuah Jalan Kecil banyak berbicara soal kejujuran. Pasal ceritanya sebetulnya sederhana: ada pemuda yang makan nasi pecel lalu tidak bayar. Katanya, uangnya ketinggalan di rumah, yang katanya masih dekat situ. Orang-orang yang bekerja di pabrik es dekat lapak simbok penjual nasi pecel kemudian ramai-ramai menginterogasi si pemuda ini. Betulkah pemuda ini memang penduduk kampung? Saat ditanyai, ternyata dia tidak bisa menjawab. Akhirnya dia dianggap berbohong dan dipaksa untuk membayar. Karena memang pemuda itu saat itu tidak membawa uang, akhirnya dilucutilah baju yang dia kenakan dan diserahkan kepada simbok penjual nasi pecel sebagai jaminan. Si pemuda bisa pergi untuk mengambil uangnya. Saat semua orang di pabrik kembali bekerja, tinggallah si pemuda yang telanjang dada dan simbok penjual nasi pecel. Tiba-tiba si pemuda menangis sambil bercerita bahwa dia datang dari desa untuk mencari kerja. Sama sekali tidak ada niat dia untuk berbohong. Simbok terenyuh juga mendengar tangisan ini, dan teringat anaknya yang dipenjara karena jadi pencuri motor. Akhirnya dia percaya bahwa pemuda ini adalah orang yang jujur dan diserahkannya kembali baju si pemuda. Setelah si pemuda pergi, datanglah petugas ronda yang sedang mencari maling. Setelah menyimak ciri-ciri yang disebutkan tukang ronda, barulah simbok sadar bahwa orang yang tadi ditolongnya adalah seorang maling. Ternyata, ia memang pembohong.

Lakon Arifin C. Noer menggambarkan tekanan dan masalah yang dialami Indonesia lewat karakter-karakternya, tidak terkecuali Si Pemuda. Mochtar Lubis, beberapa tahun setelah ditulisnya lakon ini, berpidato soal sifat-sifat bangsa Indonesia. Sifat yang pertama disebut adalah hipokrit alias munafik. Tersebab dijajah bangsa lain, orang Indonesia banyak yang belajar tidak jujur dengan menjilat penguasanya atau menilap uang negara sehingga mereka bisa bertahan hidup. Si Pemuda, dengan kepandaiannya menipu orang banyak dan mempermainkan perasaan Simbok Penjual Nasi Pecel, merupakan contoh ideal dari manusia Indonesia yang munafik ini. Agar bisa makan, dia gunakan kepandaiannya membohongi. Sekarang pun kita bisa melihat kebohongan ini. Pejabat pura-pura sakit supaya tidak dipenjara. Pedagang mencurangi timbangan supaya untungnya bertambah. Pengemis pura-pura terluka dan berdandan tak terurus supaya dikasihani. Sampai hari ini, betullah bahwa orang Indonesia masih akrab dengan sifat munafik.

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3. Kebohongan dan omong kosong

Saat Si Pemuda mengaku uangnya tertinggal, Simbok tidak lantas percaya. Katanya, dia sudah kapok dibohongi seperti itu. Barulah waktu Si Pemuda sudah bertelanjang dada dan menangis sambil mengaku mencari kerja Simbok jadi terenyuh. Dua kali Si Pemuda berkata tidak benar. Tapi, Si Pemuda hanya berbohong di awal. Waktu “mengaku” itu, dia sudah bukan berbohong lagi. Kok bisa?

Ada dua jenis perkataan tidak benar: kebohongan dan omong kosong. Harry Frankfurt, seorang filosof berkebangsaan Amerika, berpendapat bahwa seseorang dikatakan berbohong (lying) jika tujuannya adalah menutupi suatu kebenaran. Sementara itu, orang yang mengeluarkan omong kosong (bullshit) sudah tidak peduli lagi pada kebenaran. Yang penting adalah kata-katanya bisa menarik orang lain.

Nah, inilah mengapa saya bilang Si Pemuda hanya berbohong sekali. Saat ia bilang uangnya ketinggalan dan rumahnya ada di dalam kampung, ia menutupi kebenaran bahwa dirinya sebetulnya tak punya uang dan bukan penduduk kampung. Ini dia lakukan supaya terhindar dari amuk para pekerja pabrik. Namun, saat semua pekerja pergi, dia berusaha memancing rasa iba Simbok dengan bercerita soal asal-usulnya. Di sini, dia sudah tidak lagi peduli soal benar atau salah. Yang penting, dia bisa pergi tanpa membayar nasi pecel santapannya dengan membawa kembali bajunya yang dijadikan jaminan.

4. Matinya kata-kata

Apa akibatnya kalau banyak orang munafik yang berujar omong kosong? Orang akan susah untuk membangun rasa percaya. Saat semua orang mengaku anti-korupsi, kita tidak akan tahu bedanya mana yang jujur dan mana yang maling duit rakyat. Saat sebagian orang dituduh menistakan agama dan sebagian lagi dituduh membohongi orang pakai ayat kitab suci, kita akan bingung bagaimana beragama dengan benar. Saat semua orang berkata cinta dan sayang, kita tak tahu lagi mana yang tulus dan mana yang bermanis mulut.

Akhirnya, kita tak bisa lagi saling percaya. Hilang sudah rasa empati dalam hati kita, sebab ketika kita merasa kasihan kita juga curiga bahwa orang lain hanya pura-pura saja. Saat orang datang minta-minta, kita ragu-ragu mengeluarkan uang sebab kita pernah membaca berita soal pengemis yang hanya berakting miskin tapi kedapatan punya motor sport di rumahnya. (Ini betul ada, sumbernya ada di bawah.)

Bahkan, bisa jadi hilang pula kecenderungan kita untuk setia pada kebenaran. Bagaimana tidak? Setiap hari kita dibombardir dengan omong kosong dari orang-orang munafik yang sudah tidak lagi peduli mana yang benar dan mana yang salah.

Tak mudah memang mengetahui isi hati orang, kalau tidak mau dibilang mustahil. Sebab, kita tak punya cara untuk langsung mengerti jalan pikiran dan perasaan satu sama lain. Kita hanya bisa bertukar gagasan lewat bahasa, lewat tuturan dan tulisan, lewat kata-kata. Semakin banyak omong kosong yang kita terima, semakin tidak yakinlah kita dengan kebenaran kata-kata yang dituturkan orang lain. Kita tidak bisa membedakan antara kabar benar dan berita palsu. Inilah mengapa omong kosong berbahaya buat kita.

5. Kejujuran Pengarang dan Kita

Matahari di Sebuah Jalan Kecil adalah karya Arifin C. Noer yang terbilang klasik dan banyak dipentaskan. Cari-cari saja videonya di YouTube. Namun, beliau sebetulnya lebih terkenal sebagai seorang sineas, terutama karena salah satu filmnya yang sangat terkenal dan masih banyak diperbincangkan sampai sekarang. Saya yakin teman-teman sudah pernah menontonnya. Judulnya Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI. Gara-gara film inilah orang sampai sekarang masih fobia dengan PKI dan komunisme, padahal negara-negara komunis saja sudah runtuh atau berpindah haluan. Film ini juga menjadi cerita sejarah versi Orde Baru, yang di dalamnya Pak Harto dielu-elukan dan Bung Karno disalahkan karena lalai terhadap PKI. Tidak sedikit yang menuding Arifin C. Noer turut serta menyebarkan kebohongan sejarah. Sayangnya, ini berlawanan dari pesan yang beliau sampaikan di naskah drama Matahari.

Lakon Matahari (1963) memang ditulis jauh sebelum film Pengkhianatan (1984). Keduanya diciptakan di bawah dua rezim yang berbeda (yang satu zaman Bung Karno, satunya zaman Pak Harto). Kita tidak tahu apakah beliau sadar bahwa ada kekeliruan dalam film garapannya. Menurut sebagian berita, beliau mengaku kaget saat film Pengkhianatan dijadikan tontonan wajib dan pada akhirnya menjadi karya propaganda. Barangkali beliau tahu soal beberapa hal yang salah dalam filmnya, namun terpaksa diam mengingat kondisi zaman itu. Kalau sudah begitu, masih layakkah kita berdiskusi tentang drama beliau yang berkisah soal kejujuran?

Tentu saja! Kita tentu sepakat bahwa manusia hendaknya berkata jujur. Lalu, adakah dari kita yang seumur hidup tidak pernah berbohong, tidak pernah menyontek, tidak pernah berkata yang lain daripada isi kepala kita? Saya yakin tidak. Namun, justru di situlah kita harus makin ingat pentingnya bersikap jujur, bahkan pada saat kita terpaksa menyampaikan hal yang tidak benar seperti Arifin C. Noer. Kita mesti berusaha sesetia mungkin kepada kebenaran, bahkan sekalipun kita tahu bahwa banyak penipu dan pembohong di sekitar kita. Jangan sampai mata hati kita dikaburkan oleh kebohongan dan omong kosong.

Referensi

Arifin C. Noer. Matahari di Sebuah Jalan Kecil. Berdasarkan laman http://naskahdramapbsi.blogspot.co.id/2012/11/lakon-matahari-di-sebuah-jalan-kecil.html

Indria Ambarwati. 2014. Citraan dalam Naskah Drama Matahari di Sebuah Jalan Kecil Karya Arifin C. Noer. Skripsi. Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta.

Mochtar Lubis. 1977. Manusia Indonesia. Ceramah di Taman Ismail Marzuki. Jakarta: Pustaka Obor Indonesia.

Harry Frankfurt. 2005. On Bullshit. https://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf

Inilah Rumah ‘Mewah’ Pengemis Kakek Winnie The Pooh. 2015. http://surabaya.tribunnews.com/2015/06/17/inilah-rumah-mewah-pengemis-kakek-winnie-the-pooh

Intan Paramadhita. 2007. “Contesting Indonesian Nationalism and Masculinity in Cinema.” Asian Cinema 18(2): 41-61. doi https://doi.org/10.1386/ac.18.2.41_1

Kredit foto

Poster Dramaturgi XIII diambil dari laman Twitter @SasindoUNAIR. Bila kurang berkenan, nanti saya cabut. Foto pertunjukan diambil sendiri. Mohon maaf amatiran.

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[REVIEW] Buffalo Boys (2018): Should You Watch It?

Review: The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation

Published by Antariksa Akhmadi on 2018-05-24

The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation
The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation by Lawrence Venuti

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked the book on the wrong time. This is supposed to be a very theoretical book on translation studies aimed for advocating for the paradigm of foreignization. I, barely understanding scholarly discussion about translation, was frequently lost inside Venuti’s dense prose and near-eternal paragraphs.

Venuti argued that translators have too long underestimated their own role in shaping history by rendering themselves “invisible” in the translation process. He challenged mainstream idea (or so he said) that a good translation is a translation that does not read like a translation. This acceptance about translation leads to a fluent translation: a translation that is readable but conceals differences between the author’s and the translator’s culture. As a result, readers of the translated work think that they are directly interacting with the author while in fact they are accessing the original work through the ideological lenses of the translator. Venuti condemns this phenomenon as a kind of cultural opression where the author’s deeply-held values are discarded and replaced with the target-language culture’s presuppositions. A notable example is when a Roman text telling intimate interactions between two males was interpreted as homosexual activities in English translation during the Victorian era.

His “call for action” emphasizes the need for translators to preserve some kind of “strangeness” in their translators so that readers realize that they are reading something from a different mind. In some cases, calls like this makes sense since there are many translations that act as though as they are the author’s words in another language rather than the near-original work of the translator, such as the famous Fitzgerald’s “translation” of Omar Khayam’s Rubaiyat. However, in other cases Venuti just seemed to be paranoid of threats of cultural opression and how translators seem to be neglected.

I might need to read this book sometime later after having some good grasp of the fundamental issues in translation studies in order to enjoy the full depth’s of Venuti’s argument.

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Review: Tidak Ada New York Hari Ini

Published by Antariksa Akhmadi on 2018-01-28

Tidak Ada New York Hari Ini
Tidak Ada New York Hari Ini by M. Aan Mansyur

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Catatan (agak) penting: saya belum pernah nonton AADC, bahkan filmnya yang pertama sekalipun.

Puisi cinta memang mudah memancing perasaan, sebab semua orang pasti mengalaminya. Karena itu pulalah ia cepat jadi membosankan. Walau ada satu dua rangkai kata yang cukup saya ingat (misal “Kau yang panas di kening. Kau yang dingin di kenang” yang sangat sering dikutip itu), tapi sisa-sisanya walaupun sentimental tapi cenderung membosankan. Entahlah, saya tidak begitu suka puisi-puisi cinta Aan Mansyur walau saya tak memungkiri kecakapannya dalam merangkai kata. Saya sempat membaca terjemahan beliau atas Puisi XX karya Pablo Neruda yang elok dan saya pakai sebagai acuan membuat terjemahan saya sendiri.

Mungkin gaya berpuisi seperti kumpulan ini memang sudah sangat formulaik, contohnya pada puisi Kahlil Gibran dan Pablo Neruda yang mengkiaskan cinta dengan peristiwa-peristiwa alam seperti siang dan malam atau panas dan dingin. Sama dengan bukunya Boy Candra yang dari judulnya (“Senja, Hujan, dan Cerita yang Telah Usai”) saja sudah tampak pasaran dan mencomot gaya berjudulnya Goenawan Mohammad (“Tuhan dan Hal-hal yang Tak Selesai”). Oke, ini ngelantur.

Oh ya, saya kurang suka pula ketika buku kumpulan puisi dicampurkan dengan buku kumpulan foto. Kesannya seperti membatasi ruang imajinasi pembaca dengan menampilkan gambaran peristiwa yang ingin disampaikan sekalian. Barangkali ini karena keharusan dari filmnya, ya. Naasnya saya tidak paham karena belum (dan tidak berminat) menonton film yang memuat kumpulan ini.

Dari sampul depan sampai sampul belakang buku ini, saya tidak menemukan puisi yang betul-betul orisinal. Elok, iya. Mengena, iya. Tapi, saya tidak merasakan rasa-rasa sastra di kumpulan ini. Tidak masalah menikmati buku ini, sayang ia bakal dingin di kenangnya.

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