by KATHRYN “KITSIE” EMERSON
When renowned dhalang Purbo Asmoro received Siddharth Chandra’s invitation to create and perform a full-length wayang kulit tale based on the 1920 play Awas L?lara Inpluwensa (Beware the Disease of Influenza), he was immediately inspired by the challenge. Purbo Asmoro is no stranger to creative construction of wayang tales that fall outside of traditional structures and was already active in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic through his art. Having received the materials from Siddharth Chandra on 5 July 2021, he live-streamed his original work entitled Tamba T?ka, Lara Lunga (Remedy Shows Up, Malady Gives Up) on his YouTube channel on 28 September 2021, only two-and-a-half months later.
In the four to five years before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, dhalang across Java had been embracing live-streaming of their performances. By 2018, almost every major dhalang across Java had started a YouTube channel and was broadcasting performances regularly. Superstar dhalang might have as many as 2,000 in attendance at their wayang and as many as another 10,000 viewing the live stream on YouTube. This established medium of wayang in a virtual format was to come in handy once COVID-19 began to ravage Java and other parts of Indonesia in early 2020.
Finding a voice during the pandemic
The first of many COVID-19 lockdowns in Indonesia was put into place on 20 March 2020. This sent a shock wave through the dhalang community whose profession is characterised by gathering large crowds in relatively small spaces. Purbo Asmoro was the first dhalang to make a public statement of concern just five days later, on 25 March 2020. Without warning or fanfare, he began to broadcast live from his home via YouTube and proceeded to perform a wayang completely alone – no 25 member gamelan troupe accompaniment, no technical team, and not a single person in the audience. He performed a ritual-cleansing story known as Sudamala (Lessen the Affliction) and by midnight much of the artistic community in Java was abuzz, emboldened by the idea that COVID-19 shutdowns did not have to mean artistic silence.
Purbo Asmoro continued to directly address the suffering and frustration caused by the pandemic in 62 subsequent performances, mostly virtual, held almost weekly over the next 18 months. Through his original interpretations of wayang tales, which he made relevant to what was happening, he invited the community to reflect on the effects of the pandemic.
The invitation by Siddharth Chandra, however, was something very different. Over 100 years ago, a fellow Javanese dhalang was asked by a Dutch colonial health official to create a play (Purbo Asmoro felt the 1920 play was written by a dhalang, but we cannot know for sure) that would educate the general public on how to treat the sick and prevent further spread of the disease during the 1918 flu pandemic. And now Purbo Asmoro had the script, complete with some simple illustrations, in his hands. This powerful connection to the suffering of his fellow Indonesians from a century ago, through the words of a fellow dhalang, captivated his imagination. Purbo Asmoro went about the process of studying the script as a starting point for constructing a full-length wayang, which he hoped would be dynamic, and meaningful to his current-day audience.
Inspiration despite a personal crisis
Two factors came into the equation that both slowed Purbo Asmoro down and helped forge an even more intimate relationship with the project. First, almost simultaneously upon receiving the proposal from Siddharth Chandra, Purbo Asmoro himself came down with a serious case of the Delta variant of COVID-19. Although he was quite ill, he had decided not to tell anyone outside his immediate household. He felt it was crucial to keep knowledge of his illness out of the general artistic community chatter, because of the second factor in the equation – his elder colleague, friend and a legendary superstar dhalang, Manteb Soedharsono, had died of COVID-19 three days earlier, and Purbo Asmoro had likely fallen ill as a result of the same superspreader.
A powerful government official had skirted the pandemic regulations and sponsored a mass-audience wayang in Jakarta, with Manteb Soedharsono as the dhalang and Nurroso Ensemble, directed by Blacius Subono, as the gamelan troupe. By the time the crew returned from Jakarta many of them had started to feel ill. Purbo Asmoro’s son, Kukuh Indrasmara, was one of the Nurroso performers. The troupe returned to Solo on 26 June 2021 and Manteb Soedharsono passed away a week later, on 2 July 2021. Four days after returning home, Purbo Asmoro’s son Kukuh came down with the infection and soon after that his mother, older brother, and finally, on 3 July, his father, Purbo Asmoro followed suit.
Dhalang are some of the most revered members of any traditional Javanese neighborhood. Superstar dhalang, like Manteb Soedharsono and Purbo Asmoro tend to be idolised by the entire nation. They are thought to be able to do no less than shift the path of a rainstorm away from an important event and are trusted to keep their entire crew safe from traffic accidents, illnesses, or other turns of bad luck. While it might have been understandable that a virus was killing off average citizens, it was incomprehensible to many that it had conquered the life of the invincible Manteb Soedharsono. And now, Purbo Asmoro had isolated himself away in his room, deathly ill from the very same strain of the virus, imagining how overwhelming it might be if the news of his illness came out.
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