The Body as a Language of Resistance: Changes in Teater Payung Hitam's Themes and Strategies of Critique from the New Order to Reformasi (1994–2016)

Abstract

This article examines changes in the themes and strategies of critique of Teater Payung Hitam (TPH), a Bandung-based physical theater group, from the late New Order through the first decade of Reformasi (1994–2010). Using the critical historical method—heuristics, external and internal source criticism, interpretation, and historiography—on scripts and performance documentation, contemporary press clippings (Kompas, Pikiran Rakyat, Tempo, Solopos, Suara Merdeka), and a published interview with TPH founder Rachman Sabur (2015), the study shows that in the New Order era (1994–1998) TPH developed six interrelated artistic strategies amid censorship: shifting from verbal language to the language of the body, using polysemic symbols, appropriating the world dramaturgical canon (Beckett, Handke, Ionesco) as a shield of legitimacy, physical intensity and an aesthetic of pain, collaboration across media, and consistent thematic boldness—as seen in Kaspar (1994), Masbret (1994), and Merah Bolong Putih Doblong Hitam (1996–1997). As controls over expression loosened after 1998, TPH's themes of critique gradually shifted: from disillusionment with the new post-Reformasi elite (1999–2002), to identity and personal existentialism (2002–2005), ecological and national issues (2005–2009), and finally the courage to expose the taboo history of 1965 in Genjer-Genjer (2010). Using Arnold Hauser's sociology of art, the study argues that these changes were not merely a shift in aesthetic preference but a process of dialectical adaptation between artistic form and the surrounding social and political structure: a nonverbal strategy that initially served as a survival tactic under repression became a freely chosen language of critical reflection in the democratic era. The study's novelty lies in systematically mapping continuity beneath change—the body, symbols, and space remained the main media across two different regimes—showing that TPH's cultural resilience rested not on avoiding confrontation, but on its ability to change the terrain and function of confrontation itself according to its historical context.