Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display by Josh Stenberg

Abstract

Reviewed by: Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display by Josh Stenberg Lee Tong Soon (bio) Stenberg, Josh. Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. xiv, 257 pp., maps, images, photographs, notes, references, index. Hardcover $25.94, isbn 978-08-24-87671-5. What can theater, dance, ritual, and public performances teach us about Sino-Indonesian social histories? In this study, Josh Stenberg systematically shows us how Sino-Indonesian cultural performances reveal the sheer diversity of a community that has generally been understood narrowly as a diasporic group, or in terms of their economic achievements and contributions to the Indies and Indonesia. Emphasizing Sino-Indonesian cultural processes, Stenberg effectively obviates the polarized pitfalls of “sinocentric” and “state-centred” approaches (pp. 4–5), and foregrounds multiple agencies in the shaping of Sino-Indonesian identities. Chapter 1 traces the social history of xiqu (Chinese theater) in the Indies from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Through the use of a wide variety of sources in different languages and through field ethnography, Stenberg sketches early encounters of Europeans with xiqu based on travel observations and other historical records, describes touring local and regional troupes and visiting groups from China since the late nineteenth century, and outlines performances and activities of local amateur groups in the twentieth century. I found the section on “Mixed Audiences, Hybrid Genres, Checkered Reputations” (pp. 33–36) particularly interesting in highlighting the innovative and hybrid theatrical practices of Sino-Indonesian communities from the nineteenth through mid-twentieth century. From patrons and audiences to the character types on stage, from musical instruments and notations to the types of plays performed, Stenberg unequivocally asserts, “It would be an error to imagine that performances occurred in some kind of ethnic Chinese isolation” (p. 33). Using wayang as an organizing framework, chapter 2 examines different forms of glove, string and shadow puppetry performances practiced by the Sino-Indonesian communities. In this context, “wayang” is the localized lens through which Stenberg helps readers to understand the social history of southern Fujian potehi (glove puppetry) from its origins in China through its development in the Indies, Dutch East Indies, New Order Indonesia, and present-day Indonesia. In this trajectory, Stenberg adds, “the hybridity of the genre has prompted many to adopt it as a symbol of Sino-Indonesian integration” (p. 63). In addition to delving into archival sources and ethnography, Stenberg studies Sino-Indonesian potehi and shadow puppetry by focusing on the biography of the dalang (puppeteer), utilizing their collection of puppets, scripts, [End Page 313] personal manuscripts, and interviews to construct a personable approach to historical studies. Chapter 3 comprises a comparative study of the scripts and performances of two huaju (spoken drama) from 1946 and 1959 with the same title and similar plots. Stenberg examines this post-World War II, postindependence Sukarno era in Indonesia in relation to the emerging People’s Republic of China in the same period through the development of huaju, focusing particularly on “how mid-twentieth-century ethnic Chinese intellectuals in the Indies and Indonesia sought to use [huaju] as a way of negotiating their identities” (p. 76) during this period. Both the 1946 and 1959 plays feature structural and textual similarities but were produced and performed in Sumatra against different backdrops during the first decade of the newly independent Indonesia. According to Stenberg, the earlier play affirms the proletarian origins of the Sumatran Chinese and their responsibilities to the Indonesian revolutionaries, while the later play was “quintessentially Sino-Indonesian [and] firmly rooted in the historical realities of the place and confronting the ethnic and political tensions of the young Republic” (p. 95). Exploring urban modern theater as a foundation for modern Indonesian theater is the focus of chapter 4. Stenberg begins by affirming the inherent hybrid contexts of the commercial theater, continuing the thread of Sino-Indonesia agency that binds this book so well together. Broadly speaking, modern Indonesian theaters are effectively global social dramas in terms of their performance spaces, use of the Malay vernacular, the multiethnic audience, translated European and Chinese literary works, publishing of scripts, and...