Asked to describe “Islands: The Lost History of the Treaty That Changed the World” — a grand-scale, multidisciplinary project that’s taken five years to create, taken him to Indonesia on research trips and involves internationally renowned performers from diverse backgrounds, Wesleyan theater professor Ron Jenkins settles on “epic documentary theater.”
The piece, which will have its premiere April 21 and 22 at the Wesleyan Center for the Arts in Middletown, features acting, storytelling, dance, choral singing, Indonesian clowning, a gamelan orchestra, shadow puppetry and a strong political message about oppression and revolution.
“Islands” is a commemoration of the 350th anniversary of the Treaty of Breda. This is the negotiation where Manhattan Island was given to England by the Dutch. What the play reminds us is that in return, the Dutch took control of a spice island named Rhun in Indonesia, gaining a monopoly on the extremely valuable international nutmeg trade.
Jenkins, who has studied Indonesian culture for decades, wrote the script for “Islands” based on interviews he did with farmers and fishermen of the spice islands. “One character, a nutmeg farmer,” Jenkins said in a phone interview last week, “is based on an 82-year-old man I met. He was born in the nutmeg forest and tells you stories of the trees.”
A volcano is a central image of the play. “The spice islands are volcanic islands,” Jenkins says. He wrote much of “Islands” at the ARMA Museum in Bali. The Asian Cultural Council funded his oral history gathering his Rhun and he received a commission from the Mellon Foundation to finish the script.
The initial idea for the show came from Indonesian artist Made Wianta, who wanted to mark the anniversary of the treaty with a cross-cultural collaboration. Wianta, a sculptor and installationist whose work has been shown internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, has created a special design concept for the set.
Nyoman Catra, a master of Balinese village performance, a professor at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts and a graduate of the Wesleyan ethnomusicology program, will narrate “Islands” in the role of Enrique, the ghost of a slave who sailed with the explorer Magellan.
Catra is an accomplished “penasar clown,” a comic servant character similar to the Harlequin in European clowning traditions. Jenkins calls the slave character “a voice lost to history.”
Two renowned Wesleyan-based composers also contributed to “Islands.” Artist in Residence I.M. Harjito has written an original gamelan score, and Neely Bruce has set the text of the Treaty of Breda to music. Dinny Aletheiani, who teaches traditional Javanese dance at Yale University, will perform a section of Harjito’s work.
Dancer/choreographer Novirela Minangsari, from Indonesia’s Acehnese culture, has spent a year working at Wesleyan on the project thanks to a grant from the Asian Cultural Council. Seven Wesleyan students, who hail from Indonesia, Bangladesh, India and China, are also featured in the performance. Some 30 artists and performers are involved in “Islands” altogether.
Following the three performances at Wesleyan, “Islands” will be performed at 4 p.m. April 23 at the Indonesian Consulate in New York City. That will be a free performance intended to raise awareness of the historic connections between Indonesia and the United States. In August, the show — with much of the same cast — will be presented at Indonesia’s Mandara Mahalango Festival in Bali.
Jenkins describes “Islands: The Lost History of the Treaty That Changed the World” as “a mix-up, a mash-up, of Indonesian and Western traditions.” Then he adds, “But Indonesian traditions themselves are mashups. They are always evolving. This is a culture that survived oppression through art.”
Jenkins is no stranger to political, socially conscious theater. For decades he served as the onstage English translator for the Nobel Prize-winning playwright/clown/political provocateur Dario Fo, and crafted the English translations of many of Fo’s plays.
Jenkins sees many parallels and ironies in how the United States and Indonesia were affected by the Treaty of Breda, and how the countries acknowledge the treaty today. Jenkins notes that while the illiterate Indonesian farmers of Rhun know the significance of the name Manhattan, and even have a street with that name on the island, there is no “Rhun Street” in New York City. “Islands” is the story of massacres, the global economy, social injustice and a “struggle for freedom.”
Neely Bruce has not only set the text of the Treaty of Breda to music; his 2010 choral setting of the U.S. Bill of Rights serves as an epilogue to the show. Jenkins feels that the Treaty of Breda deserves to be called the “Bill of Lack of Rights — it legitimized slavery and servitude.” In his program notes for “Islands,” Jenkins explains that “the battle for the control of the nutmeg trade between the world’s reigning superpowers subjected the indigenous people of Rhun and other spice islands to death, slavery, rape, imprisonment and genocide. These are the ‘offenses, injuries and losses’ that the treaty suggests should be ‘buried in oblivion’ and ‘completely erased from memory.'”
During the phone interview, Jenkins maintains that this tradition of “erasing things from memory” is alive in the obfuscations and distractions of President Donald Trump. Jenkins quotes his friend and mentor Fo: “Forgetfulness is the world’s most dangerous disease.” Then he adds his own coda: “The antidote to forgetfulness is art.”
“We are giving Indonesia its proper place in world history,” Jenkins says. “This is documentary theater. The story is told by those whose lives were impacted by it.”
THE PREMIERE OF “ISLANDS: THE LOST HISTORY OF THE TREATY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD,” by Ron Jenkins, is performed April 21 at 8 p.m. and April 22 at 2 and 8 p.m. in the CFA Theater at the Center for the Arts, 271 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan University campus in Middletown. Tickets are $8, $5 for seniors and students. 860-685-3355, wesleyan.edu/cfa.
