Krishen will remain a hero for generations to come
BY KEE THUAN CHYEKRISHEN JIT embodied an era in Malaysian theatre. He explored a variety of forms and tried different things in his search for new theatre language.
He was a risk-taker, so that while he could be directing a commercial American play (usually in Singapore, which revered him), he would at the same time be thinking about doing some cutting-edge material next.
He mentored many. Some have gone on to distinguish themselves as trail blazers of the next generation. Through the Five Arts Centre, which he set up in 1983 with his wife, Marion D’Cruz, and a few others, he was able to realise some of his theatre ideals and also be a guru to the young.
I had the privilege of working with him in the 1980s. In our first collaboration, he got me to play an Indian overseer in a labour compound, in the play The Cord. When he first broached the idea, I thought he was mad!
But that was Krishen for you. He was always pushing the frontiers, debunking stereotype notions. He carried that on right to his last production, Monkey Business – Rhythm in Bronze Gamelan Theatre. The reviews were not all good, but that would not have mattered to Krishen. A lot of the time, the process was more important to him than the final product.
This credo was evident in his theatre column Talking Drama, which he wrote for many years under the pseudonym Utih. In it, he often expressed a wider, historical view of the productions he saw and wrote about.
He was not merely being the academic he was, as History lecturer at Universiti Malaya; he was also concerned about how Malaysian theatre should develop. He gave it context and direction.
Some theatre practitioners were stung by his critiques. I was one of them. He virtually tore to shreds the first production I wrote and directed in the 1970s. But malice was never an element in his writing or intentions. Even so, Krishen lost friends who fell out with him because of what he wrote of their work.
It was quite a price to pay, but the column was his mission. It enabled him to bring together theatre in the major languages of the country in order to forge a discourse.
He wanted Malay theatre people to talk to non-Malay theatre people. One could say he tried to democratise theatre. His column was indeed very influential, and is the only living and sustained record of the Malaysian performing arts in its first decades of development.
Krishen was a lot of things. He loved life (and women). He was enigmatically lazy about looking after himself and yet supremely disciplined when he had to be. How else could he have sustained a weekly column for so long?
He was a contradiction – he could be sweet and seductive and also harsh and biting. Some of the people who have worked with him on theatre projects have borne the brunt of his harshness and yet still ended up adoring him.
Some people say he was an opportunist who knew how to exploit the temper of the times to his advantage, that after 1969, he switched to doing Malay theatre because the political mood favoured it. And yet in the 1980s when the times were not right for English-language theatre in Malaysia, he opted for directing English-language plays. It was in fact not the politically correct thing to do.
One of these plays was 1984 Here and Now, which I wrote – as politically incorrect as any play could be at the time, because it spoke out against racial discrimination and Big Brotherism. An opportunist would not have touched it. Krishen did – and it was an act of courage.
To me, he was also one of the most articulate and intelligent men I’ve ever known. We did not see eye to eye on a lot of things, but often when I found myself in a difficult situation, I wondered what Krishen would do to resolve it. He had more than intelligence; he had wisdom.
No Malaysian has achieved so much in theatre as he has. The mark he leaves behind is not only in Malaysia but also in Singapore where for the past 15 years he spent half his time directing big-scale productions for an appreciative theatre community.
And yet there was a time when he felt almost irrelevant. Around 1990, he said to me that the younger generation then did not feel inspired by Malaysian theatre because they felt there were no heroes to emulate. I said to him then what I would say now, “That’s not true. Krishen Jit is a hero.”
And will remain so for generations to come.
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