From the theater of improvisation to the creation of plays: ways of the emergence of dramatic text in Malay literature

Kukushkina Evgeniya PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Philology of the Countries of Southeast Asia, Korea, Mongolia; Institute of Asian and African Countries at M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University 121069, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Mokhovaya, 11, str. 1, aud. 331 zhenya_isaa@mail.ru Other publications by this author

            The prehistory of the emergence of Malay drama: folk and transitional spectacular forms

The emergence of dramaturgy as a literary kind in the literature of Malaysia occurred much later compared to the genres of modern prose. The transition to the written fixation of dramatic texts was obviously lengthy. The first of the currently known plays dates back to 1951, and this date is considered to be the beginning of the history of Malay drama in British Malaya (since 1957 Malaysia) ^{[6, ms. 577-579]}. There is oral evidence that earlier dramatic works were created ^{[6, ms. 570]}, but there is no documentary evidence of this. The birth of drama was preceded by a long existence of various folk spectacles, and since the last quarter of the XIX century — urban theatrical forms of a transitional nature.

            None of the varieties of folk representations of written texts used: the actors improvised on a traditional plot. Thus, in the Wayang shadow theater, the basis of the repertoire was epic plots: for the Wayang Siam variety (or wayang Kelantan), it was, first of all, a local version of the great Indian epic "Ramayana" ^{[34, p. 75-292]}, and in wayang gedek – along with "Ramayana", Thai folklore and literary plots (this kind of shadow theater exists in areas bordering Thailand) ^{[37, p. 284]}. In the ritual representations of Mak yong, manora (nora chatri), mek mulung these were local fairy-tale and mythological plots (for the repertoire of mak yong, see ^{[37, p. 31-33]}, manors – ^{[33, p. 161-170]}, mek mulung – ^{[22, ms. 92-95]}).

            Transitional spectacular forms served as a kind of link between folklore acts and modern theater. The most famous of them – Bangsawan and Boria – originated in the 1870s on the island of Penang, lying on the trade route from India to China. The cosmopolitan hybrid culture born there, having absorbed numerous external influences, became the basis for the emergence of these theatrical forms. The catalyst for the process of their formation was deep socio-economic changes that led to the development of consumerism and commercial culture ^[28].

The spectacular forms that existed in the cities of British Malaya in the last third of the XIX century-the first half of the XX century can be adequately described as presystems where "artistic principles are realized, as a rule, in the form of trends", which can be both relevant (characteristic of this stage of historical development) and retrospective (inherited from the past), and promising (anticipating the future) ^{[3, pp. 101-102]}. It is this combination of retrospection and perspective that characterizes the Malay theater of the transitional type. The retrospective part of his poetics is directly connected with the folklore element. Like folk spectacles, the performances of the transitional theater were based on improvisation. They were also related to the folk theater by a set of template characters, standard elements of composition, formulaic and stylized speech, and a given stage movement. A significant part of the repertoire consisted of stories that came from folklore and traditional literature (for Bangsawan, see, in particular, ^[15]; ^[27]; ^[29]; ^[30]; ^[35], about boria – ^[15]; ^[37]).

At the same time, transitional urban spectacles introduced many innovations that determined the prospect of theatrical development. In the field of stage organization, this is the use of a stage (and proscenium), a basic set of scenery and/or props. The most fundamental difference from folklore spectacles was that the transitional type of theater did not perform a sacred function and was commercial. Hence his desire for novelty, flexibility and adaptability to the tastes of the audience. As a result, the performances easily absorbed new plots and various foreign cultural borrowings, which were especially evident in the interludes between acts: songs and dances of different peoples of the world were performed, including pop hits of that time; circus and sports numbers were introduced ^{[35, p. 37-40]}. Due to the obligatory presence of a motley vocal and musical component, such actions are usually characterized as "operatic" ^{[37, p. 13]}, and Bangsawan was often called "Malay opera".

The focus on constant renewal in order to retain the audience and attract new viewers turned this theater into a dynamic phenomenon. Its transitivity consisted not only in the fact that it served as a kind of bridge between folk spectacles and a modern type of theater, but also in the fact that constant internal changes took place in it: the dramatic repertoire expanded and qualitatively changed, the set of insert numbers-interludes changed and became richer, the composition of the orchestra and the musical arsenal, new ones were invented stage effects. In other words, "principles-processes" specific to transitional phenomena worked, "which convey the idea of the formation, formation ..., strengthening of a certain trend" ^{[3, p. 102]}. The existence of a transitional theater paved the way for the emergence of drama. Thus, the most important trend of its development was the formation of the need for written recorded texts, which did not arise immediately.

Bangsawan was the most popular transitional entertainment form of British Malaya. Having arisen under the influence of the Indian Parsi theater ^{[17, p. 318-321]}, he borrowed the repertoire of the latter, and began to actively replenish it at the expense of local (Malay), Middle Eastern, Chinese and Thai subjects. These performances won the mass audience, and by the mid-1950s Bangsawan "turned into a Malay national theatrical form" and "fell under the category of dominant culture" ^{[28, p. 23]}. While boria performances remained a local genre in Penang and partly in the neighboring states of Kedah and Perak ^{[15, p. 3-5]}, bangsawan attracted a mass audience throughout the country, and its poetics significantly influenced early Malay drama ^{[6, ms. 579-583]}. Until the Second World War, it remained the most popular public spectacle and entertainment in British Malaya, and only in the 1960s finally gave way to cinema.

            Bangsawan did not require the participation of playwrights for a long time, fundamentally differing in this from the theatrical form that gave him life. The emergence of Bangsavan can be likened to the birth of a hybrid of the second generation: the Parsi theater that gave birth to it was created by the "most Westernized" Indian community ^{[17, p. 315-316]}, and was a product of perception on Indian soil of English drama, especially Shakespeare ^{[19, p. 387-388]}; ^{[26, p. 3-5]}. In this theater, the role of the dramatic text was extremely important. Troupes competed with each other to have plays that could arouse and maintain audience interest. The plays were created by the authors who worked for the companies (munshi) and were carefully hidden from competitors. Not only competing companies, but also publishers hunted for texts: over time, the popularity of productions began to fuel the public's desire to have plays in print for reading. Texts were stolen, sometimes actors were bribed to reproduce replicas from memory for recording and publishing, etc. ^{[13, p. 134]}.

            Nothing like this happened on Malay soil. The genre was borrowed in its stage form, but not in its literary form. The plots introduced by the Parsi theater ("Indra's Court", "Bakavali Rose", "Sultan Bustamam", etc.) gave rise to Malay literary versions ^{[27, p. 97-102]}, but at the time of the appearance of these versions (1870s-1890s), written texts were not used for performances. They were also not used for productions on Shakespeare's plots, also inherited from the Parsis – neither the director nor the actors were familiar with the great classics (for versions of Shakespeare's themes in Bangsavan, see ^[8]).

            This situation has persisted for many decades. The coexistence of opposite principles in the poetics and practice of bangsawan – traditional and innovative – made this theater transitional, but for a long time it was the initial stage of transitivity – "transition as a state", at which "there is a balance of forces – new forms of perception of the world have already appeared, ... new values have declared themselves in art, new styles have been developed, but the connection with the traditions and norms of the passing time is still strong..." ^{[5, p. 11]}. The balance was maintained until the 1920s-1930s.

            The first samples of texts for theatrical productions in Malay

How did dramatic texts begin to appear in these ‘equilibrium’ conditions, the appearance of which marked the birth of the national drama of Malaysia? What has upset the long-term balance in favor of the new one? Where could a dramatic text come from in the Malay theatrical tradition? Answering these questions, it is necessary to outline all possible ways of introducing Malay culture to the concept of drama and staging plays.

First of all, it should be remembered about amateur theatrical activities in schools and colleges of British Malaya. The most famous plays of the world repertoire were often staged there. For English secondary schools, this was a mandatory part of extracurricular work; in most cases, plays or excerpts from Shakespeare's plays were transferred to the stage again ^{[21, ms. 221-226]}; ^{[25, p. 38-42]}. J. R. Brandon defines such productions in the countries of the East as ‘canonical’, that is,, completely focused on the scrupulous recreation of the artistic properties of the source on the local stage, relying solely on the original text ^{[14, p. 3-12]}.

Nevertheless, these texts could hardly serve as a prototype for early plays in the Malay language. On the one hand, some authors of the first Malay dramatic works, indeed, declared their desire to write "like Shakespeare" ^{[18, ms. 46]}; ^{[20, ms. 208]}. On the other hand, this did not mean that they had any deep understanding of the Bard's masterpieces. A very small part of the Malay population had access to English-language school productions of his plays, which was preserved by the colonial authorities in a patriarchal rural way and for the most part studied only in village primary schools (for the policy of the British in the field of education, see ^{[10, p. 231-241]}). Shakespeare's name was rather a generalized symbol of the highest literary virtues in the British colony, rather than forming specific impressions ^[2].

In Malay secondary schools, first of all, at the Sultan Idris Pedagogical College in Perak, performances were also sometimes staged. However, the Malay material was not used for them ^{[6, ms. 220-225]}. The incarnations of Western classics were no less specific than on the stage of Bangsawan: it was difficult to form an adequate idea of Shakespeare or any of the foreign authors from translations of Western literature into Malay, since they were made in British Malaya very limited and usually in the form of retellings and transcriptions ^[7]. Nevertheless, school productions contributed to the preparation of the birth of Malay drama by the very fact that they used a fixed text that the performers had to memorize ^{[6, ms. 225-226]}.

It is worth adding that between the two World Wars, several similarities of dramatic scenarios also appeared in the Malay periodicals.  These were texts divided into replicas of the interlocutors. However, due to the lack of a plot, conflict and characters of the characters, they can rather be attributed to journalism: in a dialogical form, the authors weighed the pros and cons, discussing this or that topical topic. Some of these texts were attributed by researchers to the genre of the story, but the Malay story of that time was notable for its significant similarity with journalism, since its bright distinguishing feature was didacticism ^{[11, ms. 32]}. In other words, these texts carried an essential generic feature of dramaturgy in the form of dividing into replicas, but they were not dramatic works ^{[6, ms. 226-232]}. Thus, they also contributed to preparing the ground for the birth of a new literary kind, but they could not serve as its direct source.

A brief scenario of the Bangsawan Theater performance as a precursor to a dramatic text

It seems that for the emergence of the Malay dramatic text, the path that lay within the very tradition of the Bangsawan theater was of particular importance. It remained completely unscripted for several decades, but in the 1920s-1930s significant innovations began in it, including the use of brief schematic scenarios of representations. According to contemporaries, these were still far from plays, but a step towards their appearance was made. The long–term equilibrium in the transitional theater turned out to be disturbed, giving rise to "the next hypostasis of transition - transition as a process that marks the breakdown of balance", resulting in "multiplicity", "variability of new directions in the development of art and culture" ^{[5, p. 12]}.

Indeed, during this period, along with traditional poetics, the poetics of realistic theater, new for him, began to assert itself on the stage of Bangsawan. There are new types of plots that reflect the reality of the era. There is reason to believe that they led to the need to use written texts.

Initially, the core of bangsawan's repertoire consisted of representations on plots constructed according to a scheme characteristic of folklore and traditional literature, ultimately going back to the myth: a hero of divine or royal origin was tested on the way to finding a spouse and a throne ^{[4, pp. 113-117]}; ^{[16, p. 57-58]}. Indian plots borrowed from the Parsi theater and stories drawn from the Malay, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Thai heritage were based on this. However, on the eve of the Second World War, more and more modern realistic productions began to appear, which quickly gained popularity with the viewer.

Several factors contributed to their arrival on the Bangsawan stage. First of all, there were significant changes in the ideological sphere in British Malaya at that time. There was a spread of Islamic reformist thought and the rise of nationalism, which was also facilitated by some shifts in the education system. In this situation, stories about the celestials and crowned kings gradually began to lose their appeal in the eyes of the audience, who now wanted a stage embodiment of more pressing life topics ^{[35, p. 51-52]}. Epic and fabulous plot universals were a thing of the past. This corresponded to the literary situation in general, since the Malay prose of that period had already begun to turn to modern topics and master a realistic method for their development ^{[21, ms. 104-119]}; ^{[21, ms. 137-172]}.

In addition, the source of new trends was the theatrical genre of komidi Istanbul, related to Bangsavan(komidie stamboel), which existed in the neighboring Netherlands East Indies (since 1945 - the Republic of Indonesia) in the local version of the Malay language. Since the policy of the Dutch colonial authorities in the field of education differed from the approach of the British in Malaya, a stratum of intellectuals who speak the language of the metropolis and are familiar with Western culture was formed among the local population. This found expression in the active translation activity ^[23] and in the intensive formation of modern literature at the beginning of the twentieth century, including dramaturgy ^{[36, p. 27-28]}. In the city theater of the Netherlands East Indies, these processes led to a fairly early emergence of dramatic texts.

Both in the field of translation and in the development of the drama of the Comidi Istanbul, a dynamic community of Sinomalais – descendants from marriages between Chinese immigrants and local women - played a big role. It was from their midst that the creators of the first plays came out. Over time, there were more and more playwrights. Some of them, who later achieved great fame (Anjar Asmara, Bakhtiar Effendi), began their career as authors of the troupes of the Comidi Istanbul ^{[24, p. 506-509]}.

Despite the fact that the Komidi Istanbul theater probably arose under the influence of Bangsavan's tour of the Netherlands East Indies, pretty soon it began to have a strong counter impact on the latter ^{[16, p. 38-42]}; ^{[29, p. 277-281]}. His guides were theatrical figures – first of all, directors and owners of companies – who had experience working in the Istanbul comedy, or hired actors and directors from there. This happened, in particular, with the owner of one of the most successful troupes of Bangsawan in the early twentieth century. Bai Kassim (or Sheikh Kassim). With his company Indera Zanibar – perhaps the most famous in British Malaya in the 1890s-1900s – Kassim sought to offer the audience not only the traditional repertoire of the Parsi theater, but also obvious borrowings from the Istanbul comedy in the form of European plots ^{[29, p. 273-277]}. As a result, according to M. A. Cohen, the activities of Indera Zanibar led "to the disappearance of any significant difference between Komedie Stamboel and Bangsawan" ^{[17, p. 112]}.

However, the most fundamental difference still has not disappeared. Unlike the Istanbul comidi, written texts were still not used in Bangsavan. The creative exchange between the two theatrical forms was mainly through the borrowing of plots, but not plays.

By the 1920s-1930s, the situation began to change gradually as the number of new types of stories coming from the Dutch East Indies increased. These were life stories that were embodied on the stage with maximum reliability. Bangsawan had not yet begun to actively master the realistic method, and the performances of visiting troupes that reflected reality produced a stunning effect in British Malaya. Especially strong were the impressions from the tours of two giants of the Istanbul comedy – Miss Riboet and Dardanella companies. Their tours of the Malacca Peninsula in the 1920s-1930s were triumphant ^{[24, p. 505]}. Realistic stories on modern topics aroused a particularly interested reception from the local audience ^{[35, p. 52-55]}. Some of the plots of these performances were included in the repertoire of Bangsawan.

It was much more difficult for the actors to improvise on new plots. In the traditional repertoire, the composition of the performance consisted of a set of typical scenes (babak) played out in certain scenery. For example, the performance almost always began (and ended) with an audience in the ruler's palace or in the heavenly palace. Romantic dates and court entertainments took place in the palace garden, battles or meetings with hermits took place in the forest, battles were also often fought on the seashore or at sea, etc. In addition, there was a set of template characters (watak): a young hero (usually a prince) and a young heroine (princess), their comic servants, the ruler-father, the ruler's wife, the antagonist (genie or pirate), courtiers, warriors, palace nurses. The characters were answered by acting roles ^{[35, p. 103-124]}. The language of the heroes of bangsawan was distinguished by formality; each actor had to maintain a style corresponding to the role. Stage movements were also set ^{[30, ms. 251-278]}.

The new realistic stories did not involve a typical set of scenes, template plot moves and characters, so the actors needed much more hints. Improvisation on traditional plots was carried out with the help of a strictly defined set of tools, and therefore was not difficult, whereas in a realistic setting everything was different.

According to the accepted practice of bangsawan, when preparing the next production, the directors presented the plot to the troupe in the form of a sequence of typical scenes ^{[35, p. 65]}. With the advent of a new type of representations, it was no longer possible to limit this. The need to use texts made itself felt, and gradually they began to come into circulation in the form of compressed scripts ^{[30, ms. 41-42]}. Thus, the birth of dramatic texts could go through the ‘increment’ of the scenario text as explanations were added regarding the development of the plot, dialogues and stage movement.

There were practically no texts of short scripts left: they were not seen as valuable, and therefore they were not published and not saved. The situation was aggravated by the Japanese occupation of the Malacca Peninsula during the Second World War, when the activity of Bangsawan companies largely came to naught.

Nevertheless, sometimes we can judge the content of the productions of a new sample. The most obvious cases were when the repertoire of Komidi Istanbul was used, in which fixed dramatic texts were already used on the eve of the Second World War. Bangsawan, which was still an improvisation theater, borrowed only the storyline. However, this line already bore the stamp of authorship – at this stage of transition, the role of the individual increases ^{[5, p. 13]}. In order to successfully play it, the artists needed additional instructions and, possibly, planned dialogues. Even if the plot was based on a traditional motive, but individually reinterpreted by the author, the sequence of actions and the essence of the replicas should have been at least outlined beforehand.

An example is two popular stories about the meeting of a son with his parents after a long separation and many trials. The search for parents is a frequent motif in the traditional literature of the Malay world, which was effectively transferred to the twentieth century on the Bangsawan stage. So, the popular production of "Dr. Samsi" (Dr. Samsi) originally represented one of the famous plays of the playwright and director of the East India company Dardanella Anjar Asmara (1902-1961). According to the posters, she "shocked the feelings of intellectuals all over Indonesia" ^{[24, p. 504]}. According to the plot, a dying baby – the son of a famous doctor Samsi – is replaced by another child, so that the doctor does not know about the death of his son and raises a ‘foundling’. He grows up, becomes a popular lawyer and one day, unknowingly, saves his own mother from being accused of murder. The mystery of his birth is revealed in the finale, when it turns out that Samsi is still his own father, because many years ago he had a secret relationship with his mother. The story of Samsi also conquered the Malay audience, being in the repertoire of Bangsawan in British Malaya ^{[16, p. 187]}.

The love of the local audience was won by another production of clearly East Indian origin - "Doctor Chepta" (Doktor Chepta), which also appeared on stage in the 1930s ^{[21, ms. 210-213]}. In the list of subjects of bangsawan's performances given in Rahma Bujang's monograph, the name of the performance is present in another spelling – "Doctor Cipta" (Doktor Cipta) ^{[16, p. 189]}. The hero has a fairly common Javanese name, but even more the connection with Komidi Istanbul betrays the similarity of many of the motives of this performance with the details of the plot of the play "Dr. Samsi".

"Doctor Chipta" is another story of the separation of a son from his mother, who, due to poverty, is forced to give him to a wealthy family. A son is born after his mother – a young maid – is dishonored by the master. Growing up, the boy becomes a doctor, and his mother and father, who has fallen into poverty, come to his clinic at the same time. At the sight of her abuser, a woman falls dead from her experiences. The real and adoptive father of Dr. Chipta tells him the truth, and he commits suicide, unable to bear the shame of being illegitimate ^{[21, ms. 212-213]}.

The tragic ending is another sign that the plot has been borrowed.  The sad denouement was not typical for Bangsawan ^{[35, p. 109]}, nor for Malay prose of the first half of the twentieth century, which distinguished it from works created in the Dutch East Indies. This fact was noted by A. By Wahab Ali, who undertook a comparative analysis of the early novelistics of Malaysia and Indonesia ^{[9, p. 278-279]}. The plot of the drama "Dr. Chipta" is more in line with the picture of the world of Indonesian literature, which developed the concept of the tragic much earlier.

Both stories were undoubtedly far from traditional plots and very full of unexpected twists. Improvisation in this case should have been a difficult task. Nevertheless, the producers of bangsawan could hardly use the author's text: the new one made its way not without difficulties. Thus, there are mentions that in 1930 the Singaporean journalist Abdullah Munshi wrote 4 or 5 plays for the City Opera company, which he himself staged on stage ^{[21, ms. 209]}. The plays were historical in the modern sense of the word, that is, they were no longer based on the plots of medieval Malay chronicles, which was typical of the traditional Bangsawan repertoire ^{[16, p. 184-186]}. They also lacked elements of magic and such typical Bangsawan characters as jinns, peris and deities. The author's text had to be memorized by heart. However, the new practice met with resistance from actors accustomed to improvisation. The plays were lost, and at that moment the birth of Malay drama did not happen ^{[21, ms. 209]}.

Despite the resistance to the dramatic text, its necessity for the success of realistic productions became obvious, and it was such productions that attracted the viewer. The appearance of short scripts prepared the appearance of dramatic texts. The possibility of their formation as a result of the deployment of scenarios is confirmed by the fact that subsequently a number of early Malay plays were written on popular Bangsawan plots (the most famous of them are Megat TerawisThose of Fatima Abdul Wahab, as well as "The Hunchback of Tanjung Putri" (Si Bongkok Tanjung Puteri) and "The Dagger of Admiral Bentan" (Keris Laksamana Bentan) by Shaharom Hussein).

With the advent of scenarios, the "third semantic constant" of the transition was designated – its implementation began through a specific mechanism ^{[5, p. 14]}. Short texts became prototypes of plays that, due to different cultural and social circumstances, came to the Malay stage only in the middle of the twentieth century. However, the transition mechanism in this case could not be limited to the development of a dramatic text from brief scenarios. It is also necessary to take into account the interaction of theater and literature – first foreign, and then Malay.

The interaction of literature and theater as a factor in the emergence of Malay drama

The available data suggest a variant of the birth of a dramatic text as a result of the adaptation of a prose work. This process was actively going on in the comidi Istanbul, when "[o] a huge number of novels ... were turned into plays for the stage," and there was a "genre fusion of drama and novel" ^{[24, p. 503-504]}.

The Komidi Theater Istanbul could play the role of an intermediary in the development of Bangsavan plots of Western literature. If Shakespeare's versions were most likely inherited from the Parsi theater, then it was through the East Indian theatrical form that individual later works could penetrate the Bangsawan stage. Thus, a theatrical version of the Victorian novel (extremely popular in the second half of the XIX century, "East Lynn" by Mrs. Henry Wood) appeared on the Malay stage. In the traditions of European artistic consciousness, novels by mestizo writers from the Netherlands East Indies, written in Dutch ("Rossina" by Dr. Kramer and "Nyai Dasimah" (1896) by G. Francis) were also created ^{[35, p. 45]}.

These works paved the way to the Bangsawan stage, as companies in British Malaya immediately reacted to the success of the new type of performances. In an effort to consolidate this success, they not only borrowed plots from the Istanbul comedy (in monographs on Bangsawan, some of them are marked as Indonesian ^{[16, p. 85-86]}; ^{[30, ms. 57]}), but began to strive to satisfy the audience's demand for realism and relevance of the subject, drawing it already in the works of local writers. 

            The available data suggest that Malay literature before the Second World War, indeed, could supply a new type of plots for the theater. The texts of prose works could be processed into dialogues and monologues for the stage. To date, the study of this problem on the material of Bangsawan has not yet been undertaken, but the pioneering work of D. Edamsky, performed in relation to the Istanbul comedy, clearly shows that the flow of literary plots into the theater should be considered as an important factor in the development of drama. The Dutch researcher's article notes the role of the interaction of the Istanbul comedy with translated and Indonesian literature, as well as cinema: a number of popular productions were carried out on the basis of well-known works of prose and films ^[24].

There is reason to believe that similar processes were going on in the Bangsawan theater with some delay: the first attempts were made to create plays and works of literature were processed for the stage.

So, in 1932, the audience was presented with a production – "The Disobedient Son" (Anak Derhaka) ^{[21, ms. 209]}. Such names were not uncommon for pre-war Malay literature, which didactically described the virtues and vices for which their owners were rewarded: "The trouble of the Lazy" (Kecelakaan Pemalas), "Devoted Commander" (Hulubalang Yang Sitiawan), "Victim of Passions" (Korban Hawa Nafsu), "Punishment of greed" (Balasan Kedengkian) and etc .

The story of the disobedient son was imbued with a teaching pathos typical of Bangsawan and Malay literature of that time. In the absence of parents making a pilgrimage to Mecca, the main character Ahmad expels his wife and children from the house, takes an immoral person as a second spouse and recklessly transfers all property to her name. The returning parents take the side of the older wife, for which Ahmad drives them away. However, soon he himself is pointed out to the door by a new spouse, secretly containing a lover. A skirmish occurs, Ahmad is arrested for debauchery and sentenced to 5 years in prison. His noble brother, police officer Muhammad, takes Ahmad's family to him and takes care of her. After leaving prison, the latter repents, asks for forgiveness and receives it ^{[21, ms. 210]}.

This story came to the stage of Bangsawan after a tour in British Malaya by the East India company Miss Riboet, so it is impossible to completely exclude its Indonesian origin. However, there is another significant point: at that time, two whole stories were published in the local periodicals under the title "The Disobedient Son" ^{[11, ms. 227, 262]}. Due to the unavailability of their texts, it is now impossible to say which of them could give life to the bangsawan production. However, it cannot be excluded that its plot came from literature. The moralizing content fully corresponds to the spirit of pre-war Malay prose, in which there was a whole segment of works on the topic of morality and generational conflict ^{[11, ms. 54-55]}.

Other examples of Bangsawan mastering the plots of works of local literature of that period are even more obvious. In particular, the production of "Faridah Hanim" by Opera of Singapore was based on the most famous novel of the 1920s. The posters and newspaper announcements even mentioned "authors": "famous playwrights Mr. Nunmim Ainmim... and Mr. Nani bin Al. Hj. Osman" ^{[35, p. 51]}. However, the creators of the plot "famous playwrights" definitely were not. Without a doubt, we are talking about representations based on the novel Syed Sheikh Ahmad Al-Hady (Syed Shaikh Ahmad Al-Hady; 1868-1934) "The Story of a lover's fidelity to his beloved or Farida Khanum and Shafiq Affandi" (Hikayat Setia Asiik kepada Maksyuknya atau Faridah Hanum dan Syafiq Affandi;1925), better known simply as "Farida Khanum". The reformist in spirit work has received great recognition in Malaya, has withstood multiple reprints and is now recognized as the first example of the genre of the novel in the Malay language ^{[21, ms. 136-141]}.

The Sheikh was an influential publicist, an ardent supporter of the purification of Islam from pre-religious superstitions, propagandized the need for education, including for women. In addition to the relevance of these ideas to the Malay community of that time, the central love line certainly aroused public interest.

 In addition to the plot, which was supposed to be perceived by the audience as familiar, the plot of "Farida Khanum" contained many episodes that created intrigue and held the attention of the audience. There were secret meetings of lovers, suffering due to the forced marriage of the heroine, the departure of the inconsolable hero to the war. The heroine's cunning allowed her to avoid intimacy with her unloved husband until the moment when the exposure of her husband's dishonesty freed her from the shackles of a hated marriage. In the denouement there was a joyful meeting of lovers, a test of the hero's loyalty and, finally, a wedding.

Since the result of the stage adaptation has not been preserved in writing, it is impossible to establish whether the text of the novel was remade into a full-fledged play or just a short script. If the alteration into a play took place, its authors at that time could already be afraid of persecution for copyright infringement and therefore could not print it (even if the concept of copyright was still poorly developed, the novel of the Eaten Sheikh was too well known and popular). The fact that this was the case is indirectly evidenced by the pseudonym of the first of them, which is a combination of the names of the letters of the Arabic alphabet (nun-mim-ain-mim).

In addition to the novel of the Eaten Sheikh , among the Bangsawan plots mentioned in the studies , at least a few more borrowings from the Malay prose of the twentieth century are found . Thus, there is no doubt that the source of the production of "Datuk Chinchano" is another early novel written by Ahmad bin Muhammad Rashid Talu (Ahmad bin Haji Muhammad Rashid Talu; 1889-1939). Ahmad Talu was greatly influenced by the works and journalism of Syed Sheikh Al-Hadi, highlighting the problems of the backwardness of the Malay community in a reformist spirit. Nevertheless, his prose was much more imbued with local flavor, besides, love and adventure motives played a big role in it ^[12]. Thus, his work carried the fascination so appreciated on the stage of Bangsawan. In particular, the novel "Who is the villain or Dato Chinchano, the famous robber" (Siapa Jahat atau Dato' Cincano Perompak Yang Termasyhur; 1929-1932) tells about the exploits and severe injury of the famous pirate Chinchano, who after long trials repents and comes to a righteous life. As in the case of "Farida Khanum", there can be no doubt about the origin of the bangsavan plot.

Apparently, in the 1930s, the then very young genre of short story, following the novelistics, also managed to provide material for bangsawan. For example, there was a production called "Who is to blame?"(Salah Siapa?), which went back to the story of the same name, written in 1938 by Mohammad Bujang under the pseudonym Melati Sarawak (Jasmine Sarawak). The title of the story has a different word order (Siapa Salah?) ^{[32, ms. 688]}, which in this case does not affect the meaning. In addition, the coincidence of the content of the story and the theatrical production is obvious.

Among the characteristic themes of Malay short stories of those years was the danger of Christianization, which in the writers' view threatened the Malays ^[1]. Melati Sarawak's story is dedicated to this problem. According to the plot, the young hero, who was educated in an English high school, grows into a person far from his native culture and easily agrees to be baptized for the sake of marrying the daughter of a wealthy Eurasian (a descendant from the marriage of a European with a native woman). Having found prosperity, the hero forgets and rejects his parents, who are dying of grief. However, his wife soon drives him away, and he returns home as a beggar, where he is given a letter left by his father. The hero opens it in the cemetery at the parental graves and finds out that his parents refuse him the last forgiveness. In despair, the ill-fated young man falls senseless into the waters of the river flowing near the cemetery, and dies ^{[32, ms. 688-700]}.

The directors of bangsawan had to be impressed by the tension of the conflict, which could be emphasized by the means inherent in bangsawan: emotional scenes of suffering and clarification of relations, soulful songs and romantic episodes. Relatively small but significant changes were made in the stage version, which corresponded well to the theatrical poetics of Bangsawan. So, in the final scene after the death of the hero, the figure of the reasoner, the uncle of the ill–fated young man, came to the fore. He made a speech emphasizing the natural end of the apostate and ungrateful son, but at the same time laying the main blame on his parents, who left the Western way of life to shape the personality of their offspring ^{[21, ms. 214]}.

The story also allowed not only to give space to a stylized exaggerated image of feelings, but also to use special effects, for which the death scene of the hero was changed. Unlike the story, he did not just fall into the river, but was struck by lightning ^{[21, ms. 214]} – this impressive moment decorated more than one scene of bangsawan. Special effects (kasmat) were given great importance, and among the staff of theater companies there were employees who were called mistry(from the English mystery) – they were responsible for this side of the representations ^{[35, p. 40-43]}.

Some of the names of the productions listed in the works of Rahma Bujang, S. B. Tan and Abdul Samat Salleh pose difficult questions to researchers. There are several versions of the origin of the plots, and arguments can be made in favor of each of them.

For example, one of the names in the original sounds like "Bangkai Bernyawa" ^{[16, p. 189]}. Due to the lack of a number category in the Malay language, it can be translated as "Living Corpse" or as "Living Corpses".  In the first case, there is an obvious association with the famous play by Leo Tolstoy (1900), and the probability of using its plot cannot be denied: in this case, it most likely came again through the Comidi Istanbul, since translation activity in the Dutch East Indies also covered Russian literature ^{[23, p. 231-232]}. 

In addition, in the comidi Istanbul there was a play with a similar name, though not in sound, but in meaning – "Mait Hidoep"(translated, too, "Living corpse" or "Living corpses"). It was written in 1931 and belonged to the famous Sinomalayan playwright Kwee Tek Hoay (1886-1951), who worked for the Istanbul Comidi and collaborated with the Dardanella company. The play was an adaptation of G. Ibsen's "Ghosts" with Chinese characters. Unlike the original, Ki Tek Hoai's version was devoted to a social problem, which he considered the most important – the spread of venereal diseases ^{[24, p. 503]}. It cannot be excluded that the plot of this play was borrowed from the Istanbul to Bangsavan comidi with a change of name and spelling, since in its original form it had a clear East Indian coloring.

Finally, under the title "Bangkai Bernyawa" in 1949, a novel by Ahmad Lutfi (real name – Syed Abdullah bin Abdul Hamid Al-Edrus; 1911-1966), a popular writer of the post-war years, was published in Malaya. During this period, the Bangsawan theater sought to restore its position as the most democratic and beloved entertainment form by the audience, which suffered greatly during the years of the Japanese occupation ^{[16, p. 42-45]}; ^{[35, p. 165-166]}. This goal could not be achieved, but Bangsawan continued to exist for about two decades, very reluctantly surrendering its positions under the onslaught of cinema. At that time, it was especially important to impress the audience with exciting stories, and the plot of Ahmad Lutfi's novel met this criterion.

The novel belonged to the historical genre, and historical plots formed a significant part of bangsawan's repertoire throughout its existence ^{[16, p. 64]}. At the same time, Ahmad Lutfi's prose was definitely aimed at commercial success and was endowed with features characteristic of mass literature. The element of social criticism often turned out to be hidden behind a touch of eroticism, criminality, general sensationalism, which is why some of his works even fell under the ban of religious authorities ^{[31, ms. 6-16]}. The novel "Living Corpses" is written exactly like this: it is dedicated to the hardships of the occupation times and amazes the reader with straightforward references to the horrors that deprived people of their human appearance.

The main actors are two Indonesian workers who in 1943 move to Singapore, hoping to find a source of food. One of them, in terrible conditions of hunger, goes to cannibalism. Religious values help the second person to remain human. In the moral denouement of the novel, the morally fallen hero dies, and his noble friend is saved ^{[31, ms. 67-69]}.

Such a plot could well fit into the set of bangsawan stage stories. The accentuated depiction of emotions on stage, maintaining tension in the audience at the sight of scary scenes and unexpected plot twists were characteristic features of the poetics of the performances.

Conclusion

            The urban spectacular form of Bangsawan, which existed in the 1870s-1960s in British Malaya (now Malaysia), can be defined as a pre-dramatic theater system. Its leading promising trend was the emergence of conditions for the creation and use of written texts. The starting point for the formation of a request for written dramatic texts was the influx of realistic plots into Bangsawan's repertoire. Productions based on realistic plots made it impossible for free acting improvisation, on which traditional theater performances were based.

            The transition mechanism could represent both the deployment of short scenarios of productions and the adaptation of prose works for the stage. The source of realistic plots was the repertoire of the Bangsavan-related Komidi Istanbul theater in the Netherlands East Indies, as well as the prose of British Malaya, which actively mastered the realistic method in the first half of the twentieth century.

            Before the Second World War, new trends had not yet brought results in the form of published plays. However, at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century, the birth of a new literary kind took place: the first works of Malay drama began to appear in print.

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