Beyond Zat Stages  

Pandora
Translated by Ko Ko Thett and Thett Su San

We grew up watching countless performances of zatpwe, or zat theatre, in my days in the Irrawaddy Delta. There probably isn’t an individual who has not looked up, at least momentarily, at a zat stage. We are also familiar with podiums and raised platforms at events. And yet there are very few people who have had a chance to look down on the audience from a stage. Can everyone be on stage?

Zat, a word that derives from Jataka tales in Buddhism, reminds one of multiple genres, comprising comedy, singing, dance, as well as melodramatic stage plays of actors, sidekicks and villains. Today words such as zattote (a zat drama), zatpwe (a zat festival), or zatthabin (a zat theatre) belong to bygone days.

When I was a child my family usually tuned into radio zattote. We could sing along songs in popular zattote, such as ‘Give Me Back My Gold Tumbler’, ‘Was it So, Maung Kalu?’, ‘Five Hundred Ox Cart Drivers’, and many more. In rural Myanmar, at the end of the monsoon season when days are in the clear of rain and gust, the arrivals of outdoor zatpwe were heavily anticipated by locals.

Zat used to be the only entertainment for rural folks. One could enjoy the outdoors balarzat in the open air, usually free of charge, sponsored by the community. There were zat in the makeshift theatres too. In the zat season, purpose-built temporary zat halls were erected overnight. They were usually walled in bamboo mats, adorned with hand-painted zat billboards of the day. There were different prices for different ‘mats’, from velvety mats for the VIPs to affordable rattan type for the masses. Comfortable deckchairs were also available at a price. Some zat were extremely popular it was not uncommon to see giant bamboo zat halls, packed with too many people, cave in like overfilled balloons.

In the olden days there was myewaingzat, performed on the ground. The audience sat or stood around performers and musicians. After that, zat stages appeared, followed by zat halls. In my parents’ village in the Delta, a temporary stage would be built, and it was then walled off with rai bamboo mats, and a zat hall would be hastily finished a few hours before the performance. The building of the zat stage itself would rouse villagers to a zat fever pitch. Zatpwe usually arrived in villages at the beginning of the cold season, when peasants could use some cash and a breather after the rice harvest, or in the lunar month of tabaung, where pagoda festivals were usually held, before the rainy season.

Hawkers must make the most of a zatpwe, rather than watching it. Smells of burning sticky rice pancakes, glutinous rice crisps skilfully tossed and turned on an open fire, as well as ice-cream, steamed corns and all sorts of snacks vied for attention with exhilarated children. One could buy helium balloons. ‘Fortune-telling sparrows’ could pick tarot cards. At the photo kiosks one could pose in front of a quaint background such as the Eiffel Tower. Boys, being boys, loved betting on race cars, albeit battery-powered toy cars. Village belles would go out in groups. The well-heeled flaunted all the jewels they had, tiffin carriers, big and small, packed with food to last all night, fancy carpets, and cash and gifts for their favourite performers. Soon, everyone in the village thronged to the zatpwe to walk around or watch the all-night stage show.

It was not unusual to see drunken revellers at crowded fairgrounds, also in rural Myanmar. At the back of the zat hall were peeping Toms observing the backstage through the chinks in the bamboo mesh walls. Rowdy types would place their chins right on the edge of the stage and cheer on a female performer. Brawls were inevitable. Some brawlers would be met with the cane by the village abbott himself. Others would crash out only after their feet were locked in the stocks by the village head.

Rural Myanmar was renowned for hospitality. Villagers would often tussle with each other over which household was entitled to get their favourite performers over for a meal. It wouldn’t take a day before the zat people and villagers became very close friends. In some villages the zat team and the home team would play friendly football matches. Shwemyaing Ohn Pe Lay was a songwriter in a zat troop. “Ohn” in his name could mean coconut. When his zat was performing at a village called Ohn Chaung, or Coconut Creek, Ohn penned a song that went, ‘Under a coconut tree, drinking coconut water, eating coconut flesh, Mr. Coconut is writing a song about Coconut Creek. How memorable is this Coconuty Cowtown.’ He performed it in the night to uproarious applause by the villagers.

Shwemann Tin Maung, the legendary zat dancer who died dancing on stage aged fifty in 1969, had to compete with the booming film industry in colonial Burma in the 1920s. It was said that he came up with the half-night zatpwe format, and diverted filmgoers into his zat halls. And yet, even in my time in the 1980s, all the zatpwe I had watched were all-nighters. The first half of the night was usually opened with natkadaw dance, to appease the nat spirits, who lorded over every inch of Myanmar. It was followed by apyodaw dance, singing, yein dance, zat opera and drama. Then there was an intermission. After the break, there was nhapathwa (a duet), and a play adapted from Jataka tales. The curtain closed at the end of the play around five in the morning. Usually, zat were performed for three days in a row. If one watched zat the whole night, one would definitely be ‘bitten’ by a hangover the following morning. Some had the luxury of going straight to bed, others would have to begin work in a drowsy mood with ears still buzzing from zat music. The whole village went quiet in the afternoons.

One afternoon, while we were living in Bassein in the Irrawaddy Delta, the zat performer Mandalay Thein Zaw and his brother, whose zat was in town, came to our book rental shop and borrowed some books. While two attractive strangers were leafing through the books, my father yelled, ‘Hey Phoe Zaw!’ One of the strangers immediately answered, ‘Yes, Sir’ and laughed out loud when he realised my father wanted my brother for an errand. ‘Sorry, I thought you called my name.’ ‘What is your name, son?’ my mother asked. ‘I bet you didn’t watch the zatpwe last night, aunty,’ he replied politely. Only then we all realised he was the Maung Thein Zaw of national fame.

Maung Thein Zaw was one of my favourite zat performers. In my opinion his exceptional artistic qualities were only matched by his fine facial features. He penned poetry under the name K Zaw. He was the only zat actor who brought modern Myanmar poetry to the zat audience by reciting poems in zat costume on stage. Shweman Chan Tha was another favourite. He had a good sense of humour and was very friendly. His performance skills were exceptional. I loved his duet dances where he remained in character, and spoke in zat style.

There was also Nann Win. He was a multi-instrumentalist and also skillful in song writing. He never bored the audience. My mother loved Nann Winn duets, especially when he danced to the classic, ‘Elephant Snatched by a Garuda.’ Once it was dawn, and the velvet curtain closed, he started singing, ‘Oh the grand curtain, please hold on! I am still dancing…’. The curtain rolled up again. It was his idea of an encore. The leaving audience looked back, roared with laughter and had some more fun.

There were also a number of things I didn’t like in the zat culture. Every performer had their own signature songs, which were very catchy and easily became earworms, especially to children. The lyrics were mostly about the look, the fame, and the success of zat performers and the support they received from their fans. I wondered why they did not write something more significant, with more sophisticated melodies. I also found the role of a female performer in a duet very subservient to the male counterpart as she played the wife to him. In duets, lady performers would come out one at a time to take turn as the wife of the male dancer. In some performances a man would be dancing, circled by scores of women on the floor, clapping their hands. The zat had always been patriarchal for generations, but there were exceptions such as the lady performer, Malaing Than Than Myint, who led men in duets. Instead of a zat, one could also watch anyeint thabin, where a woman virtuoso dancer was surrounded by male jesters. Then again male jesters always made inappropriate gags about the female lead.

After the 1988 uprising, the martial law that dictated ‘lights out after sunset’, also snuffed out the lights on the zat stage. In the name of the ‘restoration of law and order’, we passed time stoically and quietly. Just when the zat was about to be revived in the Delta, the area was swept away by cyclone Nargis in 2008. Hundreds of families disappeared overnight. Hundreds of businesses washed away in brine. The rural Delta was depleted as its offspring immigrated to urban areas. After the disaster, the zat was replaced with dharma talkshows in the zat seasons. In the Delta villages known for coconut trees, the sound of zat has been unheard for some time now.

Times have changed. I find myself tied up in knots on social media. At a zatpwe, if someone went missing, they could be paged from the stage. Today some missing friends are located on social media. In the process of looking for someone else, have I gone missing? The ups and downs manifested in zat dramas are played out in our daily lives. On to the global zat stage of social media, we keep pouring both our superficial and true feelings. Perhaps we don’t even know who we are trying to entertain. When I am nostalgic about zat from my childhood I might have also become a zat performer on social media.  

Of late, the beauty of traditional Myanmar nightlife has been deterred by COVID-19. The zat has moved online. We go round visiting countless social media zat stages on a daily basis, trying to make out who was the key performer, villain, or supporting actor.

As performers in life, things beneath our feet may not always be bouquets or rewards. There may also be broken bricks and corncobs thrown at us for a bad performance. At the end of the night, when a zat is over, all that remains is refuse.