On the origin of the Komedie Stamboel. Popular culture, colonial society, and the Parsi theatre movement

Abstract

M. Cohen On the origin of the Komedie StamboelPopular culture, colonial society, and the Parsi theatre movement In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 157 (2001), no: 2, Leiden, 313-357 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl MATTHEW ISAAC COHEN On the Origin of the Komedie Stamboel Popular Culture, Colonial Society, and the Parsi Theatre Movement Introduction . The Komedie Stamboel has been celebrated as one of the most significant 'artistic achievements' of the Eurasian population of colonial Java (see Van der Veur 1968a), but also damned for its deleterious influence on Java's classical and 1 This article was written while a postdoctoral research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (DAS). The roughly 170 different newspaper items directly concerned with the compahy allow for a discussion of the wek-to-week, almost day-to-day, activities in the company's early development. Planned follow-up studies will cover the subsequent decade of the Komedie Stamboel, examining further generic developments in the theatre and the varied patterns of reception, consumption, and appropriation in different dries and towns of the Netherlands East Indies.