Krishen Jit's 40-year career has seen him do service as director, theatre critic, producer, actor, historian, arts educator, regional power broker, arts policy advocate and more. In some incarnation or another, Krishen has been involved in many of the landmark events of our performing arts history. His influence crosses the boundaries of English and Malay language theatre in Malaysia, and extends into engagement with arts practitioners on a regional dimension as well.

In order to fully understand Krishen, it is necessary to have some insight into Krishen's personal history, and the wider environment within which he wrote and practiced. This is not to suggest that the personal and the political are entwined into a neat weave of cause and effect. It is useful however, to take into account what Said calls "an inventory of influences" in order to fully appreciate a career that has been as much reactive to forces external to it, as it has been constructed to a master plan.

The child of Punjabi immigrants, Krishen grew-up in the 1940s on Batu Road, the heart of the merchant district of Kuala Lumpur. At the age of eight, he made his stage debut as the child-god Rama in a stage play in the Gombak Lane Temple. It was an auspicious start, and perhaps a fitting metaphor of a commitment to the arts that had all the elements of a spiritual vocation. Krishen attended the Victoria Institute, and was actively involved in the VI Drama Society. One of the premier Colonial schools in Kuala Lumpur, its school system fostered amateur dramatics based on a curriculum of Western plays. Krishen recalls one production that defied this convention - the staging of a Chinese Opera, Lady Precious Stream by SI Hsuing when he was in 6th Form. He played the role of the Father and was introduced to the Chinese opera art form by a director well versed in the genre. This was also a time when traditional theatre troupes such as bangsawan, and Chinese Opera were still a part of the urban environment. Krishen enjoyed access to these live performances, and these forms entered the storehouse of his memory from an early age.

Krishen was also active in the leading English-language theatre group of the time, the Malayan Arts Theatre Group (MATG), which was still under expatriate control. Prof Lloyd Fernando describes the early days of English theatre as being very much of the Chandrapore Club-school. When the colonial administrations and other expatriates did give a nod to their geographical location, the result was Westerners in Oriental garb as in Flecker's Hassan . Locals were limited to supporting roles both on stage and off . The country was on the cusps of Independence though, and changes were inevitable. Two years after Independence, a combination of the personal and the political came together to give Krishen a place in the history books. He became the first local to play the male lead in an English play when he took on the title role in MATG's production of Julius Caesar.

With his interest in drama, the English Literature Department seemed the logical place for the young Krishen when he joined University Malay. Indeed he was an active member of the Department. Together with fellow student Tan Jin Chor, Krishen co-founded UM's Literary and Drama Association in 1960, and made his directorial debut in Frank Selden-Smith's The Water of the Lethe under Lidra that same year. However, Krishen felt that his interests lay more with history, and the academic rigor it offered. He switched departments and eventually graduated with an honours degree in History. He received a scholarship to pursue his MA in History at the University of Berkley California, and in 1962, left for the US for five years. His affair with the arts never wavered though and he spent all his time attending poetry recitals and plays and watching foreign films and TV shows late into the night in what was the mecca of the counter-culture in the US.

While his predilections lay with the creative arts, Krishen did complete his thesis, and returned to the History Department of UM as a lecturer in 1967. With the security of a career in academia, Krishen continued with his theatre activities, which at that point did not offer any kind of financial security. Krishen seemed set for the sort of career that other academics/directors such as Anthony Price enjoyed.

However, the political environment intruded upon these plans. After over a decade of relative stability following Independence in 1957, cracks in the social co-existence began to emerge. In 1969, a period of political unrest resulted in inter-ethnic riots breaking out on May 13 1969. The riots were a watershed, effecting deep changes on every level of society. Barbara Andaya describes the post-69 period as "…characterized by strong government intervention" (303), and indeed an enduring legacy of the Riots is the range of prescriptive policies formulated by the ruling elite to restructure the socio-economic framework of the country.

For many artists, May 1969 was an epiphany, a moment Krishen describes as "so profound… it justifies the recognition of a post- 1969 perspective in the arts, including theatre" (Jit, 1989, Tenggara). Conflicts over language were a key feature of the Riots. It was played out primarily between English and Malay, and was highly fraught, involving as it did aspects of economic and social positioning and political power. Not surprisingly, in theatre practice, the Riots precipitated a crossover from English-language to Malay language performance by a number of prominent players, including Rahim Razali, Syed Alwi, and Krishen himself. In 1971, the MATG organized a multidisciplinary festival, Genta Rasa, in the Lake Gardens. It was the first time performers from both English and Malay theatre shared the same stage. In June 1971, the MATG launched a new monthly magazine called "Seni dan Teatre". The magazine was unusual in that it was bi-lingual, featuring articles by poets and writers from both the Malay and English-language worlds. Krishen was at the center of these changes, helping to organise Genta Rasa, and write for the magazine.

It was at this time that Krishen initiated an influential, if uneasy relationship with the State. Prior to the May 1969 Riots, the Government was largely absent from the performing arts and cultural arena. Significantly, there are no provisions for culture in the Constitution, although religion and language are prominent features. Artists, whatever the genre or language of practice, were left much to their own devices. The Riots changed this. The reconfigured relationship between the arts and the State was most vividly symbolized by the National Cultural Congress, held in 1971. Krishen, together with Syed Alwi, Rahmim Razali, Ahmad Yatim and Usman Awang co-authored the paper on theatre, entitled Our Theatre…Where are your Roots . It advocated a theatre practice that thematically drew from local history and culture. It also suggested that theatre practitioners employ traditional theatre to enrich practice, citing Syed Alwi's use of Wayang Kulit in the flashback scene of All the Perfumes as an example. The paper criticized the dependency on Western theatre, and noted that theatre practice was only accessible to a small English-educated elite. This was a damning indictment, coming as it did from people closely identified with theatre in English previous to the Riots. Krishen, together with Usman Awang, Syed Alwi, Noordin Hassan and Rahim Razali, became part of the new State-sanctioned power equation that strongly advocated the construction of a Malaysian theatre that was rooted in the local context.

In 1972, Krishen began what was to become the longest running arts column in Malaysia, Talking Drama With Utih in the Sunday Times. When he began reviewing for Berita Harian shortly after, he became the only person writing about the arts in Malay and English. His writings in the mass media as well as in more highbrow academic journals are an invaluable archive and critical analysis of the early days of our performing arts history. Not only did Krishen attempt to dismantle the divides in theatre by writing about plays in Malay, English, and the vernacular, he wrote about traditional and contemporary arts, visual arts, music, dance and even did book reviews.

It is symptomatic of our society that Krishen Jit has, at different times, been accused of being either too pro-English or too pro-Malay theatre by practitioners on both sides of the language divide. Some have felt that it was opportunism, which motivated his involvement in the Malay-language scene after the Riots. However, his response was part of a collective movement, including numerous other practitioners. The Riots generated a crisis of consciousness, which in the case of Krishen expressed itself in the search for a theatre practice that was no longer solely dependent on Western forms.

Others were of the view that Krishen displayed a bias against English-language theatre during his so-called Malay theatre-phase in the 70s. The evidence though seems to suggest that in an environment of absolutes, Krishen's position, and his relationship to language was more ambiguous. He continued to review plays in English, such as Phoenix 61's Caucasian Chalk Circle calling the Chin San Sooi directed production "an exuberant Brecht" (NST, 21 Apirl 1974). Profiles of English-language actors, such as Leslie Dawson, Bosco D'Cruz, KK Nair and Thana were also frequent feature. His stand, as articulated in the NCP paper, was against a type of theatre rather than a blanket rejection of the use of English. Indeed, there continued to be English-language groups such as the Selangor Philharmonic Society, Liberal Arts and the Klang Theatre Workshop whose productions sought to emulate western theatre practice wholeheartedly in form as well as in content. Productions such as these were the object of Krishen's derision.

The late 70s were a period of great change, as the policies instituted in response to the Riots began to take effect. A separate but related development was the resurgence of Islam, in part as a response to the deep social change arising out of policies such as the NEP. Islam was a defining element in the National Cultural Policy, and consequently, the emergency of a more fundamental reading of Islam had a profound impact upon arts and cultural practice. In 1980, a Malay-language version of Hamlet , directed by Helen Van Der Poorten, was staged at University Sains Malaysia. Religious extremists protested the provocative scene between Hamlet and Gertrude, and denounced Hamlet's most famous soliloquy as anti-religious "because it was a contemplation of suicide" (Kee, "Extremist danger to Theatre", Business Times, 8 June 1980). The dynamic absurd theatre movement of the 70s was recast as irreligious in the mounting piety of the 1980s, and there were a number of confrontations between practitioners of theater in Malay and religious groups during this period. This had a negative impact on theatre practice, and the innovation and experimentation of the 1970s began to wane.

As Muslim identity became stronger, so too the divisions between Malay and non-Malay, now became increasingly identified as a dichotomy of Muslim and non-Muslim (Hilley, 57). In 1979, Krishen was appointed Artistic Director of a Theatre Festival celebrating the 25th Anniversary of University Malaya Malay Studies Department. However, during the Festival, anonymous letters began to circulate questioning the appointment of a non-Malay to such an important position, and accusing his of being unqualified. Although playwright Usman Awang and journalists/writer A.Samad Ismail both defended Krishen's appointment, the incident alerted Krishen to the heightened atmosphere of ethnicity evident in the NEP era.

Shortly after, Krishen was awarded a grant to spend 9 months in New York, studying Performance History at NYU under Richard Schechner. He availed himself to the vibrant theatre scene and gained a more theoretical approach to theatre, under Schechern and his Grotowski-influenced Environmental Theatre. Upon his return, he continued to practice in Malay-language theatre, directing a selection of Usman's plays in 1981, and devising a script in Malay based on Arena Wati's short-story, Dunia Yang Ku Tinggalkan (The World I Leave) in 1982. He maintained his commitment to the Malay-language theatre movement though his writings in English and Malay publications such as Dewan Sastera and the Tenggara journal. He also had a level of involvement in Malay theatre through his links with the Ministry of Culture Arts and Tourism and remained on a number of panels and advisory committees. By the mid-80s however, his visibility in Malay-language theatre was significantly reduced

At about this time, bi-lingual or multi-lingual dialogue and the expansion of locally inflected forms of English language in performance began to appear in locally written plays. Playwrights working within the confines of English language were creatively exploring ways to reflect a Malaysian sense of reality, an experiment started in the 60s by the likes of Edward Dorrall and Lee Joo For. In 1983, Krishen co-founded the multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual Five Arts Center with dancer Marion D'Cruz, visual artists Redza Piyadasa, playwright K.S.Maniam and director, Chin San Sooi. The company gave Krishen a more focused, stable environment in which to explore different ideas of language and performance. Among the plays staged by Five Arts, The Cord (1984) and The Sandpit (1988) by KS Maniam, Kee Thuan Chye's 1984 Here and Now (1985), Leow Puay Tin's Three Children (1987), and Three Grandmothers (1988) all used a mixture locally-inflected English, local dialect and other languages in their plays. Krishen articulated his shared stand on language at a workshop production of Maniam's The Sandpit, directed by him,

"there are three schools of thought involving the writing of English plays … 1st you can write in English. Then you can write Malaysian English and put in all the "lahs" . Finally there is Maniam's way…you write grammatical English but use words which capture the rhythm of the language [of the characters], which in this case is Tamil" (Leee, Kit "How the Audience Saw It", NST, 31 May 1988)

Nonetheless, without the use of the national language, theatre in English, albeit an English that was rooted in the local context, fell outside the parameters of the NCP. The prominence it enjoyed during the colonial period, and even in the early days of Independence was reduced as due to the combined forces of the NCP and the policies on language and education introduced after the Riots.

The 80s saw an increase in State power and there were several conflicts over issues of language, culture and education during this period. Playwrights were more critical of the State, as exemplified by perhaps the most politically explicit play of the 1980s, Kee Thuan Chye's 1984 Here and Now, which reconfigured Orwell's cautionary tale within the Malaysia context. Krishen's own work reflected this development, although to a lesser degree than the works of writers such as Kee. Through collaborations with writers who were committed to challenging the hegemony of an increasingly authoritarian State, such as Kee, and Singaporean Kuo Pao Kun (The Coffin is too Big for the Hole, which was denied a performance permit in 1985) Krishen's work began to display a tone more questioning of political authority.

It was also during this period that Krishen began to move outside the confines of Malaysian theatre towards a more regional practice. His position as an academic and his involvement in theatre practice made him particularly well placed to contribute papers on the South East Asian performing arts for conferences, journals other publications. In 1988, Krishen was invited to be the Dramaturge at Singapore's TheatreWorks. This opened the way for collaborations across the straits that were to grow and deepen over the next decade. That same year, he co-directed (with Ong Keng Sen) Leow Puay Tin's Three Children in Singapore. Collaboration was to be a key feature of his works in the following decade as well, as he established partnerships with a diverse range of writers and directors such as Joe Hasham, Dick Lee, Ong Keng Sen, KS Maniam, Zahim Albakri and Huzir Sulaiman amongst others.

As a director, he has not always transferred his strong creative vision onto the stage successfully. Nonetheless, Krishen has furthered the exploration for a new, multifaceted theatre vocabulary in a significant way through his thought-provoking style as a director. He is no Rendra, or even a Noordin, crafting groundbreaking theatre. He has been in the position though to distill ideas, trends, and theories through his writings and to test them out in practice, pushing actors and writers in directions they may not otherwise have chosen. Whether he is judged as successfully achieving his aims or not, Krishen had been an integral part of the search for a theatre that drew from a wide range of influences, both internal and external. The sheer body of work, the diverse collaborations and the longevity of his career as director have given his work a particular potency, regardless of critical or popular receptions of it.

This is not to say that his has been a solitary journey. There have been many before him, and many who have traveled parallel paths with him or even against him. Some amongst them have been responsible for a singular event, or act which has had the ability to alter the course of practice in a discernable manner. Edward Dorrall whose characters in A Tiger is Loose in our Community (1967) attempted to use 'Malaysian English' described as " the fragmentary speech which can be heard throughout Malaysia" as a "self-sufficient dramatic instrument" (Fernando, 26). Spoken with a cadence that no longer aspired to be English public school. Syed Alwi and K.Das who wrestled control of the MATG from expatriate control, Usman Awang's refashioning of the villain Jebat into a template for the modern man, Noordin Hassan, who heralded a new theatre vocabulary utilizing traditional forms in Bukan Lalang Di Tiup Angin. Each are iconic moments in the history of our arts practice, and Krishen played no small part in capturing this moments and giving them a more a permanence and significance through his writings.

Almost 60 years after his stage debut, Krishen continues to be a force felt, a presence sought, an artists emulated, a critic respected.