LITERATURE REVIEW ON BANGSAWAN IN MALAYSIA 1960-2017

Bangsawan or the Malay opera is a unique performance. The root of this theatre is the wayang Parsi, brought by the Persian merchants to Penang in the 1870s. This is the first Malay commercial theatre, and it is also known as the transition theatre in the lineage of Malay theatre. Bangsawan has both traditional and modern theatre elements in it. This theatre is almost 130 years old and has gone through a few changes and adaptation in context with its social milieu since 1890s. Currently, bangsawan has become an area to be studied at the level of postgraduate research. These studies examine bangsawan in the context of social sciences as well as performing arts and covers bangsawan performances in the region of Peninsular Malaya, Singapore and Sarawak. The first article on bangsawan was published by Rahmah Bujang in 1975, and since then bangsawan has been studied from various aspects. This article intends to answer the question, “What is the existing corpus knowledge on bangsawan in Malaysia up to the year of 2017’. The findings in this article are, in general previous literatures up to the year of 2017 on bangsawan in Malaysia has covered various topics. These literatures can be divided into two categories according to the location of bangsawan that had been studied. The first category is bangsawan of the Peninsular Malaya and Singapore, and the second bangsawan performances in Sarawak. These past literatures would discuss from various aspects on bangsawan, such as the history and its development, acting, theatre conventions, music, the performance process and intervention efforts to preserve the art of bangsawan.