Neither Victim Nor Villain: Sofi the Enabler in Piring Cangkir

What do we make of those who stand by and do nothing?

Set in the 1980s rural Malaysia, Piring Cangkir (written by Fattah Fawzy and directed Khairunazwan Rodzy) is a chilling exploration of how power, silence and complicity fester within the walls of a seemingly respectable household. At the center is Haji Tahir, a respected figure in Kampung Nirmala, whose influence masks a string of dark, unspeakable acts including sexual violence committed against his own daughter, Dian. What begins as a slow unraveling of family secrets spirals into a storm of generational trauma, culminating in a final act of collective revenge that leaves Haji Tahir bleeding on the floor and Yasmin, Haji Tahir’s own daughter-in-law, one of the few who dared to resist, lifeless as a result of that resistance. 

Much has been said about the characters in Piring Cangkir: the predators and the prey, the oppressors and the victims. And indeed, the play lends itself to this binary: those who inflict violence and those who bear its weight. But watching the play unfold, another figure stood out to me. A character who doesn’t quite fit either category. Someone who does not harm, yet doesn’t help either. Someone whose silence costs lives.

That character is Sofi.

*Sofi is played by Nafiz Anuar, a soon-to-be graduate from Aswara's Faculty of Theater.

While the narrative urges us to feel sympathy for him, a mute man surrounded by chaos I would argue otherwise. In a story so heavily shaped by choices, Sofi’s repeated lack of action is, in itself, a moral decision. He may not be a predator like Haji Tahir or Taufiq, nor a victim like Yasmin or Dian, but he enables the harm. And that makes him something just as dangerous, and just as necessary to talk about.

Predator vs Prey in Realist Theatre

Realist theatre thrives on moral tension, the drama of everyday life, stripped of artifice, revealing the uncomfortable truths that lurk behind closed doors. It’s a style that insists on psychological depth and social context, often forcing audiences to confront the gray areas between right and wrong. In plays like Piring Cangkir, this realism manifests as a clear struggle between predator and prey: the abuser and the abused, the powerful and the powerless.

This dichotomy is effective because it taps into an intuitive sense of justice. Haji Tahir, for instance, is immediately recognizable as the predator being a respected patriarch whose moral decay corrupts everything around him. Yasmin and her husband Norman, Nilam (Taufiq’s wife,daughter of Haji Tahir), Dian and Jannah (the other 2 daughters of Haji Tahir) marked as the prey through their pain, silence and resistance. The play draws us into this dynamic, inviting sympathy for the victims and condemnation for the perpetrators.

But realism, at its most potent, doesn’t just deal in binaries. It allows for the existence of morally ambiguous characters, those who don’t fit neatly into categories of hero or villain. So, enter the third category: the enabler.

Enablers often escape scrutiny. They do not strike or scream. They don’t make the decisions that haunt others for generations. But they let things happen. They see and stay quiet. They know, but choose not to act. Their complicity is quiet, but it’s there, in the delayed reaction, the averted gaze or the failure to intervene.

In Piring Cangkir, Sofi is one such figure. Mute in speech but not in action, he navigates the world of the play with a passivity that for me becomes its own kind of violence. His silence is not just a symptom of his condition; it is also of a choice and one that plays a pivotal role in allowing the cycle of abuse to continue.

By introducing the idea of an enabler, we begin to see how harm doesn’t always require an active hand. Sometimes, it just needs someone to look away.

Sofi as an Enabler

Sofi is, by design, an elusive character. Mute and largely observant, he drifts through the story like a shadow, witnessing the collapse of a family haunted by abuse and repression. But to read Sofi merely as a passive witness is to ignore how his inaction becomes a significant force within the moral structure of Piring Cangkir. He does not inflict harm but he enables it. And that, in a realist work like this, matters deeply.

The first defining moment comes when Yasmin, driven by desperation and courage, entrusts Sofi with a letter meant for the police. It is a plea for intervention, a desperate attempt to break the silence surrounding Haji Tahir’s horrific abuse of his own daughter, Dian. Sofi, however, delays. We are not shown a confrontation of conscience, nor a decisive refusal, just a vague hesitation that stretches too long. His failure to act allows Haji Tahir to return home, discover the attempt at exposure and unleash violence upon Yasmin. She pays with her life. And Sofi’s delay, quiet, indecisive, and possibly borne out of fear, becomes a turning point that makes that death possible.

The final act of the play seals Sofi’s role. After Nilam, Dian and Jannah strike back in a climactic act of vengeance, slitting Haji Tahir’s throat in a scene that bleeds catharsis and horror, Sofi enters. He sees the aftermath: the once-powerful patriarch now gasping, dying. And what does Sofi do? Nothing. No attempt to help, no expression of grief or outrage. He resets the space: turns up the music, closes the door, and leaves, as if wiping the slate clean. As if none of it happened.

This is not neutrality. This is quiet collusion. If Sofi had chosen to act at any crucial moment, to report, to intervene, to comfort, the story could have changed. But instead, he becomes the grease in the machine of silence. His inaction is not born of naivety; it is a series of decisions made in full view of suffering. And in the realist world of Piring Cangkir, that makes him complicit.

Sofi’s character reminds us that enablers are not always loud or malicious. Sometimes, they are gentle figures, or with gentle appearance, whose refusal to take sides ensures that harm continues unchecked. In a narrative thick with pain and moral reckoning, his silence speaks volumes.

The Ethics of Inaction

In stories shaped by violence and injustice, we often look for villains to blame and heroes to root for. It feels cleaner that way, easier to digest. But Piring Cangkir, in its realist framing, resists such simplicity, well at least for me. It asks a harder question: What do we make of those who stand by and do nothing?

Sofi’s silence is not just a plot device; it is a moral dilemma. What is the cost of inaction when harm is unfolding before your eyes? How much responsibility falls on those who don’t act, not because they agree with the wrongdoing, but because they fear the consequences of speaking out, or because they want to preserve order, or because they simply don’t want to get involved?

These are uncomfortable questions and realism forces us to sit with them. Realist theatre doesn’t offer neat moral resolutions. It reflects the messiness of real life, where many people, like Sofi, choose silence not out of malice, but out of fear, confusion or fatigue. And that’s precisely why audiences often let characters like Sofi off the hook. His muteness makes him appear vulnerable. His indecisiveness is interpreted as helplessness. We see ourselves in his hesitation, the part of us that might do the same.

But letting that hesitation go unexamined is dangerous. Piring Cangkir challenges us to reconsider our empathy. To ask whether silence, especially when lives are at stake, is ever neutral. Realism thrives on this tension, it refuses to let us feel comfortable in ambiguity. It reminds us that harm is not only perpetuated by those who act violently, but also by those who watch it happen and walk away.

Sofi may not wield power the way Haji Tahir does, but his quiet withdrawal reinforces the same oppressive system. In a story about abuse, silence becomes a weapon. And Sofi, knowingly or not, uses it.

Naming the Third Space

Piring Cangkir is more than just a tale of a powerful (devious) man’s downfall, it’s a study of a community’s complicity. In placing Sofi within the narrative, the play opens a third space between predator and prey: the space of the enabler. It’s an uncomfortable category, not easily dramatized, because it lacks the clear-cut lines of guilt and victimhood. And yet, it’s precisely this in-between space that speaks most urgently to our present.

In a world where silence can be deadly, Sofi’s character forces us to confront the ethics of watching. His muteness, literal and symbolic, represents all those who know but choose not to act. His inaction that leads to Yasmin’s death and his final gesture, walking away from a dying (evil) man without a word or intervention is not just an end, but a haunting image of all the bystanders history has ever known.

By refusing to absolve Sofi, Piring Cangkir refuses to let its audience off easy. It demands we look beyond the obvious villains and ask harder questions about our roles in the systems we live within. Because in reality and in realist theatre, injustice doesn’t just need perpetrators. It needs silence, delay, ambivalence. It needs Sofis.

And maybe, in watching him, we begin to ask: When have we been Sofi?