Shadows and Imagoes: Hybridizing Macbeth for the Postcolonial Contemporary Indonesian Stage (original) (raw)

This paper provides a report of a performance project aiming at exploring the potentials of integrating the concepts and forms of the Indonesian traditional art forms of shadow and wooden puppets in staging a performance based on Shakespearean tragedy, namely “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” It is carried out based on the following assumptions. Firstly, although several forms of puppetry still survive in Indonesian culture particularly in Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese cultures, puppet performances no longer a form of performing arts that exist in mainstream Indonesian cultural life, only being performed in special occasions unlike for example film screenings and popular music concerts. Secondly, culture is conceived as being dependent on the primordial and ethnocentric ideas of authenticity and originality causing the loss of public support of cultural forms such as shadow puppet performances and theater. Thirdly, therefore, studies in and the prospect of such cultural forms needs to b...