A collaborative, mixed art performance involving multimedia art and six different performing arts is to be staged this Sunday evening (Dec. 20) at the Yogyakarta Cultural Park (TBY) by the Indonesian Institute of the Arts (ISI) Yogyakarta's School of Performing Arts.
The production, called Lamising Paseduluran (Fake Friendship), with the English title Forbidden Blood, is said to be one of a kind.
"As far as I know, there has never been such a performance in Indonesia before," production manager I Wayan Dana said earlier this week.
He added that the show, presented as the very first production by the school's new Center of Excellent Performing Arts (CEPA), was a collaborative work combining shadow puppetry and music.
"In the production all the six performing arts that we have in this school, plus multimedia art, are involved," he said, adding that the other four performing arts are dance, theater, karawitan (gamelan music) and ethnomusicology.
The story told in the show, in the unusual multimedia, interdisciplinary method, as explained by director and scriptwriter Kasidi Hadi Prayitno, is about insincerity in friendship and a forbidden love affair conducted by the main character of the story.
"In this case, dialogue will not be the main means to understand the story, as other elements including the dance, the music and the audiovisual presentations will also help tell the story," said Kasidi, who is the son of noted Javanese puppeteer Ki Timbul Hadiprayitno.
As such, the performance will feature two puppeteers and 20 gamelan music players, as well as six dancers, 10 ethnic music players, 30 orchestral musicians and a monologue performer.
They will perform one after the other or simultaneously as fits the plot of the story. At one moment, Kasidi said, spectators might be presented with an audiovisual piece of dances or a shadow puppet show. At another time, it could be a live dance and/or live puppet show accompanied by traditional gamelan music or a Western orchestra or a mixture.
"This is my first *involvement* and I consider this an experimental performance," composer Singgih Sanjaya said of his role in the performance, adding that a complete orchestra would be used to perform both the adapted and the original compositions to complement the narrative.
In terms of ethnic music, the performance's ethnic music director Cepi Irawan said that Sundanese sounds dominated his work.
The story, Kasidi said, was taken from a sequel to the Mahabarata epic, telling of Drona's journey to Java in search of his classmate Sucitra; later, the two become enemies.
Drona, the result of an affair between his father and a servant, meets a white horse that is a reincarnation of the goddess Tilutama; he impregnates the goddess.
"In the concept of the traditional shadow puppet show performance, this, as I see it, is the story of Durno Ngejawa *Drona Goes to Java*," said puppeteer Udreka.
"What was challenging for me is how to make the dead shadows on the screen look alive and how to make the movements *of the puppets* and my suluk *recitation* songs work with the accompanying Western music," he said.
In the Javanese version, Drona is described as a priest of bad characters. As a priest and as the teacher of both the Pandawa and the Kurawa siblings of the Astina kingdom, he is supposed to set an example. Blinded by his greed for earthly things, however, he is no longer capable of choosing between right and wrong.
"It turns out we can still observe many figures like Drona today. We can see how religious leaders are willing to sell sweet words by quoting the verses from the Holy Book, making religions sound dry and disgusting," Kasidi said, adding that the story told in the show represented contemporary social trends.
