Indonesia’s largest international performing arts festival kicks off with drama workshops that map out the landscape of the country’s performing arts.

A discussion featuring esteemed Indonesian artists — playwrights, dancers and composers — opened the celebration of the 2016-2017 Art Summit Indonesia festival this month.

The three-day workshop was held at Kinosaurus in Kemang, South Jakarta, last week — led by writer, musician and theater man Ugoran Prasad, or Ugo for short. The workshop gathered together a group of artists from different fields — including Teater Satu Lampung’s esteemed troupe leader Iswandi Pratama — in daylong discussions of dramaturgy.

The scientific-styled meeting of the arts had the carefully selected group of rising and senior artists gathered in a tight circle — with those active participants sitting up front, where Ugo had a whiteboard and projector screen set up.

The gathering started by scrutinizing how a drama was structured and how it related itself to the real world. Utilizing the screen, Ugo led the group in a discussion akin to those you would find in critical thought, taking definitions and branching off into issues that connected to each active participants’ individual views and concerns.

 For the first time since its inception in 1995, the eight performing arts event is pushing workshops and lectures targeted at artists in addition to its usual artwork-showcase festival.

 Yet the workshops and lectures curated by the team of curators — Yudi Ahmad Tajudin, Helly Minarti, Nyak Ina Raseuki, Nungki Kusumastuti and Otto Sidharta — serve only as a sort of “road to” for the highlight of the two-year long program, the big festival next year.

One of the event’s producers, Rama Thaharani — who only got involved this year — said a key theme of the event was repositioning. The event is trying to reclaim the glory that it once had during its first year, both in quality and in its visibility to the public and to the performing arts community.

 “This year the Directorate General of Culture tasked us with not only organizing the Art Summit as a regular festival again, but with the quality and success that the first Art Summit had,” she said.

 The declining quality of past events — mostly due to the frequent changes in the role and responsibilities of the ministry that holds the event — has led the team behind the festival to focus on remapping, making the event one that spans two years, instead of one month, in its eighth incarnation.

The first year will consist of the aforementioned workshops and lectures, with around 12 programs planned in total. The programs will involve several acclaimed international artists, including theater and contemporary performance researcher Peter Eckersalle, Japanese playwright and director Toshiki Okada, Japanese performer Takao Kawaguchi, Filipino composer Jonas Baes and Malaysian composer Chong Kee Yong.

 The international artists will host workshops curated for local artists, sharing and exploring recent challenges in expressing artistic efforts to respond to social and cultural issues, in addition to leading a lecture open to the general public. Rama said these efforts to cater to the local arts community were an attempt to create a space for dialogue on global issues, to reposition Indonesia on the global map.

Leading the Discussion: Theater man Ugoran Prasad opens the floor for discussion and debate at Kinosaurus, Kemang, South Jakarta.

 “We have seven foreign speakers this year, discussing issues that are still relevant globally. The Art Summit has a role as a model for global dialogue and we want to show that Indonesia is socializing and playing too. That we are discussing global issues,” she explained.

 However, efforts to reposition the festival in terms of artistic dialogue are not aimed just at the global playground but also at Indonesia itself. The usually Jakarta-based event will now be hosting workshops in a number of other cities around the country, again, as an effort to map the condition of performing arts in Indonesia.

 “The Art Summit is starting to go unnoticed by the performing arts community, so going multi-location is part of an effort to introduce ourselves again. In every event we hold outside of Jakarta, we work with local organizations and foundations so that we can understand what local artists want and need,” Rama said.

 The whole program itself is a sort of preparation for the following generation of Art Summit Indonesia, with the ninth incarnation being based on the results of the eighth. The event will now be held biennially instead of triennially.

“We want the Art Summit to be recognized and celebrated by the public. We also want the performing arts to have regeneration in not only artwork and artists, but also in audience. This is why, this year, millennials, are a key part to our success,” Rama said.

All together: The UK-based Gandini Juggling troupe perform Smashed at the Gedung Kesenian Jakarta arts house in Central Jakarta during Art Summit Indonesia in 2013.

— The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post.

— Photos courtesy of Art Summit Indonesia