Yudi Ahmad Tajudin brings his version of daily Indonesian culture to the OzAsia Festival in his production of 'The Streets'.
Yudi is the soft-spoken Director of Teater Garasi (Garage Theatre) in Indonesia's Yogyakarta, and for this year's OzAsia he is bringing 'The Streets' to Australian shores for the first time. The piece has been kicking around since 2008, and after an extensive tour of his home country and a foray to Japan it is now our turn to experience its glory. More a performance installation piece than narrative theatre, 'The Streets' is a as-true-to-life depiction as you can get of the Jakartan streets, and the many undercurrents that flow through them.
“The concept is that I, as a Director, wanted to learn about the social, political, cultural life in Indonesia,” says Tajudin. “So we set it in the street – and within that there's broader, deeper situations. It's not just a space to pass through, it's also a space where you can see a lot of conversations between classes, interactions between ideologies. And we wanted to include all those voices within that space, including those who want to keep the spaces for themselves. We wanted to investigate the issues within daily life.”
Within the interactions between ideologies and classes Tajudin is also interested in looking at the developments within Indonesian cultural identities since the fall of the New Order government in 1998. “Post 1998 we are entering this era the Indonesians call the 'reformation era'. And they're quite radical, the changes. So I wanted to investigate what kind of changes are actually happening in Indonesia.”
Initially touring the piece within Indonesia, Tajudin remarked it was interesting to observe the differing reactions within the social classes at the class depictions on stage. “We got a lot of various responses, but it was mostly well-received.“The middle and upper classes found the piece quite sad. Meanwhile the younger audience from middle or lower classes found the piece a kind of acknowledgement and celebration of the situations that are occurring around us. At the same time I think the audience understands that our intentions are not only to depict the reality, we also try and ask the audience to go deeper and look at it deeper and discuss it because we want to look at the real issues which are being portrayed in the street life of Indonesia.
“My intention is to express an invitation to look for the order in the chaos, the potential order within the chaos. Everything that happens – the conflict between ideologies and different voices – it is all related to each other. It is more than a show. It is an invitation to the audience to participate and be surround by the streets of Indonesia. Because that is what the streets are, they are all-encompassing and you cannot simply be a passive observer. ”'The Streets' plays the Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the OzAsia Festival, 24 – 26 September.
