Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
9-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Program
Theatre and Performance
Advisor
Peter Eckersall
Committee Members
Jean Graham-Jones
Claudia Orenstein
Barbara Hatley
Subject Categories
Performance Studies | South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies | Theatre History
Keywords
Indonesian theatre, the body and corporeality, theatre and coloniality of language, decolonial theatre, decolonial aesthetics, physical theatre
Abstract
A study on Indonesian theatre historiography, this dissertation explores how and why the body and corporeality serve as the dominant means of theatre-making in Indonesia. Tracing and locating the bodily practice in theatre and performance from Indonesian independence until the turn of the twenty-first century, it locates the frictional relationship between the body and corporeality with modernity and the coloniality of language. That friction occurs in the process of adapting and translating modern theatre in the 1950s as much as during the heyday of folk popular theatre in the 1960s, preferring the body and corporeality as a refuge from ideological, cultural, and language war. The experimental theatre practice in the 1970s onwards continues to glean from the refuge, especially in relation to the coloniality of the New Order’s autocratic regime and its developmentalism. By exploring the trajectory of the body and corporeality as a persistent refuge, this dissertation theorizes on the gestural nature of decolonial aesthetics and its future.
Recommended Citation
Prasad, Mohamad Ugoran, "Historiography of The Body and Corporeality in Indonesian Theatre: The Search for Decolonial Aesthetics" (2024). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5992
Included in
Performance Studies Commons, South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons, Theatre History Commons