Women in contemporary Indonesian theatre; Issues of representation and participation

This article has its origins in a sense of omission in the research I have been conducting over the past few years on modern theatre in Indonesia -that is, theatre in the national language, Indonesian, employing a written script and derived from the model of Western drama. In such research I had not devoted particular attention to issues of gender in presentation and organization of performances, had not sought out the perspectives of female performers. Why this had been the case is a question I explore in the introduction to the paper, a preliminary exploration of the situation of female performers in such theatre through the examples of a small group of women actors. Their stories are presented against a background of observations of interpretations of 'modernity' in Indonesian theatre and society, and of the strictures of currently dominant gender ideology. As explained below, the project begins with an initial assumption of the reduced power and autonomy of women in modern as compared to traditional, regional performance, based on observation of both types of theatre, and contemplation of modernizing processes. The eventual findings, while not contradicting this assumption, at the same time, I hope, also present a more complex, layered, and interesting picture.