“Multitude of Peer Gynts” is an inquiry-based performance on “fear/anxiety” and “im/mobility” in contemporary Asia. Consists of inter-Asian performance makers from Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka, this contemporary theater collaboration departs from a rereading of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. Initiated by Yudi Ahmad Tajudin (director) and Ugoran Prasad (dramaturg) from Teater Garasi, Indonesia, the project is devised through a series of collaborative workshops with Takao Kawaguchi (performance artist-dancer-choreographer), Mikari Fukui (actor, mover) and Yasuhiro Morinaga (sound artist-music composer) from Japan, Venuri Perera (choreographer-dancer) from Sri Lanka, and other artists from Vietnam and Indonesia.. In 2018, field research was conducted in Japan (Hokkaido), Vietnam, Sri Lanka and East Flores (East Flores), and also had network meetings in Tokyo and Kyoto. The performance will be premiered in Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) – Japan, in November 2019. In 2020 and beyond, the project will be performed in Jakarta-Indonesia and elsewhere. On Asia as theatre: working in the performance field, having experienced both its potentiality as well as its precarity, we find that Asia is a valid category of theatre praxis. The project is conscious with the existing history of Inter-Asian intercultural performances as its closest historical interlocutor, a trajectory that we seek to learn from, reconsider, and revise. At the same time, rather than synthesizing and mixing many different “traditions” to create a stage production of a culturally hybrid form, the project seeks to look closer at Asia as a living, an ongoing sites of encounters and a part of global history. We are more interested to understand how Asian subjects struggle with the ongoing global history, along with its politics and economic capital circulation.
http://www.multitudeofpeergynts.net/
Achievement of FY2020
https://grant-fellowship-db.asiawa.jpf.go.jp/en/grant/cc2022/
- Related Countries
- Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka
From the Organizer
The grant provides an excellent opportunity for Asian cultural producers to develop transnational initiatives and cooperation in the cultural field. For many cultural producers across Asia, the grant should open a map of possibilities for collaborations, partnerships, and networks of ideas and cultural practices. A project such as the Multitude of Peer Gynts has benefitted from the grant, allowing a rare producership initiative from Indonesia to grow. The partial nature of the support, emphasizing on mobility and travel expenses, should cover the initial stage of any cultural initiatives and the potentiality of multi-year support should allow a more organic development for an inter-Asian transnational encounter. While the coverage of the grant could be distributed more evenly to help undersupported sections of any cultural initiatives expenses, the continuation of this form of support should enhance the cultural circulation and equal access across Asia.
