Performance | Indonesia

Story of a Wanderer

Abdi Karya

Abdi Karya’s motto is “Don’t think. Feel.” The performance artist, theatre-maker and cultural manager from Makassar, Indonesia, has created a truly tactile performance for the Castlemaine State Festival. Using the sarung (or sarong) to portray shapes, styles, feelings and memories, Story of a Wanderer is inspired by a 14th-century manuscript written in the Bugis language of Sulawesi. The manuscript, La Galigo, is the story of creation, and Karya uses it to explore the questions: Who makes us who we are? Who named us? Who labelled us? Incidentally, in 2004 the manuscript was turned into a play, I La Galigo, by experimental theatre director Robert Wilson. Karya has previously collaborated with Wilson at the Watermill Center in New York.