Indonesia

Dindon W.S. (Director) is the Chairman and Director of Teater Kubur, Jakarta. His works include: Raong raong, Danga dango 1,2, Sirkus Anjing, Tombol 13 Topeng Monyet Bola Plastik, SandiwaraDol, Trilogi Besi, and many more. Teater Kubur employs the physical theater method as the foundation of their rehearsals. The searching process lives on always in the heart of this director, who has experience in giving workshops and engaging in cross-cultural collaborations overseas to find new meaning for his spirit. His care and awareness of social reality continuously drive him to open up space for new possibilities which may be seen as impossible by another. Dindon participated in the Asian Contemporary Theatre Collaboration Hotel Grand Asia (2005) and directed the Asian Contemporary Theatre Project On/Off (2008, Theatre Tram, Tokyo).

Born in Saitama in 1992, Maho Watanabe is a translator and dramaturg who works in and around art, media, and humanitarian work. In 2014, during her year abroad in the West Bank as an Arabic Studies student, she joined the director Yukari Sakata in Rashomon | Yabunonaka, a theatre co-production by Palestinian and Japanese artists. This marked her first involvement in performing arts, followed by numerous international collaboration projects, festivals, and workshops. Her translation of Lilac Duhaa (Death in the Era of IS) by Palestinian playwright Ghannam Ghannam won the 2019 Odashima Yushi Award for Drama Translation.

Narumol Thammapruksa is a performing artist and Aikido self-defense artist with a particular interest in social issues. She developed a technique called autobiographical storytelling to portray the performer’s experiences by telling stories of the individual’s views on societies in parallel with the present world. At the same time, this also portrays how one was oppressed and how others are affected by oppression. In addition to plays, she explores non-verbal movement, including mime, modern dance, and using masks. As a director, she breaks the tradition of the imagined “wall” that separates the performers from the audience. In her performances, she occasionally urges the audience not to be taken by its stories, and uses symbolic language to deconstruct and reconstruct. At present, she is on the committee of the Peace Culture Foundation, whose aim is to build a culture of peace by promoting non-violence through social art activities and Aikido practice. It is her wish that these activities will help to foster love, compassion, empathy, and diversity, in striving for a more harmonious society.

Red started practising moving images at Hanoi Doclab in 2015. Her short film Summer siesta: 6th hour counting from dawn (2017) was exhibited at Fundacion PROA (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and White Chapell (London) She is also a member of AJAR Press, an independent publishing house based in Hanoi. In June 2019, she had her first art residency at Á Space (Hanoi), and coordinated her first solo exhibition, Mùng mung. She has practiced organizing mixed experimental music/film/performance programs at Heritage Space since 2018. In late 2019, she began researching contemporary dance and theater production. She has been collaborating with H2Q Art, MORUA, the choreographer Ngo Thanh Phuong, Mat Tran Ensembles, and other artists. Her experiences include various projects including Method; L’EGO (Kinergie Studio), X-PROJECT, Sound Barrier, Through the door then…, Eye See Ai, 1936, and more. She was chosen to be a participant of Producers Camp 2021, organized by the Taiwan National Theater & Concert Hall.

Rina Tanaka is an Assistant Professor at Meiji University’s School of Global Japanese Studies. She was a visiting fellow at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. Her research interests include the sociocultural history of contemporary musical theatre in and between German-speaking countries and Asia. In 2019, she was awarded the Helsinki Prize of the International Federation for Theatre Research. She is also active as a professional translator and critic.