More than 28 years in the making, EgoPo presents the world-premiere re-telling of the ancient Hindu epic in collaboration with two of Indonesia’s vanguards in the performing arts. This performance will take place in The Navy Yard, under a giant open-air tent. The staging integrates the puppetry, dance, theater and music expertise of the three companies to tell one of the world’s oldest stories about the unbreakable power of the human spirit. Performances will be surrounded by Rama’s Fest, a week-long celebration of Indonesian food and culture.
EgoPo has been training and collaborating with Javanese theatre and dance companies since 1996. In 1997, our first exploration of the Ramayana opened with a workshop production at the National Cultural Center in Surakarta (Solo, Java) following a year-long residency. Our organization has held long-term residencies with artistic and cultural exchanges at its root.
Through collaboration with Papermoon Puppet Theatre and Kalanari Movement Theatre, EgoPo brought American actors to Indonesia to train with multidisciplinary artists for 5-weeks in July 2023. Most recently, this in-process work had a showing at Padepokan Seni Bagong Kussudiardja (Yogya, Java). The Ramayana stands as the most ambitious work EgoPo has done to date with this project reaching fruition in Philadelphia in June 2024.
The sharing of the Ramayana tradition with American audiences, many of whom have yet to see or read it, is an act of conscious gift-giving by our artistic team and an invitation to view the world from a new perspective of radical kindness.
Read more about Ramayana here.
