"The Aboriginal Sewang Performance: Preserving Tradition"[Special Seminar] (2009/5/25)

　This paper traces the production of an aboriginal Temuan cultural performance, the Sewang. The logistics and economics of producing a Sewang performance, its asthetics and performativity are discussed firstly within its own communal and cultural contexts and secondly seen in relation to modernization and the opening up of the aboriginal society. This paper concludes by positing the choices, changes and imagined collective cohesiveness which the Temuan must engaged in so as to encounter the encroachment and impact of modernization.
Solehah Ishak is Professor of Theatre Arts and Director of the Cultural Center, University Malaya. She graduated with a Ph.D. degree from Cornell University in the field of Theatre Studies. Her latest publications are Staging Eastern Voices (Akademi Seni Kebangsaan, 2004) and Siddhartha’s Journey to the East (Goethe Institute, 2005). Currently she is heading a research project on the structures, genres and performativity of musical theatres in Malaysia. She has just completed (2005) a research on the performance arts and culture of the aborigenes of Malaysia, which was funded by IRPA, the Intensive Research in Priority Areas. Solehah Ishak has translated numerous Malay plays into the English language all of which have been published by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, the Institue of Language and Literary Malaysia. These include Children of this Land, The Opera House and T. Pinkie’s Floor.

Coordinator:Hau Caroline　 (CSEAS)