Performance, popular culture, and piety in Muslim Southeast Asia - Book Review

As stated in the introduction, the volume argues that theatre, performance
and electronic media are vital components of the lived Islamic
practices in the current-day Malay-Indonesian region. The ‘Indonesian
public’s commitment to shari’a law is ‘real’ but also ‘vague’ (3). ‘Unlike
the Muslim majority in Indonesia, which is fragmented into numerous
ethnicities and a spectrum of religious orientations, Malaysian Muslims
are more unified in ethnicity and religious orientation. Muslims who
would be divided into traditionalist and modernist camps in Indonesia are
united within the Islamic Party of Malaysia’ (4). The authors contribute
to a compelling argument for how individual practitioners (including
performers, directors and writers) have stylistically been adapting and
negotiating their live art in relation to the techniques, masks and costumes
that they use, the movements and repertoires that they perform, and the
interpretations of self and the body that performers embody and present
in accordance with changing socio-political environments.