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.