ABSTRACT
Modern Indonesian theatre and contemporary pop music were not genre the author imagined placing alongside the ever prominent "traditional" ceremonies and cultural arts. Many people, especially students and young adult workers, told me that modern, Indonesian-language theatre was their favorite cultural art form and the one they thought most significant due to the way it expresses hopes about social justice, democracy, civil society and modernity in a language they understand. The Indonesian Communist Party used these and other cultural forms to politicize segments of society, filling these forms up with proletarian terminology and values. There is an indirect class critique and opposition to globalization which takes the form of hegemonic cultural influence uprooting local values and social ties. However Teater Eska has fit into Indonesia's diverse Islamic spectrum over time, it is clear that their group, with "prophetic theatre", concepts of transcendence, and cultural dakwah is wedded to an Islamic ideological framework.
