ABSTRACT
Plaza Indonesia is Indonesia's first and largest shopping mall. This multi-level complex contains local and international shops, restaurants, and entertainment such as a fitness club and movie theater. In this chapter author examines the Indonesia's expressed goal of becoming modern and how the shopping mall is part of that ambition. He draws from the framework of play and the theories of Goffman a Canadian-American sociologist. In order to apply the language of theatre to analyze the environment of the mall as a playful space that fosters a global performance of modernity. Plaza Indonesia consciously stages a performance embodying progress and modernity. The mall provides a setting for Americans to act out a nostalgic idea of community and for Indonesians to perform a global modernity. Plaza Indonesia frames traditional elements of Indonesian society as vital parts of Indonesian international modernity. Tradition, whether expressed through performances, clothes, or objects, is regulated to a thing while modernity is an ongoing process explored through play.
