Disclaimer: This review is part of my personal takes on the works presented at Pesta ARTI 2.0. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer (i.e. me, myself and I) and do not reflect the views of the organizers, jury, or any affiliated parties. The intention is to engage critically with the work while supporting the growth of indie theater.
Team 5:
Written by Yusof Bakar
Directed by Rizal Rafizal
Kedarah is set in the distant future, where society lives in what is described as the post-Anthropocene epoch. For context, we are currently in the Holocene epoch, though some argue we are already transitioning into the Anthropocene. To imagine a time beyond the Anthropocene suggests a setting at least several thousand years ahead. The play also mentions that shifts in food availability and lifestyle had occurred a few centuries earlier (from the moment the play takes place), implying that the transition to this new societal condition, for them, had just taken place in the past 200–300 years. So, Kedarah situates its world far into the future, setting the stage for a society that has evolved or devolved in significant ways.
Setting the story far into the future, for me, should allow for a lot more freedom in world-building. Basically, if you use any references, no matter how fictional they are, no one can really argue whether they make sense or not because it’s set so far ahead. And I believe that this freedom should be fully exploited. So when there are objects or references that feel too strongly tied to our present-day world, it feels like the potential isn’t fully realized. In Kedarah, the two characters talk about Shakespeare, Usman Awang, quote Putin, and mention wisdom from chess grandmasters and it made me wonder: would a society thousands of years into the future still be having these same conversations? It ends up feeling like their world hasn’t really evolved, just a direct extension of ours. There’s no new fictional or hypothetical material for these future characters to reference, almost as if there’s a gap in the historical and cultural timeline.
In Kedarah, the two characters play a game of chess that looks exactly like the version we know today. While there's technically no right or wrong in how you imagine a far-future world, after all, some things could survive unchanged if they’re well-documented and culturally preserved, it still feels a little too convenient when a game remains exactly the same over thousands of years. Compare this to Dune: Part Two, where Princess Irulan is seen playing a game that resembles chess but has clearly evolved into something new, fitting the distant future setting of the story. That kind of small but deliberate world-building detail helps make the future feel richer and more believable. When a story set far ahead in time relies heavily on present-day references without tweaking or reimagining them, it can make the world feel oddly static, as if culture and innovation have somehow frozen instead of continuing to grow and change. Other examples, like the Star Trek universe inventing fictional games like 3D chess, show how future societies are often imagined with both continuity and evolution in mind, familiar yet adapted to their time.
Of course, it’s also possible that the use of present-day references such as quoting Shakespeare, Usman Awang, referencing famous chess grandmasters, was a conscious choice. Perhaps the production wanted to ensure the audience had something familiar to hold onto, a real-world tether amid the futuristic setting. Introducing entirely new fictional cultures, histories, and pastimes could risk making the story feel too alien, distancing the audience. So perhaps by anchoring the dialogue to recognizable figures and artifacts, Kedarah aims to maintain a bridge between its imagined world and the audience’s current reality. Given that possibility, it’s a strategic move, though it comes at the cost of fully realizing the vast creative freedom a far-future setting could offer.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing a fully constructed, entirely fictional future world. But at the same time, there’s something quite charming about the idea that Usman Awang’s wisdom has managed to survive across the long passage of time.
If you’re familiar with Yusof Bakar’s work or have seen a few of his plays, you’ll start to notice that he tends to follow a certain structure, almost template-like. I think depending on the audience, some might eventually feel a bit desensitized to it. But honestly, that probably says more about the audience than the writer because every writer naturally develops their own style, and personally, I’m fine with his approach, even if the template or structure has become quite apparent to me.
Kedarah is built around conversation, a duologue, if you want to be more specific. Because it leans heavily on dialogue, it naturally becomes more "tell" than "show." Which means the burden falls heavily on the actors: they must be strong enough to keep the audience anchored purely through their exchanges. For me, the actor playing Jae came across stronger than the one playing Joe. "Stronger" in the sense that she had a better sense of play where you could see her trying to give more through expression, movement, and gesture, which was important given the conversational nature of the script.
The stage is split into two zones: stage left serves as Joe’s prison (cage or confinement0, while stage right represents the space outside, where Jae moves freely. For most of the play, the characters stay confined to their respective sides, with Joe only stepping out at the very end when Jae opens his cage. While the decision to divide the stage this way makes the separation of spaces immediately clear, it also introduces a significant challenge, keeping the visual energy alive despite the restriction. It’s a tough task for the director and the actors, especially in a space so physically small and intimate. Personally, I felt that while the setup was logical, it did limit the possibilities for a more dynamic exploration of movement and staging. I couldn’t help but wonder whether other creative approaches could have suggested the separation without relying so literally on a left-right divide. Still, given the tight constraints of the studio space, it’s understandable why they chose this route and they managed to make it work.
Kedarah offers an intriguing glimpse into a future world but feels somewhat caught between the bold possibilities of speculative fiction and the familiar comforts of the present. There’s an admirable ambition in setting the story so far ahead in time, and the production shows clear thought in its staging and character dynamics. However, the choice to heavily anchor the world to current-day references limits the sense of evolution that a far-future setting could have explored more fully. Despite the structural and thematic limitations, Kedarah remains a thoughtful piece, carried by committed performances and a distinctive authorial voice. With a bit more willingness to push beyond the familiar, this world and the ideas it holds, could become even richer and more striking in future iterations.
