I saw The Tangled Garden at the Museum's Amphitheatre on 19 August. Its a play by Don Mamouney and produced by Sidetrack Performance Group from Sydney and Komunitas CCL from Bandung, Indonesia. It was part of the Festival of Darwin.

I went to see The Tangled Garden partly (and maybe largely) to see some old friends -- Arif Hidayat and Margaret Bradley of Arimba Culture Exchange. I know Arif and Margaret from my work in Sydney in the late 1980s and early 1990s; we worked together when we were building an Asia-Pacific cultural alliance in Sydney, with the first Asia-Pacific cultural festival, Pesta in 1991, as one project.

It turned out also that another old friend from my Sydney days, Monica Wulff, was also in Tangled Garden. I worked with Monica during the Pesta days and with the Balai Ensemble, an Asia-Pacific performance group which I co-founded in 1990 or 1991 in Sydney. I had not seen my old friends since I moved to Darwin in 1992, a good fifteen years. Very, very pleasant reunion.

I also met Don Mamouney, whom I had known of since the 1980s, for the first time after the performance on 19 August. He wrote Tangled Garden and was touring with it from Bandung on to Sydney. More on Don in another blog entry.

I enjoyed the performance; it was fine theatre, enhanced by the interaction of different cultural and dramatic traditions as well as skillful writing, design, performance. It was eloquent testament to the value of intercultural work, and of community-driven intercultural work: Don Mamouney, when I chatted to him, emphasised the power of working locally as exemplified by the work of Komunitas in Indoneesia, with whom he has worked in situ for several months.

Don also said that they were interested in doing workshops in Darwin while they were here but that plan didn't prosper. I said a workshop program would've been a great opportunity to learn from Sidetrack and Komunitas, and also for them to see what Darwin communities were like and had to offer. Don said that it would be good if they can return to Darwin in future to work with communities here. Arif and Margaret were also interested in returning to Darwin to work with communities here. I also suggested it may be good to include Darwin in a partnership arrangement or circuit involving Sidetrack and Komunitas.

We agreed to keep in touch and to explore further the return of Sidetrack and Komunitas to Darwin, and longer term partnerships involving them and perhaps Brown's Mart and other interested parties in Darwin.