Dark themes with strings attached Mwathirika, by Papermoon Puppet Theatre, touches on difficult themes of political persecution in Indonesia. The show has toured Singapore and five US cities. Picture: Sondhiar Hitomartanoe Source: Supplied A QUIVERING puppet girl, missing her father and brother and surrounded by the maundering spirits of the dead, drops a red whistle and gives up, whereupon she is lifted into her puppeteer's embrace. It is the only time in the performance there is direct interaction between puppeteer and puppet, and the moment powerfully reflects emotion on to the audience. Throughout the rest of the show, humans engage with puppets in grotesque parodies of events still too delicate to discuss. But at this point puppeteer, puppet and onlooker join in a common experience of loss. It is the axial scene in Mwathirika, a production by Papermoon Puppet Theatre at this year's Darwin Festival. The show uses modern theatrical techniques to revive the ancient Indonesian art of wayang (puppet theatre) to portray the country's 1965-66 anti-communist purge. Its central theme is not the mass executions or imprisonments themselves but their peripheral cost. Childhood friendships are torn apart when Moyo and Tupu's father, Baba, is persecuted for belonging to a political party depicted only by the colour red. Their neighbour, Haki, forbids his wheelchair-bound daughter, Lacuna, from speaking to the siblings; their father disappears and their lives fall apart. "The common people never understand what happens, but suddenly the government says: 'We have to get rid of these red people,' " artistic director Maria Tri Sulistyani explains. In preparing the show, she and her husband and co-director, Iwan Effendi, sought out personal accounts behind a history that, in Indonesia, is still rarely discussed. Now in its 35th year, Darwin Festival started as a beautification event after Cyclone Tracy devastated the town in 1974. It evolved into a community festival and finally grew into the 18-day arts and culture event that begins on Thursday. This year's lineup includes performances by Aboriginal singer-songwriter Archie Roach, Oz Opera's rendition of Mozart's Don Giovanni and a collection of indigenous activities held in the Darwin indigenous community of Bagot. Festival artistic director Edwina Lunn says choosing the theme of "Territory life" was easy. "It came quite naturally," she says, "because of the things that I was interested in, and the people that I was spending time with." Lunn says it reflects Darwin's backyard culture and transient lifestyle, in which many people come for a good time, not a long time. Mwathirika is one of a handful of shows plucked from the region, made possible by a small increase in government funding this year. Papermoon Puppet Theatre was founded in 2006, after Tri Sulistyani and Effendi, who are not classically trained, ran workshops involving puppets following the 2006 Java earthquake, which struck near their home city Yogyakarta. Inspired in part by Melbourne's boisterous Snuff Puppets and a "very dark" performance of Shakespeare by a German puppet company, Tri Sulistyani says the couple quickly realised puppetry could do much more than entertain kids. One of their early, overtly sexual productions, Noda Lelaki di Dada Mona (A Stain on Mona's Chest), was aimed at a mature audience. By using theatrical puppetry to nudge Indonesia out of its "forgetfulness" (Tri Sulistyani's word) about its troubled past, Mwathirika neatly combines the country's cultural heritage with modern art forms to make a bold self-examination. The show has already toured five US cities, as part of an American cultural diplomacy project, and Singapore. In doing so, it brings into focus what some argue has been missing from the past few years of Darwin festivals: a greater emphasis on unique local stories. Beneath its carapace of tropical living, Darwin sustains a unique culture full of barely explored themes. What of the Yolngu aristocracy found blaring their income in front of poker machines or in bars? What of the long-time Territorians who remember the days when one of the town's two main drinking establishments was known, for good reason, as the Cage? The Rubbish Warrior, homeless man Trevor Jenkins, persists in erecting his tripodal debris sculptures at intersections despite the council's best efforts to stop him. The city's economy is now underpinned by Japanese investment. Andrish Saint-Clare, a veteran of the Darwin arts scene whose late 1990s project Trepang told the story of interactions between Aborigines and Macassarese fishermen, would like to see the Darwin Festival help build a repertoire of top grade local performances. "Instead of trying to look like a mini version of Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, (the festival) could look at and promote what's unique in the region," he says. Past efforts have included a collaboration between the Flying Fruit Fly Circus and Aboriginal children from Arnhem Land, and last year's Doku Rai, a theatrical collaboration between Australian and East Timorese performers that premiered in Darwin and drew praise elsewhere. Fabrizio Calafuri, who directed the festival from 1992 to 2002, says recent years have tended to suffer from "buying off the shelf" syndrome. "I wanted Darwin Festival to reflect Darwin culture by developing its own home-grown stuff," Calafuri says. Lunn defends the festival's record of attracting local content, but acknowledges most of the best indigenous theatre is still being produced down south. We don't have one indigenous theatre company in the Territory. If we did, that theatre would be very different," she says. Mwathirika is at Brown's Mart Theatre, August 17-18. The Darwin Festival, tomorrow to August 25.