Arsita Iswardhani

Actor, performance maker, dramaturg, programmer – Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Participant International Forum 2024

Arsita Iswardhani is an actor, performance maker, and dramaturg based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She is a collective member and programmer of Teater Garasi/Garasi Performance Institute. Interested in intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches, she explores precarity, invisible labour, social choreography and ecology issues as seen from her third-world location. Her approach has primarily involved observing, listening, conversing, revaluing, and retelling stories through performance, not only about humans as subjects but also about objects that are part of the story of an ecosystem or society. She aims to mediate and value forgotten/invisible stories and knowledge, which are often invisible and unknown, and share them forward to shape a possible new narrative for society’s future.
Her latest projects with this trajectory were a collective-creation work, “Time-Stone. The House is on Fire” (2023); a biographical, “Shatters and Panties Herstory” (2022); and a 4-hour micro-dance, “How the Ghost Worker is Dancing in Your Shoes” (2020) – part of “Multitude of Peer Gynts” project, Ibsen Scholarship Awards 2019. A facilitator of the Asian Performing Arts Farm (APAF) Laboratory 2020, she also served as a dramaturg of “UrFear: Transit Sri Lanka and Vietnam” (2021), OpenLab Teater Garasi (2021–2022), a programmer and co-dramaturg of “Invisible Dance: Body in Frictions” in Ahmedabad-India (2023) and “Dance Exchange: Invisible Dance” (2022). She is a fellow of Schloss Solitude Akademie (2023–2024).