Hyper reality theatre: Violating the boundary of the realism structure through the work “theatre lembu/tepuk amai-amai”

Abstract

The millennial era of the 21st century has fallen witness to the emergence of popular artistic works that transcend beyond reality marks and serve as a condition of the hyper-reality world. In this context, this paper work argues that Malay theatre performance is a popular art form that has risen and built its own tendency as a post-modern art product that violates the realism structure boundary and acts as a hyper-reality world. This must have been caused by the Malay theatre direction that comes with recent directors who have the desire to violate this realism structure, in their assertion of new theatre performance forms. Related to this, our current paper work discusses the work directed by Namron entitled ‘Lembu’ and another one by Wan Khairunazwan Rodzy entitled ‘Tepuk Amai-Amai’ that have olated the boundary of the realism structure by forming themselves as hyper reality theatre. Using the non-structured observation method and the application of the hyper semiotics theory as the study’s analysis outcome, this paper is able to explain the form of hyper reality theatre created by both directors as their effort to oppose to the realism theatre style in Malay theatre performance. This article’s main discussion is based on the interpretation of the actors’ acting form sign-system, the stage scenic sign-system, the stage lighting composition sign-system and the characters’ costume sign-system that have been channelled to both theatres ‘Lembu’ and ‘Tepuk Amai-Amai’. Thus, the findings in this article show that the actors’ acting form sign-system, the stage scenic sign-system, the stage lighting composition sign-system and the characters’ costume sign-system in ‘Lembu’ and ‘Tepuk Amai-Amai’ are the conditions of the proper sign, pseudo sign, false sign, recycle sign and superlative sign that mix together in the performance space. Thus, the integration among the proper sign, pseudo sign, false sign, recycle sign and superlative sign which overlap has led to this newly formed theatrical performance of Lembu and Tepuk Amai-Amai as hyper reality theatre and given a hyper-reality world experience into the staging Malay theatre today.