Cobina has been a college professor since 1997, most recently on the faculty of Theatre and Performance in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, State University of New York. Previously, she was a member of the theatre studies faculty in the Drama Department, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She received her doctorate in Per
Cobina has been a college professor since 1997, most recently on the faculty of Theatre and Performance in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Purchase College, State University of New York. Previously, she was a member of the theatre studies faculty in the Drama Department, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. She received her doctorate in Performance Studies at NYU under the mentorship of Richard Schechner. Her scholarly focus is Indonesian experimental theatre and performance art, traditional Balinese theatre, music, and dance, 20th century Euro-American experimental theatre, intercultural theatre (possibilities and limitations), play adaptation and translation, and theories of theatre and performance. Artistically, her strongest influences are Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht, focusing on theatre for social change and pushing the boundaries of theatrical performance and performance art as spaces to interrogate and test discomfort with difficult topics to broach in everyday interactions, as well as exploring ways to challenge conventional audience/performer relationships.
Professionally, she works as a production manager, freelance new play and production dramaturg, and translator of Indonesian plays into English. Her most recent project was as Production Manager and Associate Programmer for Beyond Home Borders, a fundraising festival (March-May, 2021) for The Lontar Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Jakarta that promotes Indonesian arts and culture primarily through English translations of works by Indonesian authors.
The world premiere staged reading of her translation of OH by Putu Wijaya was lived-streamed during a plenary session during the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies (more...)
She has been a member of Putu Wijaya's Teater Mandiri based in Jakarta, Indonesia since 1988. For over 30 years, she has been performing and holding workshops with this leading theatre group in Indonesia and internationally, as well as serving as its company manager. Most recently, she played the role of Mrs. Co in JPRUTT by Putu Wijaya in May 2018 in Jakarta.
She is an active member of the PEN Translation Committee and of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA), Association of Asian Performance (AAP), served on the Board of Directors of PSi (Performance Studies International), Pentacle (an artist management support service and dance education organization) and was a member of the Theatre Arts Selection Committee for Fulbright for three years (2014-2016).
Major scholarly publications include:
plus several other articles in the Asian Theatre Journal, The Drama Review, and Theatre Survey, as well as numerous contributions in encyclopedias including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Actors and Acting, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, among others, primarily about Indonesian theatre practitioners, performance genres, plays, and theatre companies.
Several of Cobina's translations of Indonesian plays into English can be found two anthologies that she edited and for which she wrote the introductions:
Several of Cobina's translations of Indonesian plays into English can be found two anthologies that she edited and for which she wrote the introductions:
Other published translations:
OH by Indonesian playwright Putu Wijaya, celebrates its world premiere reading in an English translation by Cobina Gillitt. Tackling themes of justice, truth, and generational difference, OH dramatizes the hallucination of an elderly accomplished lawyer who has been muted by a stroke. In his mind, he recalls the time when his son, also a renowned lawyer, visited and shared his thoughts about being the state-appointed defense council for a notorious drug dealer. His son won the case, but upon doing so became the target of a murderous mob. OH was first performed in Jakarta in 2017 to wide acclaim with the Old Lawyer performed by the playwright Putu Wijaya, the Nurse by his wife Dewi Pramunawati, and the Young Lawyer by his real son Taksu Wijaya.
The staged reading took place during the AIFIS-MSU Conference on Indonesian Studies: Paradigms and New Frontiers. Playwright Putu Wijaya was scheduled to join the event live from Jakarta with opening remarks. Following a staged reading performed by Taksu Wijaya and directed by Cobina Gillitt, Tikka Sears moderated a discussion and Q& A session about the play and its translation.
Putu Wijaya is one of Indonesia’s most acclaimed and prolific playwrights and monologists. In l972 he formed Teater Mandiri that performs his plays under his direction. By irreverently mixing fantasy and reality, Putu invokes “mental terror” in the hearts of his audiences. He attacks the monotonous rhythms of daily life and apathy toward the status quo. Teater Mandiri has performed in Indonesia, the United States, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Brunei, Egypt, Germany, the Czech Republic, Belgrade, and Slovakia. He has published more than forty plays, dozens of monologues, over thirty novels, and fifteen short story anthologies, and has written and directed close to two dozen screenplays and television series and has conducted workshops around the world.
Taksu Wijaya is the only child of Putu Wijaya and Dewi Pramunawati. Taksu has been a part of his father’s many theater productions since he was small. In the past few years, he has begun performing larger roles, including the Young Lawyer in OH that he has performed many times in several cities across Indonesia since 2017. Taksu now has a day job in IT while still growing as an actor as a member of Teater Mandiri. This is his first time performing the role of the Young Lawyer in English.
Tikka Sears is director and co-founder of Theater for Change at the University of Washington and Artistic Director of Memory War Theater. As a theater director, performer, and teaching artist, she creates devised works fusing physical theater, puppetry, and docudrama. Her theater work is dedicated to storytelling that amplifies marginalized voices. Tikka has worked with a variety of Indonesian theater and dance artists in the US and Indonesia, including as a cast member in US productions of Roar and Geez written and directed by Putu Wijaya and in a collaboration with Teater Payung Hitam while a Fulbright artist-in-residence in Indonesia. Tikka teaches workshops and residencies focused on embodied arts, Theatre of the Oppressed, arts for social justice, and Indonesian contemporary theater at conferences, universities, nonprofits, and K-12 schools
Cobina Gillitt is a translator of Indonesian plays and a freelance new play and production dramaturg located in New York City. She has been a member of Teater Mandiri since 1988 and has performed and toured with them in Indonesia, the US, and Germany. Several of her translations can be found in The Lontar Anthology of Drama, Vol 3: New Directions 1965-1998 (Lontar Foundation, 2010) that she also edited and for which she wrote the introduction. She is the Production Manager and Associate Programmer for the Lontar Foundation's Beyond Home Borders Fundraising Festival.
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Era of the Bat:
Six Abstract and Political Plays
by Ikranagara
Translated by Cobina Gillitt and Kay Ikranagara
With an Introduction by Cobina Gillitt