Contemporary Indonesian theatre and Javanese tradition

A woman preparing dinner in a humble village home repeatedly tells her son to bathe before he eats, as he dawdles and talks back. Finally, the boy sets out for the river but reports that the stream has dried up, transformed into a battlefield, that of the great Bharatayudha war that concludes the Mahabharata epic. A four-armed goddess appears, holding a grenade, arrow, pistol, and sword, and urges her child to fight fiercely, without mercy. At another site, in a contemporary airport lounge, passengers carrying suitcases rush past women performing traditional Javanese dance movements; huge shadows of both are projected on a screen behind them, along with images of jet planes traversing the sky.