Not everything I do is a stadium or a Vegas residency. Some of the most interesting jobs are smaller, and braver for it.
The Great 50 Show was Oriental Circus Indonesia's 50th-anniversary production — a contemporary circus with no animals at all. It opened in December 2018 at Gelora Bung Karno in Jakarta and toured Java and Bali afterward. Peter Wilson directed. I did the set.
Reinventing a circus
OCI dropped the animal acts entirely and rebuilt the show around people and live music. There's a story running through it — a young man named Noah, echoing the journey of the company's founder, Hadi Manansang. It's closer in spirit to The Greatest Showman than to an old big top.
Designing for bodies in the air
An acrobatic show sets a very specific problem. The scenery has to share the space with fire, aerial silks, flying trapeze and a wheel of death, performed by a cast from Indonesia, China and Mongolia. My job was to frame all of that without ever getting in its way — strong enough to read as a world, open enough to let people fly through it safely.
Why the small ones matter
I like the smaller projects. They're often where the real invention happens, because you can't hide behind budget or scale. A reinvented circus is part theatre, part stadium show, part high-wire safety problem — and you have to solve all three at once.
