The Drama Behind the Drama: The Inside Story on ICN 2025 Senjakala

What do you get when you mix a fiercely ambitious theatre director, a disapproving father, and a dream so big it could rival a Broadway production? You get ICN 2025 Senjakala – the story of a man who turned his passion for theatre into a career acclaimed by critics and envied by peers, but not without a few Shakespearean-level tragedies and misunderstandings along the way.

We spoke with Owen Nigel Tjiptarahardja (Arya Rahma Aditya), Denise Evangeline Pigety (Erina Rielle Astari), Billy Muliorahardjo (Producer), Gerren Owen Limantara and Marshella Angelin (Artistic Directors), and Cliff Sia and Trisha Cianita (Scriptwriters), to dive into the full story of ICN 2025 Senjakala! 

Can you give us a short synopsis of ICN 2025 Senjakala and its themes?

Owen Nigel Tjiptarahardja: Senjakala is about a little boy, who grew up estranged from his father, because of his ambition to become a musical director, which his dad doesn’t approve of due to it not being a conventional career path.

However he is still very persistent about his ambition and goals, so he ended up pursuing it. As a result of his estrangement, he grew up with the absence of the loving care and warmth of the presence of his father in his life, which is very crucial.

Denise Evangeline Pigety: …we have this theatre director called Arya, and he’s a very prideful man, and when he’s going through his journey to success, there’s an incident that causes him to have his downfall.

What inspired the story and themes of the play?

Billy Muliorahardjo: For this play, we are trying to explore different problems that people face nowadays that we feel are rarely addressed or talked about in normal conversations. So we try to explore those stories and how they can evolve.

Trisha Cianita: We focused more on the theatre world because the background of our show this time is theatre – the Yogyakarta Theatre festival. It’s an annual show where they showcase rich Indonesian culture through theatre from the top theatre shows in Yogyakarta.

Gerren Owen Limantara: This year, the play involves a lot of daily life activities. We have some familiar scenes, for example, a house or maybe the theater, and because we want to incorporate daily activities, we use sets that would be used during such activities. For example, the properties, the wardrobe and the makeup, et cetera.

What was the thought process behind the artistic choices of the performance?

Gerren: Initially, we thought about which scenes we wanted to perform based on our script, then think about what we can put there, things like what are the natural movements of our cast, what are good colour combinations. We work one by one through our practices and meetings to find the correct combination, so that it’s visually and aesthetically pleasing to the audience.

Billy: We wanted the audience to resonate with our play, so we tried our best. We coach our actors to act, sing, and perform all the music items to dance to help our show resonate with the audience.

What challenges did you face during production?

Marshella Angelin: For this year’s ICN, we tried to integrate the actors and the dancers a lot more compared to the previous ICNs. And since we have to balance the acting and dancing side, we have to combine their schedules as well. 

There are quite a lot of people performing on stage at the same time, so it’s quite a challenge to coordinate all of them. Especially if you have to practice with a lot of them, not all performers will listen well.

Billy:  It’s definitely the late-night meetings because to produce this kind of show, it requires a lot of preparation and planning. So oftentimes, there will be late-night meetings with different committees and different people, and although it can be taxing sometimes, it was a memorable experience! 

Were there any real-life experiences that influenced you in this production? 

Billy: Not from me personally, but I’m pretty sure I think it’s common. It’s pretty common how, like, people have different upbringings and this leads them to having, like, very different personalities than what the parents expect them to have. So, yeah, that’s what we try to explore.

Denise: For myself, I think from my personal experience, I’m not really that similar to Erina, the character. I’m not as demure as Erina, but I added some cheerful and bubbly personality to her character, and I think every other cast has brought their own flair to their character and it makes the show more alive.

What role does Erina play in Arya’s story?

Denise: For Erina, I think she’s like a breath of fresh air for Arya since she is the one who introduces Arya to discover the world and not focus on his work. So I think Erina can be described as a ray of sunshine in Arya’s dark life. 

Trisha: To some extent, actually, we made Erina quite the perfect character, so when they (Erina and Arya) meet our main character who is, you can say the imperfectly perfect Arya – they are bound to clash. So Erina’s role here is to let Arya view the world through a new lens so that he will be able to open his eyes and see how to view life from another perspective.

What are the societal issues that you wanted to address through the narrative?

Trisha: For societal issues, we’ll be highlighting the relationship between Arya’s father, Hendra, and Arya. Since we live in an Asian country, we have the stereotype of a tiger parent. Since we have our target market, we feel like it will hit right at the point where we can show this stereotype.

One more thing is probably mental health issues…it’s quite different from normal mental health (scenarios) where we focus on grief. So, this is a bit of a spoiler, but it’s more like we are showing Hendra’s (Arya’s father) grief towards the death of his wife. And it is actually quite different from other people’s grief. 

Billy:  In this story, we are trying to explore this character’s (Arya’s) strict upbringing, with his single father and how this leads to him having a very high ambition, and how he becomes a perfectionist over time and how his issues, because of his personality evolve, and how he reconciles with those issues.

What are some of your favourite unexpected moments or fond memories from working on this play?

Marshella: It’s not totally unexpected. It’s just whenever this happens, it makes us quite scared – the dancers, sometimes they have muscle cramps during practice. And if they cannot perform, then we cannot do anything, and we have to change the performer.

Gerren: I think if I have to answer with one memory, I can’t say much, because I have a lot of favorite memories. Personally, it’s as long as the actors, the cast and the dancers, can portray, sing, dance and act within our standards and expectations.

Billy: It was a very fulfilling experience for me. I’ve been in this show for the past three years, and every year it’s been wonderful. Meeting new people, trying to explore different stories, and having different people doing different things. It’s definitely fun!

ICN 2025 Senjakala

🗓️ Date: 15 February 2025
📍 Location: Sota Drama Theatre, 1 Zubir Said Dr, Singapore 227968
💲 Price: 

Tickets for ICN 2025 Senjakala can be purchased through their official website! For the latest updates, be sure to check out their Instagram as well!

Photos by Izzah Ilyana and Russell Loh of the DANAMIC Team.