Review: A Look Back to Reality in Teater Koma’s MENCARI SEMAR

Review by Nabila 'Hana' Hananti, editing by Rakaputra Paputungan.

For their 235th production, Teater Koma brought the play Mencari Semar onto the stage of Ciputra Artpreneur from August 13-17 of 2025. Written and directed by Rangga Riantiarno, this show had a vision of uniting Javanese mythology with a futuristic narrative, serving a story that is relevant to our present time. 

We, the team from Broadway World Indonesia, had the opportunity to watch their media preview on August 12th, and here’s our review:

In our world with its rampant use of AI and the illusion (as well as the disillusionment) of social media, Mencari Semar instead satirized those trends in this absurdly philosophical tale of a group of sentient robots searching for a long-lost deity named “Semar”. 

The word “Semar” itself refers to a prominent character in the Javanese wayang (shadow puppetry) tradition. In this show, it took the form of a deity who lives on earth. In a world where humanity is extinct because they’ve long since destroyed each other, all that remains is a group of robots created by mankind who left a single instruction they cannot undo: destroy. 

That is when this group of robots embarks on the journey to seek Semar and take his Kalimasada talisman in order to undo their single instruction. Their search led them to a time-travelling black hole where they captured Semar and imprisoned him within a simulation in order to draw the talisman’s power out. They attempt to trick Semar into giving the talisman by creating the idea of a perfect world, which Semar rejects completely because he recognises that such perfection is merely an illusion. By the end, Semar breaks out of his confinement and returns to his family, while the group of robots figure out an algorithm to cancel their main instruction, and they all live happily ever after. 

Nowadays, we are certainly more familiar with the concept of robots than we are with wayang. Globalization has reduced the importance of tradition; hence, stories that used to be shared from generation to generation are lost to history. In a way, delivering this play was reviving a culture, delivering the history of ‘perwayangan’ to a younger audience in a lighthearted way, especially with the flavor of modernity infused into the mix. 

While they deliver a story of robots and deity, as a whole, Mencari Semar was a product of humanity, for humanity, and about humanity. Theatre is a medium that involves human cooperation, and in this play, Teater Koma stated and held the stanza that technology can only go so far as mimicking human behaviour. A very anti-AI stanza, especially during the current government’s interest in exploiting AI on the basis of ‘efficiency’.

Theatre is an aural performance. And technology can only mimic human behaviour so far. Yet the reverse is not true, as during the simulation scene, the actors played their role perfectly, seemingly normal and yet somewhat uncanny. The cast of Mencari Semar put their all into the play, bringing in the energy, unity, and chemistry of a long-running group. And it shows, because despite the absurd nature of the play, the message and the story they wanted to deliver were conveyed. 

Currently, the social and political status of Indonesia is on shaky ground. Indirectly, Teater Koma took the opportunity to shed light on the issue, such as by making several political jokes about the election. Most notably, they even involved some familiar acronyms into the storyline. For example, the existence of UUD (widely known as ‘Undang-Undang Dasar’ or ‘Basic Law of the State’ being satirized as ‘Undang-Undang Dewa’ or ‘Law of the Deity’) was regarded as problematic by the deity as, while it was a recent law, it had “criminalized” Semar, who had existed long before the law existed. The idea that a recent law would interfere with something that has existed for decades is practically nonsensical, and yet it does happen recurrently in this country. 

Art is always political. And while Mencari Semar did not offend anyone directly, it wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for the current political climate. 

As a whole, this show was a very philosophical work brought through absurd means. Still, this show also brought the beauty in the imperfection of mankind, and that is certainly what one would expect from a group that has created theatre for so many years. It is applaudable and very much relevant to today's times, and I am looking forward to more! There’s no stopping, just like the comma in their names!

Broadwayworld Indonesia is a media partner of Mencari Semar.