Maisyarah is a teaching artist, producer and theatre director with over 15 years of experience in theatre and 10 years of utilising theatre for teaching. Her work focuses on children, young people and diverse communities, using theatre and puppetry to build confidence, foster self-expression and foster social connection. She is the founder of Play With May, a fun-based learning programme that offers creative art and academic support for children aged 1.5 and above, and also runs the Giving Month programme, an annual crowdfunding initiative that provides free art and puppetry workshops for underprivileged communities, including urban poor, indigenous, stateless, and orphans.
Maisyarah has written and directed children’s theatre performances, including Azam the Astronaut and Tujal and the Wind. She also worked as an assistant director for children’s musical productions, including Siti Di Alam Fantasi and Pak Pandir dan Labu Ajaib, at Istana Budaya. Internationally, she co-produced with Flying Balloons Puppet, where she helped bring their productions to festivals such as Georgetown Festival and Esplanade’s Pesta Raya. In 2024, she attended the Edinburgh International Children’s Theatre Festival as a delegate and participated in the 2nd Asian Theatre for Young Audiences Meeting in Bangkok. Recently, she co-founded and curated Main Boneka Festival, Johor’s first puppet festival in collaboration with Kelab Bandar Kita Johor Bahru and Universiti Malaysia Kelantan.
IG: playwithmayandco
Flying Balloons Puppet is a dynamic performance group that seamlessly blends the art of puppetry with the exploration of body and space. Founded in Yogyakarta in 2015, Flying Balloons creates performances where objects narrate, and stories provoke, using puppetry to uncover human emotion through tactile materials and visual poetry. Their works bridge craftsmanship and contemplation, and aspire to ignite a new wave of creativity in puppetry.
IG: flyingballoons.id | @flyingballoons.puppet
Founder of Flying Balloons Puppet
Actor, Director, Puppet Artist
Rangga Dwi Apriadinnur founded Flying Balloons Puppet in Bantul, Yogyakarta, in 2015. Graduated from the Art Institute of Indonesia Yogyakarta with a major in Acting in 2018, he directs many of the company’s productions (solo and collaborative) and is known for integrating puppetry, object theatre, non-verbal storytelling, and everyday spaces to explore ecological, memory, and identity themes.
Dramaturg, Director, Performer, Puppet Artist
Jefri Mugi is an Indonesian multidisciplinary artist exploring the intersection of body, memory, and landscape. A graduate of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts Yogyakarta, he works across performative puppetry, physical theatre, and installation. Through Flying Balloons Puppet, Jefri examines migration and ecological interdependence, creating transformative performances where myth, material, and movement converge.
The proposed artwork centers on the development of The Girl Who’s Afraid of Everything, a new collaborative project exploring fear and curiosity.
During the residency, theatre director Maisyarah Mazlan will focus on developing narrative structures, designing characters, and exploring interactive strategies to create an immersive and emotionally meaningful experience for young audiences. The Flying Balloons team will create objects, an installation, and a puppet exploration inspired by materials found on Nikoi Island, combined with textiles brought from Jogja. Through movement research, sound exploration, and site-responsive experiments, the project reframes the island itself as an active collaborator that will shape the gestures, textures, and emotional landscape of The Girl’s journey.
The residency includes workshops designed for children and Nikoi staff. Children will participate in small nature expeditions, gathering objects from the island and transforming them into creations shaped by their imagination, while exploring fears kids generally experience and turning them into something imaginative and unexpectedly fun. The artists plan to conduct workshops for Nikoi staff to support the creation of an installation that will later be completed with the objects and artworks created during the kids’ workshops. These sessions create opportunities for knowledge exchange, foster connection with the island’s environment, and introduce participants to accessible creative practices rooted in material and exploration.
%252C%2520ArtJog%2520Daily%2520Performance.jpg)
%2520with%2520Gwen%2520Knox%2520Australia.png)
Ubah Rumah is an art residency and archive inspired by stories of our region.
