Traditional Malay Healing Practices: Expressions of Cultural and Local Knowledge

This paper looks at the healing practices of Main Peteri, a traditional-ritual form of Malay theatre, as an expression and evolution of local culture and knowledge. The main purpose of this paper is to understand and highlight the uniqueness of local knowledge and culture within the trajectory of its community. The rituals of buka and tutup panggung, the concept of the angin/wind(s) and semangat/spirit/soul are seen within the context of local knowledge and the healing mechanisms of performance. This research situates main peteri as a communal theatre performed not only for the benefit of the sick person, but also for the performers and by extension, the community at large. This study is based on ethnographic investigations and recordings involving phenomenological observations and in-depth semiological interviews with key informants of the main peteri. This resarch is grounded on structuralism's intricate interpretations of relationships between elements of signifiers and signifieds in order to understand the unconscious mind of the sick persons, the practitioners and the community. This is achieved through a study of the form and the semiotics of the main peteri theatre. The binary relationships between religious restraints/edicts and modernists approaches, the concerns of purists-traditionalists and accomodators-innovators of this theatre form are juxtaposed within the parameters of cultural change, innovation and development. It concludes by analyzing traditional theatre's re-positioning as it confronts an information-technology driven world.