It has been four decades since anthropologist James L. Peacock studied the ludruk form of drama, once popular in the East Java city of Surabaya. Peacock and his wife lived in the citys Kampung Gundih neighborhood from 1962-1963 to do research on ludruk.

Why were you interested in ludruk?

I studied it to understand many points, for example the way working class people saw the world in an industrial city in Java, Indonesia under Sukarnos era of Gu