rokateater (lowercase throughout; pronounced rokat-teater, with a double “t”) is a stage-based platform for experimentation in the creation of performing arts. Founded in 2016 by theatre director and writer Shohifur Ridho’i, it serves as his primary working space for developing ideas, writing, and directing his works.

As a space for encounters and intersections among young performing artists and practitioners, rokateater takes performing arts as both its primary approach and form, while remaining open to other artistic practices and modes of interpretation. Its works explore diverse themes and creative approaches, often engaging with the perspectives, experiences, and everyday lives of young people in Indonesia.

As a stage-based studio for performing arts creation, rokateater treats theatre not simply as forms to be produced, but as mediums through which to question, experiment with, and push the boundaries of performance aesthetics and language. Its practice is situated within the shifting landscape of contemporary performing arts in Indonesia, while remaining attentive to vernacular practices, everyday repertoires, and the encounters between different forms of knowledge.

The name rokateater comes from rokat, a Madurese word related to ruwatan—a ritual of purification, protection, and renewal found in Javanese and Indonesian traditions. In this sense, rokat-teater can be understood as a kind of ruwatan of theatre: an ongoing attempt to care for, disturb, question, and renew theatre from within. Rather than treating theatre as a fixed form, rokateater approaches it as something that can be continuously reworked, unsettled, and brought into new encounters.