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When a theater production bills itself as an epic, it's usually nothing more than a publicist's bombast. Yet when Robert Wilson's I La Galigo premieres in Singapore on March 12, it will be literally true: the four-hour spectacle of song and dance, mantra and martial arts is based upon a classic of Indonesian literature, an epic poem almost unknown outside the archipelago until now. The poem, also called I La Galigo, survives in thousands of fragmentary manuscripts and was written in an archaic Indonesian language that maybe no more than 50 people today are able to understand. It runs to some 300,000 lines—roughly 20 times the length of Homer's Odyssey—making it one of the longest literary works in existence. The creation myth of the Bugis people of South Sulawesi, I La Galigo (which takes its name from one of its protagonists) is a stirring saga of gods and demons and heroes, love sacred and profane, and the eternal struggle between good and evil.

After its debut at Singapore's flash new Esplanade performing-arts center, the production will embark upon an epic journey of its own—a series of shows in Europe and America that will culminate at New York City's Lincoln Center in 2005. This will be the most high-profile presentation of Indonesian performing arts abroad since the founding of the republic more than half a century ago.

Staging the obscure poem might seem an unusual career choice for producer and director Wilson, a native of Texas who has long been pre-eminent in the highbrow world of experimental theater. His production of Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, presented at New York City's Metropolitan Opera in 1976, was a breakthrough for avant-garde theater in the U.S. Since then he has become best known for his austere, abstract interpretations of the classics, from Shakespeare to Wagner.

Wilson created his new piece in Bali, with an international creative team and an all-Indonesian cast and orchestra. A recent workshop performance at the Bali Purnati Center for the Arts, situated in a jungle ravine amid terraced paddy fields, showcased Wilson's stage legerdemain at work. Flimsy sets produced majestic effects: a great seagoing ship was created with a few artfully twisted bamboo culms; a parade of animals sprang to life from bits of cloth, paper and string. The birth of the title character was represented by winding and unwinding the mother from a series of gorgeous sarongs—a simple, graceful illusion that matched the solemnity of the event.

I La Galigo is vastly complicated, a pageant spanning seven generations set to a haunting score by the Indonesian composer Rahayu Supanggah. In Singapore, the show will have lavish sets and costumes constructed from fine Javanese batik. Yet for Wilson, the key to any successful production lies not in its music or props but in the structure of the show, whether it be an opera starring Jessye Norman, an evening of rock theater with Lou Reed—or the staging of an ancient Bugis epic. "Paris is a beautiful city because it has a beautiful structure," he says, explaining that a harmonious overall pattern is more important than any of the individual elements that fill it. "Here in Bali we begin by creating the bones of the piece, and put on the flesh. Finally, we will put on the skin." By skin he means the sets, costumes, and especially the lighting, always a crucial element in a Wilson production.

The germination of the show dates to 1995, when New York City-based filmmaker Rhoda Grauer was traveling in Sulawesi to research a documentary about the Bugis and learned about the epic poem. Dazzled by its dramatic potential, Grauer decided to bring the work to the stage, and recruited her friend Restu Kusumaningrum, a dancer and the creative director of Bali Purnati. Both women had previously worked with Wilson and they wanted him to stage their discovery. After their presentation at his summer workshop in Water Mill, New York, Wilson agreed to take on the project.

The production has ignited enormous interest in Indonesia's intellectual circles. In February, the influential Bali-based arts journal Latitudes devoted a special issue to I La Galigo—the poem and the show. Indonesian actress and icon Christine Hakim is filming a documentary about the production. Yet it is unclear whether the show will ever be performed in its home country. No theater in Indonesia has the technical resources to stage it, and the cost of renting and hauling the necessary machinery even to Jakarta is prohibitive in a nation that spends very little on culture.

Nonetheless, the production has already provoked controversy in Indonesia. One scholar objected to Grauer's abridgment of the epic's plot, although the show's four-hour running time will strike few theatergoers as scandalously brief. Some Indonesian artists are worried that the work's cultural identity, its "Indonesianness," is at risk simply because the show is directed by a Westerner. Kusumaningrum, the principal Indonesian member of the creative team, sees the controversy as evidence of Indonesia's inferiority complex: of a self-deprecating belief that the country's traditional arts are somehow not as worthy as foreign culture, an attitude that stems from the colonial era. But Kusumaningrum says one of the most valuable fruits of the production is that it will give 50 Indonesian performers and a local technical staff the opportunity to work with international artists, and thus to expand their creative vocabulary. "I'm not worried about Indonesia's cultural identity," she says. "Our culture is so deep and rich and strong. Why worry about it?"

Wilson, who has traveled throughout Indonesia for more than 15 years and says he feels "a great affinity" for its people, certainly isn't letting the controversy stand in his way. "Indonesia has a wealth of cultures that are virtually unknown around the world," he says, and he is determined to introduce them to a wider audience. Instead of being undermined, the country's heritage can only be enriched when one of the most vitally creative men in theater revitalizes an epic tale that might otherwise have been forgotten.

• Jamie James | Bali
• An Indonesian epic poem comes to life in the hands of a modern stage legend