Bruce: The Adventure - Bruce Sipetualang. Making an interactive show for kids at the Children's Hospital

We visited the kids at the Cancer Ward at the Children's hospital to ask them for their help. We need some good ideas to make a show for International Children's' Day. The ideas were awesome and so now we are making an interactive show about friendship - a pig (Bruce stars again!) a magic egg and a Rat called Tuti. In partnership with the hospital volunteers group we are putting on a half an hour show for 100 kids and their folks. Next week - ahh! No worries at all - I'm working with professional actor Theo - who is also a Boal fan - Ani - an amazing woman who works creatively in communities and Inna who is a post-abortion counsellor, keen on using theatre in her work. What a dream team! Rehearsals consist of huge amounts of discussing about politics, education, sexual health, theatre in communities - plus ahellovoalot of laughing! Of course we do a bit of acting too....

We have developed a make your own theatre style show with intervention points for the audience. The audience decides which way the story goes - will Bruce finally make friends? What does he need to do for this to happen? Will we discover what is inside the magic egg?! And will Anna ever learn her lines in Bahasa Indonesian? Watch this space!

Senter, Sapulidi & Bahan Kain - Making & Framing Theatre Fast

Torch, Sapulidi & Fabric - Making & Framing theatre Fast!

For four days nine people gathered to go through a theatre making process with Ria & myself to experiment in object manipulation/puppetry and making theatre fast! We met at Pendopo Siliron, one of the oldest pendopos in town. The space was small and surrounded by garden, with a great feel really conducive to the intimate work we were doing. On the fourth evening we made a 40 minute presentation of our work.

The audience was supremely late for the showing of our work in object/puppet manipulation, imaginative text making– even for Yogya standards but the cast remained impressively focused and presented the show with sensitivity and energy.

As I sat behind the computer operating music and lights I felt real joy, joy for having been able to make the work with people who gave themselves to the process and trusted it and us. More than that the ideas were inspired and conceived with commitment.

Well, most of the time and for 90% this was the case. A 10% of the group decided not to fully commit and we were forced to go through our own process of trying to identify the problem - the negative attitude, tardiness and general "kill the king" behaviour. As a facilitator there is often a workshop saboteur – that is they are committed to their cause at the expense of others. Too hyperbolic? Well, it certainly made it hard for Ria throughout the process and left a really unsavoury feel for the whole group. We decided to talk with the unnamed one. To express what perhaps had not been expressed to him before (because the polite nature of local culture). In the time between the session and meeting I realised that due to lateness and absence the unnamend one had not actually attended an introduction session so was seeing the workshops through a different frame than us. I wanted to give him the opportunity to understand the frame and then for them to make the decision to return (and take responsibility for it) So, we met and talked and an understanding was made. The unnamed one returned and was really present and the mood changed - great! It was a difficult process & an emotional one....but now we know getting the "framing" right is essential!

The Process:

After three days of exploring lights, fabric and sapulidi (brooms for sweeping!) Ria & I worked on combining the elements in a particular order to form a show. We rehearsed this with the group adding more ideas & taking things away and on the same night performed to 20 people….twice! as the first time most people were inconceivably (1.15 minutes!) late! This was followed by a whole group discussion with questions from the audience about the process.

Audience Feedback

I loved the way they used the props! I loved th Gajah – the elephant the best!

I didn’t know what it meant but it gave me strong feelings.

It was like poetry.

How you got to make it – the process – is very interesting to me.

Participant feedback:

Really great! I will steal your ideas!

It was very strange, something I’ve never done before. We worked without a script but we all knew what we had to do. Hebat!

I didn’t know where it was going to go, how we were going to make a show from it but we did it!

I really enjoyed the process. I can see how it can be used in my work and how anyone can become artists this way.

Sapi Pelangi – The Rainbow Cow

Enter The Rainbow Cow –

When I brought The Rainbow Cow - a puppet show in a briefcase – to Yogya I wondered if it would be of interest to kids here. To be honest I was a tad worried that a pig as the hero in a Muslim culture might be a bit of a no-no…..So when Ria couldn’t stop saying ooooooooo it’s so cute (those cursed words to all puppetmakers!)…and proceeded to act out the entire play, I thought that we may have something.

The Rainbow Cow went into translation. It is a story about Cordelia the cow who is unhappy in her skin, inspired by the kids’ book ‘Black Cow White Cow’ – but now it is quite a different story with the same theme – be happy with the skin you are in – or it could lead to all sorts of troubles!

In a place where there is the Michael Jackson Skin Care Clinic, where the occasional bleached white face appears through the crowd wearing a jilbab (Muslim headscarf), where people stare at your arms and say ooh you're so white – the issues around skin colour abound and, according to some people I have spoken with, are left unspoken about. As is the striving for a bigger nose, longer legs, big boobs…totally familiar stories about body image that surface in regional Australia as much as in the city of Yogya.

Jeannie, my house mate and Indonesian language student, helped translate and Cahya a paper moon puppet manager and one time performer has begun to take on the puppeteering role under my direction! When Ria and I first talked about what she would like to do, she said she’d like to take something into the hospital here – to the kids with cancer ward….so this is the loose plan. This process is a sweet connection for PMP & I as Cahya has always wanted a larger role in the performances but being an excellent arts manager ends up being channeled elsewhere. It also means we can both be outside eyes and Ria can begin a relationship with the hospital for the future projects.

Building partnerships is a snap phrase in Australia where many funding bodies commend links between arts and non arts organizations. TransVision Arts is built on these relationships. But here it is just beginning – where NGOs and health and education organisations are seeing the benefits of arts in the community to deliver messages or explore issues or to promote wellbeing through active participation – did I mention I’ve written a few funding applications? Sounds like it doesn’t it….eeeeeekkkk.

Cahya has taken a cow and a pig home with her and will learn her lines and tomorrow we begin to rehearse.

Thanks to Hannah French by the way for helping me make The Rainbow Cow in a spurt of creativity just before I left Australia – thank you!!

Listening to the Spiders

Gut instinct, intuition and the process of making theatre: When we try to force a process – however well conceived and genuinely desired – there is this chance of finding a spider in the belly…lupa lupa crawling around making me feel itchy inside. Listening to the spiders is part of making theatre for me. Following them inside to the point of concern to discover: What is it that is not working? Why is this hard?

Ria and I have reviewed the workshop process. On reflection the idea of a two week workshop process was becoming less of a creative conversation and more of an event driven affair. Neither of us want this. Plus it was getting hard to pin people down to such along period of time. Ria agreed – this is hard - to get people, to confirm a viable space, to feel the weight of a performance…so simplify and go back to the point of what we want: she wants to explore ideas of found lights and night time puppets, she wants an open creative dialogue between myself and local artists. She wants to offer the workshops to those who usually do not get the opportunity to work in this way. I want an organic process to make a piece of work that is - not to force a performance but to find the impulse within the group to perform something -to give ourselves the opportunity not to perform simply to play together. I’m keen to know how people make work here - how people are propelled.

Our change in tack back to our original five day plan with the possibility of further development later into a grander presentation dissolved the knot of concern.

The spiders have returned to their webs and we are ready to play.

Cooking Up a Storm – in Semi Darkness!

An ancient Javanese proverb says: "If you want to find the light, go where the darkness is".

Ria and I will be collaborating on a new work facilitating up to ten emerging performing artists to make a short performance with the proverb as our starting point. After we have posed the question to the artists ‘What is your burning artistic question right now?’ Ria and I are then interested in how we can facilitate the exploration of these questions, combine these burning questions and create a process to make a show. All in less than two weeks!

Making this work will be like making a gourmet curry dinner for twenty people with only three cooking pots and two burners. It’ll take days to make and more to mature and the final outcome will be dependant on the combination of available spices.

Our ingredients at this stage (subject to directorial change!) are our selected (and limited) materials:

Simple puppet making materials – cane, tape, plastic, paper, White fabric, found lights and broom brushes.

Our spices are our artists. Our pots and burners are our twelve days, our pendopo, our limited funds and limited access to three phase power.

Our work in progress performance will be at Karta Pustaka. This old Dutch Cultural Centre is a stunner of a pendopo. To me it elicited a strong overwhelming feeling of ‘we have to make something big and amazing to reflect this space’. Ria explained to me however, that the space is not expected to be used in that way, it is a community space for anything and everything – no pressure. Interesting how I have a received sense of how architecture shapes culture. Grand space means grand show. So I take on Ria’s understanding of how space works here and become all inspired by the possibilities of working in an indoor out door space with 16 pillars, performing in the round……exciting stuff. Let the cooking commence!

For more information about what we cook up please check out the Papermoon puppets blogspot or watch this space!

Teater Gardenella -Realism Only!

Ria (Director of Papermoon Puppets - if you are new to this blog!) spent four years working with Teater Gardenella as an actress and was very complimentary about Joned its director. After a quick dash across the city on a particularly smoggy day we went to visit him. Joned is a very interesting man who asked pointy questions– a very unJavenese characteristic - often being critical, cynical even, yet he was also incredibly hospitable. We ate lunch (our second lunch that day because it is rude to refuse food!) and talked about Gardenella and its history and niche in the realism market. "We do nothing but realism!" – he told me! Then he let the dog out. No big woofy to ward off the expressionists but a small cute little thing who he proceeded to groom. Showing his softer side Joned and his hound donned matching faux snakeskin hats and demanded I take a photo. Yes Director! ( I begin to get an insight into his autocratic directing style?). No worries! Gardenella have a show this week and although I was told to not to bother going by the Joned because I won’t get language – I will be going!!

Yayasong Bagong Kussudiardja

Another woman taking active steps in promoting the arts in community contexts is Jeannie Parks of Yayasong Bagong Kussudiardja (YBK).A Javanese dancer from a Korean/US background, she helps manage a large wonderful estate just outside the town consisting of performance pendopo studios and a residence. The place once was a dance school and Jeannie and the committee are new image for the organization as a place to make art with people…to share practice stories and skills. The vision of YBK is big and culturally groundbreaking but already having effect despite limited people power. It is a huge project with a number of programs currently running to nurture community cultural development faciilitators and involve community in projects. Snuff Puppets will be returning from Australia to do a second project with YBK in a few weeks. Their first was Peste Boneka – Puppet Festival last year.

http://www.ybk.or.id/home_english.php

Snuff Puppets

http://www.snuffpuppets.com/