Play challenges children and adults alike

Play challenges children and adults alike

By Achmad Nurhoeri

JAKARTA (JP): If you think every play by children is sweet,
cute and funny, you should have seen Be be last Saturday at Taman
Ismail Marzuki. The children talked about serious things,
suitable for adults to reflect on, but apparently complicated
enough for children to relish.

The drama was staged by the Bela Studio group with a cast of
30 boys and girls aged between five and 12 years and ten adults.
The Indonesian world of drama is dominated by adults, so the
evening deserves recognition.

Be be presented a cynical reflection of what is happening in
the world of adults. Children live according to the examples
given by the adults. They sometimes imitate the adults so
perfectly that it illustrates how silly adults can be. The
education system, politics, TV and other adult-made stuff were
blamed for the behavior of the children who in most cases can not
resist the influence.

The play was supported by a musical orchestra of pans and
platters that gave a melodic accent as imaginative as the play.
The rickety-rackety sound of a sapulidi (broom of sugar palm
fiber) blended nicely with the honking horns and the clanging
noise of a noodle bowl hit with a spoon. But what gave life to
the play was the words of the two TV news presenters, who were
adults.

The news presenters acted like your neighborhood wise guys and
continually commented on what was going on. But, sometimes the
news had no link at all with the play.

Improvisation

The stage was cut into six sections. The main section was in
the middle of the stage. A news studio, a computer office, a bed
of a jobless man, a man frying crackers, and a den where kids are
watching TV are the other sections. The scenes on main section
frequently interacted with those staged on other sections but the
kids in each section mainly played their own parts.

The ups and downs, and good and bad sides of society was the
theme. The kids showed how adults often fail to do things they
advise kids to do. One scene portrayed how children like to drive
recklessly, imitating the adults behavior on the streets. The
under-aged players with their make-believe bikes even made the
seats of the audience a zig-zagging racing circuit.

Another scene portrayed the bad habit of Indonesian teachers
who often leave their students alone in the classroom doing
writing assignments so they can go eat.

But violence was the thing children imitated the most. One
scene showed a security officer forcefully dragging a jobless man
who in the previous scene had asked the cracker fryer to give him
money. Right after the officer disappeared, the children started
to drag each other about.

The children found it difficult to understand the serious
messages. Take for example the lyrics of this song, which teemed
with phrases strange to the children. "Lari, setan terbirit-
birit/ Instalasi nuklir, kiamat terjadi/ Yang kere dan yang
pintar/ Semuanya mati (Run, Satan helter-skelter/ Nuclear
installation, Judgment Day arrives/ The tramps and the clever/
They are all dead)" Even several adults looked confused. A woman
sitting in front of me couldn't answer her little boy's questions
about several unusual things happening on stage.

Director Edi Haryono seemed to put much hope on the kids'
ability to improvise. Most did it well, others were helpless. In
one scene, for example, two five-year-olds didn't seem to
understand what they should do. They ran back and forth across
the stage and suddenly cried from confusion.

Maybe the "failed" improvisation was exactly what Edi wanted.

Tour

Unfortunately the play did not draw a lot of attention. On
opening night there were only 60 people, mostly the relatives of
the players.

TIM actually was Bela Studio's second stop of the Be be tour
in Jakarta. They first performed at Erasmus Huis, the Dutch
Embassy's Culture Center. They will continue the tour to the
Yogyakarta Arts Center at the end of the month.

Since it was established in 1987, Bela Studio has produced
several plays, including Nyamuk (mosquito) and a play on the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster. They plan to stage Tikar (Plaited
Mat) together with Be be in Yogyakarta.