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.