ON TOUR WITH THEATER LAKON
Location: Jakarta - Indonesia - Asia
Ambassador: Egbert Wits
From july untill early september 2010 theatre group Lakon from Utrecht is visiting Indonesia. “Monyet Loe!” is the performance with which they tour through Indonesia. I was fortunate enough to tour with them for a week. During their preparation I also helped arranging places for them to perform in Indonesia. Within a simple forest setting and using beautiful puppets of monkeys and a young child Lakon asked attention for the decline of rainforests in Sumatra and the threatened livelihoods of the orangutans living inside them.
In Indonesia playing inside buildings or theatres means your audience will be upper class. Most Indonesian can simply not afford to spend money on entertainment. Therefore the clue is to not let the people come to the theatre but let the theatre come to them! Therefore Lakon performed inside schools, on public squares and visited isolated communities.
The audience best suited for “Monyet Loe!” (‘You monkey!’ in English) are children aged 4-10 years old. The actors of Lakon really interacted with these children. They are stimulated to make noises and through doing so they become part of the play. Combining theatre with educational goals can be very successful and Lakon’s ‘Monyet Loe!’ is a beautiful example of this. All the children are thrilled from start to finish and when talking with them after the show they really feel sad for the monkeys and are aware of the bad things happening within their own country.
The show I will never forget was the one in Ciwidey. In these hills near Bandung communities of tea workers live in isolated villages. Just a month ago one of these communities got hit by a landslide causing more than a 100 deaths. We visited a community nearby and with the remnants of the landslide effects in the background Lakon gave about 150 kids high quality entertainment as to temporarily forget their lost friends. Living in barracks, surrounded by tea plantations, 2 rough hours driving away from civilization, this theatre show might be the only one they see in a long time. It felt great to be a part of that……
