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Kerensa Consciousness

The last six months have gone very fast here in Bali. So many types of events. So as I get ready to return to Australia for six months, I will tell you a little about what has been happening. My husband, SE Dewantoro, says it is the craziest year he’s had in terms of events on top of the usual gallery opening and ceremonies the Island of the God’s (and Art’s) calendar. In January, I presented three works in progress – The Story of Shakuntala with I Made Jimat, A Clockwork Medea and The Red Room. For me it was the beginning of new work that has devoured much of my thoughts and energy. The Story of Shakuntala evolved into a solo topeng performance in Indonesian and was performed at the exhibition opening of I Made Tempo and Putu Suriani. From this 45 minute piece it evolved again into a more contemporary version inspired by a Joged Pinitan performance that I saw of Ibu Ni Cenik ( Jimat’s mother) at the Chedi. Joged Pinitan is solo performance where the dancer played all the characters in the story without props or masks ( almost similar to Odissi and Bharatntyam solo dance stories). The New Shakuntala was performed to the music of Eric Neufield and incorporated Balinese and Indian dance gesture with Balinese inspired vocal techniques.

In February a company of artists Teater Creamer Box arrived on our doorstep in Banjar Payogan and wanted to do a performance of `Waiting for Godot` the next evening. We managed to get Borneo Art Studio in Tebesaya and what unfolded was the most amazing piece of physical theatre that I had ever seen. The dedication and skill that they brought to this performance was evident in their precarious balances and delivery of this play but even more so when they noted that they rehearsed instead of ate for four months and had self funded this ad hoc tour. At present they are back in Bali performing at the Indonesian Peoples Forum.

They simply just prove that one doesn’t need `funding` to make good theatre. It comes from the desire and dedication to do so and it would be great to have them come out to Australia some time and get people who complain about the lack of funding here to get up do something, create work that is worth funding. Following the performance in Ubud, they then did it again in Denpasar before heading home to Bandung via a gig in Malang. In early February there was a short story conference held in Negara (I had turned up to it by accident thinking it was a theatre event). The event was closed with a colossal performance by Nyoman Erawan – a cast of thousands supporting music, images, installation, and poetry all by Nyoman Erawan. So much for the artist doing for the art and not for the ego. There were some great moments but by the tenth slide projection of Erawans face I think I was suffering Erawan poisoning. It was a classic example of lots of money ( the cast of thousands and special effects) and not much thought.

March came along and with it was a performance group by Tuju Taksu from California lead by Maru Matthei, Sharing Art and Religiosity led by Prabto and Diane Butler and the Udayana Festival of Performance ... all at about the same time. It was a tough decision but my heart was in Denpasar with Teatre Orok who were organizing their second Festival of Performance. I somehow managed to get through the month rehearsing with Tuju Taksu as well as redoing my own pieces The Red Room, A Clockwork Medea and Shakuntala for the Udayana Festival. The Festival had some great nights and some terrible nights – Gepeng’s ( SE Dewantoro) installation, the great Cok Sawitri and Ita, a group of students from one of the high school performing a piece about the disintegration of society and the highlight of the whole event - a performance entitled “Festival” which was a collaboration between POSTI and the students of SMR 4. The piece started with a kind of upside down parachute strung in the sky which gradually lowered to the resonating hum of the students seated in a circle. Students dressed in white began to move slowly around the circle as this piece was lowered just several metres from the ground. The students froze and the lights blacked out as the parachute collapsed. Immediately the lights came back on to a vision of joy and color as the kids splashed paint and color all over themselves and this parachute as it was raised back into the sky. It was the most and exciting piece of contemporary performance and installation I have seen in a long long time. The group itself has been doing innovative work with their adaptation of texts which was seen at the Young Peoples Theatre Festival held at STSI Denpasar in April ( but I haven’t finished with March.)

I managed to go to a few Sharing Art Nights. Apparently I chose the wrong nights. As an audience member I was utterly confused by the work of Prabto and his students – were they performing or were they not performing, was it a movement jam that I was watching that people could join ( yet felt uncomfortable to do so). I wasn’t the only person who felt unsure about what we were witnessing. Even with the bad performances by the ever so radical students of STSI at the Udayana Festival, I had a sense of what they were trying to do (openly insult the intelligence and the time of the audiences that had attended that evening).

Tuju Taksu performed towards the end of March at Gaya Gallery over two nights. A good sized paying audience on both nights meant that Tuju Taksu could give a donation to two chosen charities – a school for disadvantaged children in Tampaksiring and Ketut Suriani’s foundation in Denpasar that does work with mental health patients. The mask performance has a nice audience following here in Bali that wait each year for he reappearance of their favorite masks. They have been performing in Bali since 1995. April looked like it was going to be quiet month but towards the end it started to heat up again with Festival of Theatre for Young People at STSI. This was one of those horrendous competitive events where there were judges and where the audience acted as if it were at a football match. They did everything they could to distract the people on stage from ringing other people in the audience on their mobiles to preempting the lines that were about to be said. If it had been my students performing I would have just got up on stage and said stop. The racket was confounded by the fact that all the groups performing had not learnt to use their voice properly (the hall at STSI is quite good acoustically) and were totally depended on microphones that muffled their sound. It could have been a good night’s entertainment. April was also the month that Sutasoma foundation performed their piece at the Garuda Wisnu Park, unfortunately their astronomically priced tickets meant that Keluarga Gepeng and all my friends could not attend. 350,000 rupiah tickect ( about seven dollars Australian) was just a little ridiculous. Going by the photos it looks quite polished but it always gets me how people can charge the same prices in a third world country as they would if they were performing in Sydney. Oh well.. In late April, we were blessed by visit from Kozana from France and Hanna from Finland who both were keen to do workshop here in Bali. These workshops were attended by both able-bodied and disabled performers and evolved into a performance called Ucapan Hati which was done both in Ubud and Sanur and filmed by Bali TV. Gepeng and I got to meet up again with the kids from SMR4 and see their performance “ Festival” at the Sunrise School in Kerobokan. Again it was the best thing in the days events which included an acapella group, a performance by the children and Keluarge Gepengs hideous “ Bangun Menari”. When we first did this small piece it really was a joke and seems audiences in Bali are in need of humour. We have a group of fans who like the piece simply because of its clumsiness.

In May, four of us from Kelompok Senja Hari ( Gepeng, Kerensa, Yanik and April traveled to Batungsel in Tabanan to work with eighty children in primary school. It was part of a community arts project set up by Yayasan Mack. The week was spent doing workshops in dance, theatre, poetry and art with plenty of networking between the three schools that were involved and the community leaders of different banjars promoting a creative way of learning. We ended the week with a performance for the community about rubbish. Gepeng and I had a days break before he had to swing into action again. He was asked by the organizers of IPF to reinstall his installation at the Indonesian Peoples Forum in Nusa Dua. It is an apt piece of work describing the degradation of the environment in his own home town. June is supposed to be romantic for me and Gepeng but I already feel the need for preparations back in Australia - learning my lines again for the Mr Stupid Tour with Musik Kabau, preparing Publicity Material for my performances of the RED ROOM at the Melbourne Fringe and of course trying to line up other gigs and workshops along the way. Send me an email. I am available for workshops in both traditional and contemporary performance, discussions on new and traditional performance here in Bali as well as residencies in schools and communities.

Salam Budaya
Kerensa Dewantoro
kerensavan@hotmail.com