*Jakarta Globe, 23 December 2009

Never is there a greater desire to leave a country than when you’re prevented from doing so. Looking utterly disheveled into my 13th hour at the Simon Bolivar airport in Caracas, I groggily awoke on a departure hall bench to Spanglish boarding announcements, having experienced the most traumatic incident of my traveling career.

The previous night I was detained, had my stomach x-rayed by the anti-narcotics police for suspicion of being a drug mule, was grilled by a vertically and mentally challenged national guard for no apparent reason and had my passport confiscated and thoroughly examined under ultra-violet lights and a magnifying glass for its authenticity. These minor hassles I laughed off. But my mirth promptly expired when a representative of Air Canada denied me the right to board my flight to New York. The reason stated on both my flight record and the hardcopy now in my possession read: “Indonesian citizen without visa to Canada. Denied board.”

I had no intention of entering Canada. The airline just so happened to transit in Toronto en route to New York City. A bloated airline rep offered no solace when he said new information had come to light stating Indonesian citizens require a visa to enter Canadian airspace. Since when? “Sorry, we don’t know. Try flying with another airline,” was the answer. Perhaps due to the initial shock I managed to remain calm, though the plan of suing the airlines for causing emotional distress was already hatching in my head. In my fog of shock, someone handed me the phone numbers to American and Continental airlines, which I promptly lost.

Since Air Canada was the last flight, departing at 1.55 a.m., all other airlines had shut down. There was no use badgering anyone until morning. I headed for the arrival hall food court where other travelers, who preferred the stiff seats between Subway and Church’s Chicken rather than challenging the crime-filled streets of Caracas to catch their red-eye flights, were spending the night.

There I met Juan Francisco, a recent engineering graduate also heading for New York City. He is planning to purchase a Dell computer in America to resell in Venezuela for profitable black market dollars. Borrowing his iPhone, my heart sank upon seeing the prices of last minute flights to the USA from this mountainous country. In exchange for using his phone, we watched comedies on my laptop to while away the long hours until dawn and took turns watching each other’s luggage during toilet runs.

At 3.30 a.m., I parted ways with Juan Francisco and tried my luck with the airlines. Within the next few hours, I’d exhausted all my options, was becoming unhinged and ready to roll into a distraught ball of bawling and tears. All the airlines – American, Copa, Aerolinas Argentinas, Delta, Continental and even one I had never heard of called Santa Barbara – heading for the US cities of Miami, Houston and Atlanta were not only fully booked, they were “overbooked” to quote one airline rep.

Continental took pity on my frantic figure and placed me on their standby list. At this point, I was ready to be cargo. I was ready to shed my 40-liter backpack of dirty laundry and be a bagless vagabond, as long as I was a bagless vagabond on my way out of South America. I felt like a hapless lover spurned by all those I’d courted and rejection inspires desperation.

My situation was such: I had no working phone to contact friends or family, was denied board by Air Canada, denied a refund by Air Canada, every airline heading for the US was overbooked and only one out of five airline reps spoke English, I possessed less than $400 to my name and was not at all confident my credit card wasn’t maxed out yet. There was also the issue of a connecting flight from NYC to Singapore I was scheduled to be on at 2100 that night. In my attempt to be a frugal globetrotter, all my flights were cheap but non-refundable, making my Christmas homecoming surprise trickier to accomplish. In the meantime, the memories of my gastronomically happy moments in Venezuela rapidly eroded and were replaced by a surety of my never setting foot on the entire continent of South America ever again.

But when the sky burst into dawn flames over the looming Avila Mountains in the distance, American Airlines pulled through for me. They found me a direct flight at noon that would get me to NYC in time to catch my connecting flight to Asia. The cost was exorbitant and only three seats were left. I prayed (for my Visa to function) and paid.

As a traveler, I rely on impulse and instinct, trusting that I’ll get where I need to go safely and promptly, priding myself when I do so. I consider them my little accomplishments, minor victories won in the battlefield of voyages. Air Canada was a bitter lesson, where I learned not every wish acted on a whim can be granted every time, even if it is the wish to return home.

*Jakarta Globe, 16 December 2009

To enter a new country without anything but your Lonely Planet guidebook is akin to snorkeling: you only skim the surface of the sights, the food and the culture.

To enjoy a new country with a local who knows it well is a more like deep-sea diving into its very soul. You become part of welcoming homes instead of cheap, seedy hostel rooms. You get to eat home-cooked meals and share jokes with your newly adopted families and friends. Most importantly, you become privy to a deeper understanding of a land that isn’t yours, for you’re seeing the country through its locals’ eyes.

The country of my choice: Venezuela, the land of numerous Miss Universe title holders, the infamously outspoken Hugo Chavez and the thoroughly inconvenient one-sided currency exchange (buying dollars is illegal here). My local connection: Maikel, a documentary filmmaker and an old friend. In Maikel, I found a trusted guide, an inside man who knows which back alleys to take during rush hour, the times of night to avoid wandering the streets, and where to find the best rum and cacao chocolates.

Though only in his mid-20s, Maikel’s knowledge of Venezuela’s socio-economics, politics, history and gastronomy was abundant. From the moment I stepped off the plane to the time he brought me back to the airport, I was regaled with the tales and tradition of Venezuela, from the popular business endeavors tackled by the Spanish (restaurants) and Portuguese (bakeries) immigrants residing in the capital of Caracas, to the architect behind the mosaic floor design at the Simon Bolivar International Airport. But what stuck with me the most was the food Maikel introduced me to.

He showed me Venezuela first-hand through my eyes and my stomach. Every activity we undertook included a local meal, a snack, a drink or a dessert.

In Caracas, the high undulations of the country’s verdant mountain ranges greeted me. I soon deduced the reason why Venezuelan women were as curvaceous as they are. It does not involve the giving breast enlargements on Sweet 16 birthdays, but it is because of the food.

It didn’t take me long to discover that Venezuelan cuisine, to my dismay, doesn’t stay away from cheese, that all-time fattening and cellulite-inducing ingredient.
Every single meal I stuffed myself with freshly made soft, white cheese ( de mano , manchego , guayanes , clineja ) of varying levels of buoyancy and melts, from the ham-and-cheese filled crescent croissant cachitos in the morning and the thumb-thick maize pancake cachapas for lunch, to the gooey finger food of fried tequenos and famous cornmeal cake arepas at night. The Venezuelans, in my opinion, should replace the French as the famed lovers of this dairy product.

Performing my duties as a tourist, we scaled the heights of El Avila’s national park by cable car. On the mountaintop, we found the tourist hot spot immersed in a thick rain fog and teeming with food vendors and hungry families.

Held in hands, half-eaten, were plates of arepas , cachapas , empanadas (fried cornflour patties packed with cheese and meat) and bowls of sopa de mondongo (a thick, flavorful soup brimming with chewy tripe and boiled root vegetables).

As we waited for the rain to dissipate and Caracas to become visible from the mountain, I chose an ice-cold milky sweet chichas over a hot chocolate for the sole reason that every Venezuelan had one in their hands. Like Indonesians, it seems like they are firm aficionados of all things sweet.

When not consuming food, Maikel entertained me with stories of Venezuela’s gastronomy — from the tradition that lies behind the hallaca (a meal prepared by the family during the Christmas season), to the methods of creating a perico (scrambled eggs with tomatoes and onions).

Maikel’s father Miro, a well-known local food writer in the area, prepared my last meal in Caracas. The dishes may not necessarily be Venezuelan in origin, but were prepared with the love of a Venezuelan man (though Miro is originally a Croat and was born in Chile).

Indeed, it was the most exquisite of subtle flavors that exploded in my mouth in a frenzy of sweet, peppery and sour when I sank my teeth into Miro’s fresh Chilean salmon, coupled with soft-boiled plantain, sprinkled with chopped onions and coriander, glazed with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

Watching the sun over Caracas with Maikel and his family that evening, my palate recalled the days of feasting on cheese, sweet, fermented drinks, bitter buttery cacao chocolate bites and nectarous rum.

On my journey, I have consumed many delicious meals — alone. But there was a delicate difference in enjoying a country’s banquet of gastronomical delights in the company of friends. It made the flavors all the more indelible.

*Jakarta Globe, 9 December 2009

With fluffy pillows propped around me, I bounced on the soft white sheets of a bed in Mexico City’s new airport hotel, ecstatic to have electricity and a modern toilet at arm’s reach.

These may be simple necessities for some, but following a sojourn on a Mexican farm, they were luxuries for me. Less than 12 hours before, I had been deep in the hills, toiling away on one with none of the amenities listed above — unless one counts the compost toilet.

Finca Tres Mundos is a concept farm owned by Elham, an Iranian-American, and her Mexican husband, Luis, who decided to build a sustainable farm on the mounds of Mazatepec. They constructed a stone house on the top of a hill, an adobe mud hut at the bottom and sprinkled two donkeys, three sheep, two dogs, a cat and half a dozen chickens in between.

To reach the farm, it took over an hour to clear the massive metropolis of Mexico City — which has spread its growing tentacles of white-washed houses onto the mountainsides like an unstoppable disease — to Xalapa in the east.

From there, it was a 40-minute ride into the forest and the village of Mazatepec, where the bumpy main road can only handle one truck at a time, donkeys tied to the side of buildings bray incessantly and the local butcher sells her wares on the verandah of an abandoned building. Then, after 10 minutes of walking and lugging my 15-kilogram backpack over hills, slopes, muddy paths and a stony creek, I finally arrived.

A family of four Mexicans greeted me in front of the hut where volunteers sleep. Mariana, a 30-year-old painter and muralist, was farm-hopping around Mexico with her family, home-schooling her daughters, Paula, 12, and Valentina, 6. The children’s father was a bullfighter who Mariana eloped with at the tender age of 17 and divorced a few years ago. She was now with her sculptor lover, Cesar.

At first, I had been concerned about the sleeping arrangements, as the family was already occupying the place and there was naught inside the hut except for a large table piled with sleeping bags and thin mattresses. Elham, sensing my distress, pulled out another table from under the mattress-laden one and presented my “bed” to me with a smile. I spent my nights huddled next to a snoring Mariana, fancying myself to be in a war refugee camp — minus the bombs or killing rampages, of course.

My first sunset was spent roasting marshmallows by a bonfire and attempting to understand the Spanish jokes. Since there was no electricity, it was dark, save for the sky’s cloak of stars. Our dinner was simple: roasted potatoes, tomatoes and onions, and lemon juice as a dressing. As night fell, the temperature dropped, forcing us to head into the main house where we played card games by candlelight.

The following day, I worked with Cesar to take down the roof of a cob hut that was to be rebuilt into a chicken coop. Cesar barely spoke English and my Spanish was no better, so instructions were acted out like a game of charades.

After the laborious job of dismantling the roof and running away from angry wasps that were living in the wood beams, I was ready for more ladylike duties and turned to separating squash seeds, to be dried and roasted, with Elham.

At the farm, even the basics required effort. The compost toilet was an open-air two-tiered wooden shack with a cement seat to squat on. Bodily fluids amassed at the lower level, which smelled like a horse stable due to the wood chips masking the odor. What was most disconcerting was the quiet — how I missed the sound of flushing!

The problem with having one toilet for seven people occurred in the mornings when I, busting for the loo, would usually find someone already there before me. But at night, I discovered that counting stars could help pass the time.

Showering was another matter. On this farm, the act of bathing demanded planning and patience, as it involved using a bucket system and boiling water 20 minutes beforehand.

“The bucket system turns most people off,” said Elham, telling me of a previous volunteer who hadn’t bathed for over a week. These days, volunteers will find a sign in the adobe hut that reads: “In consideration of others, all visitors must bathe AT LEAST once every four days.”

Life here wasn’t much different from that of poor Indonesian villages, where poverty imposes these conditions upon its residents. Yet here were individuals putting themselves through the difficulties and hassle voluntarily.

Still, I was glad I tried it out. Even if only to discover that I, spoiled city child, was not cut out to be a traveling farmer. It took all of 48 hours before I sprinted back to Mexico City as fast as the bus could take me. After all, I had basic needs that had to be met. And a hot power shower in the winter was one of them!

*Jakarta Globe, 2 December 2009

A country’s first impression is indelible. It leaves an imprint, like a lover’s first kiss. And more often than not, it is never quite what you expect.

When I think of Mexico, I breathe in the fire of the desert earth and the loneliness of immigrants who turn their villages into ghost towns by the borders as they strain toward the American dream. I dream of swirling sands and sad-eyed cows with bony hips, of people worshiping Maria statuettes by roadside altars and the idolatry of robed skeletons.

Then there is the Mexico of the movies. Filled with prayers and drug lords, it is one steeped in religion and violence. What I found in reality was nothing quite so dramatic.

But due to media influence, I was still apprehensive upon arriving in Mexico City and was pleasantly surprised to find an airport better looking than New York’s JFK. The vast modern space of shiny glass and metal was clean and orderly, and my immigration officer said “ bien venida ” (happy arrival) with a smile as we parted ways. At least the movies were right about one thing — the locals are friendly!

Ana, my couchsurfing host, picked me up at the airport in her little white Tsuru. We charged into the oncoming traffic of gold-and-ruby Volkswagen cabs, buses and trucks like an errant bull. “Here we have to fight,” said Ana, motioning to the vehicles zipping by with hardly a flicker of a signal as they overtook and switched lanes, just as they do in Jakarta. I felt at home already.

I pride myself as a culinary explorer. Some people scale mountain peaks for adventure, but I gravitate to whatever crowd is gathering around a street vendor and request the same. Unfortunately, my barely passable Spanish complicates matters as the names of Mexican cuisine are as familiar to me as sand is to an Eskimo. I discovered this dilemma is easily solved by simply pointing or saying “ uno, por favor ” (one, please). I was often left with a fiery breath that could put a dragon to shame. I soon noticed that Mexican dishes are basically different interpretations of the staples of maize and beans, the latter of which can cause enough flatulence to raise a king-size blanket off its sheets.

Ana lives in the Perralvillo area, where the surrounding streets have names like Beethoven, Wagner and Caruso. In the mornings, the narrow street near Beethoven market was jam-packed with cars of all shapes and sizes, and in various states of disrepair. Mahogany-skinned men were at work, repainting the vehicles. They had taken over the street.

In Ana’s neighborhood, food vendors lined the sidewalks, a stone’s throw away from each other. Around them the elderly congregated, children played and women chattered. There I was, bearing witness to the country’s culture of three C’s: cars, Catholics and communal gatherings.

Ana estimated that there were 20 million people living in the massive urban sprawl. With such a dense population, there is no room for personal space. Bumping, grazing, knocking and colliding into people on the streets is as normal as breathing. Doing so while standing still, I discovered, was also entirely possible. I only started fretting about the remnants of swine flu when I saw a herd of pigs transported on an open truck through the center of town.

I fretted for nothing. Like the airport, the city was spotless. The roads were devoid of trash despite the high number of bodies and the lack of dustbins. Furthermore, the presence of paupers was as rare as blondes in the city of darkly coiffed Latinos. I had stumbled over more beggars on sunny San Diego’s sidewalks. In their place were lovers abound, from youths to geriatrics, displaying their desire for each other in every public place imaginable. Mexico City seems to have overtaken Paris as the “City of Love.”

Performing the most minimal of my duties as a tourist, I visited La Casa Azul, otherwise known as the Frida Kahlo Museum. It is named for the vibrant blue of the home where the unibrowed painter and her lover Diego Rivera resided for 25 years. It was full of the usual paraphernalia of such famous artists, such as a letter of gratitude to Albert Einstein and a portrait of Diego by Italian artist Modigliani.

But what I found most interesting was a sketch by Frida called “Ruina” (Ruin). “For Diego,” she had written in the corner. The pencil sketch of a cracked face was Frida’s reproach of her husband’s womanizing.

Yet theirs was a great love and artistic alliance that survived the distress of infidelities. Looking at the lovers on the streets of Mexico City, it isn’t hard to imagine them sharing the same fate, even as commoners.

My first impressions of Mexico may not have been filled with the madness and mayhem promised by the silver screen. Hollywood is allowed her hyperbole but I prefer Mexico just as she is.

]]> http://titaniaveda.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/12-hours-in-118-time/ Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:26:43 +0000 Titania Veda http://titaniaveda.wordpress.com/2009/11/30/12-hours-in-118-time/

*Jakarta Globe, 5 December 2008

We hear the sirens first and then see the flash of green as they zip past. The paramedics of Ambulance 118 are the heroes of the streets, working around the clock to save lives and lend a tender hand.

7:30 a.m.
Even in the early hours of the morning, the parking lot of Cipto Manungkusumo Hospital, or RSCM, in Central Jakarta is filling up fast.
Five ambulances are parked in front of the children’s wing. “Ambulans Darurat,” or Emergency Ambulance, has been stenciled boldly in red on the front of the forest-green vehicles.
A man with plump cheeks and a short, squared-off beard is inside one of them, checking an oxygen tank.
“We have to go to Manggarai [South Jakarta] to fill up our oxygen tanks,” Dany Widyanto says.
At 26, he’s been a paramedic for four years. An older man with a perpetual smile, dressed in the regulation blue Ambulans 118 uniform and scruffy sneakers, introduces himself as Habibi Dukhri.
“We always travel in teams of two. Dany and I take turns driving,” Habibi says.
Today the two have been paired up for their 12-hour shift, covering Central Jakarta.

8:00 a.m.
At the oxygen-filling station, Dany and Habibi run into Marlinawati Susana and Mutmainah. Known around RSCM as Marlina and Imut, the two women are also attending to their tanks before their shift begins.
“We have to check our equipment every morning because patients are more likely to die from lack of oxygen than delays in [getting to the hospital] caused by traffic jams,” Marlina says, referring to the maddening traffic conditions in the Indonesian capital.
Slender and long-limbed, she has pulled her hair back into a ponytail, accentuating her pale, heavily powdered skin.
Her partner, Imut, wears a jilbab, or headscarf, and no makeup. She lets Marlina do most of the talking.
They have both been with the ambulance unit for more than two years.
“Almost half of our crew are women. There is no difference between us [men and women],” Habibi says.
Marlina says, “People work here because they like a challenge.”
The four of them say their goodbyes and hop back into their ambulances.

8:20 a.m.
Habibi and Dany leave the oxygen station for the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle in Central Jakarta, where they are expected to “stand by” from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
They are not worried about being late; it is likely they will just be sitting there, waiting.
“In the beginning, I liked the idea of going all around the city,” Habibi says. “And after doing it for a while, I began to really enjoy it. In the hospital, there is a senior-junior system. Here, [as paramedics] we are all equals.”
In the five years that Habibi has been a paramedic, not a single patient has died in his ambulance. “Victims sometimes die when we arrive late on the scene, but never in the ambulance because we always stabilize them before moving them,” Habibi says.
Even in heavy traffic jams?
“The response time for road accidents is often longer due to traffic. Sometimes when we get there, the victim has already been taken away in a bajaj [auto-rickshaw] or taxi,” Habibi says. “We often lose victims that way.”
Ambulance 118 is a national government ambulance service. The service is free for people with welfare cards, as well as road accident victims. For house calls and hospital-to-hospital transfers, there is a flat-rate charge of Rp 200,000 ($17), regardless of mileage. The cost includes all necessary services and supplies.
“People don’t know much about us,” Habibi says. “Sometimes, when there is a road accident, say someone on a bike, they often refuse our help because they think they have to pay.”
Dany is broody and seemingly fed up. But he concedes, with a roguish gleam in his eyes, that he is in his element when on the graveyard shift: from 7:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.
“The most exciting are the nightclub victims,” he says. “You never know what is going to happen! Someone might be drunk and try to pick a fight with us.
“That is a cause of distress for paramedics because our safety is important. If it is not safe for us, it is better we refrain from treating the victims until backup from police or another unit arrives. Don’t try to be a hero.”

8:40 a.m.
At the traffic circle in Central Jakarta, Habibi relaxes in the back of a police pick-up truck fitted with benches and a canvas roof. He has found a friend: a policeman directing the rush-hour traffic.
“We like to call ourselves street children,” Habibi says with a laugh.

9:58 a.m.
Habibi takes a call and the men get into the ambulance.
“We’re off to the north now. They are out of ambulances in Kelapa Gading because most are them are being used to take welfare card holders to the hospital,” he says. RSCM has only five operational ambulances.
“Before, when we had 15 ambulances, our response time was excellent. At times, three ambulances would converge in one place,” he says. “We aim for good response time.”
Dany sounds the siren and the ambulance sails through a red light. Drivers honk their horns in protest. They still do not know the nature of the emergency.
“We often get crank calls, so our operator will take a call, write down the information, and call the person back at their number,” Habibi explains.
The ambulance veers into the busway lane, which is lawful in an emergency. “Ambulances have priority on the road but people still don’t realize it,” Habibi says.
He rings the operator for the exact location, then reports to Habibi: “We’re standing down. There is another ambulance closer.” They turn back to Menteng, Central Jakarta.

10:45 a.m.
Habibi pulls into a small police post at Suropati Park, Menteng, to use the bathroom. Dany perches himself on a steel bench. His partner returns with milky coffee. “I smoke sometimes. In the field, we can survive all day on just coffee and cigarettes,” Dany says.
“They call us ambulans gaul [cool ambulance drivers] because we are all so young,” he laughs.

11:00 a.m.
Habibi’s phone rings. “Here we go,” he says. “Standby for a protest? MPR/DPR? Inside or outside the building?” he asks the operator, referring to the People’s Consultative Assembly and the House of Representatives buildings.
“Two units have been called to be on standby for this protest,” he tells Dany. They get in the ambulance and Habibi starts reading his newspaper.

11:20 a.m.
Dany parks in the street outside the legislative complex and walks over to meet Suyitno and Eka, from the Ambulance 118 unit in from Tanjung Duren, West Jakarta.
“The protest has not even started,” Suyitno reports.

11:30 a.m.
A man in uniform approaches the ambulance. A young woman wearing a pink T-shirt is slumped in his arms, her long hair covering her face.
A crowd forms. Within seconds the woman is being given oxygen through a nasal cannula.
“Wake up, Mega,” Dany says, once he has discovered the victim’s name.
Habibi pops around the door with an oxygen mask. “Dany, use this instead.”
Habibi and his colleagues chat with the victim’s father, seemingly unperturbed by the situation. Her husband appears with a plastic cup of tea.
The woman stirs, managing to raise her head just enough to sip the sweet tea.
“How is she?” Suyitno inquires. “Stable,” comes the reply from inside the ambulance.
The woman had followed her father to Jakarta from Ngawi, East Java Province, to support him in his protest to increase the tenure of village administrative leaders.
Although Habibi advises the patient to rest, the husband calls a taxi and they leave.

12:05 p.m.
A man approaches Eka and asks her to check his blood pressure, which she does. It is not long before a Civilian Protection Service officer enters the ambulance. “What is your complaint, sir?” He too is worried about low-blood pressure. Then comes an elderly gentleman with a black cap.
“I have a headache,” he says to Eka, as she dutifully pumps the blood pressure meter.
Habibi makes small talk with the men about the protest.
“If one comes in, the rest follow. They are often looking for headache meds,” explains Habibi, as Suyitno informs the growing crowd of the same thing.
“We don’t supply oral meds,” he tells the people lining up. “We only carry them for emergencies and evacuations.”
Three more men ask Habibi to check their blood pressure. “They will all line up because they think we are offering freebies,” Suyitno says.
“My chest hurts,” one man says.

12:50 p.m.
Eka wants to pray at her post in Tanjung Duren, West Jakarta. Everyone heads there for lunch.

1:00 p.m.
Habibi heads to the upper level of the Tanjung Duren Fire Station with Dany. They meet up with Purwiyanto, the area coordinator for West Jakarta. “We don’t have a post of our own, so we are sharing with the fire department,” Purwiyanto says, as the two paramedics settle on the floor.
Habibi rings headquarters to report on his whereabouts. On TV, actor Gading Marten is trying to find lines on a show called “Missing Lyrics.” Looking on, the paramedics dig into their meals.

2:40 p.m.
“We are picking up a patient from Pelni hospital and bringing him home. We do not know the condition of the patient yet,” Habibi says as they leave the fire department.
Turning onto Jalan S. Parman, they are faced with a traffic jam. “This is Jakarta,” comments Habibi as Dany switches on the siren. Dany looks agitated. “I don’t like jams,” he says. Habibi falls asleep.

3:05 p.m.
“Don’t take a ticket,” Habibi tells Dany as they enter Pelni Hospital in Central Jakarta. Once stationed in front of the emergency doors, Habibi sets up the gurney. Dany rolls it in.
“Straight ahead,” instructs the hospital staff member. The patient’s family greets them. A relative helps Habibi and Dany with the best way to get back home. “Go past Pondok Kopi because it is not too far. The patient has sores on his back,” she says.
In a darkened room with three beds and green pleated curtains, the patient lies on his back: A frail elderly man, covered only with a blanket, he has had a stroke and been at the hospital a week. A nurse dresses him carefully.
Dany and Habibi have their latex gloves on. “Sir, we are going to lift you up slowly, OK?” Habibi says.
They wrap the patient in blankets and lift him onto the gurney. “Does it hurt?” Dany asks. The patient moans, almost inaudibly.

3:20 p.m.
Everyone piles into the ambulance. The patient’s daughter-in-law sits up front. Habibi is with the patient in back. The patient asks Habibi to pull off his Band-Aid saying it pains him. “It hurts from the injection, Pak. This is to prevent bleeding,” Habibi explains.
He starts making small talk. “How old are you, Pak?” he asks. “72.” He gently holds the old man’s hand and takes his blood pressure. “Slowly, Dany,” he says as the road gets bumpy. The patient’s feet peek out of the blue hospital blankets, crusted with sores and cracked skin.
“Sometimes we travel out of town, like to Solo in Central Java when patients want to spend their last days at home,” Habibi says. “Then we would have a mechanic with us, in case the vehicle breaks down.”
The patient asks Habibi to scratch an itch on his left arm. Up front, Dany is trying to find the exit. “There have been coma patients who go home to die. We have to be there when the families pull the plug,” Habibi says.

4:10 p.m.
The ambulance arrives at the patient’s home in Pulo Gebang, East Jakarta. Three dogs roam around the patio; paw prints pepper the floor. Dany and Habibi roll the gurney into the house. With the help of the patient’s relatives, they lift him onto the bed. “Pak, get better soon,” Habibi says before walking back to the car.
He fills out a form with the patient’s details for the relatives to sign.

4:20 p.m.
Habibi fills out the daily log book and helps Dany with directions back to Central Jakarta. “A GPS system was set up for Jakarta but due to a lack of funds, it was never turned on,” Dany says. “We know our way around Central Jakarta but sometimes we get calls to unfamiliar places and have to ask for directions.”

5:25 p.m.
Back at RSCM, the parking lot is full. Dany manages to find a spot and turns off the engine. Habibi goes to find snacks. “Before we had a post at this hospital, but no more. So we chill in the ambulance,” Dany says.
When Habibi returns with fried snacks, they talk about the rise of new ambulances in Jakarta hospitals.
“What irks me is that some people still think of us as mere drivers. It is to be expected, I guess, with all the fancy new ambulances nowadays being driven by drivers who are not trained paramedics like us,” Habibi says.
“Yet, people only trust us when it comes to big emergencies,” Dany adds. “Because if you compare us with fresh medical grads, they lose out to our experience in the field.”

6:00 pm
Habibi has gone for evening prayers. Two women approach the car.
“Pak, can you take a patient to an old folks’ home on Radio Dalam?” they ask Dany. He asks about the patient’s condition. He is still in the intensive care unit.
Dany calls headquarters to find out if the night-shift paramedics are available.
“Can you not take him yourself?” the woman asks.
“I am sorry, it’s procedure to have two paramedics in the ambulance,” Dany says. “And we recommend moving the patient late at night, when there is less traffic. Tonight, all the patients that have to be transported from RSCM are ‘bad’ ones,” Dany says.
“A ‘bad’ patient does not have all his ABCs [airways, breathing, circulation] in working order. Usually it’s the airway that’s most problematic. Our patient today was a ‘good’ one because he was stable.
“Sometimes hospitals are funny. They call us to take patients away when they are critical or ‘bad’ because they consider it bad luck if they die in the hospital.
It begins to rain. Habibi returns and Asep, the Central Jakarta area coordinator, jumps into the ambulance. “Not going home?” Dany asks him. Asep snorts, “Ha! I am sleeping in the ambulance tonight!”

7:20 p.m.
The rain stops. Habibi and Dany spill out of the ambulance into the wet parking lot and head home.

*Vivi Yip Art Room, 28 May 2009

Oversized doll heads of little girls dominate the canvas, surrounded by vertical and horizontal lines, and graphic shapes that seep and melt around them. Whimsical creatures who seem to stem from childhood fairytales, peer out of the crowded background, inhabiting the frame. The palette is subdued, with regular sweeps of muted brick reds and matte mustard greens. Part comical, with strains of anime, Badruzzaman’s creations deconstruct human interactions and personalities, always with the slightest dash of discomfort for the onlooker.

On canvas is where Badru plays with elements to adorn his paintings, such as foliage and snaking lines, creating a more tangible impression of space. Extensions of the artist’s graphic design background is apparent in the cubic shapes, hexagons and squares, and tiled spatial details of his pieces. The 27-year-old Yogyakarta-based artist, with his clean and defined lines, is inclined to provide the two-dimensional impression of a sleek graphic novel rather than a work of brushed acrylic upon canvas. But Badru, a native of Lampung, was never predisposed towards comic books or the like, his main influence being the street art that run rampant on the walls of Yogyakarta.
“Our attitude, our instinct,” he said, “was just to paint.”
The artist rarely displays his works, this being only his third exhibition. Though when he does, he prefers to express himself on a larger scale, saying “It seems such a waste to place my themes on a small canvas.”
His paintings veer more towards female characters, whose visages he bases on young women who enter his reality. While his male figures, possessing clown-like features, originate from the playful experimentation of his imagination. But these are not pictures of mirth. There is a sense of melancholy behind the children’s faces and, though resembling jesters in a royal court, Badru’s men hold something sinister behind their smiles.
“People have their own characters, I paint them accordingly,” Badru said.
Though the characters who appear to menace his central characters and invade the background change with each new canvas, one makes a routine debut – a bile-green rotund shaped critter with sharp, eager little dentures. Badru has no name for his creature, simply calling it is a symbol of egoism.
“I feel free to criticize people on canvas,” he said,” without them understanding that I have criticized them.”
His themes, Badru explains, all stem from personal experiences. Life’s daily fluctuations, minor joys, tediums, aches and interactions all play a part in Badru’s final pieces. He dips into his past and uses the memories to actualize his canvas. “I find more satisfaction with personal themes of love, friendship and day-to-day life,” Badru said.

Of a painting entitled “Girlfriend: Saving My Dog”, Badru had drawn on his experience with a former lover, depicting a beautiful woman-child with crimson pillow lips and sad bedroom eyes. In a larger  ontext, Badru does touch on universal themes, such as the desire to be accepted. “Hi…”, one of his earlier works, is a painting of a red-headed girl-child with an unadorned background and Badru’s personal favourite.
“She is a person who is lonely at heart, not accepted by the society around her,” Badru explained.
“I see myself as this newcomer, in a strange place, looking for someone to befriend,” he continued. He offers hope for his protagonist in the shape of a little bird that flies above her, playing with a strand of the little girl’s tresses between its beak. Although there remains some paintings that Badru considers too personal to be displayed for the public to scrutinize or enjoy.
“There are pieces which I’d prefer to keep for myself,” Badru said. “It is similar to how some people keep diaries, except mine is on canvas.”

Badru’s pieces can take up to 2 weeks to complete. Concepts, colours and timing are all swayed by the artist’s moods.
“Emotion plays a factor,” Badru said. “If I am feeling emotional, I tend to use warmer colours.”
With each piece, Badru begins with a rough sketch on paper before spilling his images on to canvas.
“I feel the power [on the canvas] to be more creative. I can add and embellish,” said Badru, who never limits himself to adhere to the original sketches he draws.
Badru has simple ambitions – to introduce his art to the public as he utilizes the canvas to release his past experiences and emotions. What he strives is to maintain a style that is unique to him.
“It is hard to accept comparisons to other artists because I try so hard to create my own style,” said the artist.
Badru, who has no formal training in fine arts, continues to develop his art, finding new techniques, adding and playing with dimensions to add to his eccentric tableaux. When he first started painting, his works were plainer, focusing only on the main characters. His backgrounds were rarely garnished with the detailed landscape and cacophony of critters as they are now.
“I feel I want to try something new, to change the composition, the layouts,” Badru said of his newer pieces. He surrenders to the process of creation, unburdened by style trends or themes that are popular in the art market.
“What is important is to be as creative as possible,” Badru stated. “As for the art being good or bad, that is up to the public to judge for themselves.”

*Jakarta Globe, 11 December 2008

In the far corner of a house in Cimanggis, 40 kilometers from Central Jakarta, a boy walks by, pushing an empty wheelchair.
His gait is rather strange, his legs twisted at odd angles. He walks carefully, relying more on the wheelchair than pushing it. The quietness is sporadically shattered by screams. Short and high in pitch, like a frustrated toddler grappling for words that refuse to form.
In its sprawling compound on the main road of Jalan Raya Bogor, Wisma Tuna Ganda houses 30 children and adults with various forms of cerebral palsy and autism.
Most have lived here since they were toddlers. Fifty percent are over the age of 30; the oldest is 40.
Kristanti, the deputy head of Wisma Tuna Ganda, explains: “We treat residents for a maximum of 20 years, but some stay longer because their families are hesitant to take them back or have abandoned them completely. Where else can they go? So they become our responsibility.”
In a bright room with open windows, residents sit on safety chairs playing with colorful sets of shapes.
Most stare emptily into space, saliva dribbling from their lips.
Rusdi, the only one with coherent speech, answers in a slurred voice when asked his age and the name of his father.
Blind, the 36-year-old holds a forefinger to his left ear whenever he speaks, as if straining to hear.
The institution does not provide residents with a formal education.
“It is enough to teach them how to interact, understand who they are, and daily survival skills like putting on clothes and feeding themselves,” Kristanti says.
A caretaker is teaching Icha, the youngest resident, how to play with blocks. She does not look like she was born with a defect. But she is autistic and has yet to walk or speak at 3 years of age.
“She responds to her own name,” says Kristanti with a smile, “which means at least she understands who she is.”
Polo shirts, T-shirts, shorts and pants hang in the garden in neat rows under the morning sun. A man sits at the end of the hall, his legs crossed, eyes closed, swishing his head from left to right. There is a big grin on his face. On approach, gray hairs can be seen on his head.
“Fikri is one of the older ones. He is mobile but blind,” says Kristanti as she rubs Fikri’s head. At times his hands flutter up, as if playing  an imaginary piano. “They live in their own world,” Kristanti adds.
Neat white tiles dominate the physiotherapy room where chaos reigns. The floor is littered with bodies, prone and writhing. Three caretakers in dusky pink uniforms heave a child up and strap her to a standing frame. To the left, two children hang on frames like forgotten puppets; their legs and arms bound to splints of padded steel to keep them from stiffening and bending. The children wear heavy orthopedic shoes so they will not develop flat feet or curling toes. They are strapped to boards with cloth straps, hands hanging limply above their heads. For an hour they rest that way to straighten their muscles and practice standing.

“At first, they were angry and would struggle against it,” says Rita Komala who has been a physiotherapist and caretaker for 11 years. “But now they have gotten used to it and some can fall asleep.”
The room is clean and the physiotherapy equipment new —a  noticeable difference from the past when there was an absence of generous donors. Prior to funding, treatment was not maximal due to the high cost of equipment for therapy.
“Shoes for preventing flat feet cost Rp 2 million,” comments Rita.
It is hard to tell the boys from the girls, or the men from the women. Everyone has short hair, cut off for convenience, and wears a T-shirt and pants. Their names are written in permanent marker on their clothing. Rizka, on the middle standing frame, flashes a big grin. She has sharp features, like a bird.
A commotion occurs in the middle of the floor. Ribs jutting out of his thin skin, a tall teenage boy is being undressed by caretakers. He has relieved himself in his pants and they are removing his adult pampers. They turn him over to powder him; his pelvic bones are visible.
One caretaker squeals upon seeing his erection. The 17-year-old’s pimply face remains expressionless. The caretakers laugh off the incident, quickly dressing him and strapping him to a chair. A napkin is placed under his chin like a bib.
“He leaks at both ends,” jokes a caretaker. “Like a tap,” says another.
A caretaker takes hold of another child and sits her down on a padded wooden seat. “They have to learn to sit,” says  Kristanti, “so their spines can be trained.”
“Susan,” she says pointing to a child with painfully thin and distorted limbs who is lying on her back, “cannot be trained to stand because her legs have become too spastic. If we force it, her legs will break.”

Lying stiff on the corner of a thin foam mattress, Vivi, in lollypop-pink stripes, blinks her large eyes and grunts. She wears splints, except on her right arm which was injured in a wheelchair accident.
“When Vivi was born, she was a healthy baby who had the chance to run and speak,” says Rita. She succumbed to cerebral palsy at 18 months.

Once everyone is strapped into standing positions, seated or stretched straight on the mat, the room falls quiet. Sounds from a soap opera blare from a television set. No one pays attention to it. The caretakers sit around the room and joke with one another.
Renni, who has regularly visited the home since 1993, comes bearing snacks. Renni went to physiotherapy school with Rita and is a freelancer now. She comes to volunteer for a few hours every week and says she feels something is missing when she does not.
“How are you, Ika?” she says as she high-fives Rizka, whose hands are tied above her head.
The 17-year-old beams beautifully, her mouth filed with sharp, black stumps that were once teeth. To her left, a plump girl grunts, laughs and shakes her head.
The caretakers crowd around Renni and eat her offerings.
“Rizka was so pretty when she was younger,” recounts Rennie. “But once she started menstruating, and through lack of care, her teeth have gone bad.”
Popping a peanut into her mouth, a caretaker speaks of Nano, who was left in a dumpster in Ancol, North Jakarta, when he was 5.
“He will always yell for food if he sees any,” she laughs. Nano is now 22.
“Many parents just leave them,” says Kristanti. “Some move houses without telling us their new address. Most never ask about their children. Sometimes when we feel a child needs their parents, we even pay for the parents to come here.”
An hour later more children are carried into the physiotherapy room. These are the ones who have finished their lessons next door. The caretakers busy themselves by massaging baby oil onto the atrophied limbs of the newcomers and joke with the children. Rizka and her two friends are released from their standing frames and left to roam the floor, their leg splints still attached. Little yelps and mini-screams are heard around the room. It is hard to tell whether the children are expressing pain, boredom or pleasure.
Rita and Rennie dote on Icha, their backs to Vivi in the corner. Vivi’s forehead turns lobster-red when she wails.
“Leave her, she is only seeking attention,” says Renni.

“Icha is cute so everyone hugs her and plays with her,” says a caretaker. “No one hugs Vivi.”

Vivi’s cries eventually brings a caretaker over to remove her splints. Once freed, her left arm bends inward and hardens. Her legs jerk shut. With emaciated limbs she resembles a sparrow with broken wings.
“They cannot move so their muscles athropy, their limbs getting smaller and smaller,” Renni explains.
Rizka, seeing the snacks near the mat, pulls her body along with her arms to take a crisp. She chews quietly. Crumbs fall.
Icha, the smallest, strapped to one of the standing boards, hangs like a cartoon character with her upright ponytail shooting out of the top of her head. Slightly cross-eyed she has a look of constant awe. She smiles and laughs at a caretaker who sits and dangles a camera phone in front of her.

Dani, an apple-cheeked girl with gorgeous dark eyes that disappear when she smiles, bangs her body against the standing frame next to Icha’s. Beside her, Putri, mouth agape, is silent and peers passively from behind her upright arms at the scene around her, slowly moving her head from left to right.
Rizka has another go at the snacks. She takes a few nuts then throws them on the floor.
“Leave it, she will eat them from there,” says a caretaker as Rizka picks a nut off the tile.
Buck-toothed and sporting blue socks featuring a superhero, Nanda is out of her shackles and is being trained to sit on a padded seat. She curls her head down and purrs in delight when someone rubs the back of her neck. After sitting for a while, she belches and throws up. A caretaker rushes over to clean her and rub minyak kayu putih, or cajuput oil, on her stomach.
“We’re going to lie you down on the floor, OK?” she says to Nanda.
Meanwhile, Dimas runs around the room creating havoc, pushing an empty standing frame and swinging the support straps. Physically he is in fine form but Dimas is autistic and cannot speak. He starts yelling and pulls people toward a hanging strap, wanting to play.
Lunchtime rolls around. All the children are taken off the standing frames and are left lying on the floor in various distorted positions as the caretakers prepare the food. Dani, effervescent, keeps laughing as a caretaker removes her splints. Vivi is spoon-fed on her back, her head propped up. The mashed up meal dribbles down her chin. Yellow and soft, her lunch also lands on her nose.
Putri sits upright beside her, solemnly flattening her rice before slowly bringing it to her mouth. A tiny dark-skinned girl by her feet stretches an arm toward her, eyeing her plate.
Dimas swoops in and steals her prawn cracker. Her reaction to catch him was too slow. She resumes her meal without a fuss.
On the opposite side of the room, Icha sneezes and looks surprised. Dani breaks out in laughter. Vivi, clean after her meal, suddenly throws open her sticks of arms, her huge eyes bulging toward the ceiling. She looks like a crucified child.
In the main house, the air is calmer and the atmosphere somber. Here lie the children too ill to move, in beds that have bars to prevent them from falling out. Above each bed is a wooden board listing each child’s name, birth date, origin, date of entry and ailments.
Tiffany, 6, is the frailest and the worst case. “Blind, spastic, mute, paralyzed,”  Kristanti reads.
In the dark, the whites of her wide eyes glow like sunken torchlights as a caretaker brings a spoonful of tomato soup to her mouth.
Yunas, 18, has been living at Wisma Tuna Ganda for 13 years. Although mute, he has full comprehension skills and responds with sign language and gestures. He often acts as a guide for visitors.
Upstairs, in the girls’ and women’s quarters, is Teresia. The T-shirt she is wearing says Dyna but Yunas knows it is her.
Aged and lined, with bony bent limbs curved like a meditating yogi, Teresia is the oldest resident. She arrived five years after the place opened in 1975. In the bed nearby, a girl squeals, happy to be playing with a handful of black pebbles.
There has only been one recorded case of adoption since the institution’s inception.
“It was in 1975 and a Dutch person adopted a boy. Of course, the child was active and could be independent,” Kristanti says. “No one would take a child who couldn’t move. It is too much hassle.”
Rare is the occasion when a child is taken back by their families. The fortunate few who are able to be productive are placed in other institutions to learn trade skills which are not provided here. But most residents die in the institution, often forgotten or abandoned by their families.
“An institution like this is not a place to break ties. A child has a right to be loved and cared for, here or at home,” Kristanti says. “But most people abandon their responsibility once they give their child over to us. Parents don’t realize they cannot forget their children.”

(Photos: Titania Veda)

* Dewi magazine, June 2005

The debut opening of Roy Petley’s gallery in London caused an uproar in the West End, with people seen queuing down the street to get in. In fact, that wintry October night saw so many people in the gallery that the fire department responded four times to heat alarms going off in the building.

This dream of an art gallery began many years ago by a boy abandoned to a children’s home. Trapped in a dark and dreary world, even the beatings by his guardians could not curb Roy’s irrepressible spirit. “My escape was painting and drawing, the reality was horrible. I quite liked the fistfights but I didn’t like the beatings,” he confides. Becoming the first ever to receive a scholarship at the children’s home at the tender age of sixteen, Roy left for Brighton University but after his first semester he decided to go to Florence in the arms of a beautiful woman. His thirst for the foundations of art, well-drawn, well-coloured and well-painted works naturally drew him to the Italian masters of old; Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Several years later, after living through his work in Italy, he returned to his homeland, England. There, he exhibited on the Green Park railings, a then melting pot of would be artists.

A chance meeting with the Duchess of Kent was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with the British royal family. The late Queen Mother and the Prince of Wales are collectors of his works, the late Queen Mother being particularly fond of his Norfolk landscapes. A whirlwind romance with an adoring public commenced, with sell-out shows following him wherever he went, from London to Barbados, Dublin to Dallas.

To satisfy his love of beautiful sports cars, three Alfa Romeos, engine red Ferraris and an E-type Jaguar once decorated his backyard. He even appeared on Good Morning Texas, flanked between William Shatner who “was on before me trying to promote a video game for Star Wars”, and a piano-playing-pot-bellied-pig who refused to perform. “It wouldn’t play the piano because it was camera shy”, Roy deduced.

Roy’s rags to riches story caught the eye of both the BBC and Sky Television, resulting in documentaries on his life and his art, and forced a change on his outlook on life. “I used to have people lining up to buy my work – but once the BBC did their documentary on me, they ended up banging on my front door trying to buy a paintings, it became a nightmare!” he exclaimed. Once dubbed the Best Dressed Man in London, this sort of major publicity was not in line with Roy’s solitary nature. In the early nineties, he chose tranquillity over fame and moved to a lonely farmhouse in the south-west of France. “I left England to become an unknown, to have a peaceful life”, he said. He quickly applied his energy to rebuilding his new-found home, which was soon to be featured in House & Garden, Homes & Gardens and Interior magazine.

the last of the sun by Roy Petley (courtesy of Petley Fine Art)

An impressionistic painter, he finds inspiration in his surroundings. In the summers, he is often found by local fishermen knee-deep in water, drawing models draped in flowing white dresses and adorned with wide-brimmed hats that Roy is known for collecting, or painting his neighbour’s children licking ice lollipops in his rose garden.

Self-taught, Roy experiments with all mediums, disclosing how he changes “mediums when I want to change my mind-set”. At his leisure, he moves effortlessly from pastel to oil, watercolour to sanguine. He speaks of each medium with equal passion, stressing on the ability to draw well being essential when working with any medium, particularly watercolour – “There is no changing it…there is only one chance”. He continues on saying, “watercolours are my reference for my oil paintings, an oil painting becomes a fuller version of the watercolour on a canvas.” He describes how Degas used to work with charcoal before drawing in the pastel, but prefers himself to draw with colour immediately. He is also is quick to illustrate that “pastel is a dusty medium and after a short period of working with it, I am always happy to return to my natural medium – oil.”

The subjects of Roy’s works are as varied as his mediums, drawing upon inspiration from anything and everything – portraits, still life, cityscapes and landscapes have all felt the touch of his brush in his paintings. “I usually have an idea of what I want to do before I begin, I see the world through my paintbrush and palette – all that remains to do is to recreate the image that I see in my mind.”

Whether it be landscape or still life, light and shadow are the basis of his works. There is a certain light and youthfulness, a grace and joyfulness that emanates from his paintings. He depicts an untouchable innocence that is reminiscent of childhood and days gone by. Although it may seem an old-fashioned and romantic world, this is Roy’s world as it exists today. Each painting draws you in, engages you with its subtle colours and soft lines.

sunlight in the dark canal by Roy Petley (courtesy of Petley Fine Art)

It is said that once you have had a show in Cork Street, you have made it in the art world. Having exhibited in galleries on the street for over a decade, Roy had reached a point in his life where he wanted to give something back. In his youth, Roy himself had approached gallery after gallery, carrying his portfolio, and had been turned away. In later years, the same galleries would beg him to exhibit with them – he wanted to provide artists with the opportunities he never had, with “a gallery they can trust, where artists feel comfortable”, where the open doors and laid back atmosphere would encourage artists – especially the younger ones. In the autumn of 2003, he did just that. “I started up the gallery because I was really fed up with how artists are treated”, he explained.

Petley Fine Art sets itself apart from other galleries because as Roy proudly states, “this is the first time an artist has owned a major gallery promoting work other than his own”. True to his word, Roy has raised the bar for the whole area by filling his gallery with only the finest paintings and sculptures from an international pantheon of artists. “We have famous artists, infamous artists, and also young artists just starting out in their careers – regardless of where they are in their careers, it is their talent that attracts us to them.”

It is this refreshing concoction of artists that gives the gallery its lively character and explains why artists enjoy exhibiting there. Neil Forster, an artist of Petley Fine Art and an established portrait painter whose sitters include The Prince of Wales, speaks highly of the gallery. “I thought this gallery opening in “the” art street of London and offering art with no over-intellectualizing or posing, is so refreshing that it must in time be one of the most visited galleries in London.”

Roy is also quick to point out that a lot of effort has been made to ensure nothing distracts from the paintings. His long-standing motto being, “the art is foremost, the gallery secondary and all emphasis is on the artists”.

Filled with boundless energy and enthusiasm, Roy floods his gallery with the same vitality he fills his paintings. Now with three galleries spread across Europe, Petley Fine Art seems to be going from strength to strength. As for Roy, does he miss the good old days when he was a struggling painter? “Well,” he laughs, saying, “I have artists ringing up at 4 AM telling me their problems with their wives who are jealous of their models. One artist calls up and says can I come see you now? I think, what’s going on here?”

Petley Fine Art
9 Cork St
London
W1S 3LL
+44 207 494 2021
http://www.petleys.co.uk/

(photo: Titania Veda)

*Jakarta Globe, 6 February 2009

A man climbs quietly from a grave and closes a white burial cloth that shrouds a skeleton. The bones are the color of burned earth and in pieces. A maggot scuttles to hide behind the empty eye socket of the skull. After more than 30 years of interment, all that is left of a once middle-aged adult now fits into a small bundle.

A weathered, wooden plaque with jagged edges bears the name the skeleton once answered to.

At Menteng Pulo Public Cemetery in South Jakarta, the air is fresh with the scent of blossoming trees and rich earth. A lone mottled mutt threads cautiously among the graves, its skin matted and reddish from the rain and earth. She sits on top of a grave, observing as 50 gravediggers calmly go about their work. They are not burying the dead but raising them, literally, from their graves.

Along a large strip of land near the Cideng River, 10,600 square meters to be exact, emptied graves with ragged edges line the cemetery. The workers have been commissioned by the city administration to unearth about 3,500 plots to make way for a highway linking Jalan Soepomo and Jalan Rasuna Said.

“Traditionally, you cannot disturb the dead,” sayd Entong, the head gravedigger. “But this is a city that is developing, and they need to expand the road.”

Inside an open grave, Entong breaks up the damp soil with a rusty hoe. His black jeans and feet are encrusted with red earth. He hands the last of the unearthed bones to his assistant to wrap in cloth and take to another burial plot that has been allocated for the exhumed bodies.

“This one was buried in 1962, so there are very few bones left,” Entong says, pointing to the decomposed bundle of bones about the size of an infant.

Entong climbs out of the grave and begins to break the gray headstone with his hoe. Pieces of stone fly around him. He has to remove the name plaque embedded in the stone so it can be placed with the remains for identification. His skin is burnished from the 32 years he has worked outdoors as a gravedigger.

“People call me first when they want to bury someone,” Entong says.

On this overcast morning, no weeping or hushed prayers for the displaced dead are heard, only the thud of hoes hitting the soil. Entong says it has been two months since the excavation of the graves commenced and it is scheduled to end next week.

“At the beginning there were more relatives,” Entong says. “Now it is rare for families to come even though we have informed them we will be digging up the graves. Maybe they have moved. Maybe they can’t bear the process.”

The majority of the graves are Muslim but Entong estimates 800 Buddhist graves will also be uncovered this week.

The remains are being moved to new burial plots further down the road. Unclaimed remains are moved to a cemetery at Kampung Kandang in Cilandak or to Srengseng Sawah Cemetery in South Jakarta, Entong says.

The ground is soft as paste from the ongoing Jakarta showers and he flings it around him as he hoes. An errant and persistent fly flits around his bare feet.

“We take the remains out, wrap them up and then knock down the gravestone,” explains Suroh, a caretaker at Menteng Pulo since the ’70s. Wearing a red shirt, a large mole jutting from his chin, he watches Entong work in the distance.

“I do not cry at anyone’s funeral,” Suroh says. “I am used to them.

“We are here to fix their homes, their final resting place.”

It is noon when Entong rests inside a makeshift wooden hut in the middle of the cemetery. The soiled clothes of the caretakers hang to dry nearby on headstones and from overhanging trees.
A caretaker chugs on a motorcycle down the narrow dirt road that runs through the cemetery, ferrying four white bundles to an ambulance for relocation.

“It is funny. Kaplok, kaplok, kaplok is the sound of the bodies flapping,” says Suroh as he watches.
“We are all the same. In the end we will die,” he adds as he deeply inhales from a clove cigarette.
Under the cool shade of the hut, the men sit in their mud-caked clothes, sipping hot, milky coffee and talk lightheartedly about death. Entong recounts a time when he had to break the legs of a corpse.

“If I didn’t, they wouldn’t fit into the cloth,” he says.

The kain kapan, or burial cloths, are rough pieces of white cloth two meters in length. “These ones cost Rp 12,000 [about $1],” Entong says, pointing to a pile of fabric in a cupboard. “Cheap ones.”

The hush is disturbed by the arrival of Iwan Suwandi and his family. Together with his wife, Suwarti, his sister, sister-in-law and grandson, he has come to rebury his son Rachmad.

“I was shocked to get the notice from the cemetery,” Suwandi says, of being notified of the disinterment. “I found out at Lebaran,” he adds.

A gentle-looking man with glasses and specks of grey through his hair, Suwandi had been ill for the past three months and unable to come to Menteng Pulo earlier.

Wearing a tan fishing hat and checkered shirt, Ali greets Suwandi, whom he knows. The caretaker has been tending Rachmad’s grave since he was buried here four years ago. An old hand, Ali has worked at cemeteries since 1948 and takes care of 100 plots in Menteng Pulo.

Rachmad, Suwandi’s third son, died of liver problems at the age of 24. “I wanted to move him to Bogor but we have no family there,” says Suwandi, who instead asked for his son’s body to be moved nearby within the Menteng Pulo cemetery.

Entong is called upon to dig up the body.

“It is his job to dig. We each have a duty,” explains Suroh, whose own position is caring for the graves, like Ali.

Entong alternates using his hands and the hoe to scoop out the earth. The burial cloth is laid on the ground beside the grave and he begins to place the unearthed chunks of bone on it. Two assistants crouch nearby to lay them out on the burial cloth. Standing above his son’s grave, Suwandi’s face is placid as he calmly inquires about the whereabouts of his son’s skull.

The wooden headstone reads, Rachmad H. bin Iwan Suwandi, etched black upon painted white wood. Slivers of the skeleton’s rib cage are taken out one by one. Entong continues to dig and finds a hipbone. Finally, he finds the skull. Suwandi places his hand over his mouth and lets out a small gasp. The family begins to pray. A sniff escapes Suwandi as he continues to look at Entong in the grave.

“His legs aren’t here yet,” Suwandi says.

Entong clears the mud from his hoe and continues digging.

The air is hushed and the smell of rain is heavy on the breeze. “We forgot to bring an umbrella,” Suwandi says to his wife, who nods agreement. Their 7-year old grandson, dressed in blue, has his hand on his knees and keeps his gaze intently on the open grave. The women look distressed.

When Ali comes over to help wrap the bones, Suwandi asks if the bundle is heavy. Ali says it isn’t. Three men wrap the bundle tightly and hand the bones to Suwandi. With steady steps on the slippery, rain-soaked earth, Suwandi carries his son to a prepared burial site, mouthing a silent prayer.

A little way up the road from where Rachmad was originally buried, a gaping hole six feet deep awaits. The small congregation stops, and Suwandi hands the bundle to a gravedigger as he jumps in the grave. The body is gently returned to him and the gravediggers tell him to open the bundle. “All of it,” says one as the other balls up chunks of soil with his hands. “It is to prop up the body so it does not overturn,” he explains.

Suwandi carefully tucks his son into his resting place and two men start to fill in the grave. An imam in a black velvet skullcap, propping himself up with a multicolored umbrella, asks for the name of the deceased and begins a low chant. Only the boy’s name, Rachmad, rings out as the imam crouches by the grave. All else is quiet save for the sound of hoes hitting the ground.

The mother opens a prayer book, her face partially hidden under her black jilbab as she prays along with the imam. Her grandson stands behind her, holding her arm.

Suwandi straightens his son’s old headstone and turns his palms up to the sky. The imam moves toward him and they pray side by side. The earth atop Rachmad’s new grave is choppy and uneven but Ali explains it will be tidied later. He takes out a clove cigarette, lights it and stands before this new grave he will also care for.

A warm wind blows. From a nearby mosque, the resonant call to prayers rings out, echoed softly by surrounding mosques.

(photos: JG/Yudhi Sukma Wijaya)

*Jakarta Globe, 13 December 2008

It is noon when Christine Hakim makes an entrance on the staircase of a hotel on Bali Island. The weather is balmy and the air has a faint smell of salt. Hakim wears a batik shirt with a cloud pattern and a jade-green lizard-skin tote bag slung over her shoulder. Her signature streak of green hair is barely noticeable when pulled tightly back.
Hakim runs into Trade Minister Mari Elka Pangestu, who has just addressed a conference, at the reception desk.
The press immediately swarm around them. “Mbak Christine!” the photographers and journalists call out.
Hakim answers questions with good humor and the poise that comes from being in the public eye for more than three decades.
“There is still no one in the film industry who can rival her,” whispers a journalist.

Since Hakim launched her acting career in Teguh Karya’s “Cinta Pertama” (First Love) in 1973, barely an unkind word has been written about her in the media.
It is not hard to see why. “As I age, my maternal side develops. I treat them like they are my children, even the older journalists,” Hakim says. “I jest with them, pretending to be difficult. They in turn try to coax me, as a child would coax their mother for a treat, to give them an interview,” she adds with a wink.
After the press conference, Hakim heads for the airport. The appearance of her very famous face — the vermilion lips, the warm eyes under darkened lashes, the beauty spot — causes many people to do a double take.
Besides being a screen icon, Hakim was the first Indonesian to be invited to sit on the jury of the prestigious Cannes International Film Festival and she also graced the cover of TIME magazine as one of their Asian heroes of 2004 for her contributions to film and society. Yet it is with a deep sigh that she sums up her life in the limelight in one word: “heavy.”
“It was my never my intention to end up this way. I just wanted to be a good person,” she says, referring to her humanitarian work.
“These are the consequences of the decisions I have made throughout my life. So I have to be consistent with my choices,” Hakim says. “In a way it is a moral burden — if I choose to let go of my commitments — because at times they involve the livelihoods of others.”
Hakim’s compassion for others and her nationalism are evident in the roles she has chosen to play in films such as “Daun Di Atas Bantal” (Leaf on a Pillow), about the lives of street children; “Serambi” (Verandah), about the aftermath of the tsunami in Aceh; and “Cut Nyak Dhien,” about an Acehnese freedom fighter.
Hakim is also an advocate for public education and children’s welfare. “If I can help someone who is in need — and release them from their troubles — that is what makes me smile,” she says. “When I am in trouble and help comes my way, it is an incredible feeling. Because I have felt that, I want others to feel the same.”
In 2008, Hakim was appointed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco, to be a Goodwill Ambassador for Teacher Education in Southeast Asia.
Her own foundation, The Christine Hakim Foundation, provides nutrition for malnourished children in West Java Province. “We [as public figures] do not always have to contribute to the community, but perhaps I want to give meaning to my own life. I feel if I do things only for myself then my life is less meaningful. But if my life can give meaning to others, then it has more purpose.”
A friend decides to fly back to Jakarta with Hakim and takes the last available seat — in economy. Without a second thought, Hakim gives up her business-class seat to her friend.
“I much prefer sitting in the back of the plane,” she says, waiting patiently for the crowded line to move forward. “Besides, it is the safest place in case of a crash.”
At lunchtime, Hakim takes out a brown paper package of rice from her favorite street stall in Bali. She politely refuses a stewardess’s offer of utensils.
Her down-to-earth attitude — sitting in economy, eating rice with her hands — appears to puzzle the other passengers, who watch her constantly. “Acting is a profession, just like any other. Life does not only encompass acting,” Hakim says. “The gist of life is not there [in film] but comes back to my existence as a human being. There is no difference between one person and another. We all have pluses and minuses. I do not feel I am better than anyone else.”
Arriving at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport, Hakim sails through immigration, past a sea of officials’ smiles. “The kindness of others makes my life easier, but it has also become a burden for me. People are nice to me because they appreciate, respect and believe in me. In that sense, I have to tread carefully so as to not disappoint anyone.”
The arrival hall is almost empty — aside from a film crew on break. Their camera and sound rigs are strewn around the area. Hakim recognizes a few of the crew members and stops to chat. They discuss a movie that is currently in production in Jakarta. The verdict is not good. Hakim shakes her head sadly.
“That film has been rife with problems from the start,” she says.
Once in her car, Hakim sinks back into her seat, clearly travel-weary. “On three occasions I wanted to stop making films” she discloses, pausing for thought. “But my soul is in film. As humans, we all have a calling. We all have our own duties to fulfill — of that I am convinced. Whenever I face a major predicament, in other aspects of my life positive things, such as recognition for my work, appear. So how can I stop?”
These awards symbolize people’s hopes and appreciation — their support. And so I continue,” Hakim says.
Back at her office in South Jakarta, Hakim rolls out a mat and begins to pray. The soft recitation of bismillah — in the name of Allah — resonates throughout the room. After praying , she changes into a boldly patterned top and a ruby-red Spanish-style tiered skirt.
Hakim says she does not find it hard to be a woman working in a patriarchal culture.
“I do not want to be a man. My femininity has become my strength. It sets me apart from men. It is an asset,” she says.
“In life, you have to be able to be tender and hard. I can be hard, believe it or not,” she says.
Darkness hangs over the capital as Hakim makes her way to a gallery opening, where she is guest of honor.
“In the end, it is my life,” she says. “But when people already respect and believe in me, they only want to see me as that person [they see onscreen]. They need to understand that I am also human and can also make mistakes. “
She reaches her destination and glides out of the car with a grand smile for the wall of photographers who greet her. Then Christine Hakim disappears into the throng.

(photo: AFP/Mychele Danau)

*Jakarta Globe, 25 November 2009

Strangers. The word tends to have an ominous cloud hanging over it. But in the beginning, everyone is a stranger, an unknown quantity — even the people who become our friends.

As a journalist, chatting to random people comes with the job. It’s a prerequisite, in fact.

The other day, I struck up a conversation with two middle-aged men watching a salsa class in San Francisco. They were from Guatemala. After conversing about dancing and being immigrants, the portlier of the pair said, “You’re very open. Most women here don’t normally speak to strange men.” What a pity, I thought, because those women missed out on meeting these two who, with twinkles in their eyes, taught me a little about their country.

I like strangers. They are a novelty with their different points of view and stories.

But like the Guatemalan said, trust in this day and age is hard to come by. After all, if colleagues can backstab you, friends betray you and spouses more likely than not cheat on you, then who’s to say the strangers you befriend aren’t liable to harm you?

Traveling in unfamiliar territory, everyone I meet is a stranger — a possible threat or friend. So as a solo traveler, I try to be more cautious. But on any journey, nothing quite goes as intended. In my experience, strangers have enhanced my travels and, more often than not, come to my rescue.

As a foolish youth driving solo across England and Ireland, I managed to get my car wedged in a ditch. There, surrounded by dense fog, past midnight, in the countryside somewhere between Dublin and Galway, I sat in the dark waiting for help. Eventually, I flagged down two men on their way home from the pub. Unfortunately, due to the substantial amount of Guinness in their system, their car ended up in the same ditch as mine. It was only after the pub closed and the rest of the inebriated villagers came our way that we were saved.

This time my story began when a 5,000-pound steel cable snapped off the San Francisco Bay Bridge, causing it to close for a few days. Due to the bridge closure, Amtrak canceled its buses, which I needed to connect to a southbound train, leaving me stranded in the city. Amtrak did leave a note on the bus stop sign. Catch the train in San Jose, it read. Nothing else.

I went to the local subway station to find a train bound for San Jose. A kind attendant informed me that the southbound Amtrak would leave the next morning. “Do you have a place to sleep tonight?” he said. At the train station, naturally. Unfortunately, the stations close at night, was his reply.

Lack of lodgings was the least of my worries. My mission was to catch my train to San Diego. The route I had to take was simple: a Bay Area Rapid Transit train from San Francisco to Millbrae followed by a Caltrain to San Jose where I was to wait for an Amtrak bus to Santa Barbara, and finally a train to San Diego.

Zipping down to Millbrae, I was slightly apprehensive. Was San Jose the right place to catch up with my wayward Amtrak transportation? Midnight was closing in fast. I turned to the elderly couple behind me and asked if they knew where I could catch the Amtrak train to San Diego. Their names were Bill and Rosanne, and they were on their way home from watching the musical “Wicked” in San Francisco. There were no trains till tomorrow. Again came the question: “Do you have a place to sleep tonight?” “No,” I replied.

Before alighting in Millbrae, Bill turned and said, “You can sleep on our couch tonight.” And with those words, the kind pair saved me from spending the night outside of the San Jose station.

So I hopped into their car and we drove to their home in Belmont. It was a quaint old house with a porch, the random passing deer or raccoon in their yard, a kitchen with flowery wallpaper and a brown-and-white Papillon dog called Mickey.

When Bill discovered my budding love for riding long-distance trains, he took me to his basement. On a wall a sticker read: “My wife says if I buy one more train she’ll leave me. Gee, I’ll miss her.” Bill is a railway aficionado.

He had spent the last 41 years turning the basement into a miniature country of undulating mountain peaks, canyons, clouds and cities connected by railways tracks and trains of all shapes and colors. We talked of trains till well past the witching hour.

It wasn’t until I was snugly settled on their couch that a thought crossed my mind — what if they were a couple of elderly serial killers? Laughable misgivings that dawned too late and completely unwarranted for the kind couple shepherded me onto a train headed for San Jose the next morning.

A friend of mine once asked what it feels like to befriend strangers. I had answered: happy. Looking back, I’ve changed my mind. My answer now? Grateful.

Travail de métho complété ! C’est ainsi que je le met sur mon blogue pour mon plus grand bonheur ! !

UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL

SONGE D’UNE ŒUVRE DE SHAKESPEARE

TRAVAIL DE SESSION

PRÉSENTÉ

COMME PROJET FINAL EN MÉTHODOLOGIE

PAR

ÉMILIE NADEAU-SOUCY

NOVEMBRE 2009

Table des matières

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….3

Biographie de Shakespeare………………………………………………………………………..……3

Principales œuvres……………………………………………………………………5

Mouvement baroque et comédies élisabéthaines……………………………………..6

Le songe d’une nuit d’été

1.1 Les thèmes………………………………………………………………………..7

1.2 Les personnages…………………………………………………………………..8

1.3 Caractéristique de la comédie……………………………………………………..10

1.4 Techniques d’écriture……………………………………………………………..11

Shakespeare notre contemporain………………………………………………………11

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….12

Songe d’une œuvre de Shakespeare

Le rire est essentiel à l’homme et fait habituellement partie de son quotidien. Dans l’histoire du théâtre, de nombreux auteurs se sont démarqués grâce aux rires qu’ils ont provoqués. William Shakespeare en est un exemple. En 1594, il a écrit la comédie anglaise Le songe d’une nuit d’été. Le contexte socio-historique, les thèmes et les personnages de cette pièce seront présentés. L’explication des diverses techniques d’écriture qui peuvent être associées à la comédie sera aussi faite, mais d’abord, voici une rétrospective de la vie et des œuvres de Shakespeare.

Le 23 avril 1564, un nouveau-né voit le jour dans une famille bien nantie de Stratford-Upon-Avon en Angleterre. D’une mère bourgeoise et d’un père marchand fortuné, le jeune William Shakespeare grandit dans un environnement propice à l’éducation et à l’instruction. C’est ainsi qu’il étudie de façon intensive l’anglais et la littérature latine, en plus de se pencher sur l’histoire, la logique et la rhétorique.

À l’âge de 18 ans, le jeune Shakespeare prononce ses vœux de mariage avec Mme Anne Hathaway de 8 ans son aînée. La cérémonie se fait rapidement, puisque son épouse est déjà enceinte de 3 mois. Après ce mariage, la vie de Shakespeare demeure en grande partie un mystère pour les historiens. La trace du dramaturge disparaît presque entièrement jusqu’à son arrivée à Londres en 1587.

Il faut attendre 1592 pour prouver incontestablement que Shakespeare habite bel et bien l’Angleterre. Cette preuve est fournie par le dramaturge Robert Greene, qui le critique ainsi dans un pamphlet :

      […] Corbeau arrogant, embelli par nos plumes, dont le cœur de tigre est caché par le masque de l’acteur, et qui présume qu’il est capable de déglutir un vers aussi bien que les meilleurs d’entre vous : en plus d’être un misérable scribouillard, il se met en scène dans sa dramatique vanité.[1]

Shakespeare pratique le métier d’acteur dont il est peu fier jusqu’en 1594 pour se consacrer ensuite davantage à l’écriture. C’est vers l’année 1595 qu’il écrit la comédie Le songe d’une nuit d’été. Les historiens ignorent le moment exacte de sa création.

Le dramaturge fait partie de diverses troupes en Angleterre et il s’établit finalement, après plusieurs années, au théâtre du Globe. Sa troupe est alors réputée comme étant « la meilleure compagnie de Londres. »[2]   Des archives commerciales prouvent que Shakespeare a fait une petite fortune et qu’il s’est acheté une propriété en Angleterre où il a vécu avec sa famille le restant de ses jours. C’est à l’âge de 47 ans, soit en 1611, qu’il se retire du monde du spectacle.

Shakespeare termine sa vie avec des démêlés judiciaires concernant la possession de certains terrains. Il meure à l’âge de 52 ans le 23 avril 1616. Ses deux filles ont des enfants, mais il est prouvé qu’il n’y a aujourd’hui, malheureusement, aucun descendant de la famille de Shakespeare.[3] Fort heureusement, bien qu’il soit mort, ses pièces de théâtre d’une grande richesse ont traversé le temps.

Pour faciliter la compréhension de l’ensemble de l’œuvre de William Shakespeare, il est possible de classer ses pièces de théâtre en trois grandes catégories ; les tragédies, les comédies et les pièces historiques. Il est intéressant de noter que Shakespeare s’est permis d’écrire tant des tragédies que des comédies. Plutôt que de se spécialiser dans un genre théâtral précis, ce dramaturge a prouvé son talent dans divers style d’écriture dramatique.[4]

Au total, Shakespeare a écrit 10 tragédies dont Roméo et Juliette, Mac Beth, Othello et Hamlet, prince de Danemark, 10 pièces historiques comprenant l’histoire du roi Henry et finalement 17 comédies dont La Nuit des rois, Tout est bien qui finit bien, Comme il vous plaira et Le songe d’une nuit d’été.

La pièce de  Shakespeare Le songe d’une nuit d’été s’inscrit dans le courant du mouvement baroque qui apparaît au XVI et au XVII siècle.[5] Au théâtre, comme dans les autres arts, le baroque s’oppose au genre classique en misant beaucoup plus sur l’émotion que sur la perfection. Le changement rapide de l’intrigue, l’illusion, l’inconstance, le paradoxe et le mouvement sur scène sont aussi caractéristiques à ce mouvement.[6] Le courant baroque est composé de diverses catégories de pièce de théâtre dont les comédies élisabéthaines.

En Angleterre, dans la seconde partie du XVI siècle, William Shakespeare est une référence en ce qui concerne les comédies élisabéthaines. Ce genre de théâtre est lié au règne d’Élisabeth Première et s’étend environ des années 1580 aux années 1630.[7] En Angleterre, le théâtre occupe une place de choix puisque la reine encourage le développement des arts. Tout au long de son règne, elle protège le théâtre des protestants puritains qui ont une foi très grande en Dieu et qui comparent la pratique théâtrale à la venue du diable lui-même. Protégé par la reine, Shakespeare a écrit de nombreuses pièces dont Le songe d’une nuit d’été. Les historiens pensent que cette pièce est écrite à la demande d’un Seigneur en vue de son mariage.[8]

Cette comédie est considérée comme l’une des pièces les plus joyeuses dans l’ensemble de l’œuvre de Shakespeare. Le thème de l’amour occupe une place importante dans l’intrigue. Le drame ne vient jamais miner la vie des protagonistes. Les quelques épreuves qu’ils rencontrent ne font qu’augmenter les sentiments qu’ils éprouvent les uns pour les autres. La fin l’histoire est heureuse et règle en définitive les quelques problèmes survenus au cours de la pièce.[9] 

La désobéissance face à l’autorité parentale est aussi un des thèmes importants. Égée, le père d’Hermia, veut à tout prix la marier à Démétrius, bien que son coeur soit pris par Lysandre. Qu’importe l’opinion de sa fille, l’ordre paternel doit être respecté au XVII siècle. La révolte d’Hermia découlant du mariage forcé entraîne le conflit et les péripéties de la pièce.  Le thème du surnaturel est aussi très présent.  La section suivante se consacrera  à son l’explication.

La pièce Shakespearienne est composée de rôles multiples. Au total, 22 personnages se partagent la scène. Il est possible de les regrouper en deux clans distincts ; celui des humains et celui des fées. Tout au long de la comédie Le songe d’une nuit d’été, les êtres surnaturels et les humains évoluent côté à côte. Bien que la confusion règne dans le monde des hommes à cause de la magie des fées, l’équilibre paisible de ces deux univers revient à la fin de la pièce, grâce aux mêmes pouvoirs surnaturels des êtres de la forêt.[10] 

Le sort des humains est scellé par les actions des fées. Lysandre, Hermia, Démétrius et Hélèna vivent leur amour au bon vouloir des êtres de la forêt et sont, malgré eux, des pantins victimes de la magie des fées. Dans la pièce, les artisans qui tentent de monter une pièce de théâtre pour le roi sont aussi victimes de cette magie.   

Shakespeare est le tout premier dramaturge à mettre en scène un univers aussi bien détaillé peuplé d’êtres surnaturels.[11] Pour créer ses personnages, il puise dans la mythologie classique, mais aussi dans le folklore populaire. Dans la pièce Le songe d’une nuit d’été, la petitesse permanente des fées est imaginée par l’auteur. Cette caractéristique physique est nouvelle avec l’écriture de cette pièce, puisque de façon habituelle, dans le folklore populaire anglais, les fées peuvent changer de grandeur à leur guise. Cependant, bien que les fées de Shakespeare soient petites, elles possèdent un grand pouvoir sur la nature et sur les hommes.[12]  

Le personnage d’Obéron, le roi des fées, est originaire de la chanson de geste Huon de Bordeaux datant de l’an 1548. Dans cette œuvre traduite du français à l’anglais par Lord Berners, un musicien britannique.[13] Obéron est victime, à la naissance, d’un sort malveillant qui lui donne la taille d’un enfant de trois ans. Dans la pièce de Shakespeare, Obéron est ni plus ni moins que le roi des fées. Peu soucieux de l’apparence qu’il projette, il est un roi bienveillant qui tente d’unir les amoureux de la pièce, en plus de tout mettre en œuvre pour que son mariage réussisse avec la reine Titania.[14] 

Dans la pièce, Titania est la reine des fées. Pour créer ce personnage, Shakespeare s’est grandement inspiré, selon l’auteure Beatrice Phillipotts, de deux dames célèbres. La première d’entre elles se nomme Diane. Elle fait partie de la mythologie romaine. Dans l’histoire originale, Diane se fait nommer reine des bois par son père. Il lui donne aussi pour l’accompagner une soixantaine de nymphes. Le personnage de Titania est inspiré en partie de cette déesse mythologique. La deuxième inspiration de Shakespeare est la reine Élisabeth Première. Selon Phillipotts, « nombre de spécialistes s’accordent pour dire que Shakespeare s’inspira de la reine Élisabeth Première pour créer le personnage de Titania. »[15] La Reine Élisabeth a régné sur l’Angleterre de 1558 à 1603, période fleurissante de l’écriture de Shakespeare. Un autre personnage appartenant au monde des fées joue un rôle principal dans cette pièce. Ce dernier se nomme Puck.

Puck porte aussi le nom de Robin Bon Enfant. Ce type de personnage, être surnaturel tantôt bienveillant et tantôt semeur de pagaille, fait partie de la branche des Brownies. L’origine du personnage de Puck de Shakespeare provient d’une légende écossaise. Selon cette histoire, les Brownies veillent sur les foyers le jour et font des tâches ménagères le soir venu. Leur mauvais comportement apparaît s’ils sont contrariés. La majorité des maisons d’Écosse sont habitées par un Brownie.  Dans la pièce de Shakespeare, le personnage de Puck fait référence encore plus spécifiquement au « Brownie anglais », très célèbre à l’époque de l’écriture de la pièce. Ce dernier est porté sur la sexualité et de nombreuses métaphores à ce sujet se retrouvent dans Le songe d’une nuit d’été. Dans Le livre des Fées, Beatrice Phillipotts prend cet exemple tiré de la pièce dans lequel une fée s’adresse à Puck : « N’êtes-vous pas cet esprit qui empêche le beurre de venir dans la baratte de la ménagère essoufflée ? »  Il est possible d’identifier le genre de la pièce en repérant les diverses parties qui la compose.

Le Songe d’une nuit d’été est une comédie classique considérant qu’elle peut être divisée en trois parties distinctes propres aux pièces de ce genre. D’abord,  la première partie de la pièce sert à installer une situation absurde, désagréable ou irrationnelle. La seconde partie est celle où l’intrigue est centrée sur la confusion de l’identité des protagonistes et, finalement, la troisième partie constitue le dénouement final et le retour paisible à la vie normale des personnages.[16] Une fois que les trois parties de la comédie sont bien identifiées, il est possible de repérer les techniques d’écriture qu’a utilisé le dramaturge.

Selon le Dictionnaire du Théâtre de Patrice Pavis, la définition d’une technique d’écriture est la suivante : « […] procédé qui consiste à inclure dans l’œuvre littéraire ou théâtrale une enclave qui en reproduit certaines propriétés ou similitudes structurales. » Selon cet auteur, la mise en abyme qui consiste à présenter une pièce de théâtre dans une pièce de théâtre est la forme dramatique la plus couramment utilisée dans cette catégorie de procédé d’écriture.  Dans cette pièce, Shakespeare utilise la mise en abyme comique pour faire rire le spectateur. Les personnages des artisans répètent une pièce de théâtre burlesque qui met en évidence les grands clichés de la tragédie. [17]

Dans le livre La tragédie et la comédie de Jean-Daniel Mallet, le comique peut être divisé en différentes catégories. Le comique de geste, le comique de situation, le comique de langage et le comique de caractère sont les principaux exemples des différents genres que l’on retrouve dans les comédies. La cachette, les jeux de mots et les quiproquos sont aussi des exemples de procédés couramment utilisés.[18] 

Le comique de geste comprend les mouvements physiques du personnage. Les numéros de clown, les coups de pieds et les coups de bâton sont des exemples typiques de ce genre de comique.[19] Les personnages maladroits de par leurs actions ou leurs démarches sont aussi des exemples caractéristiques.  

Le comique de situation comprend la cachette et les quiproquos. Lorsqu’un personnage assiste, sans être vu, à une scène à laquelle il ne devrait pas assister, on parle ici de la cachette.[20] Dans Le songe d’une nuit d’été, le personnage de Puck agit exactement de cette façon lorsqu’il regarde les artisans répéter leur pièce de théâtre. Cette situation permet à Puck de jouer des tours aux autres personnages, d’où l’effet comique. Les comédies de Shakespeare ont fait rire le peuple dans les années 1500 et font encore rire nos contemporains

Les œuvres de cet auteur sont intemporelles. Encore en 2009, la langue anglaise est bien connue sous le nom de « la langue de Shakespeare. Selon le critique canadien Northrop Frye : « Une des premières choses qu’il nous faut comprendre, c’est que Shakespeare n’a pas utilisé le théâtre : il l’a pris tel qu’il était à son époque et il en a accepté toutes les conditions. C’est un peu pour cela que nous le considérons maintenant comme un si grand poète. »[21]

Selon cet auteur, Shakespeare écrit pour divertir son public au meilleur de son talent. Il n’essaye pas de transmettre sa pensée politique ou religieuse à travers ses textes. Il écrit simplement pour le plaisir d’écrire et cela a contribué à faire de ses pièces des chef-d’œuvres toutes époques confondues.

De nombreuses citations provenant des textes de Shakespeare contribuent aussi à sa popularité. En voici quelques-unes parmi les plus célèbres selon le dictionnaire des citations : 

« Être ou ne pas être, là est la question » (Hamlet)

« Il ne suffit pas de parler, il faut parler juste. » (Le songe d’une nuit d’été)

« Rien n’est bon ni mauvais en soi, tout dépend de ce que l’on en pense. » (Hamlet)

« Qui n’a plus d’espoir n’aura plus de regret. » (Shakespeare)

« Ô Roméo! Roméo! Pourquoi es-tu Roméo? Renie ton père et abdique ton nom; ou, si tu ne le veux pas, jure de m’aimer, et je ne serai plus une Capulet. » [22]

Shakespeare est aussi notre contemporain puisque ses œuvres sont sans cesse adaptées au cinéma et au théâtre. Cinématographiquement, Hamlet a été filmé cinq fois  entre 1948 et 1990. Roméo et Juliette a été produit quatre fois entre 1936 et 2006 et Othello a aussi été filmé quatre fois depuis les 50 dernières années. Au total, on compte une trentaine d’adaptation cinématographique des pièces de théâtre de Shakespeare.[23]

Chaque année, des adaptations théâtrales des œuvres de ce dramaturge sont aussi faites. La comédie Beaucoup de bruit pour rien que Shakespeare a écrite vers 1600 est, par exemple, présentée au Théâtre du Nouveau Monde de Montréal  à l’automne 2009.[24]

Pour conclure, la pièce Le songe d’une nuit d’été est une référence en ce qui concerne le genre théâtral comique. Son auteur, William Shakespeare, est l’un des plus grands dramaturges anglais de l’histoire du théâtre toute époque confondue. Ses pièces, comiques ou non, sont reprises encore aujourd’hui que ce soit sous forme théâtrale ou cinématographique. Ceci montre que les thèmes qu’aborde cet auteur traversent les frontières du temps et de la langue. La vie personnelle de Shakespeare est encore aujourd’hui en partie un mystère pour les historiens. Heureusement, certains documents ont permis aux chercheurs de retracer les étapes importantes de sa vie artistique. L’ensemble de l’œuvre de Shakespeare est impressionnant vu la diversité des genres théâtraux qui s’y retrouve. La comédie Le songe d’une nuit d’été est particulièrement intéressante en ce qui a trait aux thèmes, aux origines mythologiques de certains personnages, ainsi qu’aux procédés d’écriture qu’a utilisé Shakespeare. J’aurais aimé me pencher sur l’ensemble des comédies qu’a écrites ce dramaturge pour pouvoir comprendre les thèmes, les personnages et les procédés d’écriture comiques de cet auteur dans l’ensemble de son œuvre. L’évolution de la comédie à travers le temps est aussi une piste de recherche qui serait passionnante à étudier.

[2] IDEM

[3] Fiches de lecture, http://www.fichesdelecture.com/auteur/141-william-shakespeare, page consultée le 10 octobre 2009

[4] Shakespeare, http://elisabeth.kennel.perso.neuf.fr/le_theatre_au_temps_de_shakespea.htm,page consultée le  17 octobre 2009

[5] Éditions Théâtrales, http://www.editionstheatrales.fr/catalogue.php?num=536, page consultée le 17 octobre 2009

[6] Wikipédia, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque, page consulté le 17 octobre 2009

[7] Théâtre Élisabéthain, http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie, page consultée le 17 octobre 2009

[8] William Shakespeare, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare, page consultée le 17 octobre 2009

[9] Le songe d’une nuit d’été, http://www.denise-pelletier.qc.ca/app/assets/pdf/Cahier_Songe.pdf, page consultée le 14 octobre 2009

[10] Shakespeare, http://elisabeth.kennel.perso.neuf.fr/le_theatre_au_temps_de_shakespea.htm, page consultée le 14 octobre 2009

[11] Beatrice Phillipotts, Le Livre des Fées, Singapour, Hors Collection, 2000, p. 12.

[12] Phillipotts, Le Livre des Fées, p. 13.

[13] Chester Novello http://www.chesternovello.com/Default.aspx?TabId=2431&Statzzzzzzz2905=2&composerId_2905=112, page consultée le 28 octobre 2009

[14] Beatrice Phillipotts, Le Livre des Fées, Singapour, Hors Collection, 2000, p. 40.

[15] Phillipotts, Le Livre des Fées, p. 45

[16] Northrop Frye. Shakespeare et son théâtre, Canada, Les éditions du Boréal Express, 1988, p. 63

[17] Fiche pédagogique, http://theatre.ac-dijon.fr/ensei/pedago/fiches/2008/shakespeare.htm, page consultée le 1 novembre 2009

[18] Jean-Daniel Mallet, La tragédie et la comédie, Paris, Hatier, 2001, p. 97 à 103.

[19] Mallet, La tragédie et la comédie, p. 97

[20] Mallet, La tragédie et la comédie, p. 98

[21] Northrop Frye, Shakespeare et son théâtre, Canada, Les éditions du Boréal Express, 1988, p. 10

[22] Dicocitations, http://www.dicocitations.com/auteur/4097/William_Shakespeare.php, page consultée le 6 novembre 2009

[23] William Shakespeare, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare, page consultée le 17 octobre 2009

[24] TNM, http://www.tnm.qc.ca/saison-2009-2010/Beaucoup-de-bruit-pour-rien/Beaucoup-de-bruit-pour-rien.html, page consultée le 1 novembre 2009

*Jakarta Globe, 18 November 2009

I never met Emmanuel Lemor. But he did let me sleep in the living room of his San Francisco flat where, for a week, I shared a blow-up mattress with a French couple.

By the time I arrived in San Francisco, Emmanuel was in North Carolina dealing with a family matter. “I shall leave the key under the mat,” he had written in an e-mail.

In all my years as a couchsurfer (www.couchsurfing.org), many generous individuals have allowed me into their homes, providing me with a place to sleep during my stay in their countries. But I’ve never met a host who left his home completely open to total strangers. Emmanuel’s trust in his fellow travelers was definitely unique.

Such were the eclectic breed of individuals I encountered during my short sojourn in the Bay Area, famous for its fogs, tremors and the rock ’n’ roll culture of The Haight.

Most people who reside in cities, where danger lurks in the urban shadows and alleyways, are either untrustworthy or suspicious. The residents of Fog City appear to believe in the good in others, exuding benevolence and altruism. Residue from the hippie era, perhaps? San Francisco is the only major city where I’ve come across commuters thanking their bus drivers when they alight. The residents have a small-town friendliness about them, a jarringly refreshing trait to find within a metropolis.

On my first day, I decided to hit Golden Gate Park. As it was a Sunday, it was full of lively events held in every open space. Closest to the famous Haight-Ashbury intersection was Sharon Meadows, where Pet Pride Day 2009 was being held. The grassy arena was filled with dogs in every costume imaginable. Siberian Huskies, Akitas, black Labradors and greyhounds were groomed to the hilt. They sported everything from sequined red devil horns, green butterfly wings and black witches’ hats. After being licked by a tan mutt with hazel eyes called Chocolate, I sat next to a girl from Cooper’s Dream Animal Rescue. She was foster mum to a shy pug-Chihuahua mix named Lou. Cooper’s Dream had saved him from certain death a few weeks prior. He was scheduled for euthanasia when they pulled him out of a local animal shelter. No one had wanted to adopt him as he was no longer a pup, the girl told me. Sadly, I’ve heard similar statements made by orphanages about their older charges.

Only a few miles further was West Fest, a free concert celebrating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. The festival was a music-satiated spread of peace-loving, tie-dyed T-shirt-wearing, marijuana-puffing individuals who had transformed Speedway Meadow into a small city of flower-power hippies. At both ends of the meadow were massive stages with musicians crooning out songs from 1967’s infamous Summer of Love. On a hillside overlooking the hubbub, Asians and Hispanics manned food stalls, selling a smorgasbord of snacks and ethnic dishes.

In the midst of the rambling crowd moving from one concert to another, past tents selling recyclable goodies and flowing hemp dresses, sampling organic chocolates and signing “Free Marijuana” petitions, sat an Indian woman. She was nude. Her hair flowed like gushing mud behind her and matched the color of her leathery skin. The white man she was facing was fully clothed, decked out in Hawaiian prints.

The next day, I went on a last-minute date. While exchanging my euros for dollars and dollars for Mexican pesos in the financial district, I started chatting with the man behind the counter. Kartlos is from Georgia — the country not the state. Intrigued by all things journalistic, he invited me for coffee in the Mission district.

Like most of the people I’ve met in America, Kartlos is an immigrant. Now in his late 20s, he arrived in New York when he was 19, with $400 to his name and no English. Yet when he spoke of his favorite tuna cheese melts and showed me his apartment on his iPhone, his voice bore hardly a trace of a foreign accent.

The fact that Kartlos spoke highly of Georgia, the extensive culinary fare and his desire to return there, intrigued me. Back home, I met numerous overseas graduates who dismissed Indonesia as a third-world country and longed to remain in the progressive West. Kartlos, on the other hand, resisted his assimilation into the American culture and expressed concern over Georgia’s brain drain.

“I don’t want this country to be my ‘home.’ I want my own country to be my home,” he said. Ironically, he was waiting to obtain his US citizenship before he returns home.

Later that night, two French girls breezed in through the door — new couchsurfers hailing from the Lorraine region. They filled the small flat with their colorful language and raucous laughter. As the living room was occupied, we had to break into Emmanuel’s locked bedroom.

I got bored and started searching random things on Google Images, trying to find a new desktop image. One of those searches was “Titania”. Here are my favorite images from that search:

I love each interpretation. It makes me want to do three different productions and base the fairies on the design of each photo…hmmm…

As two books wait on whatever it is that causes me to allow them years of my life, other ideas for other tales beckon.  Once living in Malibu, I looked down into a deep and hidden valley of incredible human riches and imagined one of those landscaped mansions belonged to Steven Spielberg, a man who has found a way to Pasteurize the Land of Faerie.  Just as Disney did.  Tinkerbell instead of Titiana.  Singing skunks instead of the Lord of the Hunt.  Cute aliens.  Cute cute acute cut.  What if this hidden valley contained a door to the real world of Faerie?  What if Spielberg had built his house directly on top of it?  What if this made Oberon very very angry?  What if the real Faery burst out into our tame, though angry and confused, world not only on the Night of the Hunt, but whenever it chose?

So many tales to tell and each one costing me almost more than I can afford.  Do I make writing sound ominous?

*Jakarta Globe, 11 November 2009

“All travelers are running away from something or other. What’s your story?” Carol asked me as the Amtrak train we were on chugged along.

Carol, a middle-aged Australian woman with waist-long auburn hair, had embarked on the train with me in New York. We were on our way to San Francisco, a four-day train ride. I had always preferred to think I was running towards something, but maybe I was kidding myself.

Every one of my fellow passengers was fleeing “something or other.” When they told me their stories, I felt their longing to reveal themselves to a stranger in hopes of shedding some of the pain they carried by sharing it. But for some, the ghosts of their beloved dead were hard to shake off.

Day 1
As the Lake Shore Ltd. to Chicago pulled out of New York’s Penn Station, we rode into the hazy dusk by the Hudson River. The fading light caught the dying leaves and made them burn in torrid yellows, oranges and reds.

It had been six years since Carol lost her 21-year-old son in an automobile accident. Since then, she’s been on the move, leaving the rest of her family in Australia for the majority of the year to find new places and faces. “It soothes the soul,” she said.

Heading west with us until Chicago were three men, recent college graduates from Derbyshire, England. In order to forget their soulless jobs as debt collectors, they planned to stop in every major city on the way to California and drink their way across America.

Day 2
Morning of brought a view of the flat landscape of Illinois, shrouded by a gloomy stretch of rain-laden clouds. A freight train had derailed, causing a two-hour delay to our arrival in Chicago, where we were to change to the California Zephyr, the train that was to be home for the next three days. “My kind of town, Chicago is,” Sinatra sang. But with its autumn chill and dripping rain, it wasn’t mine.

Beyond Chicago, the country opened up: the landscape flatter, the empty stretch of steady roads longer and the music more bluesy. Gary, our cheerful train conductor, had a jovial voice that brought to mind California’s sunshine and surfers. He acted like a radio host, often ending his announcements with, “Don’t touch that dial. Stay tuned to this station for further details!”

Carol befriended a small elderly gent with a bushy white moustache. He had recently lost two sons — one to muscular dystrophy and another to a skiing accident. The pair passed the hours away, bonding over tragedy in the dining car.

Day 3
Roused by the conductor’s call for Denver, I awoke to the softest of dawns. Heading west with the glow of the sun behind us, the sky was a stormy blue tinged with a pink that slowly diluted over the Colorado plains.

I struck up a conversation with Flo. Hailing from Nebraska, she was born during the Depression in 1930. This grandmother, with warm brown eyes, soft gray curls and a voice like gravelly syrup, shared with me her crackers, grapes and a letter of filial gratitude her retired veterinarian son Stan had slipped into her carry-all.

It had been five years since Flo’s husband, a retired trucker, dropped dead of a heart attack while they were on their annual summer vacation, traveling cross-country in a motor-home. They’d been married for nearly 54 years and had seven children and 26 grandchildren together. The song at his funeral was “Eighteen Wheels and A Dozen Roses,” a song for truckers. “Not a church song,” Flo said, “but it was appropriate for him.”

As we moved west, the local radio stations began to acquire a folksy twang and the gilded foliage of western Colorado’s Aspen trees absorbed the ripeness of the afternoon sun.

In Grand Junction, Colorado, a tall lumbering man with jutting lips boarded. He hijacked our conversation by announcing that he’d been laid off by a shoe-making factory in Salt Lake City two weeks ago.

His lament was long. “I know people say the quiet ones work the hardest and I’m a talker,” he said, “but I was the hardest worker there!”

Day 4
We were greeted by the silver state of Nevada and for the third and final time entered a different time zone — the Pacific. By noon, we had passed through the Sierra Nevadas and were met with the mandarin orange groves and palm trees of the golden state of California.

Flo kept proffering tidbits throughout the day in an attempt to keep me awake so I could lend her my ear. By then, I was so weak from ingesting only nuts, rice crackers and water that all I wanted to do was sleep. I hadn’t eaten a full meal or showered in four days, had been washing in the airplane-sized toilets and my big toe stuck out of a hole in my sock. The sway of the train was my lullaby and I’d had my fill of sorrowful travelers’ tales. The numbness of sleep tempted me.

It was only after I bid my farewells in Fog City that I realized Carol’s question was left unanswered. My own story remained untold.

There is a website called ModCloth, which is an online boutique for quite literally the cutest clothes in all the land. I go on the site every day to covet clothes that I cannot afford, and my friend Alex and I have been posting pretty dresses back and forth on each other’s Facebook pages, with things like “wouldn’t this look perfect for the balcony scene?” or “THIS for the feast of the Capulets!”

We’re both a little obsessed.

But what made me particularly excited about this website was that every so often, a Shakespearean-named item shows up. Behold:

Tempest Dress - I love how this dress looks like rain pouring down, or maybe the way the sea looks during a terrible storm.

Dress Side Story – Okay, that’s not technically Shakespeare, but West Side Story was based on Romeo and Juliet, so I think it counts!

Bedroom Terrace Dress – This might be pushing the theme a little, but can’t you just see a modern Juliet wearing this on the balcony after the feast, dreaming about her Romeo?

Juliet Cape-ulet – the description speaks for itself: “Did thine heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For thou ne’er saw true beauty till thou saw this cape so bright. This item hath been begot of beautiful design, a sash through the sides makes thine shape feminine! Thou will adore this cape from the two rows of buttons, both alike in dignity, that close the front, to fair color wethinks quite beautiful. The which if you with stylish eyes attend, will look so star-crossed lovely with a sweet dress and slipper-like shoes, that good sirs far and wide will demand wherefore thou art o’er and o’er again!”

Shakespeare’s Sister Blouse – I cannot say how much I WANT. THIS. BLOUSE. It is so pretty and I could wear it to go see Shakespeare plays and feel like I had a little secret. This shirt is my #1 Covet from ModCloth right now. If I ever have spare cash again (ha, I crack myself up), I might have to make this part of my wardrobe…

Eyedust in Nymph – in thy orisons…though I’d rather dust Titania with this than Ophelia!

Eyedust in Cleopatra - I’m sure Antony found this very sexy on her.

Shakespearean Pendant - very cool design for a necklace, which kind of has an academic feel to it, too. There used to be earrings that matched, but they must have sold out or else I missed them on the site! Sad face.

To Bead or Not to Bead Headband – kind of a hippie-chick style headband, really cute and something  I’d love to add to my headband collection.

The Sonnets Charm Bracelet - along the lines of the Shakespearean Pendant, it’s definitely an item of jewelry that would stand out from what everyone else is wearing!

Ro-Meow and Juliet Wallet - How cute is this wallet? It’s adorable and it references Shakespeare. Can’t go wrong there.

Here’s hoping they keep cranking out these incredibly cute Shakespeare-themed items for years to come…when I someday strike it rich, I know where my payday treat money is going to go!

Notes:

Costumes: Kara and I  looked over the costume stock last week focusing on Titania’s kimono. Costume owns a beautiful off-white piece that might work perfectly. The one alteration that I might suggest – if it’s even possible – would be to lengthen the part of the sleeves that hang below the arm hole( called Furi in Japanese)  to make a larger projectable surface. In my research, I’ve come across kimonos that have Furi which reach almost to the floor.

This image has two elements beside the Kimono that we want to use. The parasol for a projection surface and the wooden box for Titania to keep her fairies (see below).

Hermia: Kara brought some great research for Hermia. She’s the daughter of the powerful senator and she’s “trouble.” My favorite images (below) are of young women wearing something like (or derivations of) conservative clothes. But these conservative clothes have been co-opted and have become iconic representations of sexuality. The smoking school girls. The runway model with the gangster cap. Arguably, this is a sexuality that is imposed on women by the male gaze, but that works perfectly for our piece. One question is, how do we resolve that… or how does that resolve itself through costume in the end? I think it has something to do with the fact that the men win. It’s almost always played that Helena and Hermia are happy with the outcome. But they never speak again once they’re out of the woods. And Titania and Hippolyta have become the dutiful wives to men who have done terrible harm to them.

Projection: There are four projectors available to us and Gian brought in some muslin, butcher paper and theatrical gauze and some other stuff that looks like the sheer curtains that my mother hung on her windows when I was growing up – I’ve forgotten the name. We love the starched muslin. Light comes through. Rear projection will work nicely. We loved my mother’s curtains. John suggested someone could wear a huge scarf made of the stuff and we could project on that. We even liked the butcher paper because we can tear it. Important: Gian ran with an idea from last week where the players, when done with a costume could just dump it on the floor leaving a huge mess to contend with by the end of the play. Gian’s suggestion was to take pieces of the costumes, hang them in various places around the stage and use them as projection surfaces. The more I think about this, the more I love it.

We talked about dressing Theseus in white and projecting camouflage on him when necessary.

The set: We’re leaning toward an all-white set. Make the space look huge. Provide many surfaces for projection. Contrast the darkness of my ideas.

Kabuki: I had a conversation with Peggy Shannon this week about the use of Kabuki in the forrest scenes. The big question: why Kabuki? The easy answer is that I like the way Kabuki with it’s ponderous movement and total environment of sound put the audience in an altered state in a few seconds. Also, in our production the forrest will be a metaphoric forrest of imagery from Hermia’s unconscious. I suppose the images are meant to BE Hermia’s unconscious playing itself out on various surfaces of the stage including herself and other players. Hermia is battling with her own unconscious desires and the projections will show this battle. The protagonist in her struggle is her father who pulls out an ancient law permitting him to kill Hermia if she doesn’t bend to his will. This could be a Kabuki scenario. In fact, one of the most popular and influential Kabuki/Bunraku plays is Chikamatsu’s The Love Suicides at Sonezaki first performed in 1703. The bloody ending echoes the story of Pyramus and Thisbe as done by the mechanicals. I realize nobody will get this reference from our play. It is just a place for us to work from.

Wedding attire: We defined this as an area that needs addressing. What do we do for the three wedding dresses?

Kabuki mask for puck: Love, love, love the red, white and black mask. We’re running with the idea that Puck is the mask and whoever puts on the mask becomes him/her. My inclination is to introduce the mask somehow as part of Hermia’s conscious world. Does she wear a necklace that has a small version of the mask as a pendant hanging? Does it hang on her wall? Does it project onto her body at a particular moment in the scene where her father requests that she be put to death? I don’t know yet.

Peasblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed: Titania’s going to carry little bottles full of her mojo. We’ll put little colored LEDs in there and when she opens them up, out comes the light and it jumps onto the projection screen. The actor playing Titania will provide the voices for the fairies.

Bottom’s Ass Head: We didn’t discuss this, but here’s an idea I had that came out of our discussions of scale (remember the small chairs from last week). What if the head we build is too big for Bottom to hold it up by himself and we have to have two players (or crew) following him around with sticks to balance it? And what if it’s not just a head, but maybe one asses hoof on his leg. I don’t know exactly where I’m going with this, but I thought if the head required operation from without like a large puppet, then we’d be getting at ideas about who’s in control of who, do we control our selves or are we at the mercy of our own unconscious drives? We’ll see where this goes.

The Play Within: We didn’t discuss this either, and this is some tricky stuff… but here’s where I’m going with this. Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus wake the four lovers in the forest. Theseus sets Hermia free from her obligation. Blackout. The projectors and the lights all go dark for the first time. A projection comes up. The mechanicals, except for Bottom, are in the dressing room getting into costume and make-up. They play the scene where they all wonder what happened to Bottom. The players on stage, in darkness except for the projection, quickly transform the space for the wedding sequence and then change costumes. They’re playing the scene where Theseus choses the evening’s entertainment and sends Philostrate off to inform the players. As they play this scene they’re changing clothes as well (into the mechanical’s costumes for the play within the play). ON the projected video we follow Philostrate into the dressing room to summon the players. We track with them as they walk toward the stage. All the while the lovers are playing the “lunatic, lover and poet” scene dressed as the mechanicals. They sit and wait for the show to begin. Perhaps they sit in the audience . The video cuts to a shot of the stage but instead of the mechanicals entering, Theseus, Hippolyta and the two young lovers do (on the video, remember). They sit. The live players in the audience stand and play the play within the play.

Puppetry: The theme of puppet and puppet master figure in prominently and one way we can bring it around is to have all the dialogue during the play-within-the-play provided by the live actors. So essentially they’re playing the play and (in the voices of Lysander, Demetrius, Theseus and Hippolyta) heckling themselves at the same time. It will be very interesting to have them try to sync up their voices to the mouths of the projected video. This may prove to be very much fun to do and a place to derive some comedy. The other choice is to have all the audio for this section recorded and have the live actors try their best (and inevitably fail at times) to lip sync. I’m still working on this.

En 2005 la marca de vaqueros Levi´s lanzó una campaña de San Valentín para promocionar su modelo 501. Esta campaña estaba diseñada alrededor de un pasaje de la obra El sueño de una noche de verano. El anuncio titulado Midsummer fue dirigido por Noam Murro y llevaba la extraordinaria música de Mendelssohn, todo con una puesta en escena que trasladaba la acción al moderno Los Ángeles en un contexto de pandillas de barrio y el amor. Protagonizan el anuncio Joshua Alba y Amanda Sudano.

En el anuncio, el protagonista es increpado por una pandilla callejera por el estilo de sus pantalones. Él, impasible, manifiesta en lenguaje clásico ante la cámara sus pensamientos, que representan valores como la seguridad, inconformismo, originalidad y atrevimiento. Finalmente la protagonista le cuenta que se ha quedado prendada de él.

El anuncio dio bastante que hablar y tuvo sus defensores y detractores por utilizar un fragmento de una obra de Shakespeare. El fragmento corresponde al momento en que Bottom se convierte en asno y Titania se enamora de él.

Los defensores señalaban que posiblemente hubiera gente que se acercaría a la obra gracias al anuncio y sus detractores que era una lástima que nadie tuviese que recurrir a Shakespeare para vender unos pantalones. En fin, este es el anuncio y más abajo el texto de la escena:

Fragmento versionado por Levi´s:

Chico Guapo Piensa : Advierto su vileza. Quieren que quede como un asno

Chico Malo Dice : Pandero

Chico Guapo Piensa : Para asustarme si pueden

Chico Malo Dice : Estais cambiado, ¿ qué veo en vos ?

Chico Guapo Piensa : Pero de aqui no me movere — – Chico Guapo Dice : Que es lo que veis, veis vuestra cara de asno, no?– –Chico Guapo Piensa : De un lado a otro caminare y cantare

Chica Guapa Dice : ¿Que angel me alzo de mi lecho de flores ?

Chico Guapo Piensa : Que no les temo demostrare

Chica guapa dice : Os lo suplico gentil mortal, cantad. Prendado esta mi oido de vuestro sonido, tan conmovido esta mi ojos por vuestras formas …. que os amo.

Fragmento de la obra:

Bottom: Ya entiendo su artimaña. Querrían convertirme en un borrico y asustarme si pudieran. Pero, hagan lo que hicieren, no he de moverme de aquí. Me pasearé de arriba abajo y cantaré para que me oigan y sepan que no tengo miedo. (Canta.)

El mirlo de negro color

con pico anaranjado oscuro,

el tordo, con su acento puro,

el reyezuelo volador…

Titania: (Despertando). ¿Qué ángel me despierta en mi lecho de flores?

Bottom: … la alondra, el pardillo, el pinzón,

el cuco gris, de simples cantos,

que, entre los hombres, oyen tantos

sin arriesgar contestación…

Titania: Ruégote, gentil mortal, que cantes de nuevo. Tu melodía ha cautivado mi oído, así como tu forma ha encantado mi vista. Y la fuerza de tu fascinación me mueve a la primera mirada a decirte, a jurarte que te amo.

İşin aslı bir süredir Fairy Tail mangasını okumuyorum ve şimdilerde okuduğum uzun soluklu bir manga nedeniyle yakın zamanda mangaya yetişmeyide planlamıyorum. Shounen mangaları toplu okumak -One Piece hariç- ayrı bir zevk oluyor zaten… Her ne kadar birbirlerine çok benzeyen olaylar olsada… Hele ki bahsi geçen manga Fairy Tail ise…

Yine de eğlenerek okuduğum bu manganın animesi sonunda başladı ve geçtiğimiz gün yayınlanan ilk bölümünü beklemeksizin izledim; lakin yorum yazmak istemedim. En azından tüm bölüm hakkında yazmak istemedim. Nedenine gelecek olursak… Bu gibi fantastik kurgu ya da bilim kurgu barındıran seriler hakkında bölümden ziyade konu üzerine yorumlar yapmayı tercih ettiğimi biliyorsunuz. One Piece’i baz alacak olursak bir bölümdeki parça konular üzerine kaç farklı yorum yaptığımı fark etmişsinizdir. Fairy Tail üzerine de yorumlarımı bu şekilde yapmak istiyorum; lakin yine de anime üzerine giriş niteliğinde kapsamlı bir yorum yapmadan olmayacağını hissettiğimden bu satırları yazıyorum. Umarım kendimi ifade edebilmişimdir. Demem o ki, bu görüp görebileceğiniz tek Fairy Tail yorumu olmayacak…

Neyse, animeye gelecek olursak;

One Piece ile olan benzerliğiyle anılan Fairy Tail bu benzetme çizgisinin dışına çıkmak istemesinden olsa gerek anime çizimlerinde bir farklılığa gitmiş. Çizim kalitesinde ciddi bir düşüş hissetmedim değil, sanki bir resimli romanın sayfaları gibiydi çizimler… Hımm… Kendimden böyle bir benzetme beklemezdim doğrusu… Basit, çok fazla yapaya kaçan, hissettirmeyen türde çizimler… Tamam, tam olarak resimli roman gibi değil… En azından resimli romanlarda resim ve yazının birlikteliğini derinden hissediyorsunuz.

Seiyuu kadrosunun tamamını çok sevdiğimi itiraf etmeliyim. Her karaktere her ses çok iyi gitmiş. Özellikle Rie Kugimiya’nın sesini Happy’e çok yakıştırdım ve Happy konuşurken bol bol gülümsedim. Aya Hirano’nun sesinin ise Lucy’e bu kadar iyi gideceğini hiç düşünmezdim.

Kuşkusuz animeye en iyi aktarılan Fairy Tail karakteri şimdilik Lucy… Lucy’nin kapı anahtarları ile yaptığı çağırma büyüsü ise resmen mahou shoujo olarak aktarılmış. Mahou Shoujo’ları -çok çocuksu olmamaları kaidesiyle- seven birisi olarak çok beğendiğimi itiraf etmeliyim. Lucy’nin diğer summonlarını da animede bir an önce görebilmeyi diliyorum.

Natsu’nun alev yeme sahnesini ise hiç beğenmedim. Çok daha iyi çizimler beklediğimden ve animenin çizimlerini beğenemediğimden dolayı sanırım…

Şimdi gelelim asıl konumuza; açılış şarkısına! Açıkçası çok eğlenerek izlediğim ve dinlediğim bir açılış şarkısı oldu. Şarkı ve görüntüler çok iyi seçilmiş. Tek şaşırtıcı nokta sezonun rakibi gibi gösterilerek şarkının sonunda Natsu’nun üzerine doğru o bembeyaz kıyafetleri ile süzülen Titania’mız Erza… Tamam, belki Natsu’nun ulaşmak istediği nokta, şimdilik en büyük rakibi gibi görülebilir Erza; lakin yine de açılış şarkısının final sahnesinin bu şekilde tamamlanmasını beğenmedim. En azından yirmi altı bölümü dolduracak olan bir açılış şarkısının final sahnesinde Erza’ya saldıran bir Natsu yerine daha başka bir görüntü olmasını beklerdim… Erza’ya saldıran eller kırılır Natsu! Mangada da bunu çok yapıyordun; görmiyim bir daha!

*Jakarta Globe, 14 October 2009

Tour groups are usually a no-no. These small communities with a schedule, unpredictable characters and a bus evoke in me a tightening of emotions similar to what I feel in an airport departure hall with its amalgamation of tears, fears and stress.

Except on guided tours the tears usually come from laughing too much, the fears from getting lost in an unknown city and the stress stems from finding the best restaurant that isn’t already packed for lunch because of its famous slices of original Sacher torte chocolate cakes.

Conventional group travel — where my time is not my own — is no cup of tea for a habitual loner on perpetually itchy feet, but I thought I’d give it a go. Just for a week.

As a traveler I savor solitude. So much so that I once left a traveling companion on the beaches of Dubrovnik when her loquaciousness on the subject of her sexual prowess – or lack thereof — proved more than I could bear.

So when I joined a pack of Indonesian women on tour in Slovakia, the effect was quite jostling for this lone wolf. After quiet days of traveling solo and speaking to only a smattering of souls, entering a city and conversation again took some getting accustomed to.

Holding a good conversation is similar to a long tennis rally. It flows. The ball doesn’t drop and the talk falls in elegant strokes. There isn’t the need to start over again with a serve (or a new topic) each time in order to keep momentum going. But after weeks of self-imposed solitude, with the extent of my conversation being, “Where is this train going to?” my conversational skills were no longer on the Nadal-Federer level they were when I was a journalist in Jakarta, bouncing the conversational ball effortlessly with dozens of people a day. This time, my returns kept hitting the net and dropping.

Tour groups are generally loud and being with a bus load of excitable ladies could likely do damage to one’s ears as they chat and cackle over children, chores, credit cards and consumer goods. Silence, I conceded, was not going to be on the tour bus’s repertoire this week. But it was hard to resist joining these fun-loving ladies in their babble as we shuttled around Europe, giving new meaning to the term “bus-setter” — breakfast in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava, dinner in the Austrian cultural hot spot of Vienna and lunch somewhere in between.

Riding a tour bus is basically a compact commute through a country. Commonly crisscrossing a nation in less than a week, tours for Asians are as speedy as the turnaround of tables in a busy Chinese restaurant, more a sprint than a cross-country run. As we crossed borderless borders from Slovakia into Austria, we passed wind farms that resembled graceful snow-white ballerinas in a landscape of agricultural green and stout houses with sloping red tile roofs that ran rampant across Slavic suburbia.

We acknowledged statues of national heroes wearing military suits, standing proud in white stone, and envied the old men sleepily sitting on benches in the shade, the sun casting shadows on strong hawk-like noses. I found myself gazing at elderly women wearing over-the-knee skirts in pale colors over thick ankles, and wondering if they were prostitutes during the wars; if their dresses were shorter, in bolder colors, and if they, sporting slimmer ankles, enticed armies of men into their chambers.

Along the way, the click of our tourist cameras followed us as adamantly as a stubborn stray that shadows you home. We paused in front of beautiful objects because they were listed in the guidebook, not really seeing or absorbing what was there — a mere photo opportunity. In countless photographs, our beaming faces with dried lips from holding a smile too long remained the same. Only the backgrounds changed.

On tours, which in Europe tend to visit resplendent buildings of ages past, one is bound to learn new things, for the castles and palaces of the Continent hold riveting stories within their cracking stone walls and dried up moats. At Cerveny Kamen Castle in the Slovakian countryside, our young guide, Maciej, showed us a sealed air shaft. It was closed, he confided, after a thief clambered in like an upside down Santa one day and stole castle relics — royal bows and arrows that long ago aimed at the stags whose heads pepper the castle walls, and rusted spears and swords that once drew blood.

Then he led us down to copper cellars that took more than two decades to construct. They lay deep under the castle grounds with lofty ceilings, connected to the towers that had housed generations of sovereigns since the 13th century, where without wars and princes running down their shrouded snaking pathways, their cloaked dungeons and secret passages had long been forgotten.

The hush that fell within the echoing walls lasted but for a fleeting second before someone said, “Line up, ladies, photo op!”

My first idea for the representation of the fairies was to project them onto Titania’s costume and let Titania provide the voices. If Titania’s costume was made of something like the material we use for the projection screens, this could work nicely. But John and I also discussed putting Titania and Oberon in unitards and projecting onto them. I’m inclined to use skin as a projection screen as well – in this case. Either way we’re in the realm of “the celebration of the body.” Projections on Titania’s naked back, or belly would require the work of an animator and may be beyond our capabilities at this point. I suppose I can do it myself if I have to.

John brought up the idea of using little bottles full of sea shells and sand and stones as little fetishes to represent the fairies (cobweb, moth, mustard seed, etc.). I love what this says and the visuals could be very nice especially if we go with the shaman motif for Oberon.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon, the King of the Fairies, uses magic to cause his wife to fall in love with a man who has an ass’s head. He does this to humiliate her because she will not give up her adopted son to him. Though Titania tries to explain why she cannot give up the boy (his mother was a dear friend, but then died, and Titania is taking care of the child),  Oberon will not hear of it and continues to demand the boy. When Titania refuses yet again, even after an attempt to extend the olive branch, Oberon decides he will torment her “for this injury”. His torment is the aforementioned humilation he devises.

Later, he sees Helena desperately pursuing Demetrius in the woods. He takes pity on her and sends his servant, Puck, to go and use the same magic to cause Demetrius to fall in love with Helena. It sure seems nice of him considering how he just emotionally raped his wife for his own entertainment a few minutes ago. But wait – isn’t he just doing the same thing to Demetrius? It’s all well and good for Helena (eventually, after all the crazy mix-ups that night), but what about Demetrius? Is that really the best course for his life to take? Would he have been truly happy to be with Helena after all, or will he have to remain under the magic spell for the rest of his life, only thinking he’s happy and in love? And what if there was someone better for Helena out there somewhere?

This is something that Stacie Rearden Hall, who was our Helena (and Titania, Hippolyta, and Snug) for the recent production of Midsummer at Richmond Shakespeare, and I have discussed. What if Helena was never meant to be with Demetrius after all? Did Oberon just ruin things for everyone? As usual, I’ve gone off on a tangent and gotten distracted from my point of calling Oberon a jerk, but I can’t help but mention this theory. It would be interesting to see the sequel to this play and see how these young lovers are faring twenty years down the road.

Back to Oberon. By the end, he lifts the spell from Titania, but not before somehow getting the child from her, in a scene which Shakespeare does not let us see. That frustrates me infinitely, because I would love to see just how that went. And then Titania are reconciled and sing a song together. That seems a bit off to me. The spell is lifted, and even though Titania’s child has been kidnapped by her relentless husband who just put a curse on her to dote on an idiot with a donkey’s head, she seems oddly all right with it. Something tells me Oberon didn’t lift the spell entirely. I think Titania is still at his mercy.

It’s amazing, now that I look back on the script after having worked on the show for such a long time this past year. Onstage, at least with Brandon Crowder in the role, Oberon seemed chilling and a little dangerous, but appealing and sexy all the same. On the page, however, he just seems mean and a little petty. Incredible how a good actor can make you forget how much you usually want to smack a certain character. It also just goes to show how much of Shakespeare lies in the interpretation by a company. Every line can be given an entirely different meaning, every play can be turned upside-down. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll see a production where Oberon is the nice guy in all of this.

Probably not.

Probably if you had to read A Midsummer Night’s Dream in high school, you know a little bit about who Puck is.  Puck was originally a pagan trickster, and he’s been recycled in legend and fantasy as many times (and in as many forms!) as you can imagine.  Because of this it’s not entirely sure where exactly he originated, be it German or Celtic origins.

Quite often, Puck is a character that will do good deeds and housework in exchange for a bowl of sweet milk—but if you get on his bad side or insult him, then all his work is undone in a moment, possibly leaving you worse off than when you started!

Usually Puck is a sort of sprite or fairy who belongs to the forest, and of course he’s also often seen as a servant and intermediary for Oberon, king of the fairies.  Occasionally, though, he’s shown as a satyr, with the legs of a goat, as a sort of reflection of the god Pan.

Originally it was bad luck to say Puck’s name, as in the saying “speak of the Devil and he shall appear,” which is why he’s also called Robin Goodfellow—when he goes by Robin Goodfellow he seems to be a little more generous to mere humans!  Interestingly, though, he’s also called “hobgoblin”—not exactly what that term brings to your mind nowadays, is it?  And traditionally he laughs with a “ho, ho, ho,” like Santa Claus!  Lots of little crossovers in mythology with our Puck here.

Shakespeare’s Puck is perhaps the one we’re most familiar with today, and his own description of himself (to Titania, who recognizes him) tells you a bit more of his devious ways:

Thou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal:
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl,
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And ‘tailor’ cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there. (Act ii., Scene i.)

Puck’s mischief is always done under the moonlight.  According to “The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow,” attributed to Ben Jonson, he’d also sometimes douse lights in order to sneak kisses from women, or sometimes steal their sheets!

In 1906, Rudyard Kipling of Jungle Book fame (among other things, of course!) wrote Puck of Pook’s Hill, where Puck was the oldest thing in England, the last of the “hill people,” or fairies, and that’s a fairly fitting thing to call him, as Puck does continually seem to show up in popular culture. We’re not quite done with Puck as a culture figure, even now.

If you want to check out Robin Goodfellow, definitely read A Midsummer’s Night Dream, if you haven’t, or at least watch the movie!  If Shakespeare’s not your thing, though, Puck also makes appearances in Neil Gaiman’s comic, The Sandman.