Liberating: Prison inmates take part in a rehearsal as part of a theater project at Kerobokan prison, Bali. JP/Zul Trio AnggonoFrom the outside, the Kerobokan prison located near Bali’s popular tourist spot of Kuta looks like any other Indonesian penitentiary.
A number of prison guards, donned in dark-brown uniforms, stand with menacing stares at the gate, while others eye visitors suspiciously before taking their cell phones and personal belongings at the entrance.
Once inside, the prison, home to over 1,000 inmates and detainees (which is far above its ideal capacity of 300), looks less “fearsome” to outsiders, especially upon entering a spacious garden leading to a pink-curtained auditorium.
This Monday afternoon, The Jakarta Post was on a special visit to the prison to watch a theater performance casting around 20 women and men inmates, a culmination of six months of hard work for a theater activity called the Dante Project.
The project, named after Italy’s 14th century poet Dante Alighieri, was led by Ron Jenkins, a professor of theater at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the US.
Since 2007, Jenkins has introduced theater activities in prisons, emphasizing its significance as a social catalyst in the prison culture and its potential importance in the penal system.
Jenkins has worked in prison theater projects before, in New York and other places in the US, Italy and Indonesia (at Kerobokan prison in Bali and Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara province since January this year).
In these projects, Jenkins uses the classical literary work of Italy’s 14th century Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy incorporated into the writings, poems of participating inmates.
“Dante’s Divine Comedy tells a story about taking a personal journey through hell and purgatory to heaven. It is a story that anyone who has experienced hard times can understand,” explained Jenkins.
“But people in prison unfortunately have a deeper understanding of hell than most of us, and they can identify even more strongly with a character like Dante who is trying to learn something as he travels through hell, which will help him get to heaven.”
Incarcerated individuals indentify even more personally with Dante when they learn that he himself
was convicted of crimes that led to his exile and condemnation to death, he said.
When the sound of kendang traditional Balinese percussion and acoustic guitars echoed in the hall, the play started. Andrew Chan, a member of the Bali Nine drug smuggling group, stood up on the stage and chanted a poem by Dante.
A natural actor with a few colorful tattoos on his body, Andrew who is facing death sentence, read with stunning flair.
“Lost — In the middle of our life’s journey, I found myself in a dark forest. For the straight path was lost.”
Matthew Norman, also part of the Bali Nine group, voiced his innermost feeling through a poem entitled Loneliness.
“Sit in a cold dark room listening intently for something that’s not there. It’s just another empty space, another empty day, another empty moment. There’s nothing to do but listen to my thoughts and they are as empty as I feel. I am lonely but no one can help me for I am lost within myself. In an empty space trying to get out, but there is no way out.”
A source of inspiration: One of the Kerobokan prison inmates holds up a script for a play inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. JP/Zul Trio AnggonoThis theater project, which started in January, has given prisoners a forum to find their own voices, rediscover their lost hopes and redefine as well as re-identify themselves as valued persons and free individuals (at least within their hearts and minds), despite their hardships and difficulties living within the sturdy walls.
During the course of the hour-long performance, the inmate artists eloquently expressed the concepts of justice and freedom of Dante’s versions and their own.
Sinta Puspitasari spoke loudly: “There is no justice in my beloved country which boasts of its Pancasila ideology — equal justice and welfare for everybody. Justice has been covered up with money, corruption and greed.”
Jon, another inmate, shared his perception of justice: “I want to scream. Law and justice is widely separated. Justice and court are transformed into a legal market in which anyone can bargain. Justice is for people with money.”
Dante also teaches them about heaven. Lukman Agus views heaven as a dream come true; Yanti thinks heaven is seeing your mother again, while for Tantri, heaven is being able to see her two children.
But for everybody on stage as well as pack of fellow inmates the audience, “Heaven is FREEDOM… Merdeka… Merdeka,” they shouted while clapping their hands and smoking kretek cigarettes.
Rin Rin Marliani or Orin, one of the spectators, was crying while watching the performance. “It is so liberating, inspiring to share this feeling. Life has again showed more possibilities,” Orin said, while standing up on stage.
For Tanri, expressing herself through the prison’s writing, art and theater programs helped her realize her time behind bars has been productive.
“It’s not the end. It’s the beginning. It’s an opportunity to redefine who you are. You don’t have to go back to the same place you came from,” she said.
Nyoman Catra, a professor of arts at the Indonesian Arts Institute (ISI), and his dancer wife Desak, mingled with the audience.
In a dark forest: Andrew Chan, a member of the Bali Nine drug smuggling group, stands up on stage to chant a poem by Dante. JP/Zul Trio Anggono“They [the inmates] are people often misunderstood by those outside the walls. People view them as inmates portrayed on television and Hollywood movies. We saw their talents as artists,” said Catra who worked with Jenkins in a version of Dante at the Gardner Museum in Boston. He used Balinese masks to create the character of Minos, the demon guardian of hell.
After the performance, Jenkins looked happy:
“Dante’s poem is about taking a journey from hell to heaven, and
in the months that we worked on this project, the performers wrote about taking that journey in their own terms.”
The performers, he said, wrote about it so clearly that in the course of an hour performance they and their audience were able to look past the bars of their prison and see a vision of heaven they themselves created with the power of their imaginations and their irrepressible desire to transform their lives in a positive way.
They experienced the transition from darkness to light that Dante expressed in the line they quoted from his poem: “And then we emerged to see again the stars.”
No comments:
Post a Comment