My English is super rusty nowadays. I need to practice it over, that's why I wrote today's entry in English.
I would love to share more about Flying Balloons Puppet experience in this blog. In fact, this post already on my draft lists since 2019! Anyway, last year, we got selected as one of performers at George Town Festival in Penang Malaysia. It is a new experience for me to bring 8 people including me traveling quite far from before.
We have been performing and working in several cities in Indonesia from Jogja, Jakarta, Makassar, and Lombok. But, it is our first time doing it outside Indonesia. We brought Pongo Abelii, an experimental puppet performance that we started in the beginning of 2019. Pongo Abelii is a performance where we are looking for the artistic choice and trying other form of puppetry that will resemble our group better.
Being another new contemporary puppet theater group, despite the fact that we have been around for 5 years, is quite challenging. In Indonesia, Papermoon Puppet Theatre is the role model for modern puppetry. And yes! They are our role model/mentor/friends. Before Rangga created Flying Balloons Puppet during his study in ISI Yogyakarta, we have attended Pesta Boneka - a puppet biennale festival - held by Papermoon to search for references on puppet theatre. Rangga started to search about puppetry through Youtube and his first encounter is a German puppet artist Ilka Schonbein. He then looked for Indonesia group and we found Papermoon.
Long story short, since 2015, we have been performing and creating puppet theater. As a puppet theater group we are in searching for our identity. By learning with Papermoon we acknowledged that we adapted their artistic choices. It is inevitable for everyone who are learning from others. We experimented with materials and story as well. For me personally, Act Without Words and Pongo Abelii could become the door to find our style as a group.
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| Last day of festival with all GTF team and performers |
In this festival, we performed in a Heritage building called Whiteaways Arcade. The stage is on the second floor. I get a little bit nervous since it use wood flooring and part of the shows the actor will stomp the floor. But, after general rehearsal, we could get the sense on how actor will use their power for that scene. We had 2 performances during the festival. I am the one who managed the team and the performance, back and forth coordinating with the technical team, until explaining and closing the show. It was such a journey.
I knew that Pongo Abelii is a working progress. There is a lot of things that we need to find and explore with the piece. I almost cried when I saw how people react and even cry after watching this performance. It is our first time performing in Penang, Malaysia. I hope that it gives a lot of perspective and experience to the team. Even though it is not our first international festival, but it definitely creates new way for us to deliver the story through Pongo Abelii.
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| Our Puppeteer: from left to right Jefri, Maisyarah, Yunita, and Anwar |
I am definitely wants to write more about Pongo Abelii's journey, from how this story began, how we created its premiere, how we developed this and all the good & bad things we have been through. I hope I could manage to share the progress through out this year. Actually, we plan to cook and develop this performance even more. There are several cities on our list to performs Pongo Abelii this year. But, the condition's now is not ideal for us to do it.
So, here I am trying to share its story one by one. It becomes a way for me to evaluate and even to find opportunity for this performance.
So, here I am trying to share its story one by one. It becomes a way for me to evaluate and even to find opportunity for this performance.
'till next time!
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