This week was slightly truncated, due to public holidays on Thursday and Friday. However, the work that happened Monday through Wednesday was inspiring and reenergizing.
On Monday, I taught the Rawamangun kids in the Small Gym instead of the MPR, because of JIS’s IB Mock Exams. It was also for this reason that my JIS seniors could only come for the first twenty minutes or so. I was very pleased that even though they had to study for very important exams, they still came to work with the kids for as much time as their parents allowed them. I think they are really enjoying this work and seeing the significance it has in the lives of these young children that they’re teaching.
We started out today with a little review and free time of the skills that we’d already learned. It’s great to see the progress that the children are making with only a few classes. After we finished this portion of the class, I introduced the students to clown!
It’s always an exciting day for me when I introduce the kids to clown. They always seem to have so much fun and so do I! We started out, as usual, with the clown statues. They were very timid at first and would only copy exactly the action that I did and when I stopped doing actions to see if they’d make up their own, they didn’t. Even though they weren’t quite getting the exercise, they were all having fun watching me make different clown statues so I continued. After we’d gone through all the emotions, I let the kids call out some emotions that a clown might have. It was at this point that some of the older kids really started getting into the game. And of course, as soon as the bigger kids got into, the little ones were not far behind to join in on the fun.
Before class had started, I quickly showed the clown act “Dead or Alive” to Kelly (one of my seniors), who at this point in class had already stayed passed the time she was meant to leave. I asked her if she wanted to demo the clown act with me, or if she needed to go. Her choice was to stay and teach clown to the little ones with me, so we demoed the clown act to a group of 25 children rolling on the mats. After the demo, with only a little difficulty we managed to get the kids lined up in two rows facing their partners. I walked the kids through the steps of the clown act, reminding them to open their eyes wide and look at the audience (their mothers).
After we ran through the act a few times, I ask if anybody would like to perform the clown act with their partner alone on stage. Almost every single hand shot up in the air. Not expecting so many kids to be so courageous, I quickly changed the offer to, half the kids perform and half watch, then switch. After all, the bus to take the kids back to Rawamangun was going to leave in twenty minutes. They all performed their clown acts for each other, and the audience laughed hysterically at all the funny bits. It was exciting to watch their confidence and courage to be funny grow each time the audience laughed. By the end of the second group, some of the kids were acting down right hilarious, making me and the mothers laugh almost harder than the kids! After we finished our performing, we sang a song and said our goodbyes.
Tuesday was a particularly new and exciting day. Thanks to a connection from Ibu Endah, the Indonesian Language teacher at JIS, I was scheduled to perform at an Indonesian school in Bogor, a small town north of Jakarta.
As promised, a van picked me up at my house in Pondok Indah at 630am and my two volunteers and I loaded up, and headed off to Bogor. After the hour and a half trip north, we arrived at a very large school surrounded by the beautiful scenery of Bogor. We were far enough outside the city to see a blue sky and the sun beat down on our heads as we unloaded the van.
Greeted by several very excited teachers, we were shown to the performance space, a beautiful gazebo type building, big enough to fit 600 kids at a time with a stage in the far corner.
There were several fans around the perimeter of the second floor performance space, however they did very little to combat the ever rising temperature with each minute we crept into the afternoon. We were promptly introduced to the head master of the school and brought several bottles of water along with a few snacks.
After the introductions, I began to set up my show and work out the logistics of working in this new space. There was a sound system available, that I connected my boom box to so that I could control the music via remote. We were finished setting up just about the time the students were released from class for recess. I turned on some circus music and quickly changed into my clown gear. The blaring trumpets of Merle Evans attracted many of the student’s curiosity. They began to poke their heads around through the entrance of the Gedung Besar (Large Building) to see what was going on. As soon as they realized they’d been noticed, they quickly retreated to the play areas.
Originally, the performance was just going to be for grades 1-3 and as they started arriving, I was approached by one of the organizing teachers and asked if it would be alright if fourth grade joined too. Of course my answer was “Absolutely! The more the merrier!” About five minutes later, the same teacher came up and asked, “would it be alright if the fifth and sixth grade joined also?” And, I said, “Totally, invited everyone to join. In fact, invite the high school as well if you like.” It turned out that they were in mid semester exams so they weren’t available, however by the time all the students had arrived there were over five hundreds excited kids chit chatting together.
Before I began, Ibu Senta (one of the organizing teachers) gave me a very nice introduction. She explained that I was in Jakarta on a social mission to bring the joy of circus and clown to children who were not always happy. She explained to the kids that they were lucky because they were happy at home and happy at school. And, because I was coming to perform for them, even though they were not underprivileged, it was now their responsibility to give back to those in their communities that weren’t as fortunate as they were. It was a very touching speech and I feel like it was a great start to raising awareness for the need to work socially in our communities.
As soon as her speech was finished, I began my show. I started out by telling all of the kids that I needed them to “Maju depan, maju depan!”(Come closer to the front) As soon as they’d all settled, I decided that I needed them to, “Mundur, mundur mundur!”(Back away) And, as soon as they were settled, I asked them to move forward again. This trickery went on for several minutes, the kid’s reactions getting louder and funnier each time. When I thought they’d had enough of my games, I began the very difficult task of climbing the three steps to the stage. The laughter was so enthusiastic and readily available, it was at this point that I knew this was going to be a lot of fun.
My show went fifteen minutes longer than it usually does, because the kids were so ready and available to be played with. I was able to do things that normally get laughs once or twice, three or four times and the laughter got louder and louder each time. By the end of the show I was drenched in sweat and my face was as red as a tomato. We held an abbreviated talk back after the show, where the kids raised their hands and asked me questions like; “How long have you been practicing to balance that ladder on your chin?” or “Does your mom know you spin plates on sticks, won’t she get mad if you drop them?” My favorite question came after the talk back was over and we were eating lunch. A young girl came up to me at my table and asked me if I ever practiced so hard that I bleed. I tried to explain to her that I practiced very hard and sometimes my muscles were sore, but if you were bleeding, then that wasn’t good. She replied with a sigh of relief, “Good, because I don’t like bleeding”. Then smiled and went back to her lunch.
After lunch, I gave workshops to several of the classes and they were all very excited. The workshops were short because there were so many classes, but everybody seemed to have a good time. Even some of the teachers were trying things and ever room was filled with the sounds of laughter, squeals of success and applause.
On Wednesday, we traveled north to Cilincing. Cilincing is usually our Thursday project, however with the Red Letter days and Easter weekend, this was the last time I could make it before the World Water Week performance.
We spent today putting together our show. Some of the kids seemed a little nervous, so I tried to remind them that our show was for fun. We have a gift that we’re going to give to the audience and that gift is our happiness and excitement on stage. I told them that as a performer, you have the power to affect the audience’s experience. If you smile on stage, the audience will smile back at you. If you drop your juggling ball but don’t make a big deal about it, the audience won’t make a big deal about it. I feel like after our conversation, nerves were eased and kids started to respond to what I was saying. If a kid wasn’t smiling while they were practicing, all I had to do was shoot a big smile their way and they immediately smiled as big as they could.
Class went wonderfully and it was a great way to leave them before we performed for their community the next week.
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