a festival fortnight

mainteater | Kliping Berita | Lisa Shukroon | 22 Oktober 2000

By Lisa Shukroon

Monday October, 16^th
Dear diary,
Is it possible to be festivalléd out? Coz just when I thought I could soon relax (last week of Fringe alreadyl), I’ve decided to tonight off, but let’s just say the fortnight’s been full on.

Tuesday October, 17^th
Dear diary,
Oopsy, des[ite the night off last night I slept in and pissed of everyone at work today – borring bastards. Tonight I saw Huge. Unfortunetelly, it’s wasn’t. Spent the first half unsure if accents were real (they were) and the second wondering why there was second.

Wednesday October 18^th
Saw Greg Fleet’s Trilogy – Tales from a Bald Man, It was pretty good. But he ,should decide between stand-up and comedic theatre, at least within the one show.

Friday October 20^th
OK diary it’s fair to say I’ve stuffed up. Last night it rained and, well, I didn’t move from the couch – now I won’t get to see Ngalyod or Bouncers, both of which are getting rave reviews.
Tonight I saw Silk Stockings. Great cabaret if you’re into camp old show tunes. Oh, and the venue is a real find too: The Store Room is intimate and has great atmosphere.

Sunday October 22^nd
Today I saw the best show of the Fringe Festival, that I got to see anyway – Happy 1000-1000 Bahagia. Visually startling, measured and poetic, the experience was entrancing, the story compelling and the performances powerful.
The energy of festival time is motivating. I, and a few thousand others, have moved our fat arses and experienced something different. Part of me still can’t get enough. My heart and mind are up to it, but is my body or bank balance? Stuff it. Bring on the Melboume Festival.
Mental note: To ensure continued income, remember to delete references to workmates as “boring bastard” when publishing diary extracts.

One man, one woman, many regrets

mainteater | Kliping Berita | The Sunday Age | 22 Oktober 2000

Theater : Steven Carroll

A man (Wawan Sofwan) sits on stage with a revolver at his head. He is counting to a thousand and he tells the audience that when he gets there he’s going to blow his head off. His English translator (Tiffany Ball) and a sign-language interpreter (Jodee Mundy) are on stage with him throughout the count.

Happy 1000… 1000 Bahagia is a richly layered piece of theatre from Australian/Indonesian company Mainteater. The production is based on Endlich Schluss by Austrian playwright Paul Turrini, which was translated from German to Indonesian, then from Indonesian into English. Mainteater is a multilingual company and, among other things, this show is about language, translation, interpretation and meaning.

The stage upon which the man sits is plastered with yesterday’s newspapers, which is fitting because he is a freelance journalist who has become utterly disillusioned. He writes with equal passion about the plight of the poor and the need for a globalised market place. He is true to one point of view one day and another the next. But far from seeing this as a sign of an open mind, he sees it as symptomatic of his com- plete inability to hold any point of view with conviction or to believe in anything for very long.

In many ways he possesses that alienated indifference that characterised so many of Camus’s characters. He observes himself going through the meaningless rituals of life and is nauseated and angered by what he sees. And words–his stock in trade– have now been abused to the point where they have become totally meaningless.

While the man tells his story, mostly in Indonesian, his translator and interpreter move in and out of his tale, happily translating and joining in the fun one minute, horrified by what they have to say the next.

At one stage he imagines destroying every fake word he’s ever written and throwing them in the rubbish bin. But his words come marching back up the footpath, under his door, along his legs and back into his brain. There is no escape. He deceives his wife and his mistress while looking for letters from a lost lover in the letterbox. And, all the way through his monologues and confessions, he is counting. Seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred. As he nears a thousand the tension mounts, for hanging over the whole 90-minute show is the question: what will he do when he gets there? `

This is a compelling, extremely entertaining production that moves easily between the light-hearted and the dark, the playful and the deadly serious. Given the range of moods in the piece, the ensemble performance is very smooth and director Sandra Long keeps things tense until the end.

‘Happy 1000   1000 Bahagia’
finishes today, with shows at 3pm and 8pm,
at The Black Box, Victorian Arts Centre.
Tickets: $11/$12.
Bookings: 9347 6142.
Rating: ****

Winning number come up

mainteater | Kliping Berita | Herald Sun | 20 Oktober 2000

Theater Review :
Happy 1000, 1000 Bahagia
Where & when: La Mama at The Black Box, until October 22,
Tuesday-Friday 8pm: Saturday and Sunday 3pm and 5pm

Reviewer: Kate Herbert

The play Happy 1000-1000 Bahagia is performed in Indonesian, English and Australian deaf sign language (Auslan).

The play, written by Pete Turrini, is originally in Austrian. Not only is Turrini’s text demanding and provocative, but also the collision of three langguages, the physical style and the dramatic content create a riveting performance.

As he counts in Indonesian, two women (Jodee Mundy and Tiffany Ball) count in English and Auslan. Yes, they really do count the whole way to 1000.

But there are diversions into the man’s last days, meeting neighbors and his translation job for a newspaper. The counting is mesmerising as it numbers off his last moments. The three count in rhythm, the numbers counterpointed like a musical score. The performances are compelling, particularly that of Sofwan, who is a sparkling presence on stage. Mundy has a brightness which enlivens her physical performance in Auslan and Ball provides the connection for those understanding only English.

Turrini writes with beauty and conviction, with a rich sense of the power of the mind in a state of depression and obsession.

Play showcases artistic world’s dynamic capacity

mainteater | Kliping Berita | The Jakarta Post | 20 Oktober 2000

MELBOURNE, Australia (JP): What differentiates theater from the cinema, it seems, is the ability of each performance to assume a specific and distinctive character.

The moment you walk into the Black Box Theater at the Victorian Arts Centre you feel a kind of intimacy as if the audience knew that they were going to share an extraordinary experience. And as is the case with most ofLa Mama presentations, there was a blend of tension and anticipation in theair, the audience feeling they were being led to take part in something dangerous.

The fairly small theater with a capacity of 90 seats was nearly full on the opening night, and the subdued lighting of the opening scene made the red rugby shirt worn by the main character, played by Indonesia’s Wawan Sofwan, stand out.

Happy 1000 … 1000 Bahagia by Mainteater, an independent group of Indonesian and Australian theatre artists, is a dark play depicting the final moments of a man before his suicide. It unravels, in a spasmodic but disturbingly real way, the mental slide into full psychosis, of a writer-journalist driven by his overwhelming desire not only to make a modest splash in the sea of an incomprehensibly dense and busy world, but to be someone outstanding, adored and revered by the public. Each failure pushes him further and further into desperation and increasingly desperate acts.

Cleverly adapted from a one-man monologue play by Austria’s Peter Turrini, Happy 1000 … 1000 Bahagia is brought into life by three actors, the factual character played by Wawan Sofwan and his two shadows cum alter-agos, by Tiffany Ball and Jodee Mundy.

While the focus is held on Wawan Sofwan with his monologue in Indonesian,Tiffany Ball, delivering the English version, and Jodee Mundy with her Australian Sign Language interpretation, are equally essential to the presentation.

Ball and Mundy are not always following Sofwan; in some scenes they interact with him, thus complementing his movements. Though the three are often in different spots of the newsprint covered stage, throughout the play they come across as one, thanks to the tight choreography, synchronized delivery, and very finely operated lighting. In some scenes, such as the one portraying the character’s imagination of being on fire, all these aspects come into a magnificent interplay.

The play lasts for an hour and a quarter relentlessly without a break.

It is indeed not a performance that can be broken anywhere, because of the tension and momentum that has to be maintained. This poses a slight problem of audience exhaustion. Sitting through a darkly intense play for that length of time is not the same as laughing our way through a comedy, where the laughter alone could provide some degree of physical relief.

Wawan Sofwan’s depiction of a depressive-psychotic character is eerily convincing. His whole body as well as his facial muscles are all working hard in the dramatic delivery. It is in fact a very physical performance for the three actors.

Sandra Long, who translated the script into English as well as directing the play, said that Jodee Mundy helped enhance the visual aspects of the English translation, making it more compatible with the sign language interpretation.

Happy 1000 … 1000 Bahagia, which will be staged at the theater until Oct. 22 before touring to nine venues in Indonesia, is clear evidence of the unlimited cross-cultural and cross-national capacity of the artistic world.

See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2000/10/20/play-showcases-artistic-world039s-dynamic-capacity.html#sthash.YWeXWSYY.dpuf

Happy 1000… 1000 Bahagia reviewed by Chi Vu

mainteater | Kliping Berita | melbournefringe.org.au | Oktober 2000

reviewed by Chi Vu
Taken From internet http://melbournefringe.org.au/Buzzcuts
October 2000

Happy 1000. . .1000 Banagia is a mesmerizing theatre experience utilising 3 languages – Indonesian, English and Auslan (sign language). A journalist holds a pistol to his head and decides to count to 1000 before shooting himself What follows is a nicely paced, sometimes surreal and hilarious; sometimes bewildering and hypnotic count-‘down’ to a man’s suicide attempt.

With 3 actors, each doing one of the 3 languages, there was scope for a lot of tacky translation of the same event, slowing the action down. Instead director Sandra Long manages to meld the 3 languages in continually interesting ways: each time revealing a different interaction, a different tension. The action seems effortless, using physical theatre, musicality, and blocking with a high degree of skill. The script is irreverent and cleverly structured, allowing a confident and uncluttered production.

The 3 actors, Wawan Sofwan, Jodee Mundy and Tiffany Ball deserve a mention. Wawan, with 10 years experience, has a great emotional range, switching from light-hearted absurdity to tension easily.

The set design by Darryl Cordell is pared down and yet chaotic with words, words, words at the same time. It is well suited to the script and performance. There is a great moment when the journalist has locked up all the words in his life in one big room, all the newspapers and letters and writings he has ever owned. And guess what? They escape.

Despite its current form, the script was adapted from a new work by Austrian playwright Peter Turrini, originally written in German. Alter its season at the Fringe, Happy 1000… 1000 Bahagia will tour to Indonesia.

Happy 1000…1000 Bahagia is at the Victorian Arts Centre, in the Black Box (Southbank entrance). It runs from October 17 to 22, Tues to Fri 8pm, Sat & Sun 3pm & Spm. Bookings: 9347-6142.