What a Week!

 18 May 2012

It was just another Tuesday at WSB. A steady flow of auditionees for LP6. Some exciting ones too, and after lunch, a signing ceremony with AusAID for funds for rebuilding the clinic and for LP6. Then the Free West Papua movement comes and asks if anyone wants to attend the peaceful demo at the airport against the arrival of the Indonesian plane with aid for police and agriculture sector. Several group members and actors want to attend as is their individual right. Many are cross at the government’s handling of the AFP situation which seems to them a big hypocrisy; on the one hand saying that Australia has acted in a high handed way and then accepting aid from the country that suppresses their fellow Melanesians in West Papua. We beg some to stay for the signing ceremony and a bus load heads off for the airport. The signing ceremony goes off well and as Ausaid leave, news comes that all the demonstrators have been arrested by the police who turned up in full riot gear (what is this, inner city London riots?). Mike, our CEO, heads off for the station; surely they won’t detain them?  It was a totally peaceful expression of their views. But no, they are to be kept overnight in the cells. Most of those who didn’t run away from the police were WSB staff so around 15 are locked up and Michael insists on being charged with them.

They were charged the following morning with unlawful assembly and trespassing on government owned property with malicious intent (the airport). They then gave a brilliant show, Zero Balans, that evening with several bits seeming to have extra resonance …..for them if not for the audience. Afterwards we sat around and people told their stories of the day.

Whilst all who attended did so in an individual capacity it has not escaped notice how many were members of WSB. Time will tell how this plays out and we need to develop some guidelines for participating in direct action. For now, the public reaction has been very supportive.And many are questioning why they were arrested at all.  Several political commentators here and overseas have taken the angle that the AFP story is another example of Australia playing Big Brother to its Pacific neighbours and that Australia should have known it would backfire. In communities and on the radio tokbak show there has been little support for this view.  For the government to complain of lack of respect from Australia elicits little sympathy at grassroots level because they feel the government has not respected them with its talk of stamping out corruption and then taking no action against its own ministers for many breaches of the leadership code. Why also, they ask, was the PM travelling with someone with a past history of corruption? And why is he appearing to defend him?

If anything the expulsion of the AFP has made  Australia into the good guys for the people. Callers to the tokbak show  spoke of how they had returned to education through the new technical college which offers Australia-recognised courses, of how Australia had defended the islands in world war 2. If the AFP had stayed they  would have had a bad week; Tuesday’s headline was about a crashed police minibus, the driver of which was drunk and who was travelling with three young ladies. And there is a masked, armed  gang of robbers appearing in the news a lot. The first armed gang to date. What became immediately clear as AFP left was how much of day to day running costs the program supplies; for fuel , data systems etc.There may be questions of how sustainable that is longterm. I suppose what concerns WSB more is how the police project cannot involve itself with cultural issues like the beatings still handed out by police particularly to youngsters. We had a young 15 year old girl from the youth centre taken in on suspicion of theft who was beaten with electric rope by several officers. 

And, updating this 2 days later, the violence has escalated. An elderly dutch couple murdered and Charlie Pearce, a much loved educationalist here for 40 years badly beaten up in his house We brace ourselves for the blaming of all this on Freedom of Movement and young people, marijuana, and not a mention of  an ever worsening corruption at the expense of those very same young people.

Both plays have been running for 10 days now.The response has been tremendous despite a hiccup in our new presell, no tickets on door policy . The response to Janis ia Nao (JIN) is especially gratifying since it is our first big play in which most scenes are played out by 2 or three characters. Zero Balans too is able to find an audience in this its second year.

The biggest fright in JIN was Titus appearing in his drunken MP scene without a shirt, mimicking the recent photo that appeared in the newspaper of a controversial MP drunk and bare chested outside a night club. It would be the night that I'd chosen to watch the show from the back row where there was no easy escape! Inspired political satire to some members of the audience and unnecessary to others like myself. I mean its not like he's the only MP to be raving drunk in public,  just the only one unlucky enough to be caught on photo. Going on bare chested, to me at any rate, let the others off the hook.

Given the actors' fears that perhaps the central character in JIN would be seen as denigrating women, it is funny to see the way in which the audience identify with her and will her on. Audience watching is fascinating, particularly in an alleyway production where you can see the other side mesmerised by Morinda's wonderfully energetic performance . They love every dreadful thing she says and the way she is actually one of the more honest characters.

Daytimes we're filming the kids play. The first time we have done something like this without an overseas presence. We've kept it all on the stage and used stage lights plus a few 300's. It wont look that great probably but hopefully is capturing the energy of the piece in a better way than just pointing a camera at it. More and more endeared to the youth group and the core actors too seem to be enjoying the link. They are so funny. One girl had disappeared off to beauty class at the youth centre just when we were ready to roll on a big song . Someone went to get her and a senior actor said to the rest that none of them were to admonish her. She arrives, we roll, nothing happens. The girl concerned is in tears. Sure enough like a bunch of piranhas they'd gone for her the moment she came back. Half an hour later they're  gathered together, errant girl included, around the monitor, laughing their heads off at the final shot we'd taken that day!

On the personal front, Jo and I have taken the plunge, applied for citizenship and been accepted. Now the long process of returning our British and Australian passports.