Kids Find Healing Through Drama

Ten-year old Harjono saw a mob hack his mother to death in an ethnic riot on Borneo island two years ago. He has been in a camp for displaced persons ever since, battling his nightmares.

He got into fights easily and was unable to stay still for long. He allowed no one to get close to him.

And then a few weeks ago things improved just a little: He was a given a chance to play.

A foreign theater group put him and 28 other traumatized and marginalized Indonesian children through a crash drama course and helped them stage a performance based upon their lives.

They still face massive problems, but for the first time they were able to deal with the horrors they have witnessed.

Officials estimate that about 1 million people have been caught up in bloody ethnic, separatist and religious violence that is raging across this sprawling nation.

Most live in makeshift shelters and camps. About one-third are children.

Thousands more children have been abandoned or separated from their families. Homeless, they work in markets, pedal rickshaws and sell newspapers to survive. Many are involved in petty crime or the sex trade. Others beg.

The government has admitted it doesn’t have the money to house or educate them. And while international and local aid organizations try to help, they cannot hope to reach them all.

Enter the David Glass Ensemble, a traveling theater troupe from Britain.

“We try to empower children and their imagination,” said founder David Glass, 42, “because the sort of things these kids have experienced require imagination to overcome.”

The children, ages 6 to 17, were split into four groups for six afternoons of noisy rehearsals in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta.

They were given confidence-building exercises and taught basic dramatic skills. It was then up to them.

“The kids are the makers and performers of their own work,” said Jane Arnefield, 28, one of four actors in charge of the project.

“We’re really here to make them feel good,” she said in a voice hoarse from shouting out encouragement and praise.

Using music, drama, dance and mime, the child actors came up with a classic fairy tale.

A giant monster orchestrates a bloody fight between two families who had previously lived in harmony for generations. Children from both clans reunite them, but only after countless hardships and adventures.

As if their message was not clear enough, the child actors carried placards and sang songs urging adults in the audience to settle differences without violence.

“Grown-ups have yet to learn that we are the future,” said Tuti, 17, who lives in a Jakarta shelter for homeless girls.

Aid organizations estimate there are as many as 50,000 children either living or working on the streets of Jakarta. About 20% are girls.

Patrick, 12, lives with a youth gang in a derelict building that was burned in a riot in 1998. He used to thieve for a market thug. He now begs at city intersections.

He read aloud verses he wrote about his life on the street.

“I want to be a poet and try to change things,” he said after the performance.

Hopelessness for children is found across many parts of Indonesia, an archipelago of about 17,000 islands.

Aris Merdeka Sirat, executive director of Indonesia’s national commission for children’s rights, warns that a new generation is being traumatized.

“They are growing up full of revenge and nothing is being done to stop them,” he said.

Aid worker Budi Satria Dewantoro said the youngsters who took part in the drama workshops were more confident and ready to deal with the problems they were facing.

“All the children need is encouragement and opportunities,” he said, “so they don’t feel alone in these difficult days.”