The War On Fun

For the last seven years, we have lucubrated beyond the bounds of propriety around here.  It's gained us a loyal little following of very smart people, and we really appreciate all the folks who stop by regularly to listen to us enumerate our inner-most hopes and desires.  Thanks y'all!

Just thought I'd get that off my chest, because I was starting to asphyxiate from the weight of it.

So what's going on around the ranch, or tempat pertanian yang luas berikut gedung-gedungnya as they say around these parts ('ranch' is one of those words that doesn't translate into Indonesian).

As you regulars already know, we've started up Indonesia's first cabaret.  Like the word "ranch," it's a bit hard to translate a 500-year-old Western tradition into Indonesia.  Things like satire, double-entendre and dry wit just don't exist in this culture.  It is hard to translate something that is untranslatable, and humor is one of the hardest.  Doesn't stop me from taking up the challenge, though.  There is certainly enough interest in it, and being the only one of anything is usually a good thing.

The kicker is trying to raise investment.  How do you describe something that doesn't exist?  Basically, to fully appreciate what I want to do, I have to actually produce the show, and at that point, I don't need the investment.  It's one of those glorious Catch-22s in life.

There is a method to my madness, though.  Or so I like to think.

Since economic tracking became wide-spread, it has become axiomatic that entertainment and education are the two best industries to survive an economic downturn.  The problem is, you can't be like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland and say, "Hey kids!  I've got a barn, let's do a show!"

Entertainment is a fickle business.  To me, Monty Python is hysterical, but to a lot of people I know, it just mystifies them.  To me, Citizen Kane is a brilliant character study that broke every single rule of camera movement in place up to that time, but to many people, it's a boring old black-and-white movie with no special effects.

So how do you make fun of politics in a country where, for 30 years, such a thing got you a personal firing squad?  How do you play with sexual mores in a highly conservative culture where children still marry off in birth order and kids live at home until they get married?  How do you make literary allusions in a culture with precious little literature?

You can begin to appreciate the rather fine line I am attempting to tread.

But the biggest challenge is not culture, or language or any other controllable factor.  No, it's government.

I'm not the brightest monkey in the tree, but if I know enough to understand the relationship of entertainment to economics, then you can bet someone in government does too.

Sure enough, the Province of Jakarta went and raised a 30.5% tax on all entertainment, except oddly, golf.  As one might expect, government in desperate attempts to support useless bureaucracies  will, like all parasites, kill the host by sucking it dry.  Obviously, this kind of egregious tax has a massive chilling effect on people's desires to operate venues, bring or produce shows, and especially attend shows that are expensive enough just to cover costs.

Thinking that it will cash in on the survivability of entertainment in slow economies, the geniuses in government will do everything possible to kill operators and audiences, thus having the exact opposite effect of what was desired.

In the end, what we have is social engineering, whether intended or not.  Just when people need a couple of hours of escape from their misery, the government steps in to make sure that even that tiny relief is equally miserable.

More importantly, though, what we see here is a kind of proof that bad times are coming.  Governments, who steal our money to perform studies to figure out how to survive at our expense, are obviously seeing the writing on the wall.  And the evidence comes from a place where most people wouldn't look...entertainment.  I'm willing to bet there are similar moves around the world to suck on entertainment revenues, but I am also willing to bet that the horrific box office numbers from this past blockbuster season are a symptom, as well.

My bet is that we will start to see the rise of a massive underground entertainment market.  People will seek entertainment, and suppliers will find a way to circumvent the burdensome taxes and regulations trying to cash in on it.  Look for things like underground cinemas and cabarets presenting home-grown fare at very reasonable prices.  And since the places where these things will arise are not registered venues with broad market awareness, the place to start looking is in underground publications.

It is one of Nature's Laws that when government tries to squeeze the population a little tighter, more of them will slip through the fingers.

One thing is absolutely certain - art is like life, it finds a way.  No matter how hard tyrants and dictators have tried to control and suppress art and entertainment throughout the millennia, it has always found expression some how.  If there is a defining feature of human beings, it is that they create art for the enjoyment of others and the elevation of the spirit.

At a time when people will demand entertainment as an escape, governments will try harder to both control and profit from it, which will in turn cause art to (once again) go underground.  The one big hope is that when this has happened in the past, it led to great periods of creativity and explosions of expression.

That's one thing Hollywood has never figured out - it's not the budgets, but the limits that make creativity happen.

Casting Notice

Anda dapat terjemahkan pilih bahasa di kanan. ====>

>

As part of our on-going quest to celebrate culture, promote the arts, entertain audiences, and educate everyone, we are excited to announce the following:

CASTING NOTICE

Open casting call for Jakarta's newest destination attraction: CABARET INDONIQUE

We are seeking Jakarta's most talented performers to join us in creating a truly unique show, blending Indonesia's rich cultural heritage with the classic cabaret style of theater.  As a cast member, you will be part of creating a whole new form of entertainment that will attract audiences from around the world, performed in Jakarta's newest and (so far) only venue of its kind.

THIS IS A FULL-TIME PROFESSIONAL JOB!

Committing to this project will require you to work every day except Mondays, create new material when not performing, and possibly tour in future.  Pay and benefits will reflect this commitment.

Anyone with talent is invited to audition.  We are looking for:

• Multi-talented individuals who can sing, dance and act, especially those who can combine traditional and modern styles;
• Magicians;
• Soloists - musicians, singers, comedians, actors;
• Creative performers with unique abilities and talents.
• 
  
• When:   Monday, 22 August 2016; 10:00 - 21:00
• Where:  Club Revolution, Lotte Shopping Ave., Lt. LG (dekat Gonzo's TexMex), Ciputra World 1, Kuningan, South Jakarta;
• How:     Bring a recent photo and list of experience, plus a 3-5 minute prepared routine/performance;
• Who:     Ages 18+, men and women, especially with multiple abilities to dance, sing and act;
• Information:   email theatrix.jkt@gmail.com, or cabaret.indonique@gmail.com, or Twitter @cabaretindoniq or @theatrixentserv ; SMS or WhatsApp +62-858-1060-6083

Target opening in mid- to late September.  Shows will run 6 days per week, with matinees and late shows on weekends.  This is a full-time job.  When not performing, cast and crew will work together to create new material, design costumes and perfect our craft.  Cast members will be pushed to deliver their creative best, and will be rewarded for it.

Please join us and send this notice to anyone you know who is interested in becoming a professional entertainer.

This is your chance to help create something completely new and exciting, and to have it promoted to international audiences as THE entertainment destination in Jakarta.

CABARET INDONIQUE!  Because it is time to move to the next level.

==========================================

FAQ...

What is CABARET INDONIQUE?
There are seven basic types of cabaret, named after the cultures in which they originated.  We intend to create the eighth.  By mixing traditional Indonesian culture with modern theater and contemporary themes, CABARET INDONIQUE will offer something never before seen on any stage.

Where is the venue?
CABARET INDONIQUE is located on the lower ground floor at Lotte Shopping Ave., in the same complex with the Ciputra Artpreneur, in south central Jakarta.  This type of venue is the first of its kind in Jakarta and offers an intimate audience area, mixed drinks/beer/wine, and optional dinner prepared by the head chef at Gonzo's, directly attached.  CABARET INDONIQUE seats 110 people, with booths, tables or stools, depending on ticket options and pricing.  Tickets will be less than IDR400,000/person, with dinner, and all tickets include 1 or 2 drinks, depending on options selected.

What is the show like?
CABARET INDONIQUE will feature dancing, singing, comedy, magic, sketches, and surprise guests.  The show will run six days per week (except Mondays), with a midnight show on Saturday, and an early matinee on Sunday.  Show times to be announced.  The show will change on a regular basis about every 4-6 weeks.  The show will feature everything from Vegas-style ensembles, to solos and duets, with headliner acts.  The show will run approximately 90 minutes.

How long will the show run?
CABARET INDONIQUE is a perpetual show.  It has no closing date and we hope that it will expand to other venues, as well as tour at some point.  The show will be updated regularly, so each month will offer fresh material and new headliners.  And the best part of live productions is that they are never the same, even when they are the same.

How do I make a reservation?
The CABARET INDONIQUE website will offer an online reservation system, or tickets can be purchased at the door, though we anticipate demand to be high and shows shows to sell out frequently, especially on weekends.  We will post more information on the CABARET INDONIQUE Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channel, as it becomes available.

Who can come to the show?
The show is rated 21+ due to alcohol sales and adult themes.  The venue is accessible by wheelchair and there is a drop-off directly outside the entrance.

;

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Many readers will immediately dismiss this link as being "conspiracy theory," though I thought it was rather level-headed about the whole thing.

At its root is some very true and very powerful information that every human being should know before they are ever allowed to sit in front of a TeeVee or watch a movie.

Many readers here will know that my long and rather eclectic career began in the theater at the tender age of 12.  I played Christopher Robin is a semi-professional production of Winnie the Pooh.  That and my life-long fascination with Orson Welles started me down the circuitous path that (so far) brought me to Indonesia.

What precious few people realize about the entertainment business is that it has very deep roots in occult practices.  Oh yes, you read that right, and no I don't mean since the 1800s, I mean since the 1800s BC.

The theater is actually a descendant of, for all intents and purposes, a temple.  All the modern schools of acting and stagecraft and art are little more than window dressing on a mystical experience that has, or often has, a very profound effect on the minds and spirits of anyone who participates in it, regardless of which side of the stage you are on.

Originally, scripts were mystical intonations and spells designed to invoke the actual gods themselves, or a circus (in the original sense) of demons and spirits.  The purpose was to guide and inform us on the proper way to behave and how to solve our everyday problems.

When an actor dons a mask and costume, they are actually creating a vessel for a spirit to inhabit.  I have heard actors (and said it myself) a thousands times saying that they really didn't feel a role, until they saw themselves in full costume.  Suddenly, it was if they had become someone else.  The words and actions came from "somewhere" and they simply allowed the character to "come out."

When Thespis first assumed a role as a character, and not just as someone reciting words, he became the first actor - a vessel through which the gods and unseen world could speak.  He was no longer Thespis, but had assumed the words and manners of another being, and incorporate being until that point.

We often talk of actors "inhabiting a role" or "becoming a character," but we rarely stop to consider what we are actually saying.  We are, in fact, admitting that we pay someone to be possessed by a spirit for our entertainment and edification.  In this sense, stage fright is actually fear of letting go of one's self and allowing an incorporate being to inhabit our bodies.

You may, at this point, be thinking, "What hogwash," and "Superstitious balderdash," or words to that effect.  Yet, how many times have your heard something like, "So-and-so IS __________!" (insert your favorite movie character)

I have invited friends and family to shows that I was in, and at the end, they were genuinely perplexed.  "Where were you?" they would ask.  "I was the lead character," I would respond.  "GASP!  That was YOU?!"  Truly, on the nights when everything was "on," actors don't think or act as themselves, they feel remote from the event, as if they are watching someone else that kind of looks like them.

What is even more powerful than the actor's experience is the effect on the audience.  Regardless of what we think about going to a show or watching TeeVee, we are part of a spell that is teaching us to act and react in a certain way and in certain circumstances.  As the audience, you are being manipulated emotionally and intellectually at a level most of us hardly understand or think about.

As jaded and suspicious as I am about media, I know it works on me.  I cannot watch Titanic or Apollo 13, without crying at the end.  I have actually tried on several occasions.

This is remarkable because I know what is being done.  I don't watch movies like most people.  I don't see a drama, I see lighting, set and sound design, camera angles, microphone placements and music cues.  I analyze movies, I don't enjoy them the way the general public does.  And yet, when Rose tosses the Heart of the Sea into the ocean, or the parachutes open as the capsule floats down, tears are streaming down my face.  I know I am being manipulated.  I know how it is done.  I can and have done it to other people.  And yet...

Think back to when you were a kid, and be honest here.  When you played with dolls (or "action figures" if you prefer), did those bits of plastic - in your mind - have unique personalities?  Did they say things and act in ways that were NOT YOU?  Did they have to do or say certain things to be who they were?  If you answer "yes," then you were part of a magical spell.  If you answered "no," I am deeply suspicious of your honesty.

The fact of the matter is that those who control the media are quite literally casting spells over the audience.  We are being told who to emulate and admire.  We are being told what we want out of life.  We are being shown how to behave and what is expected of us.  That's why the good guys get the girl and admiration, and the bad guys get rubbed out.  That's why stereotypes exist and how they form.  That's why we have memes and archetypes.  They are occult workings and you are the target.

Ask pretty much anyone who their heroes are, and I will lay good money that they will give you a list of media personalities or fictional characters.  That we even have heroes is a function of media telling us who to emulate, for whatever reasons the gatekeepers have.

Entertainment is a form of mind control, and even more profoundly, an occult magic.  It is manipulating reality in such a way that many people come to believe it is real. That is the definition of magic.  It bypasses our natural filters and goes straight to the parts of our minds that control how we perceive the world.

Still don't believe me?  Look at Pokemon Go.

People actually follow virtual cues to physical locations to collect things that don't exist!  It astounds me that nearly everyone I talk to, especially the players, don't see what is happening to them.  If, at the top of this article, you had any doubts whatsoever that the media are performing magic and mind control on a mass scale, then I rest my case on this one example.

Having been trained in media, having performed nearly every function on and off stage/before and behind the camera, I can attest that anyone consuming entertainment of any kind in any form is being manipulated.  It is an ancient and powerful ritual of incantations and actions that invoke very dark forces.  No matter how one tries to rationalize it, in the end it is true when viewed with an unprejudiced eye.

The US is just waking up from a two-week stupor of media manipulation called the political conventions.  Depending on you predispositions, one or the other of them have left their followers feeling more energetic and enthused, ready to fight the final battle.  This is a magical working.  Those viewers have been manipulated.  They are under a spell now.

And it is precisely why I haven't watched TeeVee in a decade.

Dream Merchant, Part 1

Your faithful reporter at right at press conference

See Part 2 here.

One of our long-time reader/correspondents, Mr. P. in Thailand, suggested that I post a sort of Lessons Learned from my experience building the Ciputra Artpreneur, which is Indonesia's first private, for-profit cultural arts centers.  Never one to turn down a faithful reader if I can help it, read on, McDuff!  You will want to brew up a pot of strong coffee for this one.  It's going to be long.

The Ciputra Artpreneur is the latest destination cultural arts center in Jakarta.  It is located in Kuningan, South Jakarta at Ciputra World 1, part of a three-phase multi-use development that includes malls, hotels, health care, apartments, park areas, a convention center and other amenities.  Once complete, one could almost spend their entire life there with no need to explore the world at large.

The Artpreneur is located on the 11th floor above Lotte Shopping Avenue and is comprised of three levels totaling 3,000 square meters with half of it being a large gallery/expo area, an art museum and a 1,200-seat proscenium theater.  It is owned by the Ciputra family, as is the entire development, and adjoins the Raffles Hotel, which is Jakarta's first so-called 6-diamond hotel (personal butlers optional).

I was the Executive Director for Operations for the Artpreneur and oversaw the construction and start-up of the center, including bringing the first-ever Broadway musical to Indonesia (Disney's Beauty and the Beast).  You may have noticed that I used the simple past tense, and thereby hangs a tale.

The first show we held was the largest collection of Kurt Wenner's work ever assembled - 11 pieces taking up the entire 1,300 sqm of the exhibition space.  The place was not finished and work schedules were shifted to night in order to accommodate the show.  It wasn't my first choice to host the show at the time, since we were well behind schedule, but it was a great show and meeting Kurt was a real pleasure.  Having the general public running around in what was essentially still a construction zone, though, had me doing my best long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

The greatest number of problems I encountered on the project were directly related to cultural differences.  Nothng of this kind had previously existed in the country and Indonesian's are not particularly concerned with safety and standards.  Since I have never had more than a paper cut on any project I've ever done, I was determined not to start now, and spent an inordinate amount of time running around wailing and gnashing my teeth about safe working environments.

A major cultural difference is that Indonesians do not like directness.  It is an affront to them and it makes them feel as if the person being direct is angry.  This fact leads to meetings that are interminable.  They start late (no Indonesian is ever on time), involve a lot of small talk and useless chatter, and no one ever gets passionate about anything.  You can imagine the fun when a hot-tempered Irish-Texan walked into this mix.

At any rate, the construction update meetings were all-day affairs, with at least one or two meals being served in the process.  However, I was deeply frustrated because the actual business at hand was no more than an hour or two.  One day, I finally had had enough and told everyone we were going to have a meeting ex-pat style.  We finished the primary business in 45 minutes, with an additional hour of break-out meetings to address specific problems.  This was down from 8 to 10 hours.  I am not sure how offended anyone was, but I was hugely relieved.  Meetings after that were significantly faster and more productive.

The construction had languished for nearly two years because there was no one involved who had any clue as to how to proceed.  From the moment I stepped in until we hosted the owner's 83rd birthday party was eight months.  That means it went from a dark, dirty, mosquito-infested hell-hole to a mostly functional art center in one-third the time it took to get to the hell-hole phase.

The first major problem I faced when I came on-board was that no one had been following ISO standards, thus as-built drawings were virtually non-existent.  This was a major headache because the contractor had re-positioned air-handling units into the audio booth, had not built out the sound-proof wall according to spec and had made a hundred modifications that were not documented.  I spent the first month walking around with a massive roll of drawings trying to catalog all the changes.  This was vital in order to know which things could pass and which had to be fixed.

The big wrench in the works was that the local contractor had never built a theater or museum, and was making changed based on lack of knowledge of the specialized uses and needs for these kinds of places.  He would cut vital systems to save money with no concept of why they were designed in the first place and absolutely no experience to guide his judgement.

This led to a number of big yelling matches in which I demanded partial demolitions to back up and start again, making sure the second time that things were correct.  Out of a (I assume) genuine desire to understand, the contractor constantly asked me "why."  I tried my best to educate him and his team, but after several months, and a fast approaching deadline, I finally lost my cool and said that I never wanted to hear "why" again.  Just do what I say and be happy with it.  I will worry about the "why" part.

This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the owner really had no idea what they had gotten into.  Thinking that most of the really expensive stuff was just over-engineering, it caused a great amount of consternation when I informed them that they could not bring major shows into the center without meeting certain criteria, including a very expensive rigging system, an even more expensive lighting and sound system, and so forth.  But these were the easy battles.  The big one was yet to come.

Remember I said the Artpreneur was on the 13th floor?  It is surrounded by a parking garage with two enormous spiral ramps leading up from ground level.  The only way to get anything, including a Broadway show, onto the stage was to drive everything up the ramp to the 12th floor, off-load it and hand-carry it up a bank of escalators, through the theater lobby and onto the stage from the audience (house).  This, frankly, wasn't going to fly.  I gave the owner a choice: either you settle for hosting lecture series on the stage, or you need a lift system to get the equipment and scenery from the ground to the stage door.  To give you an idea of the scale of the problem, Beauty and the Beast travels in 12 x 40-foot containers that were never going to fit on the spiral ramp, and the only lift that came anywhere near the stage was just big enough for about eight adults.

This led to a six-month battle because the cost of retrofitting a heavy lift system was considerable, but the entire goal of the center was moot without it.  One day, while enjoying one of my frequent smoke breaks to calm my temper down, I was standing at the spiral ramp when I had a true "eureka" moment.

I proposed fitting a 3.5-tonne lift into the center core of the spiral ramp.  This would get us to the 11th floor, which was 11/13ths of the problem solved.  Later, after very long hours of examining drawings, I found a hole between the beams and columns that would perfectly accommodate another 3.5-tonne lift to go from the 11th floor garage to the 14th floor, directly behind the stage.  This system would require significant demolition and expense, but there was no way I could do what I had been asked to do without it.

Turns out, the lift system was completed less than 24 hours before Beauty and the Beast arrived, and had yet to be tested and commissioned the last time I checked.

The next major issue was the orchestra pit.  Keep in mind that the bottom of the pit was the ceiling for the museum, which houses the largest private collection of the now-deceased artist Hendra Gunawan.  Being a ceiling, it has a greatly reduced load capacity, as well as a number of beams running through the pit smack in the middle of where all the lift gears should be.

For those who don't know, orchestra pits have a number of purposes.  First, they provide a place for a live orchestra that is well below floor level in order to mute the sound and prevent the music from overwhelming the voices.  Second, the pit lift provides a means to raise and lower equipment from storage areas beneath the stage (road boxes, etc.).  Third, it provides additional functionality for things like special effects or an extended apron in front of the grand drape (convenient for hosting 2 shows at the same time).  Without a mechanical lift, one function (storage) is lost, another is reduced (muting) and the third is severely hampered by requiring complex scaffolding and manual labor for the remaining functions.

Because the pit floor is also a ceiling, we lost 2 tonnes off of the loading capacity that was specified.  We lost a full 65 cm off the depth, meaning the orchestra would be much louder than it should have been.  The ability to provide a thrust area in front of the drape was all but abandoned.  And most of the special effects applications I can think of are lost.

These are just a few examples of the many construction and engineering problems I faced.  Others included the rigging system, halon system, UV-reduced lighting, and oh so much more.  Most were solved or at least reduced, but the outcome was strictly dependent on the owner's willingness to purchase the needed equipment and specialized services to correct the issues.

In Part 2, we'll look at the more interesting and intractable problem: cultural.  How does one create a culture that does not exist?