The sense of distance, loneliness and absence felt by those who live thousands of miles away from their families, are central themes in Migration, a performance project developed by Macau Experimental Theatre, together with Indonesian domestic workers, and presented at this year’s Macau Arts Festival
For Anny, Ayu, Gina, Ratna, Zahrah, Mira, Galih and many other Indonesian women and men, migration is not a choice, it is fate. It is the fate of those who are entrusted with the responsibility of supporting families left at home, longing for their return. These women and men emigrate when life, economic and financial crises or natural catastrophes, take away the floor and the ceiling, and the ability to survive runs through their fingers like sand. Nobody chooses to suffer, no one wants to migrate; it happens because there is no alternative. This is the feeling and state of mind prevalent in the group of more than a dozen migrant women who took to the Black Box Theatre stage of the Old Court Building to tell their stories at this year’s Macau Arts Festival (MAF).
This is the third production by community theatre project Macau Experimental Theatre and the first time the group has participated in the MAF program.
The Indonesian protagonists in Migration represent this idea of loss and separation through their intertwining bodies, supporting each other, heads on stomachs of partners, buttocks supported on benches, until they are abruptly withdrawn, as if from an economic crisis or a violent thunderstorm, leaving them to fall helplessly to the ground. In this situation of despair, migration is an option to pay off debts and to rebound economically.
REAL LIVES ON STAGE
The stories Migration tells on stage are not fictional. These are excerpts from the real lives of these women and one boy, the son of one of them.
As the eldest daughter of a fishing family in Lombok, Anny was forced to migrate to support her family. She left parents and children behind. Today, at the age of 43, 14 years of which she has lived in the territory, she has her mother, aged 75, and her daughter, 21, with her in Macau for the first time, having flown in from Indonesia to Macau to join the play, at the invitation of the theatre company.
“My mother does not have to worry anymore, she has seen that I have a place to live, and that I have many friends,” says Anny.
Grandmother, mother and daughter share the stage in the performances to show the consequences that migration has on the children left behind to grow up without their mothers, and how grandmothers and the mothers grow old without their children around. Anny confesses to being tired from her work, but says she cannot stop now. She still needs to spend another two or three years in Macau.
“I have to put up with it until my daughter finishes her studies and gets a good job,” says Anny, who works at a Cyber Café in Macau.
“WHEN I SEE YOU, I DARE NOT FEEL HAPPY"
On stage, Anny’s daughter, Ella, regrets her mother’s absence: “My mother was never mine,” she says.
It’s two days before Ella and her grandmother are scheduled to return to Indonesia, leaving Anny behind, unsure of when they will meet again.
“When I see you, I dare not feel happy. When you leave me, I try to control myself, so as not to get angry,” says Ella in the play.
Galih came to Macau in pursuit of his mother, a domestic worker. As the 24-year-old explains in the play, he got a job as a waiter at DD3 nightclub.
“I came to visit my mother and realized that I could earn a better salary here than in Indonesia. I do not have to spend a lot of time here. I want to raise some money to start a business in Indonesia. It’s always better to be at home with my family, I just need some money to return home with,” says the young man who has lived in Macau since 2016.
Galih’s mother, Gina, who arrived in 2007, is happy to have her eldest child with her, but still needs to work for a few more years outside Indonesia to support her second child.
“In our country, it’s difficult to get a better job because we have no education. I had no choice. In our country, those without money stay out of school. It is not like in Macau where the government pays,” Anny explains.
Women are even less likely to attend school, which reduces their opportunities further.
“Domestic work is for girls, while school work is meant for boys. Domestic worker for a day, domestic worker for life,” Ayu sings in the play, herself a domestic worker in Macau since 2000.
STORIES OF INVISIBLE PEOPLE
“These are people who, in Cantonese, we call ‘small people,’ but we want to know more about their stories,” explains Leong Ka Wai, the producer of Migration. “We think that migration is part of us. In this case the theatre company wanted to hear the voices of today’s immigrants.”
The producer explains that it was through Peduli (Peduli Indonesian Migrant Workers Concern Group) that the company came into contact with the Indonesian non-resident workers and protagonists of this play. Other performers came from contacts with other organizations.
For Mira, Ratna and Anny, participating in this play allows them to tell their stories to the people of Macau.
“There are a lot of things we’ve learned here,” adds Lastri, 33, who arrived in Macau in 2017 from Hong Kong.
Among the audience members watching the play were employers, colleagues and friends, local residents who wanted to know a little more about a virtually invisible Indonesian community, unlike the larger and more prominent Filipino population residing in the territory.
For the representative of the Indonesian organization, Peduli, Jos G. Young, known as “George”, this piece is important because it attracts the attention of the local community.
“Because there is a distance between the Indonesian community, foreigners and the local community. Step by step, the local community is beginning to be more enlightened. Employers are more understanding. There is better communication, not just with employers, but also with other people,” he says.
“Secondly, this is also a good opportunity to understand those we never think about, because in the life of the local people, this community barely exists. They are in some families, as domestic workers, but sometimes people do not even remember that domestic workers exist, so I think it’s a good thing”.
George believes that this process of knowledge and understanding can positively influence the working conditions of migrants.
“Because some employers come to see the piece, and become more understanding. In previous performances the employers also came to see what their employees were doing on their days off. Some were mistrusting at first, but they stopped feeling that way”.
In George’s view, the play also shows that migration is not a way out of trouble, but simply a temporary solution.
“Migration solves financial difficulties, but creates problems in families, with relationships between wives and husbands fracturing, and children growing distant from their parents”.
“MIGRATION IS PART OF MACAU.
WHY DO WE THINK WE ARE DIFFERENT? “
Director and scriptwriter Nicole Wong Weng Chi, a 33-year-old graduate in journalism and theatre in Taiwan, began writing stories about migrants in order to give them a leading role through an artistic platform. She had a strong desire to know what was going on in the souls of these communities of domestic workers, and to give a voice to this group of people, virtually unknown, but who share the intimacy of households, comforting children and taking care of families.
Migration is the continuation of a work that has been developed by Macau Experimental Theatre since 2014. With the support of the “Support Program for Community Artistic Projects” grant, the company began to develop a community theatre project focused on disadvantaged groups with fewer resources. Our Own Story and Our Bodies were productions that also included the participation of Indonesian migrant workers in 2016 and 2017.
“This year I wanted to get to the root of the problem, the reason for these workers to emigrate. Is it an economic or political issue?” asks Nicole Wong.
The playwright, who is also the daughter of parents from Hong Kong and Mainland China, wanted to focus on family relationships, and the distance between parents and children.
“These migrants come, just as our parents and grandparents came to try to survive. They are doing exactly what our parents did, so why do we think we are different? Why do we think we have a different status? That’s the question I want to propose”.
Nicole believes more and more people are becoming aware of this issue. The fact that the performance is part of the Macau Arts Festival also helps to promote the topic.
It was a curiosity to know more about the Indonesian community that led Sou Sok Weng, a school psychologist, born and educated in Macau, to join the theatre group three years ago and become a performer in their productions.
“These kinds of programs within the communities are very rare. The Indonesian community is very special because they live in the same place as us in Macau, but we do not know each other, it’s so strange”, she says. “I’m very curious to see what makes these people leave their land. Sometimes it can take years before they see their relatives again. I wanted to know the reason and to know this group,” she says.
Sou Sok Weng is herself the daughter of immigrant parents: “My parents came from mainland China, in fact for the same reasons as these Indonesians, because at that time the living conditions in China were very bad. Because they wanted to have a better life, they came to Macau”.
Reflecting on the play, Sou Sok Weng says that the parents are like fish, who follow migratory routes, letting themselves be driven by the currents, and who also come to Macau in search of a path.
“No one can choose their destiny, just like the fish, they followed the current,” the actress says. “I wanted to bring this example of my parents right at the beginning of the play, because we share similarities between us”.
The school psychologist, trained at the Theatre School of the Conservatory of Macau, believes that if life had not improved here in Macau, her parents probably would have moved again. “But here the quality of life is good,” she concludes.