Jogja’s Community Theater for Radical Change for the Difabled
Irfan Kortschak
Theatre is the art of looking at ourselves– Augusto Boal, Founder of the Theatre of the OppressedAgroup of people with disabilities and with little or no previous
acting experience came together to develop the skills required toperform a play to express their hopes, aspirations and frustrations.
They are known as ‘difabled’ or differently abled people.
The Performance
The performance took place on a makeshift open-air stage using only thesimplest of props, in the pendhopo, a large pavilion-like structure, attachedto the sub-district office in Berbah, Sleman, on the outskirts of the city of
Jogja (Yogyakarta). The performers were mostly amateurs with limited experience. They came together a week before to develop the concept for the play,
to create a scenario, and to practice the skills required to convey their story.
They were an extremely diverse group, including teachers, traders, activists,
housewives and unemployed dependents, with widely varying backgrounds,
characters, needs and aspirations. Prior to preparing for the performance,
the single common denominator between them was that all of them had
previously acted as informants for a work of participatory research conducted by Ekawati Liu, a PhD candidate from Deakin University in Australia,
into the livelihood choices of Indonesian villagers with disabilities.
Together, the group presented a performance consisting of two acts,with the first involving villagers with hearing impairments describing thedifficulties they had in accessing effective hearing aids and other assistiveequipment, and telling the audience how this affected their ability to participate in the life of their communities. Despite the participants’ lack of experience with theater, they performed with passion and conviction.
They were telling their own stories, based on their own experiences.
During the preparations for the performance, Ratna had been having issues

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Dian and two other performers, performing on the stage.

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The chorus claps and sings to accompany the performance.

Irfan Kortschak

Jogja’s Community Theater for Radical Change for the Difabled51with a home-made wheel chair her father had built for her, a modified plastic chair with wheels. While social welfare agencies do sometimes provide
support so that people with disabilities can obtain proper wheel chairs, this
support is inconsistent and not everyone who needs one is provided withone. Like many other assistive devices, they are prohibitively expensive inIndonesia, subject to taxes and excessive markups by distributors. During
the preparations, Triyanto, a hearing impaired participant, had trouble following the discussion. One of the sign language interpreters had been late inarriving, so he was trying to lip read. He was angry that he had never beenable to access a hearing aid that met his needs.
The second act portrayed the story of a young man raising chickens
who needed a loan to expand his business. When the financial institution’s
field officers visited to inspect his business, they learned that he was blind.
Without ever referring to his disability, the field officers found various barely
plausible excuses to refuse the loan. The story of the young man whose loan
was refused had no clear conclusion, and it was not clear how the issue of thelack of access to hearing aids and other assistive devices was to be resolved.
In effect, the discussion that followed the performance was its third act.
At this point, the performance expanded to encompass the audience, which
was required to participate in determining how the story would unfold, noton the stage – but in real life, in their real lives. Many in the audience had
their own experiences with lack of access to the facilities they needed toparticipate fully in community life, and this was a chance for them to express
their own frustrations and hopes. It took effort and energy for many of themto do so, with many of the audience having conditions or issues that madecommunication challenging. Interpreters conversant in sign language wereavailable to ensure that those of the audience who used this language tocommunicate were able to participate in the forum. But everyone made theeffort, and those expressing their opinions were confident that at this forum,
when they spoke, they would be listened to.
Disability in Indonesia: An Evolving Paradigm
Indonesia has a long history of social welfare programs for people with disabilities, with these programs based to a large extent on community attitudes that recognize social obligations to protect and provide for the weak
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programs have been based on a paradigm that regards disability in termsof medical conditions or impediments that restrict a person’s activities andprevents him or her from participating in the social and economic life of
the community. According to this paradigm, the state and the community
have a duty to care for those who, for no fault of their own, are unable tolook after themselves and therefore need to be helped. Thus, government
agencies, religious institutions and community organizations have regarded“handicapped people” as the “deserving poor,” worthy objects of charity, tobe placed first in line to receive handouts of rice, cash, clothes and otherbenefits.
In recent years, disability activists and development actors have challenged this paradigm, advocating for an approach that recognizes a biopsycho-social model of disability that “conceives of disability as arising fromthe interaction between a person’s functional limitations and the environment.”1 According to this model, people with functional limitations are only
disabled to the extent that they are unable to participate fully in the community due to the physical and social environment in which they operate. Thismodel implies that disability can be addressed by making physical environments more accessible to a wider range of people of varying abilities. Also,
it implies that people who need them should have ready access to assistive
devices, including hearing aids, modified transportation, wheel chairs, andprosthetics, and to services and applications that enable them to use communication and information technologies. Finally, the new model recognizes that disability is shaped by social attitudes. People have to believe thatpeople with varying abilities can make valuable contributions, including thepeople with disabilities themselves. Thus, it is vital to encourage social attitudes that work to ensure inclusion. In general, then, rather than on providing for needs, the focus of the new paradigm is on enabling participationand ensuring access.
As a result of this advocacy and activism, Indonesian policy makers’
ideas have begun to be shaped by this new paradigm, as reflected by changes
to policy and legal instruments related to people with disability. In 2006,
the Indonesian government ratified the United Nations Convention on the
Rights for Persons with Disabilities, which is clearly informed by the participation paradigm, defining people with disabilities as “those who have longterm physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation

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in society on an equal basis with others.” [added emphasis] Reflecting similar
principles, in 2016, the Indonesian government enacted Law No. 8 on People
with Disabilities, which explicitly adopts a human-rights based model thatrecognizes the rights of people with disabilities to participate as full members of the community, including through participation in employment. The
law and related documents state that this is to be achieved through the creation of an enabling legal and policy environment; the promotion of skills
development opportunities; and measures to eliminate discrimination.2
Lack of Understanding of Disability Undermines Good Intentions
Of course, it’s one thing for the government to ratify a convention and topromulgate a new law, and quite another to ensure that people with disabilities are really able to participate. Not only do official statistics paint a fairly
bleak picture regarding the situation of people with disability in Indonesia
in terms of economic status and of participation in education and employment,3 but these statistics systematically underestimate their number andfail to capture the real impact of disability on people’s lives.4 This is largely
because of a general lack of understanding about what disability is, with thislack based on entrenched, unexamined beliefs regarding what people withvarying abilities should be able to do and what roles they should play.
It is relatively easy to recognize that people of working age who are completely blind or totally dependent on wheel chairs for mobility are disabled.
These people are the ones captured by the official statistics. However, manyother people who experience significant barriers to participation just are notrecognized as having a disability. Their inability to participate is regarded
as an unfortunate fact of life, to be accepted without thought. Community
members and government agents just don’t think of people such as older
people with a disability who cannot leave their homes; autistic children who
do not attend school or who perform badly there; or people who are significantly hearing impaired without being totally deaf as having a disability.
During my work for community development programs, I have often
visited villages and talked with village leaders who simply tell me that there
are no disabled people in their community. Invariably, if you ask the rightquestions, you will find that there are many people who cannot or do notwork, who never leave their homes, who are regarded as anti-social or insane or possessed by demons – but they are not considered to be disabled.

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It’s a matter of definition, of recognition, of understanding what disability
means.
Community-driven Development: Lack of Mechanisms
to Listen to People with Disabilities
Not only do people in local communities, including officials, not really havea clear idea of what constitutes disability or how many people with disability
there are, their mechanisms for listening to them to understand what theywant and need are often limited, ineffective, or non-existent. Over the pastfew decades, following the end of an intensely authoritarian, paternalistic
regime in 1998, Indonesian society has been involved in a massive decentralization initiative. This initiative has worked to ensure very high levelsof community participation, with the emergence of a wide range of small,devolved village-level institutions that are meant to enable all citizens tovoice their aspirations and to have a say in how public funds and community
resources are used.
In particular, until 2014, an umbrella program known as the National
Community Empowerment Program (Program Nasional Pemberdayaan
Masyarakat, pnpm) provided block grants to communities to enable themto establish participatory councils to determine their own priorities andplans, with funds to build good, cost-efficient, fit-for-purpose, village infrastructure, including roads, health centers, water facilities, and so on.
Following the conclusion of the pnpm program, in 2014, Indonesia’s parliament enacted the Village Law, which was intended to build upon the principles and structures of pnpm to allocate up to 10 percent of the national
budget for disbursement to village-level institutions to provide public services and community infrastructure that met the needs of all members of
the community.
Peduli: Need for a Program to Include the Excluded
While these initiatives have often been very successful in general terms,
providing public infrastructure and services that do benefit almost all members of the community, making sure that the infrastructure and services not
only benefit members of marginalized groups, including people with disabilities, but that these people actually play a role in determining that theJogja’s Community Theater for Radical Change for the Difabled55

resources are used to meet their needs, has been a persistent challenge. To
be fair, quite a few high-level policy makers and program implementers havebeen aware of this failure and have tried to address it – but often with limited success. Many community development programs pushed and required
village facilitators to ensure that women and poor people at least attended
meetings. Even so, their attendance was often pro forma, with their influence over decision-making often limited, despite constant monitoring andtweaking of the program to overcome this issue. Ensuring the participationof people with disabilities, who often had difficulty leaving their homes, difficulty communicating, and limited self-confidence, was even more challenging, particularly when neither the community nor even the people
themselves were ever really convinced that they needed to be involved orthat they needed special consideration. Often, community groups just had
no idea that it was possible to change the way infrastructure was built or
meetings conducted or services provided, because they had no idea what
people with different abilities needed.
At the same time, many people with social, physical and other disabilities were working together in groups to solve their own problems. They often do so with little help from government programs. People with leprosyrelated disabilities, women-headed households, people with hiv, and manyothers were working together to ensure that they could establish businesses,
access health care, borrow money, learn to read and write, on their own
initiative and using their own resources. Of course, in every region, there
was always a handful of officials who were unusually committed to ensuring
inclusion, and they often did what they could to support these initiatives.
And there were also a number of high-level officials who were also unusuallycommitted to the achievement of inclusion and social justice who felt that
it was their duty to ensure that the state provided a fair share of resources
to support these initiatives and to encourage their replication elsewhere.
Village-level facilitators, community activists, non-governmental organization (ngo) workers, journalists, and many others were also becoming increasingly loud and insistent in their demands that these sorts of resources
should be made available. Something of a social movement began to emerge,leading to a commitment on the part of a number of high-level officials who
had been involved in designing and implementing the community empowerment program to trying to develop a new program specifically to include
the excluded by encouraging excellent local initiatives, providing resources

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so they could do their job better, and pushing other communities to learn
from them.
Peduli and SIGAB
While the pnpm program had started out as small, highly-idealistic pilot
study that was widely expected to fail dismally, over the decades, it had
proven to be an extremely effective way of building high-quality infrastructure at relatively low cost, infrastructure that was usually not only cheaper,
but that better met people’s needs – because they had been directly involvedin planning, designing and building it. The government had recognized that
this program was an effective means for it to meet a wide range of development goals by scaling up and expanding the project across the nation. With
the recognized success of the program, those involved in designing andimplementing it had accumulated a fair amount of political capital, whichenabled them to advocate and push for the allocation of public resources fora new approach and a new program to benefit people that had until then not
really been involved in the discourse.
At the instigation of this coalition, in a radical and somewhat controversial initiative, in 2011, the Indonesian government established Peduli,
initially under the pnpm umbrella, with the specific intention of includinggroups and individuals who had been excluded from the development process. The program was intended to provide resources and to give a voice
not only to people with disabilities, but to members of stigmatized ethnic
minorities, sex workers, transsexuals, former political prisoners, and drug
users, among many other groups that had often been excluded, often because other people in their community did not even recognize them as full
members of the community, let alone recognizing their right to participate
in determining the use of community resources. This program worked byproviding resources to civil society organizations involved in poverty reduction, social justice and inclusion, with specific experience with these groups,
including disabled people’s organizations, preferably those established andmanaged by disabled people themselves.
The focus of all these civil society organizations varied from region toregion and between the groups of people they served, but they all tended to work to build their members’ confidence and belief in themselves,as well as building their capacities to earn a living and to otherwise par-

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ticipate meaningfully in their community. The program has had significant
success in some areas and with some groups, often seriously challenging
paradigms that have prevailed for decades. One startling example of thiswas a small livelihoods program conducted in a few villages and intended
to benefit former political prisoners, mostly former members of the suppressed Indonesian Communist Party, (Partai Kommunis Indonesia), mostof whom are now elderly, infirm and desperately poor. For decades, it has
been taboo to even mention the existence of these people except in termsof fear and loathing. No government program prior to Peduli had ever been
implemented to benefit them specifically, as a group, in any way. In fact, they
were more likely to be specifically excluded, with access to health care, theright to move freely, and even the right of their children to attend school
often restricted or curtailed. It was even illegal for them to meet in groups,
so when this particular initiative first started, police and local officials often
visited, unable to believe that their meeting together was conducted under
the auspices of a government program.
SIGAB: A Difabled People’s Organization Establishes
Model Villages around Jogja
However, even compared to the challenges related to taboo and stigmatizedgroups the challenge involving disabled people’s organizations has been
harder than was envisaged. In whole regions of Indonesia, autonomous organizations managed by people with disabilities to advocate for their own
rights have never existed, and those that do are often poorly developed,
particularly outside the large urban areas, with limited capacities, resourcesand experience. Of course, there were also exceptions, outstanding, inspirational individuals and organizations that could be held up as an example
to be emulated. One organization that has been involved in innovative andexciting initiatives is sigab (Sasana Integrasi dan Advokasi Difabel, theInstitute for Integration and Advocacy of the Difabled), an independent
non-governmental organization established in Jogjakarta on 5 May 2003, todefend and fight for the rights of the “difabled” (differently abled) throughout Indonesia and to ensure their full inclusion.
Following the promulgation of the Village Law, which requires the central government to provide funds to the villages for their development initiatives, sigab sought to develop eight “good practice” model villages in the

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region around Jogja from which other villages could learn. The idea was toactively include people with disabilities in village-level processes to develop
a full range of services and resources that were accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities. Specifically, this involved ensuring access tocommunication facilities and resources such as livelihoods and savings andloan programs, with measures to establish networks between people withdisabilities and other marginalized groups. To develop these facilities andresources, sigab worked with a coalition of grassroots disability organizations, villagers and community leaders to map the conditions of people withdisabilities and the service gaps that affected them. This mapping process
was vital to ensure that everyone involved, including the disabled people
themselves, had a better understanding of what disability was, how many
people experienced it, who they were, and what they needed.
Ekawati Liu (Eka), a feisty activist with a long involvement in disability
issues in Indonesia, took advantage of this initiative to conduct her research
to gain a better understanding of how people with disability participate ineconomic activities at the village level.5 She wanted to gain a better understanding of how people in villages earned a living or found means of meeting their needs, what options were open to them and which options werenot, and what strategies they used to negotiate for access to resources andservices at the village level. Most importantly, she wanted to know what
they wanted. Too often, government and community initiatives for people
with disability have failed simply because nobody had any idea what the intended beneficiaries wanted or needed. For decades, government agencies
have thought in terms of cookie-cutter solutions to the problems that they
imagined existed for people they did not understand. For example, acrossIndonesia, social welfare agencies have been obsessed with programs toteach massage skills to the blind and sewing skills to sex workers. Very often,these programs do not work, simply because the people they were intended
to benefit did not want what was being provided. So, Eka thought it was
important to ask, to find out what the people actually thought they needed.
Even just the act of asking was a radical act.
Developing a Theater Performance
The theatrical performance described in the opening paragraphs of this article was an integral part of Eka’s research process. Eka and the activists at

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sigab were committed to the idea that people with disabilities should participate fully in the research process, not just as informants, but in its conceptualization and formulation. One means to achieve this was by inviting agroup of villagers with wide-ranging and diverse disabilities to come together to identify the issues that affected them and the solutions to these issues,and to produce a theatrical performance on the basis of that discussion.
To stage the production, Eka worked with SIGAB to conduct a fiveday workshop. The workshop was facilitated by Joned Suryatmoko, a theatermaker, playwright, community facilitator and researcher, whose role was tomanage the logistics of the process and to establish a framework by which
the participants could explore and express their experiences, while at thesame time intervening in or guiding the actual content of the performanceand the associated preparatory processes to the very least extent possible.
Clearly influenced by the ideas of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, who established the “Theatre of the Oppressed,” a theatrical form originally usedin radical popular education movements, Joned believes that all membersof the community, including those with no formal training or experience
as artists, have the agency to transform their own knowledge into aesthetic
practices and arts making – and that by doing so, the performers have thepower to transform both those who perform and the audience with whomthey interact. Reflecting Boal, Joned believes that theater is “… a means oftransforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just
waiting for it.”
Becoming Aware of Shared Interests and Concerns
In order for the individuals participating in the workshop to be able to produce a story that reflected their aspirations and concerns as a group, theyfirst had to become aware of their shared interests and common concerns.
This was by no means an automatic process, as each member of the group
had developed their own means for dealing with their own life, and did notnecessarily see what they had in common with the others. For example,
while the fiercely independent seventy-year old Mbah Muji had previously participated in village-level disabled people’s groups, he barely seemedto accept that the label “disabled” applied to him. Sure, he was completely
blind, but he was an active professional musician, he was able to climb trees
to harvest coconuts, and he had worked as a masseur. Not only did he meet

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his own needs, he supported an elderly mother and often made material
contributions to his adult children. Through his work as a musician, he wasactively involved in, and valued by, the broader community. It might nothave been easy for him to see what he had in common with Ibu Karyati,
who had previously been hospitalized and medicated for schizophrenia andwho had periods where she felt unable to interact with others or look after
herself, and was dependent on siblings who provided for her. The degree towhich members of the group felt constrained by functional limitations varied considerably. It became clear that no two people with disabilities experiences their disability in the same way as another, and that their individual
needs are highly variable.
Thus, for the group to perform a story that was their story, each performer had first to reflect on her or his own personal story and to becomeaware of how this story intersected with those of the others in the group. To
facilitate this, participants were invited to engage in a brainstorming session. This involved gathering together in small groups with a range of photos and visual prompts, with the pictures and images described in detail tothose who were visually impaired. The participants were invited to use these
prompts to define their current economic and social circumstances, the circumstances to which they aspired, and the obstacles they faced in achieving
these aspirations.
Developing a Story
Each member of the group interpreted this task in their own way. The irascible Mbah Muji at first stubbornly insisted that he did not have any problems(Mboten wonten masalah!). Others focused on their aspirations, with one
hearing impaired man stating simply “I want to work (Aku ingin punya pekerjaan). Others focused on their own attitudes, their lack of belief in themselves, while Mbak Dian, an extroverted activist whose mobility had been
affected by polio, stated that the problem was that other people did not trustin her ability to be a useful member of the community (Kurangnya kepercayaan). Others focused on the practical equipment and facilities they needed,
particularly assistive devices such as hearing aids and wheel chairs. Eachparticipant wrote down a simple phrase, short sentence, or single word on apiece of paper to summarize the aspiration or constraint they had identified.
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The group during a rehearsal.

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Irfan Kortschak

their choices. Shifts began to occur and the participants began to see how
the ideas of other participants related to them. For example, after hearing
others talk about their need for assistive devices, Mbah Muji began to talk62

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Irfan Kortschak

about how a government agency had previously provided him with a reachpole for the visually impaired, but that it had been poorly designed, so he left
it behind. When he was asked if that meant he could not go out, he laughedout loud and described going out to gather grass for his goats without any
assistive device at all, saying that he knew every inch of a wide area aroundhis house and could navigate it confidently.
Following the discussion, with the collage of printed statements expressing the wide range of ideas, hopes, and expressions of frustration, theparticipants were invited to try to determine the relationship between theirdifferent statements, to identify cause and effect between them, to formulate
a “problem tree.” For example, most of the participants saw that “lack of access to assistive devices” contributed to “lack of self-confidence,”
which in turn led to failure to apply for work. This linked to otherpeople’s lack of trust in the ability of people affected by disability, which also contributed to theparticipants failing to apply forwork or to develop businesses,
being convinced that their initiatives would be rejected or denied
support. The process of drawing
up these problem trees involved
intense and lively discussion bywhich the participants becameaware of how their own perceptions of their individual circumstances were related to those of
A hearing-impaired participant addressing thegroup in sign language.
the others in the group.
Once the relationship between each participant’s individual story and ideas with those of the others in the group became clear through the process of establishing problem
trees, the next step was to create a story that expressed the relationship between these ideas. To enable the participants to create a dramatic story, thefacilitators provided them with an example of a story, the story of Si Nia,
a blind woman who, despite her desire for independence and autonomy,

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The group prepared a problem tree.

63

Irfan KortschakMbah Muji, holding a sign saying “I
don’t have any problems!”

Dian, holding a sign saying “Lack of trust.”

was constrained by overprotective parents, who objected to her relationshipwith a man called Anggoro, also visually impaired. By discussing the themesin this story, the participants were able to see how the themes that they hadraised when drawing up the problem trees could also be dramatized.
Belief that People with Disabilities Cannot WorkA major theme that had emerged from the process of creating the problem
tree and the surrounding discussion was that the biggest challenges the participants faced related to the beliefs of the people in their community that
disabled people were unable to work or to be productive, even though workand productive opportunities were exactly what the members of the groupneeded to address their exclusion from the community. The group collectively formulated a single short sentence that summarized their frustration:“It’s because we are disabled that we need work!” (Justru karena aku difabel,aku harus bekerja!). To express this idea dramatically, the group conceivedof the story of the young man raising chickens, whose inability to expand his

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business had nothing to do with the fact that he was blind, and everything
to do with the fact that the financial institution’s field officers assumed that
he would not be able to make a success of his business because he was blind.
Interestingly, when I asked the participants if any of them had everapplied for credit themselves and had their applications rejected, they all
shook their heads. They all described struggling to establish their own businesses with the limited resources that were available to them, sometimes
using soft loans or small gifts of money or other resources provided by family members or members of the surrounding community, sometimes justbuilding on the fruits of their own labor. Not a single one had ever applied
for a loan from a formal institution. Dian, the bubbly and extroverted village
activist, who certainly did not seem to lack self-confidence, said: “I thinkmost difabled people just think there is no point applying, so we work out
other ways of doing things.” The story the group presented was not so muchabout what had happened to anyone in the group, but what they feared or
believed would happen.
So I asked Dian if she thought that maybe she or other members of thegroup might be more confident about applying for a loan after taking partin the workshop, if it had given them the courage they needed to face theirfears. She smiled and shook her head doubtfully: “It’s not just about our attitudes. Our attitudes can only change if other people’s attitudes change too.”And so I asked if she thought performing the group’s play could help change
the attitudes of the broader community. And now she laughed outright at
the naiveite of my question:
I hope so. But it’s just a small step. It’s part of an ongoingprocess. It won’t change anything unless we keep on pushing to
make things change.
Endnotes
1 See Sri Moertiningsih Adioetomo, Daniel Mont and Irwanto, Persons With
Disabilities in Indonesia - Empirical Facts and Implications for Social Protection
Policies, Facultas Ekonomi Universitas Indonesia, September 2014, www.tnp2k.
go.id/images/uploads/downloads/Disabilities%20report%20Final%20sept2014%20(1).pdf

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H u m a n R i g h t s E d u c at i o n i n A s i a - Pa c i f i c · V o l u m e 9 , 2 0 1 92 See International Labor Organization, “What’s next after Indonesia’s new disability law: disability management in the workplace,” www.ilo.org/jakarta/info/public/pr/WCMS_475052/lang--en/index.htm.
3 For example, the data show that less than half (46.21 percent) of disabled
people from the age of 7 to 24 attended school. Up to 65 percent of people without
disabilities within that same age group attended. Many disabled people cannot findjobs. The data recorded that only 24 percent of people with disabilities aged between
18 and 64 were recruited in 2015. The recruitment rate for people without disabilities
within the same age group was 42.8 percent. (See Profil Penduduk Indonesia Hasil
Supas 2015, Bappenas, at https://www.bps.go.id/publication/2016/11/30/63daa47109
2bb2cb7c1fada6/profil-penduduk-indonesia-hasil-supas-2015.html)
4 According to official statistics, only 1.4 percent of Indonesians have disabilities. This is barely plausible, considering that the World Health Organization
estimates the international average to be around 15 per cent of the global population, or one billion people. By contrast, in Thailand, the government estimatesthat 2.9 percent of the population has a disability, while in Vietnam the figure is
7.8 percent (See “Disability data and the development agenda in Indonesia”
Inside Indonesia, Edition 119: Jan-Mar 2015 at https://www.insideindonesia.org/
disability-data-and-the-development-agenda-in-indonesia-2.)
5 Ekawati Liu’s research and the SIGAB theater workshop were funded byIndonesia’s Peduli program, through the Asia Foundation.