Junior high school
In the year 2000, in a small town in the most western province of Indonesia, there was a 15-year-old shy girl. She had a lot of creative ideas in her mind. One day, she got a task to create a class performance for junior high school year-end graduation. She passionately wrote a comedy script, chose the famous songs (such as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai), and planned suitable dance moves.
Using cassette tapes and a tape player, she cut and recorded the sections of each song based on her screenplay. She assigned some classmates with the appropriate role and directed them during several practices before the performance day. Little did she know what she orchestrated was called Cabaret.
The day arrived, and the show became a huge success among other boring performance. Although she’s good at writing stories and everything, she was not that good at the front stage. There was one vacant small supporting role as a doctor that she took up because of no other classmates available. Even during that 1-minute act, she clumsily dropped the stethoscope! But overall the show was very great, and many people praised her work.
Senior high school
Moving on to senior high school, not only she had to face the ups and downs of her teen moods, but also the challenges of adapting a totally new environment in the capital city. The shy girl never understood why people said senior high school time is the best time of their life, because definitely not for her. Although her grade was excellent, she did not have many friends, let alone a boyfriend.
During that time, she did not have the opportunity to explore theatrical performance again, but she found herself enjoy writing so much. She wrote almost 20 fiction short stories for herself. Although not really serious, she had won several poems games in the radio, and one short article competition.
University
Fast forward to the university, the shy girl finally had a chance to experiment with cabaret again for a togetherness night event of the students’ association in her course department. Same as those days back in junior high school in the small town, she wrote the script, searched for the perfect songs to accompany the scenes (such as the soundtrack of Meteor Garden TV series). This time she was using mp3, rather than cassettes.
She was still the backstage person who did all the scripting and directing, but not brave enough to be on stage. In general, she never felt confident with herself, her body, her dark skin, her hijab looks, her everything. Anyway, with the help of other friends who had skills in dance choreography, the show turned to a great success and brought a lot of laughter from the audience.
Grown up
In the year 2008, she then graduated the university with a good grade and a good boyfriend. With the money in her pocket, she found traveling as a hobby to spend time. Her first and only boyfriend became her husband, they got a cute daughter, a car and a nice house.
She never wrote stories or played with drama things anymore, except writing blogs regularly just for fun. Recently, she tried to write even more serious things like opinions and academic paper, goodness! Maybe what people said was true, you only got creative during broken heart.
However, two weeks ago, she somewhat amazed her colleagues, and even herself, during the office team building. It’s only a short scene, but she could improvise acting completely and make everyone laugh. This time, she performed on stage confidently.
She realised that in the last 10 years she did not care too much about what people thought of her appearance and her dark skin anymore. She might be still a shy girl sometimes, but more confident. And she realised, maybe her creativity had not gone after all, as she was growing older and living in a comfortable family.