SCULPTURE AND SCULPTOR

There were some sorts of misunderstanding on this performance where I thought that we have to rehearse and have practices before the day of the “Sculpture and Sculptor” performance. But later, after we finished discussing and rehearsing, we bumped into Pn. Ju and she said that this task will be done impromptu during the class and we should be worried about this on the contrary, discussing more on rhythm and movement. We were overwhelmed and quite scared since we had actually given more emphasis on the sculpture and sculptor.

So, during the first meeting for this performance, my group had discussed on the theme and the background music for the performance. We were into something fun and cheerful. Later, one of the group member had actually comes out with the idea of the circumstances in a ballroom. Once the theme emerged, we were so excited and all of us seem to be so keyed up that we keep on contributing ideas of how this performance will be. Everybody was actively involved in the discussion, adding to the flow of the performance.

The best part of our discussion would be when we actually picked up the song for the background music of the performance. During that time, we were obsessed on a movie entitled “Enchanted” where it occupied nice songs and not forgetting wonderful casts. I was so into a song called “Happy Working Song” sung by Amy Adams and it did fit with the mood and the situation that we are going to create to depict happiness in a ballroom. So, all of us had come to a consensus-to use the wonderful catchy song.

Later, we had decided on the sculptures; what are the roles of each member in portraying the theme of happiness in a ballroom. We then chose a dancing couple, a waiter, a violinist and a pianist. I chose to be the man of the dancing couple, I don’t have any particular reason, but I’d just love to. Our sculptor was Hidayah where we see that she has this talent of moving happily around while rehearsing. Faez was the waiter, Munirah become the pianist, Mastura as the violinist and Nisa was the dancing girl. Then, we discussed on the props to be used in this performance where we need tie, skirt, cloth and glass to actually give a clearer view to others of what we were going to present. Before the actual performance, our first and only discussion took about 4 hours.

Unexpectedly, on the day of the performance, we were the first group to perform. We were quite nervous yet due to the discussion and practices beforehand, I would say that we were ready to be the first group to present our so-called “masterpiece”. So, here it comes, for the gimmick of our performance, I ask Hidayah to come out from the middle and did some sort of acting according to the song. Well, it did come out nice!

The sculptor started with the positioning the “clay” to where they supposed to be. The sculptor started to “carve” the clay starting with the pianist, followed by the violinist and the waiter. The dancing man and woman were the last to sculpt as we deliberately want the audience to speculate of what our performance was all about since both sculptures would be the biggest and the clearest cue of our selected theme.

Both sculptor and sculptures were at tedious position as the sculptor goes here and there with a little dancing element and for the sculptures to maintain in certain position were so agonizing. The carving of the sculptures was done after 8 minutes with four times repetition of the song. We later came out with another gimmick where we had this “magic stick” and once the sculptor touched the sculptures with it, we moved accordingly depends on our character in the ballroom.

Listening to good response from the audiences, they could guess our theme even before the sculptor finished sculpturing. I would say that the practice was so worth it and we were so satisfied and relief to hear Pn. Ju said “I kind of like the first group” which was us.

THE SOUND STORY

“The Sound Story”—the first minor performance of the subject EDU3022 (Theater in TESL). At that point in time, it was the first class of the subject Theater in TESL. I was quite excited in the first class, expecting doing things that is a little bit extraordinary rather than merely listen to the lecture.

The task on sound story was emphasizing on how sound can be manipulated that ultimately we can see there was a storyline out of the sound that we had made. Puan Ju had already reminded us not to use ordinary sound of ambulance, farting sound and few other disgusting sounds. I was quite excited to do this since it was the first performance.

We were given about 20 minutes to discuss on our storyline and the sounds, thus got prepared with our own sound story. To actually “inventing” the sounds, we chose to go out of ‘bilik tayangan’ and find our own space and discussed about the task. Honestly, it was quite a tedious task for us because we were lacking of ideas. Sounds? We only had limited sounds in minds. Basically, in the early part of our discussion, the most common sounds that we can think of were the sound of car, cat and baby. Anyhow, when the stress was rising as we only have a few minutes, we chose quite a lame storyline. Yes, it was an ad hoc plan. So we only practice twice in terms of producing the sounds and the turn of which sounds came first and which sounds came after.

Our sound story started with a sound of car where a man drove it. Later, the car stopped and there was the sound of the tickling of keys while the man whistles as he went in his house. As he entered his house, there was the sound of the howling wolf. The man then yawned and stroked himself on bed, and later he slept indicated by the sound of snoring. Later, there were sounds of baby crying, cat screeching and ghost-like whispers came after one another. Then the lightning struck that the loud sound had awaken the man. Suddenly, the man shocked and fainted. At the end, our sound story ends with sounds of few people laughing that depicted somebody few people had playing prank on the man.

Without anyone aware, we were actually late for 5 minutes. So, we became the last group to perform. We quite nervous to see other groups performed better and come out with interesting sounds that did not appear in our mind.

After the ninth group had performed, now it’s our turn. Our heart was pounding with beats, uncertain beats. However, we managed to start in controlled manner. Anyhow, there were some miscommunications in the middle of our performance. One of our members forgot her turn and it turned to be a quite a long pause during the performance. Thing was getting flawed as we took a rather long silence to get ready with the lightning sound. Anyhow, we managed to perform the laughing so sound fairly well.

But, once people opened their eyes, we heard some frustrating and unappealing mumbles. “Too long…”, “I don’t get it”, “It’s very hard”; these were the comments from our friends. It took about quite a while to actually have someone to guess on our performance. At last, Nalini did give correct guess.

13 weeks of Drama class were great!

The class of EDU 3217 would be the best class out the six subjects that I had taken for the fifth semester. During the lesson, I do learn a lot of new things most for every lesson that I’ve attended. The thoughts that the class would be monotonous and dull, turns to be completely wrong. In fact, it so fun to be in the class, reading plays and analyzing the language of the plays guided by my lecturer, Dr. Edwin. Novelty always becomes the most influenced effect in the class as it gives me pleasure to really enjoy the class by getting new interesting knowledge thus, helping me in seeing things in different angle with wider perspective. There also few similar things that I have learnt in a play that is also being used in other plays such as the usage of the word “foolish” in both Antigone and King Lear and interestingly in King Lear, Shakespeare does use the phrase “foolish honesty” conveying that the one’s honesty will allow people to harm them. I was also exposed to new cultures as depicted the educated culture in Pygmalion and the old royal Malay culture in Anike. Ultimately, I would to thank Dr. Edwin who actually helps me a lot in grasping the better understanding of the plays during the class and asking the questions in provoking my mind to think better and to see thing clearly in certain view.

Simulated teachings for the set induction-there are still many things to be improved!

As the simulated teaching started I pitied so much on the few groups that have to redo their work regards to their inappropriacy of the content and the task given. I was quite anxious if the thing happens to my pair and me. As the lecturer comments on other group, I do reflect the comments and suggestions on my content and material for the teaching. Luckily, it fits what the lecturer wants; just a few minor amendments had been done before my turn to teach. The first session was quite pressurized as there to many major corrections need to be done and there are quite numbers of group the need to redo their works. In terms of the instructions, the ‘teachers’ did not give the clear instruction of what they students need to do. For instance, they ask the students to listen to a song and after finish playing the song; they ask questions regards to the song without any matter to focus on. They ask vague questions such as “What is the mood in the song?” without any specific focus on to the lyrics. There are some of them used video clipping and provides the lyrics, they ask the students to watch the video clip but they do not make any reference to the lyric to actually relates the lyric to their teaching. Some of the teachers do goes against “the nature of set induction” where the teachers speak more while the students speaks less. However, there are still some interesting activities done to triggers the students’ interest as being done by Nazmier. He used role-playing to portray two different characters successfully. For my group, we manage to get B+ as our first activities, using hi-tech (gazettes of important scenes in The Incredibles), but our second activity moved from hi-tech way to a very traditional way, using the white board instead of using powerpoint. Thus, I would say that this simulated teaching have actually gives a lot of new reminders to be hold on while conducting the stage of set induction in class.

Shakespearean tragedy, King Lear

My first further studies on Shakespearean play in my life would be King Lear which I feel quite “pathetic” but grateful to actually have the chance to read Shakespearean play at advanced level. From the information I had, the story is borrowed from few different stories; The True Chronicle history of King Leir and his Three Daughters, Chronicle of England, Scotland and Ireland, The Faerie Queenee, The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia and A Mirror for Magistrates. Shakespeare creates King Lear out of the collected pieces of ideas from those stories. What I like most about King Lear is that the cursive point of where Lear plays a “childish game” inquiring this very important line to his three daughters, “Which of you shall we say doth love us most?” Here, Lear goes against the nature and he is seen to be unnatural as for parent to ask their children to forfeit their love. Shakespeare has actually done well in depicting Lear’s tragic flaw – arrogant, which later brings him to the reversal of fortune as the two daughters who confess their to him have actually disowns him as the story unfolds. There are a lot of animal imageries that can be found in the texts represented by the scavengers animal(such as wolf, pelican etc) which reflect on the negative connotation and the regal animal(such as dolphin, dragon, eagle etc) represents the positive connotations. Apart from that, I am so impressed on how Shakespeare uses the word “nothing”. The line “Nothing comes nothing” from Lear implies nothing comes from nothingness where the “nothingness” is cynically addressed to Cordelia who can’t verbally show his love to her father. As I look upon the story of King Lear, I detect some similarity in King Lear with a classic Malay movie directed by P. Ramlee entitled Ahmad Albab. The match point would be when the father asks his children to show their love towards him in terms of material, the more expensive things they give, the greater their love towards the father. Anyhow, the most visible difference is that in King Lear the story revolves with a father between three daughters, in contrast to that, the story of Ahmad Albab develops between a father and three sons. It is so entertaining and enjoyful to actually see this story which is crated differently according to different culture with ending, yet illustrating the same issue.

4:48 Psychosis; Touching Death

“You witness someone’s mind spiralling out” This is the utterance from the director of 4:48 Psychosis, Gavin Yap which I read at the lobby of Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac) 45 minutes before the plays starts thus, it gives me ideas of what the plays would be about. The play was scheduled to be at 3 p.m, but we have to wait for 15 minutes due to some technical problem. Anyhow, I was relief since it was overcame and I can watch the play even though it was a little bit delayed and luckily the excitement to watch the play is still there. 4:48 Psychosis shows the young talented director, Gavin Yap directs Samantha Schubert, Malik Taufiq and Susan Lankester and it is undeniably that these three outstanding actor and actresses have done terrific performance. The play takes one step closer to her inner feelings by allowing the audience a glance into what went through her mind as her depression sent her spiraling into self-destruction and eventual suicide. The roles of the three players represent facets of her mind which they are all just one person that resembles her life as dark, deep and intense. The play takes one step closer to her inner feelings by allowing the audience a glance into what went through her mind as her depression sent her spiraling into self-destruction and eventual suicide. The roles of the three players represent facets of her mind which they are all just one person that resembles her life as dark, deep and intense. Susan, Samantha and Malik characterize the same person yet with different intensity of how they deliver the dialogue. It is as if they resemble the different demons inside them that they had to let go of. As far I am concerns, Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis has a lot of repetitions of words such as the word nothing (surprisingly same as in King Lear), repetition of a interesting line which is “Could, would, should or will I?” The significance of “4:48” that it is the darkest hour of before dawn which at the end of the play one of the play said “At 4:48, I shall be sleep” and shows that “sleep” here refers to death as a “beautiful pain”. The play goes very well as those brilliant players completely engulf with their performance as if it really happen deep inside them. Dealing with darker side of the human psyche is not an easy material to work with, yet Gavin Yap does it perfectly especially on how he manipulates the element of aside in the play. In terms of the props, there are less props that had been used; basically stairs and doors which might symbolizes something. When we asks Gavin, on the less props used, he said that he want to focus more on the words on what is meant to said, the emotion and the gestures. Apart, so much of the play is in darkness and he says that “the less you can see, the more you think”. Well, I guess he is true, as the plays finish I feel quite tense to actually think of the issue of the tortured mind that “talks"



The place where the props are produced in KLPac

In line with the director of 4:48 Psychosis, Gavin Yap.

The ticket of the play

It’s the same, but not identical…

Wong Phui Nam’s Anike is parallel to the story of Antigone and to a large extents, it stand on its own as Phui Nam does set this story to a different background with difference choice of words and some differences in terms of the characters. Basically, out of the five assigned plays, Anike would be my less-preferred play based on its same conflict that emerges in Antigone. Anyhow, it is quite interesting to see the creativity of Phui Nam, writing Anike in the setting of the ancient Malay royal culture. The conflict between subject and king is told in Malay history by Phui Nam based on the famous writing of “Hikayat Hang Tuah” where Jebat has done usurpation in Melaka Sultan’s palace which drags him to injustice as the Sultan order Tuah to kill Jebat on mere suspicion that has an affair with a lady in the palace. Anike is invented as Jebat’s sister who upholds the right to bury her brother. So, basically, the storyline is the same. What make it not identical to Antigone is that the Malay words is used in Anike such as “taugeh, nenek-moyang, raja” etc. The other different is that Sirat and Wira(which resemble Polyneices and Eteocles) are not biological brothers. They are depicted as having ‘almost-brother’ relationship. This play is set up before the arrival of Islam as the element of suicide is in the play goes against the Islamic law. However, it is great to have such creative writer that can create same things in different view and contexts which brings out its own identity.