Strangers
A change in seating arrangement for this lesson. Mr Sulaiman sat at the long end of the table instead. But everyone else, stayed where they were.
Simon McBurney’s Mnemonic made me very confused with the stage directions and constant shifting of locations in the plot on the same stage. Hence surprisingly, I found it harder to write the essay than the play this week. But I concur with the class that perhaps one needs to have visually experienced the play to be able to appreciate the reading.
The assignment this week required us to “write a play in which no words are spoken”. It looked very daunting at first. But in a way, I thought it would be quite amazing if I could pull it off. My inspiration this week is my mp3 player. Hence I created Strangers, where the audience was treated to the “sonic landscape” of the protagonist as things happened around him.
Everyone wrote beautiful pieces this week. The lack of words really forced us to be creative, since we had no flowery language to hide behind. Faith as always, had that edgy dark tone in her play. I love it but I don’t think I will be able to write her style. I am just as inspired in that inclination. Sulastri’s had a poem-like feeling and Benita’s as always had us in laughter, as she juxtaposed the supernatural with the real by having a comical version of the Grim Reaper in her play.
The next assignment is one requiring combined effort. I got paired with Huilin. I wonder what we’ll be writing…
The Glass Butterfly
We are a class of 9! Douglas walked in and shocked the heck out of everyone! And we thought we had dwindled to 8 after so long.
Let’s start with the reading. David Mamet’s Oleanna was very thought-provoking. The John-versus-Carol dynamics played out over the 3 Acts tugged me back and forth, rooting for John, then Carol, then John and so on. I think there is no moral winner, as I wrote in my essay. But I was definitely on John’s side and thinking Carol as the manipulative bithch at the end of the play. Marcus made a good point in class though. Maybe part of the reason I side with John is because I am male and he appealed to me not only via the words, but also his gender and actions and how Carol treated him.
The Glass Butterfly. A play set in wartime. A sick boy’s wishes and yearnings. I thought I will write something abstract. But the plot device of the Glass Butterfly kind of fell apart when the characters created, generated too much confusion and the line between fantasy and reality was too undefined for its own good. Well, at the end of it all, I didn’t really like what I wrote and I wasn’t really expecting praises. I mean, if a writer does not believe in his own work, how can he expect others to?
The main thing we learnt during the lesson: Even though we don’t show or describe it, we should have a good knowledge of the world our plot and character reside in so that we can understand them better.
The next assignment is wordless! Pure italics… (Only stage directions since no words may be spoken) This is going to be very very interesting…
Neighbours
Wow! I got a much better grade for my essay than I had expected. On the other hand, that last play I wrote was slightly under.
I think our official class size is 8.
Dario Fo’s Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! was hilarious with the pickles and fake pregnancy. If Mr Sulaiman had not stated it was a political play, I don’t think I would have been able to see the political side of it. The essay I wrote about it was all over the place with no logical sequence in the points I was making. But who knows, I might just score well for the essay again, haha.
2 friends in a HDB flat discussing about the world outside of them. My play was inspired by the constant talk that we don’t talk to our neighbours and kampong lifestyle was better because it was communal and everyone looked out for each other. Unfortunately, I neglected one of the characters, Ee Chong, and he seemed like just a “mouthpiece” in the play. Sigh… I guess I could say political theatre is simple not my cup of tea but that is such a poor excuse.
Everyone had to present a list of political issues they were concerned with. I remembered Ms Cardoza’s comments that “everything is political” and Mr Sulaiman echoed that some social theorists think so too. The most common one topic brought up was the 377A act and I guess Singaporeans generally came up with the same issues. Alissa, who was from Malaysia, had very different ones from us. She addressed political issues as in politics among the policymakers. In my opinion, she wrote one of the best plays this week, making very endearing characters comical and yet getting the political message across.
I hope I never come across some politics-themed question again =)
Partings
The take-home reading was Art, by Yasmina Reza. The thing about this module, is that I have no idea who are the big names or famous works in theatre these days or any other day for that matter. I mean, I know the Tony Awards and Broadway and West End
but that’s about it! I probably should get down to reading up about these stuff when I remember to make time for them…
Art was funny, and slightly caught me off-guard where the conversations don’t make sense and the logic was kind of strange. My take-home essay, commenting on the play, was a mess. I won’t be surprised if I get it returned with a big bold red word RUBBISH scrawled across it, haha.
This time round, there were only 7 of us in class! 2 males unaccounted for and a female classmate on medical leave. This Computing student is surviving, still. We each had to help each other read out to read our monologues-comprised play. I titled mine Partings.
The assignment was a play of maximum 3 pages with 6 scenes, 3 characters and comprising of monologues. A talks about B, B talks about C, C talks about A, A talks about C, C talks about B, B talks abut A. Confused yet you, haha? Mine had a twist at the ending where something happens to one of the characters. Hint: It’s got something to do with the title =) The class generally loved it; Mr Sulaiman commented the ending, another part of it, was rather Chinese-drama-ish, which was horrifyingly true. Did I mention that even though I am NOT a fan of Jack Neo’s slapstick dramas and satires, my first thought gravitated towards his style when we were brainstorming for ideas earlier on in the day?
The class had interesting ideas, from modern day fairy tale to a ride on public rail transport. Haza’s one topped my list for its brave portrayal of a controversial topic. I felt so repulsed reading the lines. The impact was clearly there. I don’t think I will dare venture anywhere extra-territorial. I so got to expand this constricting box of mine.
Political theatre next… Not my cup of tea… Argh!
