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!
Benazir Bhutto
First lesson went by. I was the only non-Arts student in a class of 10 students for the module. Horrors. Shock. Indescribable feelings ran through me. Anyway we had an uninteresting class activity where everyone was to contribute one sentence in turn to make up a story. Why uninteresting, you might ask? Well, our story had no coherence and the plot points flew everywhere. Something about Jesus and sex change operations.
I was mortified.
We had a few gos at the class activity and the last one where everyone was restricted to 4-word sentences produced the best story of the lot. Something about a dream sequence involving poppies and a dog. Apparently, the restraint imposed gave us virtually no room for embellishments, no room for every individual to impose his or her idea on the story, which was good.
I guess that’s what people meant by “too many cooks spoil the broth”.
Benazir Bhutto became our next topic when each of us had to come up with a monologue on the spot about her final seconds or moments before her death. The first thing that ran through my mind was: I don’t even know much of Pakistan politics to begin with! I mean, I could not even recall the name of the Pakistani president (Musharraf) at the time of the exercise! Nevertheless I wrote something. Something which I felt could be the monologue of any dying female politician with a family. A classmate, Alissa, wrote something about chutney that conjured strong colours of yellow and white. That was the one that left the deepest impression, followed by Marcus’ conspiracy-esque monologue.
All in all, an interesting first day at class. Pardon me for my lack of vocabulary to describe it. We had take-home assignments: Read a given play, write an essay on it and write a short 3-page play. Mr Sulaiman, our teacher, said this module had been claimed by others to have had the heaviest workload in Arts. Well, after taking Mr Reddy’s modules, that remains to be proven by the weeks that followed =)
