A list of some of the things that I shall remember to take away from this module:

• Write something that people will pay to watch and be reasonably satisfied
• Make every character, word and stage direction count — Think in terms of economic value as well
• Characters should not be just be boring mouthpieces for the writer’s views
• Non-developed characters can still shine by being strong one-notes
• Pacing is important such as using fast, short lines for comedic exchanges
• Know the backstory of everything even if not everything is portrayed

Last but not least…

• Long acts can afford to be trimmed by 10 to 15 percent, haha

Work has started and no, I am not in the job of writing stories or in an arts-related field of work. But life has been interesting and well… Life will continue to be interesting in its little ways =)

2 weeks in a row I have not had a reading session for my play. I don’t think I am actively avoiding having mine done in class; I think it just doesn’t happen. Sure I would love it to have it read by the class so as to elicit comments and critiques to refine it. It’s the "pride" and "be-proud-of-your-play" thing! Okay, so I kind of dread the critiques but I also wholly agree they are part and parcel of a creative process, much-needed for well-formed ideas. I concur with Marcus in that I would want feedback for my play, which in this case here would be to have others figure out if the ending works for them.

Oh, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not complaining about the lack of reading. My little miss here has allowed me to get a glimpse of a much more diverse range of plays by others. I can’t tell if it’s me being the Computing student, or just me in general, in that most that I’ve written seems to fall along the lines of love and sexuality. "Rotes", I tell you. My fellow playwrights have indeed a superb range of imagination. I am indeed honoured to have been a part of this experience, gaining many useful insights and ideas.

The last lesson of EN2271 was held at Huzir’s place. An evening of "high art and nasi padang". Huilin wrote a completely new play which evoked a "Wizard of Oz meets Alice In Wonderland" feeling. Alissa’s play about a play is still my favourite: Witty lines and compelling characters. Douglas’ bloodied-ending caught me off-guard at first till I kind of figured there was a point in the play ending that way. The continuation of Faith’s play included a death as well but argh — I want to know how it really ends! Sulastri’s solipsistic piece has made me reviewed my personal opinions that one-man acts are generally uninteresting. The rest of us (Marcus, Haza, Benita and I) got to just sit back, eat, drink, relax and read for the evening =)

Anyway, I’ve been rambling on for quite a few entries about how everything is "coming to an end". Well this may very well be it! Urgh, I cannot even begin to describe the feeling I had in me when I reached NUS after our lesson ended beyond the witching hour. Perhaps I shall write about it somewhere else more appropriate…

As you may have noticed, this post has not been tagged with the "Last Post" tag I usually give to the concluding posts of my Module Blogs. I’ll probably write a summary of sorts some time in the future when the dust has truly settled.

I wrote the end to Intrigue! But more on that later. I’m going to talk about our sit-in guests for this week class – students from EN3271 (our senior class)!

Well, it was kind of intimidating at first not expecting them there and not knowing what to expect from them. But in the end, they provided some really unique and valuable insights into our plays. It’s the “fresh-point-of-view” thing I guess. This week’s reading session was much spiced up by our guests, giving the characters in our plays new dimensions and flair. They were animated in their delivery, which brought a larger dose of cheer and fun to our usual Wednesday afternoons. Dang! Another “made-me-wish-I-wasn’t-graduating-this-semester” instance.

Anyway, Intrigue ends with two deaths: Seng and a gunshot death. The final Act reveals background information to the Act just before it, giving new meaning to performed actions and lines. All this while, I am still struggling to make each character properly defined through their actions and dialogue in the play! That last point is an everlasting conquest, making my playwriting very very tedious indeed.

Less words here, more thoughts to my final play. The module is really coming to an end what with only 1 lesson left at Mr Sulaiman’s place. Sigh… Oh well, looking forward to the last lesson and everyone’s work of art =)

Second last lesson of our playwriting class. 4 years in NUS, this is the one class that I really like. This is the one class that makes me forget the reality outside, cheers me up. This is the one class that is going to make me find it hard to leave NUS (assuming I manage to graduate in time of course)!

A continuation of my work, I added in one flashback scene in Act 3 that previewed everything that had happened before Act 2 (which occurs chronologically before Act 1), during Act 2 and up to the beginning of Act 1. Now on thinking back, I gave the wrong diagram on the board in class when I drew my supposed timeline of the play. Chronologically speaking, it should be:

Now that seems confusing. I blame the anachronistic nature of the play on the anime, 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱, haha. My only problem is that the emotions and characters are not intense enough as yet to be able to convince that one of the characters is the murderer.

Huilin presented her piece and it kind of confused everyone in class because we tried to rationalise her piece when in fact it was meant to provoke thoughts and leave everything hanging I guess. I wish I had kind of supported her in class because I think I kind understand where she was coming from. But it’s the case of playwright’s intentions versus the audience’s expectations and so we spent a good amount time arguing over how to resolve her play logically.

Haza re-wrote her play, entirely! She used the dream device of hazy recollections, which immediately prompted me to think of Kanon, AIR and CLANNAD. Very dreamy, very interesting.

Douglas continued with his poetic-styled play. I love the presentation style! How does one write like that? Is it the Arts/cultured thing?

Benita and Faith re-wrote and expanded on what they had. I’m looking forward to their endings. Should be very interesting given the dynamic of the relationships established, Satan-on-Earth in the former and a three-way-relationship in the latter.

What’s my ending going to be like, I wonder?

Yes, the final play has landed itself a title! This post accumulates two weeks worth of progress.

So I continued expansion of the plot and added an equivalent of almost two whole acts to the cryptic opening Act. New questions and very little answer revealed! Here’s some of the plot points made:

• Tanya said he didn’t do it but Act 2 reveals she was in the house much earlier than expected!
• So was Vanessa!
• No surprise that Gavin and Ryan were lying as well.
• What’s with the Arthur, gun and hostage situation?!?
• Did someone else die from the gunshot in the opening scene of Act 4?
• Seng’s murderer is still unrevealed! (Though I already kind of leaked it in class already, to much complaints, haha)

So many stuff written and told. Too bad I have no idea how to properly conclude at the moment =(

On the other hand, I should kind of count myself lucky since I haven’t been making major revisions like some of my classmates have done to their play. The re-inventing process is really painful and draining. But for the sake of good work and art, I’m sure we’ll all agree it’s worth it =)

Second last lesson tomorrow and I can’t bear to leave! Why did it take me so long to realise and acknowledge something I have more passion for?

At the time of this post, my final play for EN2271 has yet to be properly titled.

The last one. The big one. The 30-minute one. The thirty-page-play?!? My mind blanked when Mr Sulaiman said each page of our script roughly corresponds to a minute when acted out, which in retrospect is rather true.

I had expressed interest in writing something that dealt with issues more close to heart, like teenage death and how it cuts short of everything and affects the people around the deceased. The first revision was angsty and melodramatic. In colloquial terms, “emo”. Then I figured the plot was going nowhere even though the stage directions had all been planned out. In short, scrape that initial interest.

Some classmates mentioned going back to that initial submission that got them into this class, and hoping to tweak it to bring their point of view across. I kind of balked at idea of going back to my supernatural plot at first. But then it dawned upon me, “Why not?”.

For the lesson’s read, I had completed Act 1 which consisted of 4 Scenes. The plot… Drumroll please… is a whudunnit mystery. Been-there-many-times genre, yes but it’s not about doing something unique but doing something with your individual style in it. 1 death, 5 suspects and clues slowly dropped along the way as the 4 scenes played out. I haven’t quite figured out how all the clues fit into the plot or who the murderer is, save the gender is probably a “she”. Limited furniture as the set and plenty of movement around coupled with monologues.

The initial response was good. I didn’t put anyone off, I hope. Then I found myself criticising the play, saying I should try to bring forth some sort of individuality to each character like give them quirks. That surprised me. I never knew I could critiqued myself like that!

Looking forward to more plays by my fellow classmates for the upcoming lesson. I shall refrain from commenting on them till we’ve all found our footing in what we want to write.

Oneiros – In Greek Mythology, the sons of Hypnos, the god of sleep, are collectively known as the Oneiroi, gods of dreams. Oneiros is a singular term. The most famous of the Oneiroi would perhaps be Morpheus, who has been referenced many times in pop culture.

Imagine that your dreams are actually staged. That they have gone through rehearsals and script reading. That perhaps a dreamwright, much like a playwright, wrote and directed your dream. That the characters in your dreams, while subjected to your fantasies and dreamwright’s directions, have voices and grouses of their own. That every night, in your mind, plays are actually behind rehearsed and staged…

This week’s lesson was a blast and may just possibly be the most interesting one I’ve ever had in my all years in NUS. We had red wine and pizza while we had class, because as Mr Sulaiman said, food and drinks go well with comedy! Eight of us (Sulastri was absent) with 3 pizzas and a bottle of wine.

Though it was Comedy Week, that didn’t stop Faith from coming up with a play that had dark undertones. That girl is amazing. Kudos to her writing talent! Marcus’ outbursts at the funny lines was utterly hilarious that we all had to just stop and laugh our hearts out. Haza wrote a very touching piece which doesn’t quite work as comedy but worked on all other levels in terms of emotions and character development. We dined, drank and laughed. I think Haza got a little too high on wine at the end of the lesson, on the wine! This module is really making leaving NUS very very hard, haha.

Since I am on the topic of people in our class, I think Mr Sulaiman deserves some mention as well because he read some of the lines in our play really superbly. The “feel”, tone and accent along with the play-acting was all there. I was truly in awe and still am.

Now, to start on that 30-minute play…

PS: The name of the dreamwright in my play is Meng, which is the hanyu-pinyin of the Mandarin word for "dream".

An effort of collaborations with Huilin which turned out well =) Well, I don’t know how she feels but I thought we got along pretty dandy, haha.

Our initially title-less play talks about the body in that there is an external self that we portray and an inner feeling we keep hidden from the world. One thing I realised after having heard the plays written for the week was that we all kind of put the theme “body” as somewhat secondary to whatever agenda we had written. Ours well, kind of fell along that line too I felt. Perhaps only Alissa and Marcus’ dark comedy got it right this time.

Another thing I realised, naming of characters is not just a random thing. Well, Huilin and I named ours Mann and Propp, never thinking they could also be mistaken as references to Thomas Mann or Vladimir Propp. Well I’ve heard of the latter from NM classes but I never made the connection till Mr Sulaiman mentioned his name.

The end-of-class exercise was pretty perplexing as in we had to brainstorm ideas for our final play. I had absolutely no inspiration then so I said something pretty generic for my inspiration. I mean, isn’t every other play about love, death and sex, haha? I so got to buck up on that one.

Comedy next. I think this is going to be a tough one since it is the second time a genre is imposed (Previously we had political theatre)  and I can’t imagine how to make my class laugh (Comedies have to be funny, duh!) without the use of stage directions (Yes, this was also a requirement)… Good luck to me =)

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…

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…