FIRSTWoRKS Firsts

Animah (left) snapped last night after the reading of her play Malacca 'o7 at Stor Theatre, Dewan Bahasa Friday night.

I rolled in late (horrible jams, taking the wrong turning off the highway, walking round in the dark trying to find the venue) and missed a good slice of the first play Shannon Shah's Air Con.

From the part I did see, it looked extremely interesting. Not least because I was a teacher in a school very much like the one attended by Shanon's characters. Though my boys didn't hang out with the transvestite prostitutes at the railway station ... did they? I liked the interplay betweeen Shanon's characters ... they felt very real.

Animah's play was intriguing. She took a real historical incident - the demolition of the Portuguese fort in Malacca and added a cast of characters which included a gutsy activist type heroine and an UMNO youth type guy out to foil her plans. I could vicariously see just how thrilling it must be to write something and have it lifted from the page by a cast of actors (who incidentally were excellent).

It's still a work in progress, so won't say too much here, but am so proud of my friend!

Incidentally, how do you pronounce the name of the British governor: William Farquhar. I'm as certain as only a Brit can be that it is pronounced (Farkwa) not, as the cast and Animah pronounced it (Fakuha). The name is Scottish and derives from the gaelic. Any Scots on the blog?

(To digress for a moment, the Brits have several surnames which are pronounced very differently from their spelling including Featherstonehawe which is pronounced 'Fanshawe', and Cholmondeley pronounced 'Chumley'. The pronunciation is simplified over time, though not the spelling as aristocratic families hold on to evidence of their lineage.)

Congrats to both new writers and to the others whose works were read last night at Stor.

Yes, am somewhat envious and thinking ... hey could I do this?