Monday, March 09, 2009

Chye's 10 Questions

I think writing plays is very fulfilling in the sense that you are able to create fiction from the reality you see around. And you can also get away with a lot more things than you can in journalism because it’s not so direct, and also when you write a play, you’re creating a work of art. ... And that transcends a lot of things. When you see the actual product being staged and it comes alive, that’s an indescribable feeling.
Playwright, author, journalist Kee Thuan Chye answers 10 questions for The Edge Financial Daily.

6 comments:

Amir Muhammad said...

Thuan Chye was a wonderful editor when I wrote for his page in the NST. Other editors tend to censor things for the oddest reasons.
He should use his influence in The Star to resuscitate the annual short-story competition. Only a newspaper has the kind of reach that can sustain such an enterprise and inspire people. And it's a much better medium for people to learn/appreciate English than teaching 'the Bernoulli principle' instead of 'prinsip Bernoulli' in schools -- madness!

bibliobibuli said...

i enjoyed having him as an editor too, Amir. more than anyone else, he gave me confidence in my writing.

i'd love to see the star's annual short story competition revived too ... we need as many outlets for writing as we can get

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Sharon and Amir, for your nice comments.

Thank you too, Sharon, for providing this link to my Edge interview.

Amir has brought up before elsewhere the idea of my running a short story competition in The Star. Unfortunately, I have come to the end of my tenure as I'll be retiring in a couple of months.

Hope to look for a job so I can see my kids through university!

Amir Muhammad said...

Oh no, that means Allay Koay has to do it!

Anonymous said...

All the good ones are leaving. The Edge is dying, some of the articles are sorely in need of a good editor. A case in point is the pullout feature on Malaysian websites. Not only was it full of grammar errors, a lot of the sites were inaccessible.

I don't think you'll have a problem getting a job, freelance as an editor or something.

Anonymous said...

I hope The Star considers a writing competition but I'd pitch for a short fiction 600-word type. Just to get things going. It's not as daunting, very accessible to both readers and writers (school kids can have a go as well as busy adults). Prizes don't have to be very big, and easy to print on the page.

There's also something about current Msian fiction (very general statement here). Seem to rely either on humour or sentimental settings in the past or piling on local references. Perhaps short shorts would encourage a bit more play. Also encourage bloggers to show their fiction pieces!