Texts Across the Causeway

Anyone interested in the literature of Malaysia and Singapore shouldn't miss the forthcoming performance of Second Link by Wild Rice at Actor's Studio, Bangsar.

Let's go back in time a couple of years.

I was helping Mr. Raman to organise the KL Litfest. My job was to coordinate the whole kaboodle, which meant keeping in contact with all the writers and deciding on how to fit everyone into the programme and keep them happy. (Not at all easy!)*

I was in contact with the Singapore contingent through poet Alvin Pang. I slotted the Singaporean poets into the programme and was extremely pleased when Alvin told me that Singapore Arts Council wanted to sponsor an evening event of readings. We put our heads together about the venue and decided we could use the Renaissance ballroom.

Then, just three weeks or so before the Litfest, when the planning was thankfully over (after much sweat and buckets of tears) and the programme had gone to print, Alvin announced that there had been a slight change of plan.

The Singaporean contribution would not simply be readings, but a full blown theatre production directed by none other than the great Krishen Jit. Could we find a theatre for it? I went into full-blown panic mode, phoning round every venue I could think of. All fully booked. Fortunately, the folks at the Singapore High Commission were able to think outside the box and came up with a brilliant alternative: the coolest venue in town, nightclub Zouk.

Now shame on me for doubting that Krishen and his team could come up with the goods in such a short time frame!

The production called Riding the Nice Bus was easily one of the highlights of the entire festival. It was a unique cross-causeway collaboration between the two countries which share so much history, yet seem artistically divided by the causeway. The texts (lifted from plays, fiction and poetry) paid homage to the history of Singaporean writing and were brilliantly chosen by curator Eleanor Wong - the kind of stuff that slaps you right between the eyes. A Malaysian cast performed the whole thing seamlessly. The venue was perfect. (Featured writers and performers listed here.)

Afterwards, I had tears in my eyes as I thanked Krishen (seated at the bar, looking pretty enigmatic) for all his hard work. I could have hugged him, actually, for giving us such an amazing and unlooked for gift for our festival. It was the first and only time I got a chance to talk to this great man, although I had seen him at performances of his plays previously. He passed away suddenly in April 2005.

I wish I had gone down to the Singapore Arts Festival last year (still kicking myself!) because among other things I would like to have seen Riding the Nice Bus performed again - but this time alongside Tikam-tikam: Malaysian Roulette, directed by Singaporean Ivan Heng, featuring Malaysian writings, and performed by a Singaporean cast. (Jerome Kugan gives and excellent account of both festival and performance here.)

The upcoming performance at Actor's Studio merges both productions and brings together more than 50 celebrated texts and ten actors, from both sides of the causeway.

It opens 30th August and runs till 3rd September with tickets at just RM49 on the first two nights. I bought my ticket for 31st because I can't think of a better way to celebrate Merdeka Day!**

* This is what organising the programme for the festival felt like. So many egos to accomodate! The stories I could tell but won't, unless in my autobigraphy published posthumously!
**Though as a citizen of your former colonising power should I be celebrating??

Ibsen in the Afternoon

Went along to the reading of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at Actor's Studio yesterday afternoon. Thoroughly enjoyed it, even without costumes or sets, and even though the cast walked it through with scripts in hands.

Ibsen is one of my favourite playwrights. I know A Doll's House pretty well and I've seen Ghosts twice and both times come away from the performance a nervous wreck. But I'd neither read nor seen Hedda Gabbler before and was so pleased to have an opportunity to encounter it in this way.

The cast (Anne James, Chacko Vadaketh, Kee Thuan Chye, Kiew Suet Kim, Sarah Shahrum, Shirley Chang and Zahim Albakri) were excellent. This was only their third rehearsal, for heaven's sake! (Zahim's second.)

It is an excellent play ("a dark psychological drama" the publicity material said) and I liked this modern translation which made it feel contemporary. There are plenty of twists and turns and drama and revelations. Good direction is crucial so that the play stops just short of melodrama, and Soefira Jane managed that. But the greatest delight is the characters. Anne James captured Hedda's cold cruelty and cunning very well, and it isn't at all an easy role. Most of all though, I loved Sarah Shahrum's bimboesque portrayal of Mrs. Elvsted.

There was an audience discussion with the cast and director afterwards. Would we like to see the play staged? We would. What had we liked, not liked about it? I hadn't liked the "Malaysianisation" of Aunt Juliana and the maid and said so. But on the whole there was much much more to praise than criticise. And I really hope there are more play readings to come, especially of Lorca, another of my favourites.

Now much of the drama of the play centred around a lost manuscript of a totally brilliant book, which leads to a suicide and the undoing of Hedda herself.

The moral of the story is clearly: Always Make Back-up Copies of Your Work.

Got a sad e-mail from a fellow writer last night - I'd asked him whether he'd ever sent out a short story that I'd thought was very good. He replied that his hard disk had crashed and he had lost everything he'd written since he was 9! My goodness. I've had hard disks crash on me too and save not only on floppy disk (do they still call 'em that? The technology keeps moving on while I'm stuck in a stoneage rut!) but also online - that's what I use my Google account for, with all its megamightymultigigabites of space.

Oh Darling Muse!

There is something about doing readings in an art gallery - the space feels sacred for sure. The The Darling Muse Gallery in a
three story house along Jalan Bukit Pantai in Bangsar even has a name which honours the creative process.

This was the first in a series of fortnightly readings organised by my friend Bernice Chauly and sponsored by La Bodega. We had a good crowd of friends and supporters turn up - I was really surprised at how many of the folks I'd mass e-mailed turned up - Noraishah, Caving Liz (just back from Phucket), Diana Cooper, Zarin, and Leah came to cheer me on and I really appreciated having them around.

I was first up. Read a couple of extracts from the second story I'd had published; "Just Like Steven Spielberg". Had never read it aloud before and it is a bit tricky because the protagonist speaks with a Malaysian Chinese accent. (Can hear it in my head, but I'm no actress.) But managed okay, and it was so nice to hear and see the audience react to it. Got laughs in the right places, so felt really good. Then read a little bit from a story "in progress" (hate to tell you just how long it's been "in progress"!), which is ... as far as things are classifiable ... a lesbian love story. Still have some way to go in getting it down to the page but must put in the effort now to get it finished ... have promised it to Pang for the book of gay short stories he is editing.

Jerome Kugan had a sheaf of poems and as ever, his images delight and his word choice is playful and teasing; a writer I'd never heard of before, I Rivers, mumbled his way in audibly through something; followed by Zedeck (only 18 and precociously talented); Pang, who read a short and very graffic piece about a gay encounter (he said he expected people to walk out, as they had when he read it in the bar at the Litfest, but no-one did); Bernice whom I'm happy to see is continuing to work on herfamily memoirs 14 Leech Street - very strong material; and finally Kam Raslan read an extract (about the seduction of a Swiss dairy maid in a barn! What fun!) from a new novel he's working on.

Before, after and during the break we ate delicious pizza and tortilla, drank wine, and laughed and flirted and caught up on gossip ... and if we behaved like real arty-farties then so what? It was so good to be with so many friends.

Went from there up the road to Actor's Studio to see a play called Hannah and Hannah as a guest of the British Council who were sponsoring the production. Here's the blurb:

HANNAH AND HANNA

Hannah, 16, from Margate, wants to know why the Kosovans have taken over her town and her name. Hanna, 16, from Kosovo, wants a safe place to live and a friend. Pop-mad Hannah likes to sing karaoke, especially when it's Britney Spears. What she doesn't like is that Kosovitch Hanna stealing her thunder on her favourite number. What Hannah doesn't know is that she and Hanna have more in common than the name. And, against all odds, will become friends.
Date: 8, 11-15 January 2005 @ 8.30pm, 9 January 2005 @ 3 pm
Price: RM 32/42 (Adults) & RM 17/22 (Students, Snr Cit.)

The play was convincingly acted, beautifully staged and choreographed ... a very moving account of a friendship which transcends racial divisions and narrow prejudices.

And of course, for me the evening was great because, once again there were lots of friends to meet up with, and new friends to make. Am a total people junkie!

Am feeling recharged and very much better now, especially as I am at last getting things moving re. the creative writing course I plan to teach. I've been checking out venues, talking to organisations who might want to collaborate on it. More news very soon.

The event was just like another party too - so many of my friends were there - and there was wine and nibbles and great conversation with plenty of new friends to make, in the foyer afterwards.