The 2nd Kakiscript Playwriting Competition

Kakiseni have announced a second playwriting competition :

In 2007, we launched the Kakiscript Playwriting Competition, and were inundated by entries from all over the country. Ten winners were selected, and the prize-winning plays were published in a book, 100 Minutes to Change the World.

We’re ready for more.

The 2nd Kakiscript Playwriting Competition, the richest playwriting competition in the country, is back and you have 3 months, or 93 days to create a ten minute play. A great ten-minute play, to be precise.

Read on for more information.

What We Are Looking For

This year, we’re setting a theme : Conflict/Resolution

We are looking for original, sophisticated works, which explore the idea of conflict, or the idea of resolution, or conflict and resolution jointly, or conflict versus resolution. If you have a different interpretation of the theme that we’ve suggested here, go for it!

Just make sure your work is engaging and rooted in the Malaysian experience.

Each play must run for duration of around 10 minutes, plus or minus two minutes. Submissions can be plays written in either English or Malay -- or a combination of both.

Note that we are looking for literature intended for performance; in other words, you should think about your play as theatre on stage as you write.

What We Don’t Want

We’re not looking for didactic or dogmatic plays. You are encouraged to contextualise your play with social and political issues, but don’t assume we want social or political tracts and commentaries. We want quality theatre. If you need to preach, write a sermon -- but don’t send it to us.

Why?

Kakiscript aims to encourage the creation of new, original Malaysian plays. We hope it will be an incentive for existing playwrights to produce work, and also an opportunity to unearth new talent. We also hope to encourage the creative exploration of issues affecting contemporary Malaysia.

We will be publishing the ten winning entries in print, in a single volume; they will also be available for download from Kakiseni.com.

Did We Mention Prizes?

The playwright of the winning entry will receive RM10,000 in cash. Two runners-up will receive RM5,000 each. Seven consolation prize winners will receive RM2,000 each.

See the website for further information and rules.

Kakiscripts Kakistended

The nice people at Kakiseni would like you to know that the deadline for the playwriting competition has been extended till 30 August 2007. (Clickety click to be inspired by the poster.)

Kakiscript Playwriting Competition

Online arts magazine Kakiseni has announced a playwriting competition with generous prizes and are looking for:

... engaging plays that explore and define issues of the Malaysian experience, in all its social, political, historical, spiritual and emotional complexity. Each play must run for duration of around 10 minutes, plus or minus two minutes. Submissions can be plays written in either English or Malay -- or a combination of both -- and must thematically touch on issues concerning Malaysia.

Closing date is Tuesday 31 July 2007 and all the details are here.

Earthly Powers

When I was posted, a year after my arrival, to Kuala Kangsar to teach English, I found myself on my own mission to understand Burgess and the Malaya he painted. The royal town did not disappoint: it had more than its share of eccentric characters, the Ubudiah mosque was still ‘as bulbous as a clutch of onions’, the Istana did indeed look as if it had been designed by a Los Angeles architect -- just as Burgess had described them -- and I became a fully paid-up, bar-propping member of the Iblis (sorry, the Idris) Club.

But by the 1980s, MCKK had completely forgotten the author. There wasn’t a copy of a single one of his books in the library, no commemorative plaque on the wall, and an embarrassed silence in the staffroom when I asked if anyone had read him. Not even the longest serving English teacher -- who had been on the staff at the same time as Burgess -- was prepared to discuss him.

Burgess was incredibly prolific, producing over thirty novels, including the visionary and dystopian A Clockwork Orange , and Earthly Powers, which was nominated for the 1980 Booker prize and recently voted third best British novel of the last 25 years. He also produced hundreds of reviews, academic studies, television and film scripts, opera librettos -- and, being an amateur composer, even several symphonies. Be that as it may, Kuala Kangsar just wasn’t interested. Never mind that the author was arguably one of the most important literary figures of the 20th Century.

My article about the neglect of Burgess, Malay College, and the restricted books issue is up on the Kakiseni website. Eliciting controversy, I hope with all my heart. Please do go read.

The jawi inscription at the top, is the dedication at the front of The Malayan Trilogy: To All Malaysians. And I thought I'd throw in a picture of me as cikgu at Malay College with my boys in 1988. I'm sure you can find me!

I still have every hope that we can celebrate the anniversary of the trilogy and do something good for readers and for the boys of Malay College ... once the book is declared 'unrestricted' (as commonm sense dictates it should be) and the MCOBA (Malay College Old Boys Association) make a decision about what it is they want to do.

Thanks, Zedeck for being the kind of bullying, pain in the arse kind of editor that gets a much better piece of work out of me. (But I told Zedeck I'd put him in my suitcase and take him back to the UK with me if I get deported!)

I was asked to write an article on banned and restricted books for MPH's Quill, but it was deemed "too sensitive" for publication when I sent it in, (although there was nothing in it that isn't in the public domain already, with just a soupçon of opinion added). Which I understand, particularly when there is going to be a pic of the PM on the cover. Still ... it feels funny to have an article on banned books ... in a sense banned!

Zedeck's editorial this month focuses on the happy ressurgence of things literary in KL.

Kakisenied!

Even the tiniest scintilla of snobbery would have turned the whole thing into an exhibition of exhibitionism, but these were writers with heart, not ego. They were there to entertain, not showboat, and all six thoroughly excellent wordsmiths endeared themselves to us immeasurably.

Sherry Siebel reviews our Night of the Living Text event on the Kakiseni website.

I wanna organise another one now!!!!

(Dunno whose mouth this is, but I nicked it from the Kakiseni website)