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Sunday, April 19, 2009
Burps, farts and rehearsal of Fanshen I had the privilege of having dinner at Terminal 2's Crystal Jade with my family and relatives due to a baby's first month. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it because I was suffering from super alot of wind in my stomach. Kept burping non-stop and farting (silently and stealthily, smell-less) but still couldn't get rid of the wind inside my stomach! I forced down the food cos it's not nice to have too much left-overs as a guest over there. I'm wondering - did I suffer from gastric? I've never had gastric before and I don't know how it feels like. My stomach was simply bloated with alot of hard-to-release gasses. Recently however, I realize my stomach condition is not very stable. Whenever I drink coffee, I tend to diorrhea. Prolly my body couldn't take the level of caffeine. But i learnt another lesson this morning not to drink coffee with an empty stomach. I did that today and my friend lectured me. Hahaha. That aside, I had a blast rehearsing Fanshen! The rest of my groupmates also felt the same way. It was tiring though, especially after lunch. Our energy level deteoriated rapidly after our meal and we couldn't give our beloved director (Shirin our groupmate, who is the 27 year old mum I mentioned) the energy level she wanted. But we went through the scenes anyway, just for us to familiarize with the cues and timing and coordination of things. Which proved to be useful. Her husband Heng came along too. He helped us alot by seeing our performance through the eyes of the audience and giving constructive ideas to help our team performance improve. I tried asking him what does he do for a living but he gave a really vague answer. Lol. And I decided not to question further cos I didn't want to appear nosey. :p He was pretty impressive in giving us ideas, so i reckoned he might also be a theatre person. We started practice at 830am and ended at 3pm. Woohoo we are really hardworkers. We went through many rounds of rehearsals. I'm glad we did, everything grew tighter by each round. I feel more confident and secure by the time we reached the last round for the day. And now, I can't wait to perform during the exam this coming Wednesday! :D How I wished it will be video-taped on Wed. It would be a very good memory of my days in NUS. Although this module demand high commitment in terms of time and effort, it really depends on the way one sees it. To me, I treat theatre studies practical classes as the equivalent of PE or Music lessons in secondary school. It's a sojourn from the hectic school lifestyle. :) I feel that God has really been on our side! My team members are Deming, Praveen, Francine, Janice, Shirin and myself. We easily got manpower as lighting and stage crew when we needed them. All thanks to Francine. =) They are all so loyal to her la. All her army guy friends that just came out of army. Machiam gang right. Haha.... Also, when we need important props, they are available without needing to spend a lot of money and we could find them with relative ease. I bought the cheena gu-niang shoes for only $5, lobang by Janice who got it at Kovan food market, which is near her house! I must say that Shirin is really good at directing. She is working part-time for Speech and Drama with primary schools. Although sometimes I feel like we are progressing too slowly, spending too much time talking about theoretical issues especially with such limited time, I realized I might have been too impatient and overlooked the importance of allowing actors to understand their roles. Most importantly, to understand the motivation behind each line that's being spoken. Otherwise, it will come out as really fake and unconvincing. We might be the only group that chose to do this communist play. We have been asking around what the other groups are doing. All 6 of us realized none of the groups we know are doing Fanshen!! Which is good. We can stand out. Hahaha. The others are doing "Where Love Abides" by Raymond Toh, and "Fire and the Rain" by Karnad Girish. Most are doing the first one. Fanshen is a play written by David Hare, and I believe that my group is performing it very well in terms of skills and the aesthetic. :) My character is Hsien-E as introduced previously, a teenage wife bullied by her teenage husband with a rogue father-in-law who used to be a high official. In the scene chosen by my team to perform, I am presenting my case to the officer about the abuse I suffered and most importantly, wanting to divorce my husband, Wen-Te. But in the end, I failed in my case. If you're asking about the whole point of the play, it is to show how useless, futile and pointless the whole accusatory system of communism was. At the end of the play, having the characters go through hell and sufferings, yet nothing is changed. Everything is still back to square one. Quite silly huh? It is the playwright trying to show communism as a social tragedy. That's the main point. I've written alot this time and in detail, cos I really enjoyed my day today though everyone complained about being so drained out after rehearsals. We've never experienced such intense draining of energy after acting! It really requires stamina....respect to all serious actors out there. Labels: daily rantings 12:20 AM
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