At the end of the day…

…I think I have learnt the following from the play readings:

1. Art, or the arts, is not as easy as many people think it is.

Just watching these people really work the lines during rehearsals and mould the voices of the characters from the texts so that they could get into them was really amazing, impressed me beyond compare.

But most importantly, it only reiterated to me how far I have to go with any art of mine.

2. Life, and friendship, is very transient.

It was a good four months hanging out, laughing and learning along with these people, but in another four months, I wonder how many of us will still be in contact, for reasons other than professional ones.

Call me cynical (for those of you who stalk my blog) but I think I am being realistic.

3. You can’t polish shit.

Adrian Pang said this at the end of the night when we were all at some Vietnamese restaurant at The Arts House, in reference to the quality of our scripts.

Not that our scripts were shite – they weren’t Broadway material, definitely, but he and the other practitioners agreed that the voices for each character (in all our scripts) were quite distinct, so the practitioners had an easier time doing what they did.

As compared to other crappier scripts from plays past, of course, where even the best practitioner cannot do anything about it, hence the quote.

I hope he wasn’t being polite (lol), and he really meant it, but I think what matters most is that it applies to many situations in life as well – if you’re in a pile of shit, sometimes it doesn’t matter if you try and polish it up, cos it’s still gonna be shit, anyways.

Whatever the case, a very big thank you to the people who came down to watch/listen/support. I hope you had fun 🙂

About the author

Laremy Lee

A versatile educator, writer and editor, Laremy Lee (李庭辉) has the uncanny knack of being one of the few among his generation in Singapore who crafts compelling stories in different genres.

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