On culture.

Fri, 6 Aug 2010
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Eight Plays by Huzir Sulaiman.

Found the bit that I like the most:

It angers me when after hundred years of importing aspects of other people’s culture some politician in a 4,000-ringgit Italian suit complains about Western values and such-and-such a thing is not from our culture. Our culture is everybody else’s culture. We’ve never had our own. You can’t arbitrarily draw a line to freeze its change and growth. And it angers me when people like Thomas Thomas expect me to be original, when in fact to be Malaysian is to be derivative. Deal with it and grow up. Would you like some coffee? No? It’s Colombian.

    — Huzir Sulaiman. “Notes on Life and Love and Painting.” Eight Plays. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2002. 135.

EN3271: Advanced Playwriting

Wed, 9 Apr 2008
2 min read
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Because I know there will be people who will Google for more info on EN3271: Advanced Playwriting, I thought I’d do a blog post on it too, in order to:

  1. Help sell the module – it’s really good! – and
  2. Tell people more about what I do in school.

Huzir Sulaiman is mentoring us for this module; he has also mentored us for the pre-requisite module to EN3271 i.e. EN2271: Introduction to Playwriting, and it has been a really great experience all the way.

We had a play reading last year which provided many networking and career-building opportunities for me, not to mention two very fun-filled days of laughter and entertainment from the talented actors who worked on our scripts.

The writing in this module has become more focused; from shorter pieces focusing on different areas, we have finished a two-act play and are in the process of completing another.

What I really like about this class is that because it’s a small class size, it’s not unwieldy and we can have some fun times hanging out together as well.

We usually have lunch together after class, and here are some pics of us at Holland Village when we went to Da Paolo’s for very nice pizza.


Lucas.


Cheryl and Mel.


Karthik.

So if you’re contemplating taking either EN2271 or EN3271, don’t hesitate – just do it. But do your best while doing it, so you get the most out of the experience. (Which I guess should go without saying for most things in life anyway?)

Censorship and Singapore

Tue, 11 Mar 2008
2 min read
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From: K**
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2008 2:37:15 PM
Subject: MDA update

Hi C** and E**

As sms-ed to you, MDA is not giving the go-ahead for The Last Political Animal. It is politically sensitive and should not be staged as it is (sic) as the connections are obvious.

…

Swear words like “Jesus fucking Christ” uttered by one character in The Last Political Animal are definitely offensive and for plays licensed by MDA, they do not allow this.

Please revert by today what you intend to do about The Last Political Animal. Meanwhile, the entire event will carry a R18 rating…

I think what a lot of people don’t realise is that in Singapore, the more you try and prevent something from happening, the reverse usually happens.

I don’t mean to say that the organisers are going to ignore the restrictions and proceed with staging the play; the Ideological State Apparatuses, among other ISAs, have been too far ingrained in most people for them to know when not to throw caution to the wind.

What I mean to say is that the irony in the situation now is that because of the censorship, more people are interested in actually finding out what the play’s about!

So it simply goes to show that human nature is as such – the more authority tries to impose its will upon the liberties of the masses, the more resistance there is to it.