1,000th post, woo hoo!!
Well okay, so here's what happened to me yesterday (Wed, 20 Oct)...
Lost my footing while on the way to lunch and couldn't walk properly for hours after that cos my left foot was hurting so bad my hallux can't really bend. Ow.
Dreaded the moment when he said that results are gonna be posted on the 3rd floor at Wisma - not only we have to go there, I have to find out how bad I did. Which really put me off...
Luckily for the first hour of History class we attended this talk on negative campaigning in the (current) US presidential elections race by the Public Affairs guy at the US embassy at the auditorium. (If it weren't for our and the Mass Comm class, turnout would probably be really bad if not also for some curious souls who stayed back till 4). And as usual, it was 20 minutes late - wonder if the speaker was pissed or amused at Malaysian time. According to him, mud slinging in the presidential races go as far back to the time of Jefferson and Adams. The idea is NOT to get caught, good example being Nixon. Second hour was the first newspaper presentation, which was about Pearl Harbour and America's involvement in WW2. At the end of class he told us to go get our exam papers from his office, went home instead.
***************************
After showering and dinner (and attempting to get this laptop on to check my email and all), picked up Elia to go catch the student preview of Alasdair Gray's Five Letters From An Eastern Empire, a one-man show with Edwin Sumun in the lead role as tragic poet Bohu.
Not too many people showed up for it (which is not such a bad thing, but a little freaky); could also be because people would rather stay home and watch CSI: Miami (of course, that's just me).
The gist of it is that he's been taken away from his parents at the age of five to be trained as a tragic poet for the Emperor, in anticipation of the order to write a great poem. The first four letters in question are Bohu's dictated letters to home which tell his life story and his experiences to alleviate his lonliness in the palace (with the order to write being around the corner) despite his entourage or chef, servant, etc etc. When he finally he got it, only to write about the destruction of the old capital, which he refused to because the emperor had everyone living there killed as they were "unnecessary people", which (might) included his parents; after which he asked to die because
"While the old city and my parents lived my childhood lived too. But the emperor's justice has destroyed my past, irrevocably. I am like a land with history. I am now too shallow to write".
Towards the end of his death, he finally wrote his great poem despite not wanting to. Here's the last dialog of the play:
“To sum up,” declares Gigadib, “The Emperor’s Injustice will delight our friends, depress our enemies, and fill middling people with nameless awe. The only change required is the elimination of the first syllable of the last word of the title”.
Finally, my two cents on it:
Set: I wouldn't know how to begin describing it, but it was put to good use for the 105 minutes of the show.
Costume: Several costume changes (one per scene/letter), the first one REALLY reminded us of Queen Amidala, the costume so red it reminded us of this one. The hood later came off and became part of the outfit for the first scene. Others include capes and the like. That aside, they weren't too bad, though I can't help but think that he's wearing a skirt most of the time... of course I knew it they were pants. Oh, and he was also wearing leather (or PVC?) vest with matching arm guards for most of the play.
Illustrations: Really striking and bold as they were projected unto the screen behind the performer.
Music: Bjork-ish and creepy as intended, for mood-setting purposes. Thought it reminded me of Bjork until I read the programme (yeah, I finally spent money on one) that she was an influence on the composer. Okay then.
Performer: IMO had really gotten into character, deep booming voice and also the squeaky one of the emperor. (In case no one's noticed, I am a fan of Mr Sumun)
Generally: Interesting (though my theatre partner in crime would disagree with me - she thought it was weird), thought it was good, though we didn't quite get some parts of it - like, was the emperor actually alive or was he controlled like a puppet by the various headmasters in the play? And if the letters were in a language other than English, it would've been a whole lot longer.
Also liked the ending, where it turns out that the old capital wasn't destroyed until AFTER the poem was written, to coincide with it and to justify the destruction. What a way to get someone to write good poetry.
What's even better was that we didn't spend money to watch it other than for parking and petrol.
Review on kakiseni.com, unfortunately not a positive one. But at least the articles included the artwork we saw in the play.
0 comments:
Post a Comment