TIGA by Five Art Centre

TIGA, a performance by Five Art Centre, and also my last study trip with lectures and students of MMC subject. From the description, I knew that TIGA is a platform for the performing arts practitioners who are interested in developing their skills, either in writing, acting, producing or direction. So they would be given a task to write 3 scripts based on 3 objects. For this TIGA series, they were performing based on 3 objects which is Bed, Chair and Knife.

The first performances which is Bed, it is about a young woman argues with the idea of possession in a relationship. From the performance, we can knew that she was interact with his boyfriend but it is not shown in the scene which we have to imagine ourselves and link it together. My perception towards this performance is about how a girl wanted to fight her right from her boyfriend but yet ended up she needs him badly that she willing to give up even she starts up the fight. The moments when she walking around the edges of bed is reflects that their relationship is hanging around the "danger zone". After that, the girl being frustrated and jumping out of the bed is reflecting that she is giving up this relationship, but after awhile she wakes up and fold the bed together with the blanket covering herself shows that she wants this relationship so much that she willing to give up the fight before the man do. The folding is like reflecting she warp up all the things and memories they have been through and started to cuddle his boyfriend again for her apologizes. But the blanket is getting tighter and tighter around her is like showing that even though she surrender to her boyfriend for her mistake yet the relationship made her more stress and suffer.

The second performances is Chair which is about the relationship between a mother and a daughter which the daughter traps in a loop of her mother's lessons on her. The performance shows that the chair is actually reflecting one object the relating her mother taught on it where every time the girl wanted to sit on it, she will fall down from the chair because she can't get through what her mother made her the decision. Her mother wanted her to be polite and to be what her mother wanted her to be. And this decision has made her becomes trapped. Only after when she able to sit on the chair, reflected that she able to get through the rules and thought that her mother gave, when her mother has gone forever.

The third performances is Knife which is about a woman discusses about sexuality by making it more abstract through the process of making a salad. In the performances, she pointed out some issue that most of the ladies nowadays have no any awareness on these issue. They think it is fun to play and try without thinking the consequences. Especially that part when her gloves which represent the condom has broke, she getting freak out like most of the people would do if the condom broke only the people started to realize the consequences after the enjoyable moment.

These performances are different from the Baling that we watched few weeks ago. But these are the common way that we usually watch in a drama performances. It is more straightforward with some abstract within it which give the audiences to think and relate it with our own perception.

Knife

Bed

Chair

Malaysian Media and Culture Presentation: Lion Dance

Before I start this blog writing, I would like to thanks to my lecture Dr. Carmen, Ms. Ezzati and Ms. Raja for giving us the knowledge on the arts and performances. I am truly grateful and I do learn a lot through this subject.

So during the first few of the class, Dr. Carmen has given us an assignment brief and ask us to choose one of the topic for our presentation and research. My teammate and I started to think what to do, but as we want something challenging and fun with, then we decided to choose Lion Dance as our topic.

We have done a lot of research on Lion Dance, only I feel ashamed because as a Chinese, I don't really understand that much about Lion Dance yet I just know it is a very fun performances and it brings out the feeling of Chinese New Year. I only realize how great the Malaysia's Lion Dance is and they even won the world championship in Lion Dance competition. Besides, I learn differences directions of the Lion Dance histories and I only noticed that Lion Dance costume was used during the period of post Qing-Dynasty and pre Ming-Dynasty as disguise in the forest to move around from one place to another place. There are a lot of thing I have explored through this research and these is not the end yet. I really appreciate that I able to put myself as a researcher perception to find out the entire story of Lion Dance through this research assignment.

After we have done our research, my teammate and I are ready for preparation of the presentation. At first, we have decided to perform the Lion Dance during our presentation, our plan get stuck because we have no idea how to borrow a Lion Dance costume and the music instrument such as drum, cymbal and gong. However, we didn't not just give up for these, instead our desire to perform the Lion Dance getting stronger and stronger because we all have the same goal for this presentation, "we must do the best of it". So we started to spread our word to find the clue to get these equipment. Thankfully, our classmate Pei Nie give us the clue to borrow the Lion Dance from the UTAR LION DANCE CLUB. Unfortunately, the club has disbanded. Luckily, we still able to contact the ex-chairman of the club, Roshan Jay to teach us some movement of the Lion Dance.

After we have the Lion Dance, the condition is extremely bad. The paint has gone faded; the fur is dirty; the controller rope inside the Lion Head is not functioning and all the Lion Dance is very dirty and ashes. No choices, my team and I decided to clean it up perfectly for our presentation. So we started to clean and fix the Lion Dance costume.

We fix the lion dance string that control the eyes and ears movement of the Lion Dance. Although we have no experiences in it, but we still D.I.Y ourselves. Besides, we painted the part where the color has faded. At this moment, we all feel very sad and disappointed because this Lion Dance costume has abandoned many years in the store room and nobody want to take care of it. This Lion Dance is only 5 years old but it's condition looks like more than 10 years old. After awhile, we finally made it like a new one and it looks more attractive and colorful. We are like bringing back his life and ready to show the world it's new look. We are very proud of our work and we are ready and excited to perform for the presentation.

Thanks to Roshan Jay, we able to learn and knew a lot of Lion Dance style and taught us some taboos during the performing of Lion Dance. For an example, we are not allow to touch Lion's eyes and the horn as a respect ritual toward the Lion Dance. Besides, we can't touch the reflection mirror on the forehead of the Lion Dance because they believe it is uses to scare away the devil.

As I play the role as a Lion Tail, I only realize how suffer and tiring to operate a Lion Tail. I have to squad down in half (horse riding stand) throughout the performance. I truly admire to those Lion Dance performer because to become a professional Lion Dancer, you really have to train a lot and put a lot of effort within it. And these make me more appreciate and respect the Lion Dance art.

I started to discuss with my Lion Dance partner, Johnny Choy Wai Hong to brainstorm on how to make this Lion Dance more alive and more realistic. Even though we have only one days to practice. Soon, we keep on researching for the Lion Dance tutorial and video and we found some of it which is look interesting. But when we try to practice to movement, it is tougher than we thought. I only understand why most young people don't really wanted to learn Lion Dance anymore because they have no enough determination to train hard.

In short, I feel happy and fun to have a chance to play as a Lion Dancer. Even though is just happen in 2 days but it means a lot to me. Besides, these activities have increase my knowledge so much and my respect towards the creation of these arts. I hope I able to get in touch with another art forms and play a role within it.

THE KID FROM BIG APPLE

Today I would like to discuss a movie named <THE KID FROM BIG APPLE> which is listed in top 10 movies in the cinema. This movie is directed by Jess Teong, a Malaysia director and also the vice president of chinese film association of Malaysia (CFAM). This movie has won a few awards at the 7th Macau International Movie Festival such as Best Writing, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Newcover(s) and also emerged as the biggest winner of the festival.

This is a story of a girl, Sarah from New York who was sent by her mother to live in Malaysia due to her mother career. The reason I wanted to discuss this movie for my blog post is because this movie has revealed a lot of Malaysia's Chinese culture and specialty. Besides, they also reflect a lot culture issues that happened in Malaysia.

Firstly, after watching the movie, I been asking myself a question. "There is not much Americans don't know English; there is not much Korean don't know Korean language, but why there is so much Chinese don't know how to speak Chinese?" My position is not criticizing Chinese or Chinese language but I'm asking myself why there is many Chinese people started give up on Chinese language? Like this movie, some people know how to speak Chinese but they will try not to speak it. But why? I have made a few assumptions toward this matter. Firstly, it is because some of the them have been influenced by western culture, they have not much interaction with Chinese language and they started to feel not familiar with Chinese because they have get used in speaking in English. Secondly, their parents have influences them by having an English language conversation with them since they are kids because they want them to speak fluent English. As we all know English is a very important language and also knows as International language. So most of the parents wanted to ensure their children future so they decide to teach them English rather than Chinese language. Thirdly, some peoples will have bad perception toward the Chinese language because they believe Chinese language is a very low classy or rude language. Some peoples feel humiliate when they talk Chinese in a city or higher standard areas because everyone is modernize with English language. Forth, some of them feel Chinese is hard to learn. Yes, Chinese language consider one of the hardest language to learn in the world. So, this might becomes the obstacle for Chinese to speak or learn Chinese language. Well, my assumptions do not really represent what the Chinese stop speaking or learning Chinese, these are just some assumptions and prediction that I have made when I observe the people around us.

Secondly, this movie has gives me a lot of memories on how Malaysian Chinese celebrate the festival in Malaysia. We are lucky as we living in a multicultural nation where we combined our culture into a unique culture which is only for Malaysian. For an example in the movie, they celebrate their own unique Christmas day with our Chinese culture which they use "boiled white chicken" (白斩鸡) the represent the turkey and some "red colored egg" to represent the Jesus's birthday celebration. This is the specialty happens in Malaysia as we learn and try each other culture and mixed it up to become our own unique culture to have fun with.

Thirdly, the director wanted to reflect a daily issues in the movie to the audiences. "I had just come home after working overseas, and I was shocked at just how rampant the smartphone culture was," she mentioned. In this modernize era, everyone is just looking at their phone all the times even in restaurants, shopping mall or mamak stall. They just keeping on enjoying the things happen in the internet rather than put down the phones to talk with each other and know each other more. Luckily, at the middle of the story of the movie, the director reveals some way to hint the audiences to use the technologies wisely.

In short, this is one of the best local movie I ever watched. They have managed to show the specialty, the beauty, the culture, the nature of our Malaysian. This movie also reminds us to appreciate the moment together with family. That's all for my review and opinion. :)

Baling by Five Arts Center

BALING TALKS, a conference talk between the Malaya Communist Party and the government of Federation of Malaya in December 1955. The main participant of the conference were Chin Peng, David Marshall and Tunku Abdul Rahman.

David Marshall, Tunku Abdul Rahman

Chin Peng

Thanks to Five Arts Centre, I able to understand more deeply toward this unique and more historical event happened before the independent of Malaya. Even though we have learned it in our secondary education syllabus, but it is just a "touch and go" session of this baling topic. We knew there is this event but we don't really know what happen inside it. I'm excited because we able to understand a part of the original transcript of the Baling discussion.

From the first part of the performances of this Baling which is held at the upper floor of the Five Arts Centre, I can totally imagine the scene, mood and emotion of the actual Baling talk. As the first floor is designed with white florescent light with plenty of paper stick the wall and also no air-conditioning in the room. The hot temperature of the room with hard lighting had reflected me the scene happened in 1955 of the Baling School. Due to that Malayan Emergency at that moment, everyone was panic and worried for the issue between this MCP and Malayan Government. During the Baling talk, the public was crowded all around the Baling School and bright setting of the scene had reflected me the heat, mood and setting of the room during the Baling performance.

The format of their performance is quite suitable for me, maybe because I'm the person who can't sit on the floor too long due to my hardy leg tendon. Of course, not just about this, I find it quite fine because the performances is mostly about the textual art and doesn't has much acting in the show. Therefore, I have to pay my full attention toward their conversation during the performances. Of course, we are human and human usually will hardly focus after the 20 minutes attention. Hence, it is actually a very suitable format for us to move around when each session of the performances end. Besides, together with some actor interaction with the audiences, we can actually drag out of brainstorming and refresh our brain to get ready for the next session. In addition to this, I believe every time the actor interact with audiences between the performances session, is also a short brief or some little bit of related story for the next session of the performance. So that we audiences can prepared and refresh our mind for the next performance session.

For the content of the performances, yes, it is actually the transcript of the original Baling talk in that day. The way they present to script or performance their character is very special because they took the script and they read it. I believe they actually can memories the whole script perfectly, but why they still want to refer the script in the performances? I made myself a hypothesis. As what the director told us, in his perception, word is an object, which word actually represent sometime and it do creates impact to something or someone. So I believe what their action during the performances portray the meaning of they are referring to what really happen in the past for this historical event and the script that they are holding is the prove to enhance their word during the performances. So that the performers have more persuasive power on their word during the performances. 、

Lastly, my perception after watching <Baling> documentary performance is changed. Before that, i thought Baling talk is a fair conversation between the 2 party and they have discuss their term and condition with each others in order to bring peace to the Malayan during the Emergency. But after watch Baling, I feel like actually this Baling Talk is just for the Malayan Government to show the public they have offer the chance to the MCP to negotiate with them and if anything goes wrong they can straightly take action to MCP. Besides, I think that Tunku and Marshall have actually decide their position in the talk which there is actually no negotiation for MCP and they just want MCP to follow what they have planned for them to end this emergency. Of course, Chin Peng rejected because they don't even plan to listen or accept Chin Peng's ideas.

Baling talk is one of the historical event happened in the journey of the Malaysia formation. As a Malaysian, we should learn more about our historical events and appreciate our country.