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.