Passion...

Well, after all the trouble that I and Faezah went through, finally we managed to watch Passion which is staged in KLpac last night. Firstly, if you ask me how was the play, I think I have to admit that I can hardly understand what is happening throughout the play. After all what would you aspect from a dance production…
Actually there are a few humorous scenes that are quite interesting and it actually caught my attention but the rest of it I can say it is boring…
Nevertheless, I believe that from watching the ‘not so interesting’ play at lease we gain some knowledge about staging, lighting, as well as the sound effect. Besides that, each actor’s action, posture and facial expression will also contributes to the effectiveness of a play.
Most importantly it helps us to cultivate the habit of going for a theater rather than cinema. As the saying goes “Every great journey begins with the first step”, as for us this should serve as the beginning of more plays in the future.
Lastly I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who went for the play especially Faezah and Joyce for helping me. Thank you so much for everything…

Being evaluated...

When I get back the peer evaluation sheets from my fellow course mates, it is interesting to actually know how we performed or to see ourselves in the eye of the other party. Most of the time we will think that we are almost perfect and there are no need of any improvements. Firstly, as a human being naturally we tend to have self fulfilling bias. Eventually we fail to see what are our weaknesses and deficiencies that require our attention to make improvements for the better. By the help of our friends’ evaluations, we may have the opportunity and chance to see our own default or what had gone wrong. Sometimes we just fail to realize it but almost always the people around us can easily identified our fault, as the saying goes, a good friend is indeed our best mirror. Nevertheless, at the moment we receive the feedbacks, first and foremost we need to accept it sincerely, then only we will accept our friends’ critics and suggestions as helpful constructive advices that could help us in correcting our mistakes and avoid from committing it again in the future. We should not perceive it as personal attacks and ignore the constructive comments and suggestion. In other words be open-minded and take count of the suggestions and try to improve as much as possible.

Evaluating others...

Well, honestly I think that the main purpose of evaluating our friends who are doing their micro-teaching is to make us, the audience, to pay attention to what is being taught by our fellow friends. As a result, in the process of evaluating the others, we may consider a few aspects so that we would not repeat the same mistakes or we may include what is good and appropriate while preparing our own micro teaching. While we evaluate others, we will have the tendency of reflecting it back on us. In doing so, indirectly it will develop a sense of awareness so that we will be more prepared the next time when it is our turn to do the micro-teaching. For example, we will think again whether our set induction is appropriate or otherwise, is our activity interesting, or can my students listen to me clearly, is my instruction clear enough for them to understand, and so on. Most of the time we tend to assume that we are well prepared and there is no need of any improvement, but most likely there are rooms for improvements. In realizing our weaknesses and fault, we may put an effort to rectify our mistakes and to further improve what is already good to better. Lastly, one need to be honest and reasonable in evaluating, we need to put aside all the personal and emotional feeling aside to be able to give a healthy and constructive critics.

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire is an example of a modern tragic hero and with the viewing of the movie it gives me a better understanding of the setting in which the play comes about. From the movie I can easily visualize the environment in New Orleans. Besides that through the movie, the as audience rather then a reader we get to see the actors acting out the event and it helps us comprehend the play better. Lastly I would say that the movie is rather helpful as the lines spoke by the actors are exactly the same as the text that we had and the movie follow very closely the stage direction, setting, and very little alteration are made.

Shakespeare Wallah

After watching the movie entitled Shakespeare Wallah, although the movie is quiet boring but what actually caught my attention is the message of the movie. The movie comes about the challenges that a Shakespearean play faced during the post colonial era. Basically, the people beginning to feel that the plays are boring and uninteresting as well due to the poor quality stage setting and costumes. In Fact, the up rising motion pictures industries also contributed to the down fall of the Shakespearean theatre and in this movie the people prefer to watch the Bollywood motion picture rather than a Shakespearean life performance. Eventually this is also happening in our society nowadays without us realizing it. The teenagers today prefer to watch movies in cinema instead of viewing a play. Don’t believe me? Question yourself, how many times have you watch a play and how many times have you watch a movie?

Teiresias

According to the Greek mythology Teiresias was a blind prophet of Thebes and also a prophet of Zeus. He experienced sex changed sentence by Hera. There are different story on the cause of his blindness. In one of the stories Teiresias was blinded by Athena after he stumbled onto her bathing naked. In a separate episode, Teiresias was believed to be drawn into an argument between Hera and her husband Zeus, on the matter of who has more pleasure in sex: the man, as Hera claimed; or, as Zeus claimed, the woman, as for Teiresias had experienced both due to the sentenced he suffer earlier. He revealed that woman's greatest secret: that she receives the greater pleasure: "Of ten parts a man enjoys one only." Hera instantly struck him blind for his impiety. Zeus could do nothing to stop her, but he did give Tiresias the gift of foresight and a lifespan of seven lives which he participated in fully seven generations at Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself.

Implicature...?

In this week’s class I learn a new term called “Implicature”. It is the term used to refer to utterances that have underlying or intended meaning. For example, if your roommate keeps on asking you why you did not go back for the weekend then he might have the thought of wanting you to leave! According to Wikipedia, Implicature is a technical term in the linguistic branch of pragmatics coined by Paul Grice. It describes the relationship between two statements where the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, but—distinguishing implicature from entailment—does not require it.
Through the examples given in the class, we can see that the mother is trying to ask the son not to leave her but she did not say it directly. Instead she gives all shorts of excuses to the son, hoping that he will not leave her. In my opinion, the used of implicature in drama may make the performance more interesting because it attracts the audience attention as for it will be rather boring if the actors just say out what they intend to.

Different views on culture...

During the fifth week of lecture, while we were doing the exercises in Now Read On from page 109 to 112, I found out that both the drama share a common theme. Both the drama discusses on how people from different generations view cultural issue. It is interesting to know that how people from different background perceive the importance of practicing culture. Take AMRITLAL and JAIRAJ for instance, both of them have their own perception in preserving their culture. In the second drama, Mak Su a Makyong dancer represents the older generation of the Kelantanese society, who is in contrast with the younger generations whereby they prohibited the Makyong performance as it is believed to be against the religious believe. Even so people from different parts of the country also differ in their views towards cultural practices.

History of Theater

After being introduced the History of Theater, I found it interesting that eventually theater was a performance of the ancient Greece, which was meant to develop religious rites in honor of the Gods or to mark the coming of spring. And how it has develop from a religious rites to a Modern Theater where the stage were beautifully decorated and illuminated by candles, to enable the play to be perform at night. Besides that I also come to know that there are two main categories in drama. The first category is tragedy, which it is about human fallibility and reversal of fortune. The character in a tragedy play will experience falling from a high position such as from rich to poor or from a royalty to a commoner, and it is always a result of the characters own doing. On the other hand, a comedy treats themes and characters with humor and typically has a happy ending. Unlike tragedy comedy focuses on the public persona, the protagonist as a social being.

Short Performance...

The things that I will consider for my short performance are as follow,
1. The amount of character
2. Language used
3. Intonations, stressing, and pauses
4. Settings

The reason is, in a short play we need to determine the right amount of character in a short performance. As too many character is not necessary and may mess up the performance as well. Besides that, the language must be appropriate so that the audience can easily understand he message of the performance without much difficulty. In addition, the performers need to be very aware of the intonations, stressing, and pauses that they use, because it is important for the audience to perceive the message correctly. Above all, the setting also plays a major role as it may tune the audience to the appropriate mood during the performance and this will help them to appreciate more.

Different Views on Life

In my opinion, both the poem Ages of man by William Butler Yeats and Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and the riddle in Oedipus Rex share a common theme which all three discuss about the different stages of human life beginning with a new born baby until the person’s death. In As You Like It, Shakespeare categorize the different phase of human life in seven stages, beginning with the Infant, followed by Childhood, Lover, Soldier, Justice, Old Age and finally Death. However Yeats describes humans only undergo four stages in life, which begins with the Infant, followed by Teenager, Adult and ends with Old Age. On the other hand, in Oedipus’s riddle human life is only being portrayed as three stages. As a baby he crawls on fours, then as a man he walks erect, then as an old man he uses cane.
Although both the poet Shakespeare and Yeats are discussing about life but their view on life are totally different from each other. For instance, Shakespeare view life as a process of learning and self development where during infancy men are dependent on those surrounding him and needs to be constantly attended to. Later in his childhood when he started schooling, he will feel uncomfortable and unwilling to leave his home to attend to school. Soon he will experience the sweetness and bitterness of love as teenagers do. Eventually as a young adult, one will seek recognition by putting others priority before his. After experiencing all the experience of life, he has acquired wisdom along with social status and wealth. He then become concern about his physical appearance and begin enjoy life. Next every human cannot escape old age including you and me. Human begins to decade mentally and physically along with the mocking from the people around you. Lastly, it is a certainty in life where every birth will end up with death. No matter who you are, still you will become disable and need the attention and care from the people around you before you pass away.
On the other hand, Yeats views life as a struggle and transforming process. As an infant we struggle to walk and begin to follow his desire when he is entering adulthood where values will be left behind. Later as an adult, one will be wiser and no longer blinded by desires. Lastly, one will struggle against the nature by avoiding death but in the end he will still die.
Then again, in the riddle from the play Oedipus Rex, there are only three stages involve. All of us agree that as a baby one will crawls on all fours, then as a grown-up he walks upright, then as he grows older he will uses a cane to walk.
In a nut shell, I think that Shakespeare’s views are more accurate due to the fact that to me life is a learning process. Furthermore, it gives more details in the different stages of human life compared to the other two that provides very general description.