Artaud is a crackpot!!

After 3 months of intense generating, writing and editing, I have finally completed Unit 4 at 4am this morning. 10 pages of A3. Filled. Drama and Theatre Studies. I hate this subject. It torments and pushes my patience to the limit. I must be crazy for refusing to drop it. It is so ironic that I left the exam hall thinking that the worst I could get is a B, not knowing that in fact all of us were expected, yes, expected to fail. I am truly scared. Really I am. I am scared of the immense faith that I place on my teachers. The same teachers that told me my notes were infallible, that nothing would go wrong, that I am brilliant. Sometimes I hate myself for believing them that much. I wish I could drop drama. But I can't. The fact is that I can't bear to drop it. I love the feeling of being someone else. I love the stage. I love the applauding and cheers of the audience at the end of a performance. I love the satisfactory feel of completing a play. I wished someone would force me to drop. I can't do it myself. I hate Artaud. Balinese hand movements. Yeah right. No one in their right mind would look at our play and define that as Balinese hand movements. Too bad those that watch our plays weren't in their right minds. That's what theatre studies is all about. Lying and bullshitting. It is all fabrication, an improbable concoction. I hate that part the most. I hate writing a bunch of lies to get marks. I hate writing a bunch of lies so others could get marks. Why should I put in so much effort to get equal marks as one that relies on my effort? No matter. 6 more months and I am done. No more studying the ideals of a crackpot. No more dealings with schism in my group. To conclude, no more drama. 

Nausea- Another puking incident

Who knew that a simple cup of tea could have caused me to suffer for two days. After attending the Oratorio, Elijah by Mendelssohn, I went to a nearby coffee shop for a cup of tea while waiting for the traffic to subside. The tea looked absolutely fine, tasted absolutely fine, therefore I assumed that it was absolutely fine. I woke up at 5 in the morning to a nauseous feeling caused by a churning stomach. Of course, my first reaction was to wake everybody in the house up and announced my newly contracted sudden wave of queasiness. Mum told me she had already threw up 3 times so I should just wait around until I do. Well, I headed straight to the TV room with a spinning head and an agitated stomach. Wasn't the best idea because watching TV just aggravated my head which aggravated my stomach. Just a note, there are really good shows in the wee hours of the day, those that I haven't seen for a while, like those Disney cartoons from the 50's or 60's. The first rush of partially digested food up my oesophagus came around 6am, and I just managed to reach the sink in time. Bloody hell. I hate puking non-stop, especially before the sun rises. Darkness just give me a sense of despair and hopelessness. This incident reminded me of the flight to Italy from Bangkok, and that non-stop puking was caused by dehydration. The only difference is that it was dark the entire flight because we were flying west. One could only imagine the dread I felt, I thought it was the end of the road for me. Seriously, I did. No parents, no close friends, just 23 newly met people, a lot of puke pouches and a bunch of air-hostess that did not speak English. Plus, the pain of an empty stomach was killing me as my stomach did not allow me to consume even plain water. Utter misery I tell you. 

Anyway, back to the more recent puking incident. I could not sleep anymore after throwing up a few times. for lunch, mum just cooked porridge. Eating was hard enough, keeping what I ate was harder. Uh, I hate the feeling when my stomach muscles contract to regurgitate. Well, this went on until night, just before I fell asleep. The next day, for some weird reason, my stomach was all bloaty and I couldn't eat much either, thus suffering the consequences from the building up of acids. Right now, I am not fully recovered yet but at least I could eat more and keep food in. 

Sometimes I wonder why sicknesses like these do not come when I need it most (like after studying and writing essays the entire night in school). A whole day of vomiting, just because we wanted to avoid traffic. Oh the irony.

Death be not proud

After weeks of checking the dance section of the NYT, I was thrilled with all the new articles on the new season in New York. That is, until I saw this

News article

I am truly sadden by the sudden passing of Clive Barnes. I enjoyed reading his articles especially the 'Attitudes' column for Dance magazine. I have high regards for this man as he inspired me to pursue my dreams of becoming a dance critic. He will definitely be missed in the dance world.

Finito!!!!

Yes!! Geography is finally over. No more staying up till 4am trying to cram everything in . No more having to drag my chair, pillow and blanket out on the balcony to study. No more worrying about how clouds form.
The paper was not too difficult nor was it particularly easy. The paper was weird, it took me a while to realise what's weird about it. River was not part of section A, a first in CIE geog exam history!! Thank God I studied three physical topics and population instead of just focusing on Rivers and Population, which was actually what had I intended to do. Let's just hope I didn't stuff this one up. I swear I will cry if it goes wrong.
Anyway, mum and sis just left for Korea, leaving me and my good-ol-dad(who spoils the heck out of me) in the midst of KL until Monday.

List of things to do within 2 days.
1. Get a trim
2. Buy a dress
3. Buy a leotard
4. Visit the restaurants on my list of places to eat
5. Watch a play
6. Buy Larkin's poetry collection
7. Find some of Pinker's works
8. Remind dad to mail letter to Andrea
9. Buy sticky paper so that me and Tania could watch bugs die in agony

Oh, speaking of bugs, there was a huge green beetle on the outside of our window netting the other day. It was neon green with black strips all over. Of course, our first reaction is to get the bug spray. After a few jets of poison, it started crawling upwards till it hits the window sill and fell on the window ledge. I started freaking out and spraying like crazy. I hate bugs. I hate big bugs. I hate big bugs that have weird colours on them. It was twitching like some spactic thingy. Oh, how I love watching bugs suffer before dying. Well, it twitched and toss and turn until it fell of the ledge. Me and Tania heard a splat when it landed on Suria's concrete backyard. Ewwwwww....ewwwww....ewww......
I wished I had taken a picture of it. Oh well, I will when the next one comes.

2 days of destressing...too bad Tania is stuck in Ktj..all alone..talk about role reversal man..

Knock, knock, knockin' on Heaven's door....

Upper6 Drama 08/09 presents
Knockin' On Heaven's Door

That's the title of our play. Why? We thought it would be interesting naming it after a Bob Dylan song for Mr. S who is leaving, though the content of the song have absolutely nothing to do with the play. Anyway, I know we finished it ages ago but I still wanna blog about it anyway.
Our play was very simple. It had no storyline. It had no dialogues. It had nothing that most play would have. Heck..It didn't even have a proper stage. We chose the art centre staircase as our acting area and it should be the first in KTJ history to have an exam piece there. Basically, our play was about the Seven Deadly Sins. We screamed, crawled to earth, acted hysterical, became puppets, descended to hell, became demons, tried to kill ach other, die again, and went to heaven.

Our stage

Walk into the light

I played Anger. I actually wanted Lust but Leila wanted it more, so I decided on Anger instead. It was a sort of a challege because I have this perpectual smile etched on my face but I managed to change that smile into a scowl. As a Poe fan, I just had to incorporate something Poe into my monologue. I based my monologue on 'The tell-tale heart', I just had to change the dementia into rage. Wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, I just had to keep a straight face while screaming. Oh..I love screaming at people. I wish I could do it more often just that I don't want to be sent to a mental institute.
I insisted on doing a dance in the hell scene after watching so much videos of 'So you think you can dance'. It was hard to find music that sounded remotely angry so I chose 'Warriors' from Lord of the Dance. It was kinda weird dancing contemporary to Irish music but it was fun. I scared a hell load of people in the process. I am not exactly pleased with the dance itself, but what more could be done in such a short time. I did managed to throw in a few of my favourite moves. Pas de chat, step, Grand pas de chat, step, pas de chat, fall. Ballet to Irish music. I would like to meet another dunderhead who could think of this. I am never going to show Ms. Yeu this video.

Cast and crew

Oh, and I got full marks!!! Yay!! But so did everyone else. Oh well, it was sorta a group effort anyway. I have to thank God for giving me the strength to last throughout the entire play. I swear I was getting lightheaded during the freeze. And I shall never look at James' face ever again. I froze at the wrong moment which meant that I had to stare at him for the next 8 minutes or so without moving an inch of muscle. Very smart Deborah..very smart indeed. Oh well..it's all over now.
I miss it though. Especially the screaming. Oh well, we'll see what the next play brings forth..

Never watch a Nutcracker Ballet in September!!

Two weeks ago, I went to watch the Nutcracker Ballet by Dance Space with Ms Belinda and Tania at KLPAC. The idea of attending a Christmas Ballet in early September was not exactly elating but I was thrilled nonetheless as it would be the first live ballet that I am attending that would be performed by a somewhat professional troupe...or so I thought...
The Nutcracker is a ballet that all ballet lovers have seen a gazillion times yet never get sick of. The Tchaikovsky music for this ballet is one of the most enchanting ever in the classical ballet world, from the exuberant party scene, to the climbing notes of the growing Christmas tree, to the twittering waltz of the snowflakes, to the melodious waltz of the flowers, ending with the sweetest grand pas de duex of the sugar plum fairy and her cavalier. I should have suspected that this production of Nutcracker would not take on the traditional form when the brilliant composer's name failed to be mention on the poster or anywhere on the leaflets. Only parts of Tchaikovsky original music was used and the rest was some kind of mismatch random music. I don't mind unfamiliar music but sometimes, it best to stick with the original.
This Nutcracker by choreographer Steve Goh takes on a slightly alternative story line, with the main girl named Claire instead of the conventional Clara or Masha(as the Russians would call her). Claire receives a toy nutcracker from a magician, her sister gets jealous and breaks it, the magician fixes it, and the nutcracker came to life at night to fight the army of mice. He then take her to the land of sweets where they meet the sugar plum fairy. She summons up a celebration for the victorious Nutcracker and an array of dances are carried out. In the end, the nutcracker prince marries Claire and they live happily ever after. Nothing is wrong with this storyline at all as I have seen a more bizarre Nutcracker before but the problem lies with connecting each scenes. I felt that the production was very disjointed and lack a certain story-telling substance that all Nutcracker should have. I know it is a school production and I shouldn't expect much but I am paying RM150 to watch at least a decent Nutcracker. Come on, my ballet teacher in Seremban thought that Sleeping Beauty was part of it. This just shows how badly the ballet was communicated to the audience.
A typical school ballet would always, and I mean always have small little girls, some as young as 4, swinging or flopping around to the music, and this production is no exception. It is understandable of course. Parents want their child to have some time on stage. Lines after lines of little girls in mice costumes and painted faces came scuffling out, nodding their heads about and running in again. They were cute but not particularly enjoyable for me to watch (I did not pay RM150 to watch kids run around). And this brings me to the Chinese dance section of the ballet which was absolutely a bore. The one in the real nutcracker is around 1 minute long; This one, which of course used some modern Chinese music to allow all its little girls a chance for the spot light, was too long to sustain any bit of attention that remains.
Moving on to the main characters. The girl who played Claire, I have to admit, is a very good technician. However, this is another case of good dancer, bad choreography. The choreography was a bit repetitive in certain scenes especially with the bluebird lifts (plus the prince was not even strong enough to bear her weight). The male lead was not as good as the female, actually nowhere near the standard line. Well, this is Malaysia and I understand that the stereotypical view imposed upon male dancers here so I salute the three male dancers in this production.
There was nothing special about the set design, though I like the lights around the rim of the stage which lights up during the Land of sweets. The costumes were not that spectacular but what can one expect when one resides in Malaysia. The last tutu worn by Claire was a bit too 'bling bling' for my liking. It was almost blinding when the lights hit the tutu as the prince did another bluebird lift.
I know I am being a bit too critical but Ballet is something that is deeply embedded in me that I could not, I mean won't let it go if something is not right. Hope for a Malaysian company? Not anytime soon.

Busy..busy ..busy

I've been so busy lately. Endless things to do. I promise I will update soon.