{"id":27220,"date":"2006-08-22T15:05:41","date_gmt":"2006-08-22T15:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27220"},"modified":"2023-12-07T13:30:51","modified_gmt":"2023-12-07T13:30:51","slug":"baggage-check","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2006\/08\/baggage-check\/","title":{"rendered":"Baggage Check"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Break-ing\n(Ji Po) Ka Si Pe Cah<\/em>, at first\nglance, looks like an ‘Osman, Mutusamy, Lai Kok Seng’ production. You know, a\nforced ‘muhibbah’ project. Just like in those text books we used in school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They even mention it in their website, touting it as an “inter-cultural collaboration” between three theatre directors — Jo Kukathas, Namron and Loh Kok Man — “each with their [sic] own distinct style and from different cultural backgrounds.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The production goes beyond race, gender or age,\nreally,” says Jo. “Sure, race and cultural background is part of it.\nBut it’s not everything. It’s more about the language we use when we perform. I\nthink we share a similar language when we do that. It’s deeper than\nlinguistics.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deeper than linguistics, beyond just mere language,\nyes. However, like it or not, language is indeed an important factor in\ndefining these directors and their works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kok Man is a respected director of experimental plays\nin the Chinese-language theatre scene; even film director Tsai Ming Liang has\nheard of him and had asked him a few years ago to teach theatre in Tsai’s\nhometown, Kuching. Namron, a popular writer\u00addirector-actor (he was the bilal in\nGubra<\/em>), had set his works in various\nMalay regional dialects, for example, loghat kelate in Gedebe<\/em> and loghat perlih in matderihkolaperlih<\/em>.\nJo, of course, is a founding member of Instant Caf\u00e9 Theatre (ICT), which was\nthought to have gotten away with a long run of political satires simply because\nthey were in English. DBKL caught up with the company eventually, but hey, it is\nstill around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stronger\nthan DNA<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Other people would always label you,” says\nKukathas. “I am labelled. I must do verbal English comedy. Some people say\nit’s a style. Well, it’s not my style, not what I aspire to do. Somebody once\nsaid, ‘once you have a style, you’re dead’. We’ve fought this from the very\nbeginning.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They might not like it, but that is just the way it\nis, for now. Language, it seems, is even stronger than DNA when it comes to\nsegregating people. Theatre folk in Malaysia have been lamenting and grousing\nand bitching about this since God knows how long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who go to a RM32 English-language play at The\nActors Studio Bangsar might not want to watch a play at Stor Teater DBP even\nthough it’s only RM10. Some would not even know where DBP is, or that DBP has a\nstore where they stage plays. Would you be surprised if the person next to you\ndid not know what DBP stands for?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Namron sees the separation and hopes that this project\ncould contribute in bridging the gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Different people do go to different theatre\nperformances,” he says. “We do get people who only go to Bahasa\nMalaysia plays, English language plays and Chinese language plays. I hope that\nby collaborating with each other, some people who only go to certain types of\nplays can see works in other languages they might be missing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Target\nmarkets<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, there’s nothing wrong with people watching what\nthey want. You won’t be arrested for watching the sixth Life Sdn Bhd<\/em> in a row without going to see a Kelab Kilat play. There\nis no affirmative action, special quota or Approved Permits in theatre yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not even a problem to be solved as you\ncouldn’t and shouldn’t force people to go and watch things they do not want to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is merely a symptom. An indication. Of what? Racial\npolarisation? The same baggage that caused the 1969 race riots? Unequal\ndistribution of wealth? Unbalanced education level? Snobbery? I dunno. Do we\neven care?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Malay theatre, Chinese theatre and English\ntheatre are preconceived notions. I am not sure it has to do with some baggage\nthe country has,” says Kok Man. “I am not burdened too much about\nbaggage. If l do have baggage, I will put it down, open it and see what’s\ninside.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We see the same thing with movies and songs. Senario<\/em> and Yusof Haslam movies focus\ngenerally on a particular market and they do very well there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Mandarin or Cantonese entertainment is not\nprofitable, Astro would not have maintained the Dynasty Package for 10 years.\nThey’re also going to add a few more channels to that package soon. Tamil\nentertainment is also quite popular, with THR Radio filling in that niche quite\nwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These businesses become successful by focusing on a\nspecific target market. Same thing with Barisan Nasional, the component parties\nof which fight for the interests of certain ‘target markets’ as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ways to\nunite people<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is so different with theatre that people in the\nscene keeps trying to unite people, who may or may not speak the language in\nwhich their works are written, to watch their shows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I think it has to do with cost,” says Namron. “If you make movies or music, there are major costs involved which need to be covered. Theatre is relatively inexpensive. That’s why people usually do their experiments in theatre. There are a lot of ways to unite people. It’s a large scope — politics, entertainment, sports, but theatre is possibly one of the cheaper alternatives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We want to bring our audiences together, to\nsocialise, to get to know each other while they watch our play under one roof.\nWe are only suggesting this, though. It may very well be that these people,\nwhen they get back home, they would just do their own things. It may be that\nthey wouldn’t even come to the show at all!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Namron talks about experimenting with uniting their\naudiences, but the three plays they are presenting are done separately, with\neach director taking responsibility of his or her own project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The final product, the three pieces on stage\nwould be us speaking with each other on the theme,” says Kukathas.\n“The final performance would be our communication.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It also wasn’t an artistic decision, but a\nmatter of commitment,” says Namron. “We knew that the three of us\ncould not go and be at the same rehearsals together because of our other\nprojects. So that’s why it was that way. If we had the budget to pay for\neverybody, then maybe we would have come up with a different arrangement.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even in\nthe same language, there are barriers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jo, Namron and Kok Man got together after having been involved in Lohan Journey — an ongoing Asian contemporary theatre collaboration project organised by Japan’s Setagaya Public Theatre. Last year, they joined 16 other theatre directors from Thailand, Japan, the Philippines and the United States to produce a project called Hotel Grand Asia<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“While working on the project, Namron, Jo and I realised that we have not worked with each other at all,” says Kok Man. “I suggested that we did and they agreed.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When they got back to Malaysia, Kok Man took the\ninitiative and got Namron and Kukathas to finally commit their time for the\nproject. It was quite an interesting team-up, what with the different material\nand styles the three have focused on before in their work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Namron’s piece, “VV [VVIP]”, is about an\nexecutioner and the man scheduled to be executed at 10pm. The story is about\nwhat happens before that moment in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My story is not really about language,”\nsays Namron. “It’s about prey and predator. About what happens before\nsomebody pulls the trigger. But from a language standpoint, the two characters\nwould speak to each other in normal Bahasa Malaysia, and when they go into\nmonologues, each would speak in his own dialect. The guy who is about to be\nexecuted is from Kelantan and the executioner is from the North.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His approach struck a chord with Jo, though, who could\nrelate with some of the things in Namron’s piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Even though we are far away ethnically, I can\nunderstand his piece,” says Jo. “Maybe because often times, he writes\nand tells stories of marginal people. It’s very humanistic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her piece is called “Silence, Please” where\nthree women deal with a death and a disappearing body. The language used is\nEnglish (and a little Tamil), though Jo maintains that the whole piece will\ndeal with communication not just with words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s not miscommunication, but how to\ncommunicate beyond linguistics,” says Jo. “Even in the same language,\nthere are barriers. The piece would see how some of the characters communicate\ntheir feelings and thoughts without just relying on words.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around 45 minutes, Kok Man’s piece “Repot [Mind+ Mine]” is the longest of the bunch. It is broken down to three parts with the last one incorporating some re\u00ad-enactments of P Ramlee’s Antara Dua Darjat<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I started out with trying to find what language\nmeans,” says Kok Man. “This piece is basically the presentation of a\nreport on my findings.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking that into context of the play as a whole, Break-ing (Ji Po) Ka Si Pe Cah<\/em> may well\ndemonstrate how Malaysians communicate on and through, the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, us divided people can do ourselves a favour\nby making love with each other and coming up with a new, united generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Break-ing (Ji Po) Ka Si Pe Cab runs at Stor Teater DBP from Fri 25 – Sun 27 Aug 2006. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 22.08.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Break-ing (Ji Po) Ka Si Pe Cah, at first glance, looks like an ‘Osman, Mutusamy, Lai Kok Seng’ production. You know, a forced ‘muhibbah’ project. Just like in those text books we used in school. They even mention it in their website, touting it as an “inter-cultural collaboration” between three theatre directors — Jo Kukathas, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3569,3535],"tags":[608,750,3601,1409,3602,3603,46],"language":[7523],"writer":[7593],"class_list":["post-27220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-review","category-theatre","tag-jo-kukathas","tag-loh-kok-man","tag-lohan-journey","tag-namron","tag-setagaya-public-theatre","tag-stor-teater-dbp","tag-theatre","language-english","writer-amir-hafizi"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38761,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27220\/revisions\/38761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27220"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27220"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}