{"id":27278,"date":"2007-08-02T11:38:00","date_gmt":"2007-08-02T11:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27278"},"modified":"2024-03-15T14:37:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-15T06:37:27","slug":"tembak-instant-cafe-theatres-adaptation-masterclass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2007\/08\/tembak-instant-cafe-theatres-adaptation-masterclass\/","title":{"rendered":"Tembak: Instant Caf\u00e9 Theatre’s Adaptation Masterclass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

“I believe we never stop learning,” said\nactor Anne James, sitting down at a long table. She was right on time for the\nday’s session, arriving just before me; everyone else was running a little\nlate. Australian director Lawrence Strangio — whose critically acclaimed\nadaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace” ran at KLPac between\nJuly 4th<\/sup> and 8th<\/sup>, 2007 — would be helming a masterclass\nin translating non-dramatic text to the stage, and participants had been\ninstructed to bring along something that they intended to use to that end. Anne\nhad brought Azar Nafizi’s “Reading ‘Lolita’ in Tehran”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pleasure of a workshop lies in the hope that one\nis taught something new; the specifics of this intercourse do, however, vary.\nLawrence, when he arrived, said: “I really want this to be more of a\ndiscussion. I’m not a master. I feel like I’m at a lecture. Can we get rid of\nthe tables?” The tables were moved and conversation began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What relevance can you find in a text?” I wrote in my notebook, as Lawrence asked the room about their choice of books. I had grabbed two off my shelf, at random: “What Is Your Dangerous Idea?”, a collection of essays compiled by the Edge Foundation; and Jorge Luis Borges’s “Book of Imaginary Beings”. I wrote: “It is necessary that the text is a conscious choice? Is anything<\/em> potentially relevant?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Songwriter Shanon Shah had chosen a chapter from\n“Constitutional Conflicts in Contemporary Malaysia”, detailing the\n1988 sacking of the Lord President of the Supreme Court, Tun Salleh Abas, by\nexecutive powers. The next day, Shanon singled out a particular passage of\ninterest: the contents of a letter the justices drafted to the Agong. Lawrence\nran with the idea, and we discussed, at length, the need for language to be\nembodied in a space. I wrote: “An object becomes both a textual image and\nperformative image: the letter passes through many hands.” Weeks later,\ndetermined, Shanon would still be making notes in the margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Playwright Ann Lee held up Primo Levi’s “If This\nIs A Man”, but considered transposing the Holocaust into a hypothetical\nMalaysian setting; Lawrence got her to read a few paragraphs about Jewish\nchildren awaiting their move from ghetto to concentration camp, and us to\ntranscribe it to life. Bernice Chauly (Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray,\nLove”) began to sing “Ke Ren Lai”; Kam Raslan (Joseph Conrad’s\n“Heart of Darkness”) pretended his cell-phone was a car; Jo Kukathas\n(Farid al-Din Attar’s “The Conference of the Birds”) looked up and\ntried to keep her kite flying. I wrote: “Relevance is subservient to the\nhuman story.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone had brought vastly different material; it was\nclear that the participants would find no formulaic solution to their work.\nAside from focusing on his students’ pet texts, Lawrence stuck to talking about\nhis own: how he reread “Alias Grace”, cut down the initial drafts,\nand secured permission for its staging. “Permission is necessary,”\nLawrence said. “It’s an artist’s right to own her work; you need to give\nher due respect. But Atwood was really supportive; the rights for ‘Alias Grace’\nare actually owned by a film company, and she wrote them a letter saying: ‘Hey,\nthese guys are staging a play, let them do it.’ “<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“How much does the adaptation \/ people behind\nthis adaptation own their<\/em> work?”\nI wrote. “Is an adaptation mine (the playwright) or yours (the author)?\n‘Fast Food Nation’, as a book and as a film; Charlie Kaufman’s ‘Adaptation’.\nDoes the creative component in the act necessarily have to be limited to\ntechnicalities, or is it possible to manipulate themes and concepts? If so, is\nthis okay<\/em>? When does adaptation stop\nbeing adaptation?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eventually, I realised my questions were largely\nsemantic. Isn’t a director\u2019s interpretation of a playwright’s text, arguably,\nadaptation? Discussion continued on, and it was obvious that others, regardless\nof whatever wool-gathering they may have done, would not let definitions and\ncategorical exactness get in the way telling a story. Ridzwan Othman — whose\nplay, “Flies and Foreigners”, was workshop-ed, then staged by Instant\nCaf\u00e9 Theatre in 2004 — had with him Volume Six of “The Encyclopaedia of\nMalaysia”: “The Seas”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked self-conscious as he described it.\n“Actually, my text doesn’t really have a narrative,” Ridzwan said,\nchuckling nervously. “I was just inspired by this entry about\njellyfish.” He held this up for us to see: a two-page spread in full\ncolour. “I don’t know. I just like the way it’s written, the way it’s laid\nout on the page — actually, I just like jellyfish.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone laughed. Lawrence said: “Well, you’re\nreally not making it easy for yourself, are you?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had assignments — “1. Identify what in the source text is important to you; 2. Come up with a basic structure for performance: moments, images.” — for day two. By then, Ridzwan had already constructed a yarn: he told us about a marine biologist, the author of the entry about jellyfish in an encyclopaedia, who is now a soldier –\u00ad and, in the course of fighting, is stranded on an island, and wonders why a person like him is in a war. “I thought soldier, because I was thinking about jellyfish,” Ridzwan said, “And how they look kind of like parachutes.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

First Published: 02.08.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I believe we never stop learning,” said actor Anne James, sitting down at a long table. She was right on time for the day’s session, arriving just before me; everyone else was running a little late. Australian director Lawrence Strangio — whose critically acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s “Alias Grace” ran at KLPac between July […]<\/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":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3535,3746],"tags":[1231,723,1761,608,1245,3745,3747,3744,3610,533,46,239],"language":[7523],"writer":[7625],"class_list":["post-27278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-theatre","category-workshop","tag-ann-lee","tag-anne-james","tag-bernice-chauly","tag-jo-kukathas","tag-kam-raslan","tag-lawrence-strangio","tag-margaret-atwood","tag-masterclass","tag-ridzwan-othman","tag-shanon-shah","tag-theatre","tag-workshop","language-english","writer-zedeck-siew"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27278","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=27278"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38573,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27278\/revisions\/38573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27278"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27278"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}