What kind of school has toughening-up camps that they force their “effeminate” students to attend? The kind of school located in front of a railway station that is known as a red light district? Or is this just the school playwright Shanon Shah went to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The school in question is the setting of Shanon’s\nfirst full-length play, Air Con<\/em>, set\nin an elite boys school in Kedah. The students and staff are shaken up when a mak nyah<\/em> is found beaten to death at the\nrailway station behind the student hostels. The school reacts by forcing the\nmeeker of the students to attend a Jati Diri-type camp, to turn them into\n“real men” so they may avoid the same fate. The murder and the\nensuing camp-time force six students to face up to their demons and come to\nterms with who they are, as their social support systems slowly unravel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Air Con<\/em> is the product of Instant Caf\u00e9 Theatre’s FIRSTWoRKS\nplaywright program, and some three years of hard work. The result is a\nthree-hour-long (yes, I said three<\/em>)\ntwo act play directed by Jo Kukathas and Zalfian Fuzi. The play takes you not\nonly on a roller coaster of emotions, but also gives you a spin on the tea\ncups, the bumper cars, and the Solero Shot too! From laughing till your sides\nsplit open, to covering your mouth in shock, to squirming in your chair in\ndiscomfort, to attempting to subtly wipe away tears, Air Con<\/em> has got it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It isn’t just the way in which the play readily makes\nyou cry, laugh, and feel disturbed all at the same time (a tricky feat, by any\nmeans). It’s the way the play is familiar to all, though not everyone has been\nin that kind of situation before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s the kind of story we read about in the papers all\nthe time. A body found, nobody cares; life goes on till we find another one.\nBut this time things aren’t so simple. The body in question is that of the\nlover of head prefect and all-round good looking fler, Burn. The social network\nof Air Con<\/em> is complex enough to make\none’s head spin, but Shanon manages to weave the tricky web in good timing, so\nnobody gets left behind. Unless, that is, you have a lot of trouble with Kedah\nMalay, in which case, sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are one of the unlucky few that didn’t get much\nout of the difficult surtitles, you should have at least been able to\nappreciate the impressive set. Though white from top to bottom, it was hardly\nbare. With set pieces with wheels to make scene transitioning a breeze, and\nswinging doors on either side of the stage, the versatile stage design set the\nscene perfectly for the rumble of the elite boys school. \u00b7<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story itself doesn’t sound particularly\nfascinating — the tagline reads “A school. A murder. A scandal.” The\nplay isn’t a whodunit, though. It’s more of a whatisthisgonnadotomylife, and\nthis is where the play gets its juice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the beginning of the play, the students can easily\nbe divided into two groups: the so-called pondans, and the hockey players. But\nas the play progresses, the line blurs, and division starts to get messy.\nMaking up the “pondan” group are Ryan Lee Bhaskaran as Asif (the\nlovable Chindian nerd that masturbates to beings in space, while constantly\nasserting his heterosexuality), Nick Davis as William (the boy-crazy best\nfriend of Asif, and the victim of bullying), Hazarul Hasnain as Mona (the class\nsuck-up that later declares himself straight and asks everyone to call him\nNazrul), and Firdaus Che Yahaya as Mimi (the very flamboyant, very\ndirty-minded, and very loud flirt).<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the other end of the ring we have Zahiril Adzim\n(the head prefect and hockey star that everybody wants to be), and his best\nfriend Amerul Affendi as Chep (the boy in school that nobody dares to cross,\nwith an affection for his Burn that causes him to commit an unspeakable crime).<\/p>\n\n\n\n With most of their characters played to near\nperfection (especially Chep and Burn, but more on that later), it’s clear that\nthese are not students conceived purely in Shanon’s mind. Everybody knows these\nkids. From their places in the secondary school social hierarchy, to the way\nBurn checks his fingernails during prayers, their characterisations can only be\ndescribed as spot-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The rest of the cast, too, serve to impress, with Chew\nKinwah hilarious as the air con repair man, and Nam Ron as the self-righteous\nUstaz that wants to man up the boys with excessive ceramah agama, and Ismadi\nWakiri as Cikgu Hensem (he goes by his nama glamour), the teacher we all had\nonce, or at least wished we did. Then there was Dara Othman as Aishwarya\nRoberts, the mak nyah prostitute in question, who catches Burn’s heart, and\ntorments him after her death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Individually, each of the cast members shine. As an\nensemble, they rule the school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, three hours is a long time, and yes, the seats in\nPentas 2 are extremely uncomfortable. But no, the play was never boring,\npointless, or repetitive. Well, except for the Aishwarya-Burn haunting\nsequences, that always featured the same grating whooshing sound effect. But\nother than that, the whole do is engaging, from start to finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For such a long play, of course it deals with several\nthemes. The play addresses issues of religion, gender, sexuality, and race —\nthat much is pretty clear from the get-go. But it also deals with the bigger\nand less discussed question of what makes us who we are. What makes each person\nso different from each other, and the way society perceives them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asif asks this question in a beautiful scene between\nhim and Cikgu Hensem, where he recites a poem describing Icarus’ flight and\nfall. How can Icarus be blamed for wanting to fly so high? Why would a father\ngive his son wings and then tell him not to fly too close to the sun?\n“Nobody tells Burn not to fly too close to the sun,” Asif laments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? Because people like Burn simply do not fall? Or\nbecause people like Chep and Burn are groomed for greatness, and have\ninfallible wings?<\/p>\n\n\n\n School plays an important part in the shaping of every\nindividual, but what have we been shaped into? Men? Robots? And what are the\nconsequences of these figures? Repression? Cruelty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the play, when the disturbing truth of\nChep and Burn’s relationship with Aishwarya has come to light, Asif and William\nstop to listen to a sound that only the Ustaz cannot make out. The future?\nHope?<\/p>\n\n\n\n “What kind of school is this?” asks Asif. The kind of school that makes us hope Shanon Shah will continue to collaborate with Instant Caf\u00e9 Theatre, and never stop writing plays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n ~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 11.07.2008 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What kind of school has toughening-up camps that they force their “effeminate” students to attend? The kind of school located in front of a railway station that is known as a red light district? Or is this just the school playwright Shanon Shah went to? The school in question is the setting of Shanon’s first […]<\/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":10,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3569,3535],"tags":[1352,3330,2491,3332,3607,3687,3684,607,3683,608,44,3685,3688,502,49,3686,973,533,46,3331,1349],"language":[7523],"writer":[7638],"class_list":["post-27288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-review","category-theatre","tag-ahmad-firdaus-che-yahaya","tag-amerul-affendi","tag-chew-kin-wah","tag-dara-othman","tag-firstworks","tag-gender","tag-hazarul-hasnain","tag-instant-cafe-theatre","tag-ismadi-wakiri","tag-jo-kukathas","tag-nam-ron","tag-nick-davis","tag-race","tag-religion","tag-review","tag-ryan-lee-bhaskaran","tag-sexuality","tag-shanon-shah","tag-theatre","tag-zahiril-adzim","tag-zalfian-fuzi","language-english","writer-yasmin-zetti-martin"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27288","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=27288"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38393,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27288\/revisions\/38393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27288"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27288"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}