{"id":27436,"date":"2007-09-05T04:14:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-05T04:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27436"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:47:24","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:47:24","slug":"the-60-second-plug-klpacs-4-48-psychosis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2007\/09\/the-60-second-plug-klpacs-4-48-psychosis\/","title":{"rendered":"The 60 Second Plug: KLPac’s “4.48 Psychosis”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Director\/actor\/writer Gavin Yap\ntells us about his initial meeting and subsequent relationship with playwright\nSarah Kane’s works, as he tackles her last and most experimental work, 4.48 Psychosis<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Tell us a bit about yourself. Have you always wanted to be involved in\nacting and directing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay, let’s see: I was born in\nLondon and stayed there till I was about five years old, before moving to\nMalaysia. I went to primary and secondary school here, college in the United\nStates, and then university in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I were to label them, I guess primary school would be my Dumb Years, secondary school my Smarter-But-Still\u00ad-Comes-Across-As-Dumb Years, college the Learning-How-To-Act-Normal-While-Under-The-Influence Years, university the Damn-Gotta-Stop-Drinking-So-Much Years, and the years since — well, guess you can say I’m still in the process of figuring that out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know I’ve been quoted in past interviews, saying that I’ve always wanted to be an actor, but looking back on it now, I think I was more interested in escapism. My interest in acting came from my love of movies — but I think it was more a desire to move away from real life, than a career choice. As I got older, I was always role-playing, doing bad impersonations of my favourite movie characters; that, I think, was where the whole “acting” thing came from. I never had any desire to write or direct. That was something that just kind of happened along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your current play, “4.48 Psychosis”, was British playwright\nSarah Kane’s last work, written from the point of view of someone with severe\nbipolar disorder, yes? How were you introduced to her works in the first place?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Kane displayed an intense\nfascination with the darker side of humanity, and her work does indeed reflect\nthat. What I love about Sarah’s writing is how astute she was about all the\nthings that can make us snap; all the mental and emotional states that we allow\nourselves to indulge in to the point where we feel victimised and bitter\ntowards everything around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was first introduced to Sarah’s\nwork when I was still studying in London. Her first play, “Blasted”,\nwas part of our syllabus and it just blew me away. I had never read anything\nquite so brutal. After that, I read everything else she had done and loved all\nof them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s interesting to note that if you\nwere to read all her plays in sequence, you’d find that each play moves further\nand further away from naturalism. I don’t think this was so much to do with her\nnot liking naturalistic drama, but more of a realisation that — in order to\npush the limits of theatrical imagination — she had to push aside the idea of\ntheatrical realism. “4.48”, you could say, is the ultimate result of\nthis; Sarah’s work became more focused with each play, going from war, to family,\nto personal relations — and, finally, with “4.48”, to inside the\nindividual mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What attracted you to this piece, in particular? How long have you\nworked on it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“4.48” was the one I\nidentified with the most. It just spoke to me on a very personal level. It\nstill does. So I guess, in that regard, I’ve been living Kane’s words for a\nwhile now. It’s been cool to finally let the demons out, and actually get the\nchance to stage it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are no explicit characters or stage direction in “4.48”; each production of the work has varied from its predecessors. How are you<\/em> doing things? What informed your decisions?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’d rather not say too much about the look of this particular production; I think it’ll be a much cooler experience for the audience if they’re not too sure what to expect. I will<\/em> say that my main focus will be the actor’s voices. There is a trippy visual aspect to it too — but, for me, this play is about the voices, voices in darkness. And seeing as it’s a play that takes place inside someone’s mind, it always seemed pretty clear to me that all three actors are playing the same person. They may take on different voices at different points of the play, but it all happens in this one person’s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, having said that, it can be\ninterpreted in so many ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was it like, working with Susan Lankester, Samantha Schubert and\nMalik Taufiq? Share some of their quirks with us?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve had a great time working with\nthem. They are completely committed to the material, which makes my job a lot\nmore fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Share their quirks? Ha ha. Nice try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come on. Are they unruly? Do you have to crack the whip with them?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn’t the juicy answer you are\nexpecting: no, they’re not at all unruly. I usually make it pretty clear, from\nthe first day, what I’m willing to put up with and what I’m not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t get me wrong, I like to have fun — and, quite frankly, I don’t think there’s much point in doing theatre if you don’t find it fun (because you sure as hell don’t do it to get rich). But discipline is very important to me. Rehearsal time is precious, and I really have no patience for actors who do not respect that basic principle. But Susan, Sam and Malik are very disciplined, and are smart enough to know that you can’t do a play like “4.48” without giving it absolutely everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s a typical rehearsal like? Any funny or weird stories to share?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t have a fixed method of\nrehearsing. I tend to approach each production differently. With this, there\nwas a fair bit of discussion and workshopping. After that, we slowly started to\npiece everything together. Draining, but fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A funny story: Sam had this really, really serious and emotional bit of text to get through. While she was doing it, she changed her delivery slightly — which, for some strange reason, cracked me up. This made Sam crack up, and then Susan started laughing. And they kept playing the scene. So Sam and Susan are doing this really serious scene while laughing and — <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, it’s not that funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell us a lame joke about theatre directors.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many theatre directors does it\ntake to change a light-bulb?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ten. One to change it and another\nnine to say how they could’ve done it better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever had any awkward moments with an over-enthusiastic audience member\nand\/or groupie?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, not really. Most times, people\ntend to be pretty nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s irony to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I take my younger brother clubbing, and I<\/em> get asked for ID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are you up to next?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really want to do Eric Bogosian’s\n“Sex, Drugs and Rock&Roll”. But I don’t know; have to wait and\nsee. I’ll be re-staging “The Homecoming” next year, which I’m really\nlooking forward to, and I’ll be acting in a Neil Simon comedy called “Star\nSpangled Girl” with Douglas Lim. Should be fun. You decide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Internal battles play out on stage in 4.48 Psychosis<\/em>, which runs from Fri 7 – Sun 16 Sep 2007 at the Pentas 2, KLPac. Tickets at RM35 and RM20 (concessions). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 05.09.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director\/actor\/writer Gavin Yap tells us about his initial meeting and subsequent relationship with playwright Sarah Kane’s works, as he tackles her last and most experimental work, 4.48 Psychosis. ~ Tell us a bit about yourself. Have you always wanted to be involved in acting and directing? Okay, let’s see: I was born in London and […]<\/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":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3558,3535],"tags":[3757,654,228,493,3758,735,2842,3756,740,46],"language":[7523],"writer":[7614],"class_list":["post-27436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interview","category-theatre","tag-bipolar-disorder","tag-gavin-yap","tag-interview","tag-klpac","tag-malik-taufiq","tag-mental-health","tag-samantha-schubert","tag-sarah-kane","tag-susan-lankester","tag-theatre","language-english","writer-juliet-jacobs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27436","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=27436"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39084,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27436\/revisions\/39084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27436"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27436"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}