By Jenny Daneels In reply to critical comments in an article we published last year on the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac) and the venue’s anchor tenant The Actors Studio (TAS), co-founder and dramatist-director-actor Joe Hasham agrees to an interview with Kakiseni co-founding editor Jenny Daneels to help put things in perspective. Kakiseni is […]
By Jess C I don’t pretend to be an opera buff, but I have seen enough productions to know what to expect. However, watching the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre’s latest music production, Mozart’s The Magic Flute (subtitled ‘Selected Excerpts in Concert’) was a totally new experience for me. According to its press release, Mozart’s […]
By Zedeck Siew Tell us about yourself. Did you, like any other good middle-class child, have to pick up a formal musical instrument? Yes, my parents insisted I attend piano lessons, beginning at age seven — although they had to drag me kicking and screaming the first few years. I got bored easily, and got […]
By Nigel Skelchy There is always that moment of trepidation when a curtain rises on a musical for the first time. If the impact of the first scene is less than a sonic boom, it muffles the rest of the musical. What more an all Malaysian musical written by two untried and untested neophytes? It […]
By Christina Orow We’ve all heard about the unusual delicacy that is the Shakespeare speech. Breaking through the initial layer of incomprehension is like getting over the initial revulsion to the smell of durian, until we take that first bite that sends us over to the other side. In a moment, all resistance to the […]
By Jeremy Mahadevan If you go to the Kakiseni.com event listing for Romi and Joolee dan lain-lain and read the user comments, you’ll find people have been largely appreciative of the play, the only point of contention being a sort of mini Omar Sharif-Barbra Streisand controversy involving some silly hang-ups certain people have about a […]
By Sharon Bakar Life Sdn Bhd 3 began with each member of the cast of thirteen bounding forward to introduce themselves and declare proudly, to audience cheers, “I am Malaysian!” National identity has, of course, to embrace ethnic and sexual diversity – there is no such thing as the “average” Malaysian. Yet you have to […]
By Kelvin K. Wong Having been disappointed by two out of three plays from The Actors Studio’s Malaysian Playwright Series, I admit to being quite sceptical about the fourth instalment. Gavin Yap, who pioneered the series with his not-that-sweet Sweet Nothing, has just staged his second play at The Actors Studio Bangsar (Sep 2 – […]
By Jenny Daneels He was fed Mozart as a child. At 46 now, Tan Sri Francis Yeoh makes no hesitation in investing RM25 million of his listed infrastructure company YTL Corporation into the construction of a performing arts centre that will eventually feed everyone more beautiful music. And theatre. And dance and other performing arts. […]
By Antares Two years ago an email was circulated on the APA list and around the arts community requesting inputs and feedback on the possibility of everyone pooling their resources to set up a new arts centre and performance space in Sentul West. Sentul West? I suppose some folks reacted with a few sniggers at […]
By Kathy Rowland With The Passion of the Christ raking in millions, religion is clearly in again, and there are few Catholic Saints with the cross over appeal of the 16th century humanist, lawyer, writer, diplomat and statesman Sir Thomas More. The play based on the man, now canonised as a saint, has been a […]
By Elaine Tan The elections are over: BN is still the ruling party, the oppositions are still yelping, Anwar is still in prison, and DBKL still controls the increasingly pushover KL theatre scene. In the midst of this, The Actors Studio’s stages Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons, a play based on the story […]
