Dramafest: “that’s the best Filipino accent I’ve ever heard” Part 4

Credit: EH Eusoffworks

Darn work is preventing me from doing anything on the internet at all! Chugging along is “Maid In Singapore”, written by Nadia Olisa. I’m not sure who’s the lead Filipino maid though, so I’m just winging it. Anybody want to correct it for me? This one is relatively short. Forgive me for the typos if I missed out any.

Dramafest is an annual combined inter-hall drama event, where halls of residence at NUS come together to put up six short plays which revolve around a central theme. In this interview, I take a look at the creative thinking processes, the trials and the tribulations that they had to face on the road to Dramafest.

Highlight quotes:

Eva, on Nadia and her scripts.

Last year at Dramafest she wrote a script as well, the one with the two dolls, the psychiatric one. Once again, it was fun to act, that was the feedback from the actors. It allowed for a lot of acting, for example, the Filipino maid [character], she’s Singaporean. I had a Filipino roommate an entire year, and I thought she was Filipino.

Musa, on Jia Ru’s [??] acting who played the Filipino maid

She’s very experienced. She was the lead for the last two hall productions. So she has a very good passion for acting. She actually more interested in Thai, and speaks Thai very fluently. When I told her she had to be Filipino, she was “No, I want to be Thai!”.

SPOILER: Iron Man after-credit hidden scene sucks

Iron Man mini-review: Quite an impressive film, not the best but very much watchable and enjoyable. If there was some other megablockbuster released at the same time, I doubt that it would have performed as well. Nevertheless, Robert Downey Jr. did do a good job at portraying a man who is weaker than the suit he wears.

SPOILERS AHEAD: A comparison between Iron Man with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. Both are insanely rich — except that one’s just a regular multibillionnaire and the other’s a genius multibillionnaire. Bruce Wayne mask is his true face — he acts the playboy to cover for the hard-ass hero inside. On the other hand, Tony Stark truly is the playboy and IS the playboy at heart but becomes the hero out of necessity (character development?). At the end you know he still is the attention-seeking, charismatic fool by admitting that he is indeed Iron Man.

To get to the point, the hidden scene after the credits sucks. Samuel L. Jackson makes a cameo as Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. . It’s probably the worse scene in the film, Jackson just struts out with his gap teeth smiling like a retard trying to make Stark feel small but rather it just comes off as comedic. That’s a bad portrayal of Nick Fury — or any character that might have been there. It just watches like, “oh hey it’s Samuel L. Jackson with an eyepatch being nick fury”. He just doesn’t occur to me as any incarnation of Nick Fury, just SLJ with an eyepatch.

Dramafest: “What would a world without breasts be like?” Part 2

Photo by EH Eusoffworks

Continuing on with the Dramafest Interview, here is the portion of the interview where the producers talk about Laremy’s “Between You And Me”, the first play during Dramafest 2008.

Dramafest is an annual combined inter-hall drama event, where halls of residence at NUS come together to put up six short plays which revolve around a central theme. In this interview, I take a look at the creative thinking processes, the trials and the tribulations that they had to face on the road to Dramafest.

Laremy, introducing his play:

I wrote this play because it’s always something I wanted to do, I wrote to be about feminism and femininity in Singapore. Because, as much as I don’t want to use the label, but I think I am a feminist, in that sense of the word, and I thought I would like to use art to convey that message. So that’s why when Dee asked me to do something like this I was very excited. What I did was to do some surveys, because I’m not a woman, I don’t have breasts and I don’t know what it feels like. So I got surveys from 30 people.

Danielle, on whether its right for a guy to comment on breasts:

I think you can’t really say that his viewpoint was right or not. When we were rehearsing the play, we were also talking about whether there are lines that we agree with, or lines we disagree with. For me, there was one part which was a bit chunky about feminism, which I struggled with — for one thing I don’t have the memory — but it also it was something that didn’t connect with me. When we were doign it there were a lot of issues. The more we rehearsed, the more meaning and links we saw between them [the characters].

Eva, on the Irish drinking song:

If you listen to it, it has a lot of good advice… The support one, and check for lumps.

The Wheels In Tun Dr. Mahathir’s Political Thought

To understand Malaysia, one must understand its leaders. Recently, Tun Dr. Mahathir has set up his own blog, and I found this except particularly significant because I think it gives a lot of insight into the thought processes that have shaped Malaysia in his administration.

“Politically, the opposition is the enemy. Being forced to work with the opposition is not undemocratic but it shows up the weakness of the Government.

A weak government is not good for multi-racial Malaysia. It leads to unwarranted challenges against its authority. Governments cannot please everybody. If a Government cannot be firm and is forced to flip-flop there will be a lack of confidence which does not augur well for the smooth implementation of policies or project…

A Government with little need for opposition support would be better able to disregard the sniping that all Governments must face. It should however take note of opposition views and respond where necessary.

In today’s context, the Federal Government is unable to initiate necessary changes to the constitution and would be held to ransom every time.” — Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, May 02, 2008 (http://www.chedet.com/2008/05/weak-government-is-not-good-for-multi.html).

Clearly, Dr. Mahathir is quite conservative. Saying that he favours a strong government is an understatement, and if anything Abdullah’s quote, “Aku pantang dicabar” (I will not stand challenges to my authority) seems to be a closer fit to describing Mahathir’s philosophy than Abdullah’s. It really boils down to a defence of authoritarianism.

How is working with “the enemy” an indication of government weakness? What does he define as a “weak” government? His argument basically consists of the inability to change the constitution and set policy as the opposition would “snipe” and make “unwarranted challenges” to government efforts. Nevertheless, the government somehow can take into consideration the oppposition, but obviously at its own leisure.

So the next question is, what are the political mechanisms for a government to be able to be effective? I believe that there is a cultural argument for this. Students of political science may have encountered the notion that the “Asian way” of organization is based on networks of affiliation and hierarchical patronage which permeate the previous government. Thus to lose key leaders in government would mean that a entire branch of people in the bureaucracy would have been cut off from performing their jobs.

Is there good reason for political “sniping” to reduce the efficacy of government? Let me postulate a reason which suggests the answer, “no”. If Barisan Nasional and the government has a centralised method for framing an agenda, pursuing legitimate reasons for policy and coordinating the actions of its members, then its will have greatly bolstered its policymaking capability. It doesn’t have a BN-centric “epistemic community” — a network of personnel largely dedicated to framing issues and giving BN the intellectual and moral high ground, i.e. “the confidence that it needs”. Again, it boils down to network politics.

If anything, “political sniping” disrupts policymaking because BN doesn’t have the internal institutional support as a bulwark against it, and probably has relied on government infrastructure to give that support that it no longer has control of.

In conclusion, it is in my opinion that Mahathir’s opinions are largely predicated on political realities — but realities which are weaknesses and flaws in BN’s institutional capabilities. He says the government needs to be strong through less opposition, but that necessity stems from the fact that BN has little capability to withstand opposition at all.

If BN wants to continue to stay in government, the answer will at least partially lie in reforms to become institutionally more capable of organization outside of government. I’m not sure if the resignation of Abdullah Badawi achieves that, and I am more inclined to think that it will just rearrange the networks of patronage within BN rather than giving the institutional support that it needs.

On a side note, I really have to re-read Zakaria’s Illiberal Democracy.

Dramafest: “Let’s pretend to be serious here” Part 1

Several weeks ago, I did an interview with a few people whom I really respect for what they do and how much they put into it. The producers of NUS Dramafest (with a director and a playwright) managed to take two hours to sit down and answer my questions. Dramafest is an annual combined inter-hall drama event, where halls of residence at NUS come together to put up six short plays which revolve around a central theme. In this interview, I take a look at the creative thinking processes, the trials and the tribulations that they had to face on the road to Dramafest.

The transcripts will be released in sections every other day, as I take time to transcribe them. I’ll post up notable quotes from the producers, and the actual transcript for that “episode” will be available after the jump.

Episode 1: “Let’s Pretend to Be Serious Here”
The producers introduce themselves, and talk about the behind-the-scenes organization of Dramafest, coping with regular school work and the general school calendar.

Eva, on balancing school and dramafest
As I was directing as well, even when I papers daily up to Wednesday of Dramafest week, ever since Monday, I had a lab report or something due or an actual exam on Wednesday and Friday was the actual day. So while I could set aside a few hours as a director, but if an actor tells me that they have an exam the next day, I can’t very well tell them “no, no, no, you can’t study you must have rehearsals now.” The play I directed we did it in two, three days in the end. The time constrain was so great, but actually we casted them pretty early too. Also because one actor sprained his knee very badly.

Laremy, on balancing dramafest and other activities
I think based on… I’ve been in hall for four years, and I kinda feel for everyone when he said that time taken to achieve this stuff. Somehow, I understand the need to put everything in one month, but I think that itself affects everyone’s performance. Because people who often do drama, also do dancing and singing, that also affects what’s happen. It’s a two-way thing.

Musa, on coordinating schedules
We planned out early, but then we hit recess week. And you can’t really ask people to come down on recess week. People going off for their holidays, you can’t ask them to not go off on their holidays because basically it’s an extra thing. Then, week after holidays is exam week. We can’t ask people to put away their study time to come down. It’s basically not our fault, it’s just the timing constraints.

Eva, on Chethan being a freshmen producer
Because [Chethan]’s a brave soul. Actually when I produced last year I was a freshman, so I don’t think you really need experience, it’s just that you must be willing to take the risk. Apparently not many people are willing to do that.

Click the jump for the full first episode of the interview.