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!”.

Yi Jian:
Okay, let’s talk about Maid in Singapore. Who was producing this play?

Eva:
I love this play! It was written by KE [King Edward VII Hall], but it was directed by Eusoff. So its really mixed in that sense, and we had cast from all over the place. All kinds of accents, and stuff like that.

Yi Jian:
The ticket/card said that it was written by Nadia. Who’s Nadia?

Eva:
Nadia’s from KE.

Yi Jian:
And who directed it?

Eva:
Charmaine.

Yi Jian:
Anything to say about Nadia, the script or Charmaine?

Musa:
Nadia’s a good playwright. She directed our hall play three years ago.

Yi Jian:
Three years? So where is she now?

Musa:
Australia. She sent us her script but desperately had to go off. She wanted to direct it, but she couldn’t because she had to go off.

Eva:
I would say that her forte as a scriptwriter is that she writes plays where there is a real wide range of emotion per character. It’s wonderful. It’s easier for an actor to act a wide range than to tell them to show some kind of introspective character that still goes through a range a range of emotions but is essentially more closed. So she’s great at bringing that out. 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 thoguht she was Filipino.

Musa:
I wanted to get a real Filipino girl to act that out, but then she couldn’t make it. So I turned to her, and we need her Filipino accent to do it and to make it authentic, so can you do it? And she said, I’ll go and learn. My soundperson was from the Philippines, and he been to rehearsals, and he went, “that’s the best Filipino accent I’ve ever heard.”

Yi Jian:
I’ve met a few Filipinos before and they sound exactly the same. What’s her name?

Musa:
Jia Ru [??]. 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!”. But she had to do it, and she learned. Even Sham, who wanted to be Bangladeshi, came out in the end and the accent was there.

Yi Jian:
How did Sham get into the play?

Eva:
Actually I just got him for fun. I asked him, “why don’t you just try acting?” because he’s in the drama committee, but he said he was “very scared, stage fright”, but I said, “you’re in band and you play lead guitar, so I expect more from you, you should be a stage whore, c’mon,” and then I told him about the part, it’s fairly small, so I think it would be a good debut it you’r really scared. It’s a very stutterly character, so you can speak normally and be nervous on stage, and people will think you’re supposed to do that. Yay! He actually turned out for the auditions, and he’s very earnest about his character.

Musa:
When Nadia wrote this thing, she actually had people in mind to act it out, she kinda casted me, Eva and Farveez, but I want to step out and let other people do it.

Yi Jian:
What role did you [Eva] get?

Eva:
I was told to try out the Indonesian maid and the Malay woman, because I know Malay which makes things easier, but I was like, er… My roommate was asked to try out for the Indonesian maid role but she can’t do accents too well, and she [something]. She wanted a more fun role if she acted. I knew an actual Indonesian, so I asked, she’s used to be in drama but she’s really busy with stuff, and she agreed in the end.

Yi Jian:
At the beginning of the play, there was this minor sketch, the Malay lady, how does that figure into everything?

Eva:
Well if you realised, she was talking about two suicides, so basically she was…

Yi Jian:
Foreshadowing?

Eva:
Yeah, and also for comic relief. her scripts have a really wide range of emotion and would have been rather depressing without that start, at least with some laughter.

Yi Jian:
That’s probably the most funny part about that play.

Eva:
The funny thing about that part was when I read that on the script, it wasn’t really funny, it’s just the character coming out saying, “so sad, these two people died, blah blah blah” but Shazi was hilarious, so it came off funny and worked good in the end.

Musa:
I think all the actors played their parts really well. I think the aunty… people are really scared of her as well. Because she really played that Chinese aunty very well.

Yi Jian:
Who played the school girl?

Musa and Eva:
Vanessa.

Yi Jian:
She looks exactly like a schoolgirl!

Eva:
Even here, I think she’s a bit dyslexic. Because she’s supposed to go M-A-T-H-S, but during rehearsals she kept say, M-A-T-S-S! It’s really funny, and they have their own moments. Every actor is hilarious. You know that scary aunty, in real life she’s not like that.