Nice but safe

The Taj Mahal topic is one that's been kind of beaten to death, at least in the Indian/Tamil drama and film world. The romanticism associated with the whole episode of Shah Jahan, the 17th century Moghul Emperor, building the (at that time) massive Taj Mahal in rememberance of his favourite wife, Mumtaj, is well-known and epitomised for undying love. Indian pop culture makes frequent reference to the Taj Mahal symbolism.

So when I heard that the Ravindran Drama Group (RDG) was staging its "magnus opus" (nowadays everyone's doing their MAGNUS OPUS!) entitled Taj Mahal, I heaved a sigh of boredom and was skeptical at what more could be done with that theme. For the sake of my own Mumtaj-equivalent, I went to see it at the Drama Centre yesterday.

I was quite pleasantly surprised at the great trouble RDG went to dramatise the events that led to the creation of the Taj Mahal. It was RDG's interpretation with original songs, dance choregraphy and a script that was presumably drafted from scratch, the sources being history books. The scriptwriter, whose previous works I'm familiar, must indeed be lauded for coming up with a script that stayed true to the Muslim social fabric of the Mughal times (but not neccessarily mentioning all the facts, some of which aren't too pretty). But I thought the script could've been more polished - there could have been references peppered throughout the play that Shah Jahan had a penchance for building beautiful structures. The theme of love could have also been played around with more, rather than confining it to the Shah Jahan-Mumtaj relationship.

The actors did a tremendous job. The lead pair was convincing enough, and the rest of the cast was sufficient to keep the production together.

However, for an RDG production, it can be considered a relatively "safe" production. No trademark shockers, no throught-provoking sentiments, no genre-bending. I guess that was the point of this magnus opus - a simple romantic story, captured in song and dance. But for some audience, this could've been off-putting, especially the song bits - there is only so long can you watch two people frolicking in a bedroom scene with slow music in the background.

But the comedy sequences, inspired from the Tamil film genre, may have helped to sustain attention to an extent.

In all, the production was a representation of the effort and hardwork that went into making the real Taj Mahal, but which may not have been reflective of RDG's trademark boldness.

Acting

When I dropped by Novena MRT the other day, a flood of memories washed over me. Alliance Française was located just next to it, and it used to be the usual venue of the annual drama production of the School of Communication and Information of NTU.

I enjoy acting, even though I'm not very good at it. People tend to think of it as something very easy to pull off - that's what it looks like on the outside, but try doing it. You need to warm-up, and relax. You need to understand the character. You need to think, feel and behave like how the character would think, feel and behave. It's a serious mind-whack for the serious minded. I've seen actors who can break into tears at the word 'go' - it's amazing. I could never really fully go into any character... my own persona would always invariably show up, and the character would be some wierd mish-mash of someone like me but not me.

I began to act in secondary school, during my days at Umar Pulavar Tamil Language Centre. It was a short play, where I had a role as a lawyer with a comic bent, but the comic fell flat as most of the drama was quite serious and intense (screaming and shouting and adolscent problems etc.). It was then re-staged on radio where I couldn't bear to hear my own voice on national radio.

Then in University, to escape the label of "the ECA-less person", I joined Paparazzi Productions, the drama troupe of the school. In 2003, I played this dude called Uncle Louie in Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers". To jazz up the character, I was told/I decided to have a New Yorker accent throughout the play. But, this too backfired as everyone else was speaking in Singapore English/Bukit Batok/whatever accent. So I was the only tall Indian man speaking in a crazy New Yorker accent and scaring all the small kids in the audience because the stage was so high and I was so tall and it was like some giant walking in and out. But I really enjoyed playing Uncle Louie, not because the character seemed to be the easy-going (suspected gangster) Uncle of 2 young boys, but because of a particular scene which involved the gangster side of the character being displayed to the boys at a particular scene.

Then the next year, the format of the drama production was changed. Instead of the traditional one-big-drama format, the director decided to make it a medley of 7 short plays. (My friend, who was the director, is a very talented theatre actress, scriptwriter and director of quite a number of plays. She has had quite a number of public performances and this medley was her "maiden directorial venture", to quote the cheesy film magazines.) Aptly entitled "A Bowl of Bon Bons", each of the actors had to play at least two different roles, in two short dramas. I played a work-obsessed executive who ignores his wife's feeling in "Split Decision", where the wife decides to leave at the end of the play without the husband even realising it.

The other play was called "Sure Thing", and this I really enjoyed. The story's premise was that anything could go wrong between 2 people who meet each other in a restaurant - the conversation might or might not develop depending on the things you say - or not. So, when the lead characters (there are only 2 folks in the play) meet, every time the girl or boy says something "politically incorrect" during a chat-up, a bells rings and the play is rewinded to the time just before the faux pax occured. The the right thing will be said and the conversation will develop. It was an amazing experience because my co-actress and myself had quite a bit of chemistry, and no two rehearsals were ever the same. There was a lot of experimenting and fun in doing that play.

Those were the memories of Alliance Francais - I decided not to act after that, as I felt it was a good experience enough to last quite a while. And it's not as if I'm some Daniel Day-Lewis. But I enjoy going to plays and dramas, where Thondan was the latest. I recently read about Pondok 2000, and it seems quite interesting too.

The main thing that puts me off, and many others I believe, is the price of tickets. The high price is needed to recover costs of props, venue booking, meals for actors and so on. But unfortunately, it is passed on to audiences as well. It can't be escaped, but I guess we simply have to choose which performances we wish to go to.