Tiara Jacquelina got home at 4am on Feb 23, 2009, after taking her final curtain call as Puteri Gunung Ledang and her first late night supper in four months to celebrate the end of a most memorable journey. Here, she shares her thoughts and feelings of that day that ended in joy and triumph.

SUNDAY, Feb 22. My phone alarm had been set for 10am – I had gone to bed at 2am – but this morning I am already wide awake several hours before. I had tried everything from deep breathing to meditation to counting germs and mosquito hearts – all in vain because I cannot stop thinking about the day ahead of me.

Today I will be taking my final bow at the curtain call as a girl I had come to know so intimately over the last six years. Just as Puteri went up the mountain as a girl with dreams and hopes, and came down as a woman, very sure about what she wanted and determined to achieve it at all costs, I have learnt, grown and blossomed so much along this wonderful journey.

I glance at my phone message inbox. I open two text messages, one from my director Zahim (Albakri), asking if I am feeling okay. The second is from my sister Carol, telling me that our cousin Angie had managed to buy 36 tickets for the Eu clan – nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles – to be there tonight, with bells, pots and pans and pom-poms.

Tiara Jacquelina and fellow cast members taking their final bow on Sunday, Feb 22, 2009, the last night of Season 3 of Puteri Gunung Ledang.

For a stage performer, the final day of a run is usually the toughest day to get through. Unlike an album or a film, the process of rehearsing a play requires a lot more mental, physical and emotional investment. Also, a film tends to be shot out of sequence, therefore the emotional journey is interrupted whenever the director yells “cut!”

For this third season of Puteri Gunung Ledang the Musical, I have spent every waking moment for the past four months, from 10am to midnight, with 175 people who love what they do; whose energy and spirit of camaraderie and unity is so catching.

It’s amazing to see how this spirit has been translated to the 100,000 people who came to support and celebrate all 70 performances of PGL we have put on since Season One.

Believe it or not, it’s the audience that makes the difference between a good performance and a great, unforgettable one. When an audience is “alive” and generous with their appreciation, as we have experienced over the last three seasons in KL, the performers onstage cannot help but be energised and reciprocate by turning up our game a few notches higher.

Both the audience and the performers go on this amazing roller-coaster of emotions together throughout the evening. This synergy is what I will miss most of all, come midnight when all this comes to an end.

Tomorrow, or perhaps a few days after the dust has settled, most of the ensemble, who are the backbone of our show, will go back to their pre-PGL lives as lawyers, engineers, accountants, university students as well as full-time performers.

A.C. (Mizal) and Adlin (Aman Ramlie) will move on to the next film or TV project, Ida (Mariana) will no doubt be wow-ing her adoring fans at her next jazz club stint … unless she decides to delve deeper into the world of magic and illusions after this. And Stephen (Rahman-Hughes) will be flying home to London, after stripping off his Hang Tuah regalia and returning the famous Taming Sari to the props department.

I can’t imagine at this point what it will be like tomorrow: no more SMSes about coming in for daily briefings from Zahim, followed by make-up, hair and sound checks.

I arrive at my dressing room at 4pm, do half an hour of stretching as a warm-up. The M.A.C make-up team walks in at 5pm, followed by the hair, costume and sound people. I take a photo of the team milling around me for remembrance. They have developed a system of working together: face make-up first, followed by the top half of my costume, which I wear with my workout tights or jeans, so that I can still move around and stretch with ease. I sit on a bright red exercise ball that allows me to keep moving my lower back continuously.

Adlin Aman Ramlie played his role as Sultan of Melaka with such intensity on the last night of Season 3 that his rage was palpable to his co-star. – Photo by WAN IZHAR

During the final face make-up touch-up, the hair department gets going. This is when I put on the Anton Browne vocal warm-up CD Steve introduced to me. I owe him for this because it has helped me so much in developing my vocals over the years. By now, everyone knows the exercises by heart, and they join me in singing along to them.

Once hair is done, the microphone team moves in. I have two or three mic packs around my waist and cables are running along the back of my costume, through my hair and on the side of my face. I wear at least two microphones, in case one mic fails.

At this point, the P.A. comes on and assistant stage manager Syed yells to everyone to go onstage for our daily sound check. Today, however, Syed sings his announcement to the tune of Bayan and Puteri’s farewell song, Moga Temui Cinta: “Telah tiba masa, untuk sound check ini, kerna datangnya dekat pentas, bagai telah dipanggil…” and he goes on for another verse and the chorus. I hear laughter from all three floors of dressing rooms.

Next comes “circle time”, when the cast, ensemble, stage management and creative team heads join hands before the curtains go up, say a short prayer, and listen to any final notes from Zahim.

Steve and I remind everyone that tonight, being the end of the run, emotions will be running high. I joke that anyone who starts crying before the curtains will suffer the fate of Gusti Adipati’s “pancung!”

‘Circle time’ saw the cast, ensemble, stage management and creative team heads joining hands, saying a short prayer, and listening for final instructions. – Photo by CHRIS A.

People often asked me during interviews, what makes PGL so successful. I think one of the factors is the dedication and focus by every one of the 175 people involved.

No matter how menial their task may seem, their efficiency and precision is critical to the overall success of the show. Whether it’s positioning an actor’s microphone, or making sure mic batteries are fully charged, or flashing a torchlight to guide an actor safely across the darkness backstage, the stage crew who are involved in the illusions, or even the guy whose task it is to ensure that the flowers in my kain fly when I kick them towards Hang Tuah, a show like this cannot afford to have a weak link. And everyone learns very quickly that they never ever want to be that weak link.

Another factor that’s very clear to me is the love, the sense of one-ness and the unity in purpose in everyone. We have Malaysians from almost every possible racial and cultural background – Malays, Chinese, Indians, Orang Asli, Ibans, Kadazans – who join hands in that circle every evening at 8pm to breathe positive energy and love into the person on his right, as he in turn receives energy from the person on his left.

This play has been so brilliantly written by Adlin Ramlie and crafted by Zahim that everyone – from the lead actors to the support cast to the ensemble – has their spotlight moment. In the PGL team, everyone realises that we all have our designated “moments”, and that collectively, as a team, it is everyone’s duty to help each other shine.

When we first put the team together in 2005, I realised that some things needed to be cleared upfront. This was a team made up of the biggest creative brains in the business, and with the name usually comes the ego. I made it clear from the start that theatre is a collective effort, that we were all here to learn and support each other towards a shared mission and goal. Whenever there was dispute, we would decide what was best for the project and not the individual.

Chedd Yusoff’s cheerful announcement welcomes everyone to the show, and everyone rises to sing the national anthem. Ida and I are in the wings, stage right, doing some last minute stretching, breathing and focusing. The Jalur Gemilang billows proudly on the projection screen, and we sing our hearts out as a final wake-up call for our vocals before we open the show with Majapahit’s song of hope, Suatu Hari Nanti.

The curtains go up, and tonight, all my senses are heightened as I soak up each precious moment on stage. Tonight, I have found a new energy and an extra drive in my delivery. Tonight is different. Tonight, what drives our performance is love. More than just the love story between Tuah and Puteri, or the love of a nanny who gives her life for her Puteri’s happiness.

(When I meet Jit Murad after the show, he says during the curtain call, he could sense the love between the cast members, and the no-holds barred affection from the audience.)

Tonight, I am a little overwhelmed by the love in the air. In the scene on the cliff where Hang Tuah and Puteri pledge their eternal love, the beautiful words touch me in a way I’d ever felt before. Remembering my own warning words of “pancung!” to the cast backstage, I bite my tongue, clench my fists and breathe, breathe and breathe till the wave of emotion passes. Phew.

My next challenge comes during the scene when my nanny Bayan sends me off to Melaka. This scene has never been easy for me, because Ida, as a most giving actor, always affects me with her genuine warmth. I feel that lump in my throat again as she starts the song. Breathe, breathe, breathe! You cannot hold a tune when you’re emotional, and Moga Temui Cinta was one of the most beautiful songs in the show, I didn’t want to mess it up for Ida and me.

Thankfully, my thoughts are distracted during the intermission by autographing programme books and CDs and posing for photos with the cast and crew backstage, in between doing a make-up touch-up, a complete costume and hair change and mic battery checks. The first half of Act Two is a lot lighter for me, as I have moments to rest whilst Steve and Adlin wow the audience with their solo numbers.

When Adlin goes on as the dancing Sultan, I warm up in the wings for the marathon to come, which begins halfway through Act Two, right up to the end of the show. This part of the show is about 40 minutes of non-stop action and high drama.

The time has come, and I’m escorted across the darkness to stage right by assistant stage manager Mei Chuen and stage manager Hamidon. Midon is the unseen unsung hero whose backstage cues are as critical as the performance onstage itself.

On production stage manager Pat Gui’s signal, Midon cues the moving of the structures, ingeniously created by Raja Malek, called the stupas. Each of the six stupas weighs half a ton and needs to be moved across the stage to precision timing to end up at a specific spot every night.

Hamidon also looks out for everyone’s safety, guiding actors on and off sets in the dark. People always ask me how I make it off the mountain to the Melaka palace in just a few seconds. Well, I run down a scaffolding staircase – so fast I can’t feel my feet – whist hanging on to dear Hamidon. One slip can result in a serious injury but on PGLM we have learnt that as a team you have to literally be able to trust each other with your lives.

Then comes “the scene on the mountain”, my final one with my buddy and stage partner of three seasons, Steve. What a journey we’d been through together. Steve trained me to sing in exchange for Bahasa lessons, and his priceless guidance gave me so much more confidence in preparing myself to take on this musical.

Something happens during the scene. Maybe it is the way Rohaizad’s haunting flute plays Puteri’s anthem tonight, or the realisation that Puteri has almost reached the end of her journey, but I am choked up with emotion.

It is so painful struggling to keep it together during the song, fighting to get some kind of melody across in the song, or even to just talk it. Steve is patting me on the back to try and calm me down but he ends up a mess too.

(Later that evening when we have our supper celebration, Chedd Yusoff who is Steve’s understudy, jokes, “Tonight, we have witnessed that the great Steve is only human after all and can sing off-key like the rest of us mortals!” to which Steve replies in his usual dry British humour, “Thanks a flippin’ bunch, Tiara, for ruining my career. That was the first time ever that I’d hit a bum note.”)

Thankfully though, I manage to contain myself again after the duet, and in the subsequent scene – the naming of the seven conditions – I feel the pain, loss and fury of the princess well up from deep inside me. I hold on to that adrenaline through the next scene, which is one of my absolute favourites – the showdown between the Puteri and the Sultan of Melaka.

We had workshopped this scene to be much more dramatic and “human” for this season, but tonight has to take the cake: His rage feels so real that I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand.

The final scene on the mountain, where Puteri prays for Tuah to make it before the sunrise....

As much as I’m struggling to keep it together, I can see the silhouettes of the ensemble below looking up at me, sniffling, shaking and weeping uncontrollably. The end is near for all of us.

The curtains come down and the response from the audience breaks the floodgates wide open, as we hear them cheer, clap and roar like never before.

I am back at home now but I still can’t switch off completely till I write all my thoughts and feelings down.

I’m so blessed to have had this wonderful opportunity to play the dream role of a lifetime, alongside the best and most talented, passionate and dedicated people in the industry.

Blessed to have the love and support of a husband who makes me believe I can touch the stars.

Fortunate to be greeted with loving arms by the Malaysian theatre and film audiences who have followed me on this wonderful, unforgettable journey of being Gusti Putri Raden Ajeng Retno Dumilah, the Puteri of Gunung Ledang.

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