Sunday August 2, 2009
Morsels for thought
By ANDREW SIA
Ten minutes is all dancers and playwrights have to get their ideas across in a festival that aims to be Short+Sweet.
CAN all the drama, comedy or philosophy of a full-length play be squeezed into 10 minutes? And how will viewers react to watching 11 such condensed shows within two hours?
If you like your shows presented in bite-sized portions, then you’ll probably want to attend the Short+Sweet Malaysia theatre festival starting this week at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac).
Director Kimmy Kiew and scriptwriter Martyn James Fellender are working together on the 10-minute play Viewpoints for Short+Sweet Malaysia 2009. “The idea of short plays is catching on here. When we first held this festival last year, we had full houses almost every night,” says Datuk Faridah Merican, KLPac’s executive producer.
“This year, we’ve added 10-minute dances to the programme since there is a large dance community in Malaysia. Next year, we will expand the competition to include music.”
(The dance component began on July 22; tonight is its Gala Night, at Pentas 2, KLPac.)
Short+Sweet is a short-play festival that began in Sydney, Australia, in 2002. In 2007, it spread its wings to Singapore, before coming to Malaysia last year.
“The idea of 10-minute plays is not new. I have even seen 30-second plays! And in Australia, there are even showcases of 10-minute TV programmes,” says Faridah.
Datuk Faridah Merican takes over as festival director of the second Short+Sweet. However, the Short+Sweet festival format is relatively new.
“It is a great vehicle to engage first-time choreographers and playwrights, as producing a short work is less daunting. In the theatre section, it’s also a challenge for the directors to take scripts and transform them for the stage.”
According to its website, shortandsweet.org, Short+Sweet is “the largest 10-minute theatre festival in the world” which “presents over 350 productions of 10-minute theatrical gems” at festivals in Sydney, Melbourne, (Australia’s) Central Coast, Singapore, and Malaysia. Come September, it will happen in Brisbane, Canberra and Adelaide Down Under.
“Our vision is simple: a more creative world 10 minutes at a time,” says the website.
Do short plays reflect the short attention spans of today’s Internet generation?
Faridah replies: “Watching this show is just like watching a normal 90-minute play except that there are 11 different stories in one night.
“And your mind has to be sharp enough to follow all the different story lines, one after another, with only a one-minute break between them.
“Don’t forget that each play has to have its own beginning, ending and conflicts in the middle all within the allotted time.”
For theatre, 79 scripts were received and 22 have been chosen for a full staging from Aug 5-15 (performances will staged over two weeks, with 11 plays each week). A further nine will be performed as readings.
From the 22 plays, the best 10 will make it to the gala final on Aug 16.
In last year’s Short+Sweet, only Malaysians were allowed to compete. But there were murmurs of discontent when scripts written by foreigners won, and at least one prominent playwright complained about alleged bias and timing irregularities.
“This year, we have opened it up to include foreigners residing in Malaysia. It’s good to compete with the outside world, only then can we improve,” says Faridah.
And while the 2008 edition was run by Australians, this year Faridah has taken over as festival director.
“We thought we’d look after it ourselves. It’s easier as we are on the ground every day, rather than having constant meetings with (overseas) organisers,” she explains.
Everything is done on a voluntary basis. “People are writing and performing for the thrill of it. And, oh yes, there are some good prizes for the winners too,” she adds, without going into specifics.
Apart from the competition for scriptwriters, interviews for potential directors and auditions for actors were also held. Selected directors then read through the 31 shortlisted scripts and picked those that they wanted to take on.
And that’s how two people of very different backgrounds came together: director Kimmy Kiew, 33, and scriptwriter Martyn James Fellender, 50.
“I studied theatre at the Malaysian Institute of Art, which taught it following the Taiwan syllabus, in Mandarin. And my first job was selling tickets for Actors Studio. I could hardly speak English then,” Kiew recalls, laughing.
Now a full-time theatre practitioner, she last directed the 75-minute play, Bench, in Cantonese in February.
Fellender, a Brit who has taught at several international schools in Malaysia over the past 15 years, says his play, Viewpoints, is “70% based” on his own experience of teaching students with cognitive disabilities.
“But it’s not a dirge of misery. It’s more like a dark comedy. Such students may not be very good at schoolwork but some of them are really geniuses. As the newspapers have also highlighted the case of mental institution inmates being treated shabbily, this may be quite topical.”
Kiew reveals that her own sister also teaches students with learning disabilities.
“She says there’s not much awareness in Malaysia about special education. I hope this play can help.”
She says 10-minute plays are a great way to get people involved in theatre, even if there may not be enough time to get the message across.
“It’s just like how many of today’s film directors started out by making short films.”
Fellender adds: “Ten-minute plays are such good fun that I might even incorporate the idea into my classes!”
Performance details
ALL shows are at 8.30pm at Pentas 2, Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (Jalan Strachan, Off Jalan Ipoh, Sentul West).
Aug 2: Short+Sweet Dance Gala Final.
Aug 5-8: Short+Sweet Theatre, Week One, first 11 plays.
Aug 9: Staged readings, nine plays.
Aug 12-15: Short+Sweet Theatre, Week Two, second batch of 11 plays.
Aug 16: Short+Sweet Theatre Gala Final.
Tickets
Weeks One and Two: RM30 (RM15 for students, senior citizens and the disabled).
Gala Final: RM40 (RM25 for students, senior citizens and the disabled).
For enquiries, call 03-4047 9000 or go to klpac.org or shortandsweetmalaysia.org.
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