Today me and my friends went to the short+sweet festival at KLPac. It’s a performing arts festival where they showcase dance, musical and theatre performances. We were there for the theatre performances where we get to watch 12 ten minute plays of the 1st week. The 2nd week would have another 12 plays. From each week, the best play would perform at Gala Night where they would be judged and nominated for performing awards.
Unfortunately, my phone went dead in the midst of the show so I couldn’t take pictures or make notes about all the performances. So I shall talk about the ones that left an impression on me. Yupp, what good is a play or story in general if they are not impressionable? So here goes my amateur critique/thoughts on the plays I can remember!
‘Life decisions’ was quite a nice play. I think it’s about a man who wants to commit suicide and is helped by a ‘death handler/angel’. She is there to make sure his death looks like it’s a murder committed by someone I guess. I really liked the dramatic lighting effects they used throughout the performance, the narrow, long hard edged light in particular. I have no idea what kind of light produced it, but I really liked it. It makes the approaching death handler/angel scarier as she walks towards the man with a needle in her hand and a knife later on. The actress playing the eccentric death handler was really good at expressing her emotions and her speech was clear.
‘Because the world needs unicorns’ was a crowd pleaser. Everyone laughed at the unicorn who always claim that it’s so ‘mythical, mystical and wonderful’ (ok, I’m not sure if that was exactly what the actor said, I couldn’t remember the last word he said) as he pleads to be included in the list for Noah’s ark. The dragon made quite an impact as the actor walked in bad ass with a cigarette in hand, puffing away smoke through the whole performance. The play had witty lines and I was wondering what message the story wanted to project. Noah was stuck in the middle, having to forsake the unicorn for cats instead because they bring comfort and are cutesy (and they make good poster faces for greeting cards! Hahahahahah!!! XD ) The unicorn served no purpose to mankind and it only pops up once in a while, therefore it is not worth saving. The mystical creature argued that his very purpose is to be like that, although he appears once in a while, he brings magic, wonder and hope to people. And you cant argue with magic! Reluctant to leave the unicorn helpless, he gives the unicorn another contact of a rival boat company. (another witty joke about competitive companies that always copy products from the original innovator) The play ends with Noah telling his superior a.k.a God, that the world does need unicorns. What does it mean here? We are all caught up in the need of having logic and what makes sense that we are losing more of our child like imagination and optimisms for things in life?
‘Who moved my donut?’ talks about the health food fad that is growing and how it’s affecting junk food, specifically the donut. The actor for the donut was delightful with his facial expressions and body language. It really cracked us all up too. After his stylist/PR advisor’s suggestions of turning him into an alfalfa/spirulina/wheat grass covered health donut, the donut alas prefers to be himself instead of following the trend and changing who he really is. After the sound advice of his friend, cake/aspartame (me and my friends couldn’t really catch who the fella was), the donut decided to change his scene in India, where people like all things sweet!
‘Boleh saya bantu’ was an entertaining sketch in Malay. I did felt kesian for my friends who don’t know understand the language, therefore unable to get the comedic lines made. There was nothing special in particular with this play, just the fact that the mak cik spoke in a Kedah accent and the typical funny malay puns that made us all laugh, well except for the number of non local audiences.
‘The beginning’ was a contrast from the belly-aching laughs to a more gut-wrenching performance. It talks about how an American girl deals with her new school (I don’t get why she was in a primary school uniform) life. She is always taunted and scolded in class because she doesn’t do well in her math papers. The story doesn’t mean much to me, but the actresses’ deliver of her monologue was really good. I give credit to her alright!
‘When you cant stop running’ was done in Cantonese and is the first play I saw utilizing the use of media. They had a projector screening a short intro of 1 of the characters running from his work place back to his home (the stage). The nifty thing about this performance is that they had subtitles on the screen. My friend said “Ah, finally some subtitles for me to understand!” which is really needed for all of us because I myself cant really understand Cantonese :/
‘The joy of solitude’ really struck a chord with me. And it did so for many reasons! First of all, it was done in Hokkien which I was so delighted to hear! I only hear that dialect when I am back home and hearing it over here made me feel like I was back in my hometown. Second of all, they were funny as hell!! There were only 2 actors, 1 uncle sitting in his chair another young man rushing off to work. The young man accidentally broke the key while opening the lock which trapped him inside his own apartment. The young man scrambles to call people for help. The actor for the uncle serves as a voice for each of the responding people the young man calls, from the locksmith to his co-worker and it really makes me (and I’m sure the whole audience) laughed till our tears rolled out when he slams down the phone and goes ‘DUT! DUT! DUT!’ like in a ‘in your face!!!’ kind of attitude. XD Then as the situation gets more frantic, the uncles tells the young man what to do and all, and the young man just follows what he says. Seeing them react all panicky made me cry from laughter even more. Then amidst all the hilarious moments, then came the struck of realization that the young man is forever trapped in his apartment. All the young actor had to do was stand in front of the audience, pretending that he was looking out his window while the uncle tells him his daunting fate of being locked in his apartment. As the uncle talks of his future in loneliness and it is from there that he might find the joy of solitude, you can see a glint of tear in the young man’s eyes. Wow, that really impressed me. No words nor actions were needed to convey the fear this guys has for his fate. The young man then walks off but turns around at the last step and they reenact the opening scene which felt like an ‘Inception’ moment. I hypothesize that the uncle is the young man’s conscience perhaps and the moral of the story is well, maybe, when you are in a bad situation and where there’s nothing you can do, maybe the best way to deal with it is to find the joy in it. Which brings us to another reason why I liked this play, there were comedic moments but at the end, there was a reflective and profound moment too with a philosophical moral to the story.
So that was it for the 12 plays I saw. It was really a treasure of an experience for me and I think the short+sweet festival shall be added to my list of things to catch every year. ;) After the show, almost all the actors, directors, writers were in the lobby talking and walking about and me and my friends were in the crowd too which felt cool! We went through a lot of rain and toil to get there but we were so grateful that we decided to come to this awesome festival anyway from Cyber. I don’t think any aspect of our day was short and despite the stress, trouble and craziness we went through on our journey, it was certainly worth it and will forever be a sweet memory for me! <3
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