Wednesday

30 MAY
2007
thestar.com.my/lifestyle

THEATRE:

The zen side

of Sen >22

MIND OUR ENGLISH:

Ever wonder why they

call it the blues? >14

From
office
geek to
pirate >18

Performing groups are

taking their shows out of
auditoriums, and bringing
the theatrical experience
to youngsters in schools,
campuses and on the
streets. >2-3

Moving theatre

T2

YOUTH

STARTWO, WEDNESDAY 30 MAY 2007

Theatre in
communities

XXX

Puppy love
A 15-year-old reader is upset
that the boy she fancies has
decided to concentrate on
football and the PMR instead.
>5

YOUTH

Back with a bang

Cheer 2007 is here and we
promise there will be a lot more
stunts, action and fun. >6

LIFESTYLE

TCMs new look

Eu Yan Sang modernises its
image to make traditional
Chinese medicine more
appealing. >10

PEOPLE

Global backpacker
Alicia Choo quit her job to
travel and get a better
understanding of ancient
civilisations. >12

THEATRE

The art of Sen

EDITOR: IVY SOON / youth2@thestar.com.my / 03-7967 1693

Actors and theatre

coaches are making
their craft accessible to
the young through
community-based
programmes in schools
and neighbourhoods.
By NIKI CHEONG
niki@thestar.com.my

OE is 18 years old and he has a problem.

His girlfriend wants to have sex with
him, but he wants to wait until they get
married. What does he do? Hes afraid shell
leave him if he doesnt have sex with her.
He says to himself: I dont want to lose
her.
So many things could happen next
depending on who is telling the story. Lines
like these are triggers in actor-trainer Chris
Ngs method of using theatre to engage
teenagers in discussions.
Ng has been developing and working with
this methodology in Youth-To-Youth, a
Malaysian AIDS Council (MAC) community
project which uses theatre to educate the
young about HIV/AIDS. Ng initiated the project
back in 1999, when Kuala Lumpur hosted the
5th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and
the Pacific (ICAAP).
Since then, Ng has introduced Youth-ToYouth around the country, from urban KL to
conservative Kelantan.
I use theatre as a vehicle for young people
to connect to the issue, says Ng.
What Ng hopes to do is to get young people
to speak from their experiences, or tell stories
about their friends.
I use the first line method as a trigger. If
they are talking about a fictional character, or
about a friend, they will be more open to
sharing their thoughts, Ng explains.
Joe may decide, perhaps after discussion
with friends, that he will sleep with her.
He will have sex with his girlfriend, the
second trigger line may go.

Teen spirit: Teenagers from Janet Pillais Anak-Anak Kota project choreographed their own
dance on street food for the Heritage Heboh! Lagi show in Penang.
Then the girl is brought in and other issues
arise. Does Joe and his girlfriend have safe or
unsafe sex? After some discussion, they agree
to go safe. And so the story continues.
Youth-To-Youth may work towards a performance the participants usually put on a
show at the end of the workshop but the
aim is to get young people to process their
thoughts and empower them to negotiate for
their ideas to be discussed. In Ngs workshops,
the topic is usually on HIV/AIDS.
However, he does not expect them to be
experts on the disease by the end of the workshop.
They cannot learn about HIV/AIDS
overnight, but they can always refer back to
us, Ng says. Generally, once weve sowed the
seed, these youths will have HIV in their
mindset.
Youth-To-Youth is not only about educating
the participants of the workshop, but also
about getting them to reach out to their peers.
Some of the plays from Ngs workshops

TheatreWorks artistic director

Ong Ken Sen shows a different
side of himself. >22

StarTwo

EDITOR: Tan Gim Ean

CONTACT
email: startwo@thestar.com.my
tel: 03-7967 1388
fax: 03-7955 4039
ADVERTISING:
Janet Khaw
janet@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8221
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peterhoe@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8236
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jean@thestar.com.my
(03) 7966-8224

Childs play: In the Taman Medan Community Arts Project, Mark Teh uses various methods like
puppetry to get the community interested in arts.

have been performed at various public spaces

such as during World AIDS Day celebrations or
in schools.
Ng uses theatre for HIV/AIDS education, but
it is a tool that can also be used for other purposes. People are beginning to recognise the
effectiveness of community-based arts programmes in reaching out to young people.
Actor Mark Teh, 26, helmed the KL-based
Taman Medan Community Arts Project with
fellow young arts practitioners Lim Chung
Wei, Imri Nasution, Jerrica Lai, Tan Sei Hon
and Gan Siong King in 2002.
The project started initially as a six-month
programme. Teh and his friends went into the
Taman Medan community every weekend to
work with children ranging from 10 to 17
years old, teaching them art skills like theatre,
photography and filmmaking. Unlike Ng, Tehs
approach wasnt to push an issue but rather to
expose young people to the arts.
In the process, however, this exposure gave
the youths a platform to express themselves
and talk about things they normally cannot
talk about. Teh's method is simple enter
their community and engage them in a setting
and with tools they are familiar with.
But young people dont warm up so easily,
especially to strangers. So, Teh and his group
have to inject a lot of fun elements, or as he
puts it, a sense of play.
We dont use theatre vocabulary, Teh
shares, adding that instead they use more
common lingo like sports. We tell them that
the relationship between the audience and a
performer is like that of a player and a fan.
Then there is also the context in which they
are most comfortable with.
In the beginning, when we played games
and exercises, we didnt know why it didnt
work, Teh says.
Then we realised that it was a problem
with cultural context, so we threw out things
like Santa Claus and used local legends like
Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat.
Tehs Taman Medan project ran for almost
four years. Each week, they worked with
about 30 youths and half the participants were
usually regulars.
The first phase of the project saw a public
screening of videos the youths had created
over the course of the programme. Besides the
youths, their parents and other young people
from the community watched various stories

STARTWO, WEDNESDAY 30 MAY 2007

YOUTH

T3

Playing with shadows

On tour: Baling (Membaling) played at selected colleges,

universities, and futsal centres in the Klang Valley last
year.
participants had to share touching on the topics of truancy, rape and abuse.
These days, Teh has been spending more time engaging
an older crowd tertiary students. Last year, he directed a
production called Baling (Membaling) based on the 1955
peace talks between then Prime Minister of Malaysia
Tunku Abdul Rahman and Chin Peng, secretary-general of
the Communist Party of Malaysia in Baling, Kedah.
Armed with three non-actor performers, and a simple
set, Baling toured several tertiary institutions and futsal
centres in the Klang Valley.
We were interested to see how students might
respond to our play which, lets face it, is not the most
obvious thing to interest young people Malaysian
history, physical theatre, performers with no acting
experience, Teh says.
His intention was to help young people get ownership
of their history, and he did this not only by piecing
together the play but also by holding a discussion after
every show.
This week, Teh again fulfils his promise of bringing the
arts to the public through his new production Dua, Tiga,
Dalang Berlari.
Similarly, Janet Pillais project Anak-Anak Kota (AAK)
has been steadily making waves in Penang since it was
initiated in 2001. Pillai has long worked in childrens theatre and was one of the key persons behind Five Arts
Centres Teater Muda.
Like Ng and Teh, Pillai also uses the arts to engage with
young people in her case, to get them interested in heritage.
Pillai wanted to open the children's eyes to other
interpretations of heritage, to move beyond merely
looking at old buildings. For example, they went to a
nutmeg juice shop and learnt to see it as part of their
heritage if the children do not learn how to make juice,
they wont know how to do it in the future.
Through the years, AAK participants have presented
their findings and thoughts, in different ways. In the My
Balik Pulau project, 20 children from the small rural
district in Penang captured the essence of the town and
presented it in an exhibition. Last year, they re-staged the
Penang street festival Heritage Heboh! with shows using
wayang kulit, rap and dance.
In arts, you use your senses a lot your hands, body
and intelligence for example. Children find it more interesting and natural. It is a tool; we dont push them into
the artistic realm. Also, it covers more scope than chalk
and talk, says Pillai.
Ng, Teh and Pillai are theatre practitioners who have
been involved over the years in many professional productions. There is little money to be made in community
arts, but they are all dedicated to bringing arts to the
ground to introduce our youngsters to different ways of
expressing themselves.
Chris Ng has written a book on the Youth-to-Youth
method. Although it is meant for HIV/AIDS education, the
book Youth Speak: Issues On HIV/Aids Through Drama
can be used to address other issues. Youth organisations can
approach MAC for a copy of the book by contacting Shalina
Azhar at 03-4045 1033.

Red, white and blue: In Dua, Tiga, Dalang Berlari the performers used colourful raincoats instead of wayang kulit
puppets to tell their story.
BY NASA MARIA ENTABAN
nasa@thestar.com.my
THE Bahasa Malaysia word dalang means mastermind or
puppet-master, and the term wayang kulit may be familiar. But few know of renowned dalang, Dollah Baju Merah
and Hamzah Awang Mat, who were fierce rivals.
They have passed away, and members of the Five Arts
Centre have taken it upon themselves to shed some light
on their lives.
Mark Teh, who has a keen interest in Malaysian history,
is bringing shadow play back, and taking it right into
campuses. His team is going to three colleges, and later
in the week it will perform at The Annexe at Central
Market in Kuala Lumpur.
Teh rallies for the cause of making theatre more accessible to students.
We want to go back to small, aesthetic theatre to
bring out the idea that theatre can happen anywhere. Its
cheap, mobile and easy to watch.
Today, we always need more of everything. With this
play, we want to work with what we have, says Teh who
is known for his community arts project in Kampung
Medan, off Old Klang Road, Kuala Lumpur.
The Dalang project follows last years highly successful
Baling (Membaling) tour that represented the Baling Talks
of 1955.
Many youngsters are not interested in history, partly
because the lessons are not delivered in interesting ways.
Dua, Tiga, Dalang Berlari aims at getting youths to
listen, and get captivated with stories from our past so
that history wont be forgotten in generations to come.

Convenient: Student Elaine Leong is happy that she

didnt have to go so far to watch a play like Dua, Tiga,
Dalang Berlari.

What the crew is trying to put out with Dalang are the
stories of two men who started out at the same level, as
puppeteers in Kelantan, but who chose very different
paths in their later years.
A passion for wayang kulit is what drove award-winning artiste Fahmi Fadzil to give this play his all.
Wayang is all about folksy humour it combines serious issues and jokes. The stories of these two dalangs are
about personal choices, but sometimes, something larger
chooses you, explains Fahmi.
The dialogue is taken from actual interviews and newspaper reports of yesteryear, acted out by Lim Chung Wei,
Fahmi and Wong Ty Say, while the play is directed by Teh
and produced by Myra Mahyuddin.
Working the shadow play (that projects unto a wall
behind the actors) is graphic artist Fahmi Rez and working the music is Aziz Ali.
On Monday, the team staged its first performance of
Dua, Tiga, Dalang Berlari to students of Taylors University
College in Subang Jaya, Selangor.
Energy levels were at a high, as the three performers
went through the hour-long performance almost flawlessly, switching roles throughout, as any good dalang
would do.
Comical moments were plenty, as was nail-biting,
edge-of-your-seat, fast-paced drama.
Afterwards, the audience was invited to give the crew
some feedback on the show, and to ask questions.
Kamal Huzairi, 18, liked the props and wondered at the
usage of raincoats made from plastic bags in several
scenes.
We made it a point from the beginning that we would
not use wayang kulit puppets, because we felt like we
would not be able to do it justice. Thats why we chose
something which was relatively formless, to be used
throughout the play by the performers, says Teh.
Dua, Tiga, Dalang Berlari presented multiple versions of
the Betara Kala legend, where a bloodthirsty, child-eating
giant is confronted by a dalang.
This is where the images cut out of paper that were
projected onto the wall worked best the audiences gaze
shifted to the shadow play, where the action is best presented.
Student Elaine Leong appreciates that the play has
come to her college, making it easily accessible.
Ill usually go to theatre show if theyre convenient for
me. This is a good move if they want to get youths interested, said the 18-year-old A-levels student.
Today, the performers will take the stage at Black
Box Theatre at New Era College in Kajang, Selangor, at
3.30pm; tomorrow it is off to the Roof Top Theatre,
Sunway University College, at 1pm. A discussion on
the play will be held after each performance.
Shows for the public are from June 1-3, 8.30pm, at
The Annexe at Central Market. Admission to these shows
is by donation RM20 for adults and RM10 for
students.
To find out more, go to www.fiveartscentre.org, or
e-mail fivearts@tm.net.my. You can also call them at
03-7725 4858.