Building Up to Showtime

In order to write this post, I actually needed some time to sit down and really think about the whole thing. How am I going to tell ya'll about something that has happened so many weeks ago? I initially wanted to put everything related to Orientation Night in just one post, but when I was moving on to talk about the night itself, I realized how long this very post was already. So, I decided to cut it short and have an entirely different post for the night itself! Besides, it'll make your reading easier too! Heh. I guess I'm going to have to start from the very beginning again since I don't think I've told any of you the ENTIRE thing. All the drama, the story line, the hilarious moments during rehearsals, the last minute changes, the awesome counselors and of course, the people who make up the group. We might have

some language barriers but hey, it all worked out in the end, didn't it? So, for the rest of you who have no idea who or what has been going on, you'll have to read this whole thing. :D

Okay, from up top! 

Our first group meeting was the following Monday right after Orientation Week ended, which was also the very first day of school. With events of the Orientation Week fresh in our minds, most of us only wanted to get it done and over with. I, for one, loves dramas and plays and acting but I was pretty sure the guys in the team wouldn't be as enthusiastic as I was and I don't blame them. For a while there, the very idea of a tradition where the new kids have to perform for the whole campus sounded sadistic to me. Throughout Orientation Week, I did all the crazy things because, I know that everyone else will be doing it with me and we'll all make fools of ourselves together. But this! We'll be making fools of ourselves for the very entertainment of the rest of the school and it didn't seem fair at all (cut the whole "everyone else did it when they were new" argument, it's still sadistic, hmpf). Although I love drama, having to do it with a group of people with no passion for the art (or at least no passion for carrying out the art) is not going to be easy. 

The first thing we did was to brainstorm what is it that we want to perform. It could be a dance, act, sing song, or whatever that "showcases" your "talent". Okay, I'm about to delve into another round of rants here. If you don't want to read it, skip to the next paragraph. HAHA. Right. Why is it that people always assume you can do at least one of those things? Sing, act, dance, play a musical instrument. What if I can't do any of that?? Would that mean that I'm worthless and I'm not talented? Why are only those things considered as talents? It annoys me how people always assume that you've GOT to know how to do one of those things to be considered "talented". Not everyone are into those, you know. Performing. Some people are really good writers and that's also a talent. Why are they not to showcase this talent of theirs too? So, see? Anyway, this has nothing to do with our performance, it's just me ranting again. HEH.

As a reminder, the theme of this year's Orientation Night was "Cartoon World" (I heard that in one of the recent intakes, the theme was "Disney" or something nearly similar. Aww, counselors, you guys need new ideas. Don't mean to offend ya'll, just sayin'.) I was honestly pretty excited with this theme because it's quite broad, is it? We have a lot of materials to work with. As we sat down properly as a group again to discuss, I realized some of them were waiting for me to give ideas which totally failed on their part because I need something or at least a base to trigger all that creative juices in my head. At that time, we were at square one. Nothing to base on, nothing to rely on. Then, I thought, since our group had so many boys and so few girls (well, actually, we had more girls but they decided to abandon us and not come to the rest of the Orientation Week. But then again who needs them? Hmpf.), why not go for the obvious option? Snow White! HAHA.

So, instead of using the seven original dwarfs (Happy, Grumpy, Sneezy, Doc, Bashful, Sleepy and who's the last one again?), we can substitute them for other cartoon characters! And thus, we only need two girls for the roles of Snow White and her evil stepmother/the queen. Maybe because everyone else just wanted to have this all over and done with, no one objected (although I did because I thought that it was too ironic and kindda silly but no one believed me when I said I object, they thought I was just fooling around, which I was but I sort of meant it as well, So.....). So, there! We started on just the basic line of the plot and tried to get as much of those things covered on the first day. I volunteered to play the Queen because, let's face it, shall we? I can play villains and angry characters pretty well because, apparently, that's how I really am in real life. HAHA. I'm not trying to say that I'm evil or anything (though some of you probably would) but I think I intimidate people back home in Kuching. Totally opposite effect here, people think I'm "friendly". Haha. And also, villains are so much more fun to play! You get the coolest costumes (Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman, anyone?) and you get the best lines.

In our case, I didn't get the best lines but I did get the MOST lines. GAH. Our version of Snow White is nearly similar to the original one in a sense where we only have different dwarfs and added a couple of new characters. Here is the play according to scenes:

Scene 1: The queen ask the mirror who is the fairest of them all and she is told that Snow White is the fairest. She gets pissed and asks the Beast (form Beauty and the Beast) to kill the king's daughter in the woods and the bring her her heart.

Scene 2: Beast chases Snow White in the woods and the dainty lady falls, he drops the knife and asks her to run away, revealing the Queen's desire to kill her. As they were just about to go separate ways, "wolf" (from Red Riding Hood, they did make a cartoon from that, right? Right? Oh well, no one questioned us anyway and you should see the other groups, some had nothing to do with cartoons anyway) appears and attacks Snow but Beasts pushes her away and he gets killed. Before the wolf can attack Snow, the seven dwarfs (Mr. Bean, Popeye, Pink Panther, Donald Duck, KungFu Panda, Shaggy and Pinnochio) appear and saves her (killing the wolf). They bring her back to their cottage.

Scene 3: The Queen waits for the Beast but he never showed, she went ahead to the mirror again and asks who is now the fairest, the mirror tells her that it is still Snow White and she gets all pissed again. She decides to kill the girl herself by making her eat the poisoned apple.

Scene 4: In a disguise, the Queen approaches Snow with the apple and got her to eat it. Snow White drops to the floor and Queen takes her disguise off, walks off stage with her evil laugh and announcing that she's the fairest of them all again. The dwarfs comes back from the mine and sees their beloved Snow White unconscious on the ground. Sadly, they put her in a coffin (or in our case, on a bench, HAHA) and kneels by her to mourn for her. A handsome Prince (who was played by the same guy who played the "gay playboy" in out Nilai's Got Talent thing during Newbies Week. He seems to be getting all the girls in all these dramas. Hahaha) comes and leans down to kiss her but just before he could, she pushes him away (a touch of humor can't hurt. Heh). They're all happy she's alive. Yay.

So, basically, we have 4 scenes, with my being in 3 of them and btw, Snow White have not a single line. She's only screaming, smiling, dying, HAHA. This is because our Snow White, Lynus, didn't even want to play lead in the first place. We managed to coax her into doing in and in return, she has no lines. Fair enough, right?

Our second meeting, we all got up and started with the acting. It was terrible. It was just plain awful. It was awkward, weird and you just feel stupid doing it. Even I didn't enjoy it. Gah. We were just bad to a point where you can literally see everyone sigh in relief when the session was over. Hahaha. But then again, we were sort of forgivable because we weren't going to have a proper script to follow and no proper lines to read.

Then, we just started practicing more, nearly every night with our counselor, Eleven guiding us through. She was pretty much our director, telling us how we can add new things, showing us how to do things and all that. She was truly, truly, truly extraordinary. And I'm not just saying this because she might read this or someone might read this and then tell her, and I'm not trying to kiss up. She really is great, people. She can act too, you know. We're not very close but I have tremendous amount of respect for her.

On one of our early practices, we decided to just sit down and discuss our music and our wardrobe. This, I would say was one of the most significant meetings of all because this was when two friendships of mine was truly born. Eleven was busy discussing stuff with the "dwarfs" on their own characters, so, Kugen (who plays the Beast/Huntsman, lol), myself and Dinesh (our other counselor, in case you forgot) just started chatting. We talked about quite a lot of things and I found out that I could actually crawl out of my "safe shell" with these two. From that night on, I looked forward to hanging out with them during practices. Perhaps also because with them, I don't have to worry about language barriers. Kugen and I have this, sort of, a "dynamic duo" kind of relationship, where we would tease each other, laugh at people and talk about a lot of great things. Even now, after the event, we still try to hang out as much as possible, going through our crazy schedules just to fit each other in. I really do hope we'll be able to remain friends (and yeah, I know you're reading this, Kugen! Must find time to replace that Tuesday la!). As for Dinesh, hah. Well, we've been hanging out a lot. He's probably one of my closest friends in college now and I do see him quite a lot, so you'll probably hear more about these two on this blog.

I think it was on Monday or Tuesday of the second week of practice, Eleven told me that the Foundation kids (who will be performing also) were going to do Snow White too. This is really really bad because people will surely compare the two performances better and who ever goes second will have an expectation to beat. There'll be a huge rivalry between the two too. So, we'll need to have something that pops about ours. Eleven told me also, that she asked the rest of the group whether they want to make our version a more humourous one or a more "serious-we-want-to-blow-you-away" one. The group wanted the latter and I couldn't agree more, especially I know (and apparently so do everyone else) that the other groups and foundation will surely be doing a things with comedic elements as their main attraction. We'll be the attraction with the "serious" acting. We'll be the exception among the norm, the special one. :)

So, yeah, for two weeks, Mondays to Thursdays, we rehearsed, added new things, took things out, had fun, hang out, grumbled about staying in school late and being so tired. On one of the nights, I think it must be the second week, one of last of the late night practices, the counselors advisor, Prabu, came and told us to show him what we got. That night, unfortunately, our dear dear Snow White, Lynus didn't come. So, for the scenes that does not involve me, I replaced her. Doing double roles was fun too, I literally had to go from nice to evil, from evil back to nice. But of course, for the one scene that involves both characters at once, the "wolf" took over and "died" for me. Yay. At that point, there were still some parts we needed to fix, so, it wasn't entirely perfect yet at all. When we were done, he told us to sit down and face him. With the most disappointed  look on his face that can smash anyone's confidence, he said "Guys, that wasn't good. It was not good at all". We were all speechless, even Eleven who was standing behind him looked down sadly, Dinesh wan't around (Dodgeball practice, they had a tournament to train for too. Dodgeball, they actually play the thing. Eugh). It was the most horrible dramatic silence in the world. Then, he mumbled "It was fantastic" but everyone else was still too stunned to say anything, I looked up, a bit confused. Prabu himself looked at us and repeated that louder and at that moment, whoa, the sound of relief and the way Eleven's face brighten up was, just, wow. Haha. He went on to gush about how we had all the elements to blow not only the audiences away but the judges as well. He liked it after all! Haha. And then he sort of single me out a little bit by commenting on my "English", my fluency that is. So, now, whoo, pressure's on me to talk and speak perfect English. Haha.

The big night was on a Tuesday night and the day before it, Monday was a public holiday for Negeri Sembilan (though no one seems to know what the occasion was), so there were no classes. We used this day for a final practice, get some of our very few props done and in the evening, we had a rehearsal. The counselors put up the decorations in the hall, got everyone to do their thing on stage to do their thing, it was the rehearsal, really.

And we also got to know the sequence of performances. Our group will be the 6th out of the 9 groups to perform. Haih, okay, I was at first not too happy with this arrangement. I'd rather be at least one of the first 4 to do it, you know, when the crowd are still fresh and eager to watch the show, you know. Rather than be the last few groups to perform when the audiences are already bored and expecting new and interesting things to see. Then, I found out that the foundation kids (aka the other snow white group) will be performing last! So, this is great news! Haha! We'll have to set the bar real high. For the rehearsal, I think we did okay. Eleven gave us some last minute notes and comments on our performance. The other group members commented on my voice projection, apparently, those who sat at the back can hear me too, so, that's amazing (yay me).

Jun Bin, one of our group members who will be one of our "dwarfs" (Popeye) though he was not even close to the height of one, helped us with the last part, the taking a bow part at the end. He's one of the most hilarious person around and he's really really cool. :) We all stayed back after rehearsal until about 10:30pm to work on it one last time plus to practice the last parts and had a lot of laughs.

There. These are the things that lead up to the thing itself. I should be posting that one up A.S.A.P (as soon as possible, in case you didn't get that, lol). ;)

I hope you'll have a great weekend too though. I'm pretty sure we all want to catch up on our sleep. I know I do. Heh