Be Seen and Be Heard

"Be seen and be heard", an actor's golden rule, according Mr. Mano. Yup, that's right. THE Mano Maniam. If you don't know him, he's a Malaysian actor and he's been in the business for a long long time. He was in that movie, Anna and the King (starring Chow Yun Fatt, Jodie Foster and a very young and super adorable Tom Felton) and in the highly successful local sitcom in the 90s, Kopitiam. He was pretty much everywhere: on stage, in movies, on TV, behind the camera, teaching in classes. I was lucky enough to have him as my instructor when I signed up for a new course that Nilai was offering (this course was being conducted for the very first time just as I arrived at the school. Talk about timing! And how lucky I am).

The course was for only about 7 weeks with 4 hours sessions, once a week. And then consisting about 50% of our final marks, we had to do a final presentation (yes, performance) for the school (or anyone who wants to come, of course). And let me tell ya, 

those 7 weeks was one of the most precious time ever. It was one hell of a ride. There was one week where I was not feeling very well but I went anyway because I refused to miss a single class (even though I had to endure 2 hours of chemistry in the morning, though I was in the lab). Again, if I were to go through every detail in this course, this will be another long post and I don't want to burden any of you guys with that again. Hehe. So, I'll just skip to the important bits and save some drama from any of you (mainly becasue I don't want to remember all that nasty bits since it's already been forgotten by everyone else. Besides, what's drama class without some real drama, right?)

So, yeah, this class is literally a book-free class. We have no textbooks, no written assignments, no research. Just a lot of acting, practical stuff, games, creative thinking, team work (a lot a lot of that), discipline and well, all that other non boring stuff. The first few classes were pretty much like yoga sessions. :)

We literally went back to basics. Mr. Mano told us that to be actors, we need to be human and that meant we have to get the most natural human activity right: breathing. So, yes, he taught us how to breathe which made sense, really. He told us that we were supposed to breathe through our tummy (or diaphragm), not our lungs. Ask anyone who is a singer or plays a blowing instrument (like flute hehe) and they'll tell you to do the same thing. The reason behind this is that if you breathe through your tummy, then you will be able to say more things, sing more words and play more notes. What happens is that you literally get more energy because when you breathe like that, you get more oxygen into your system. There, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? So, that was what we did for the first few sessions as well as a few different voice exercises. Something like that exercise Sharpay does before she goes out to the stage in High School Musical. Mr. Mano taught us how to project our voices and as the sessions goes on, we moved on to emotions and playing quite a few games too. :)

First day of class white board

Of course, what's acting class without acting? He told us to get into groups at the end of the first day and told us to come up with an original story with every member of the group assigned to a role in the story. I fell in love with my group from day one. Michelle, Christian, Dilshan, Shawn Mahashi and myself. Then the next couple of classes, Shawn brought a friend along to join the class and now we have Hassan too. :) We met up a few days after the first class to start working on our story and a few meetings later, "Tangled Lies" was born. I was later assigned the role of script writing AND directing. Hehe. What's Tangled Lies about?

It's about a guy called John (Shawn) who could've saved his best friend, Dexter (Dilshan) from being murdered but didn't because he couldn't bear the thought of the possibility of dying and having to leave his childhood sweetheart, Bubu (Michelle, the name of the character was super random but funny. Hahaha) behind. After the murder of Dexter, John was adopted into another family and became an overprotective brother to his adoptive sister, Jane (ME). The play start when after months of not seeing each other, they went out shopping and met Michael (Christian), owner of a boutique. Michael and Jane flirts with each other (yes, a lot of cheesy lines here) and got John furious. After John pull Jane out of the scene a woman comes out and appears to have somewhat of an intimate relationship with Michael. John and Jane got into a fight at home and it was revealed that Jane had been John's punching bag for ages and that only if "John would just take his medication like the doctor says" then it wouldn't have to be that way. John lost control of his emotions and kill Jane. Turns out, he still feels guilty about letting Dexter die and his inner guilt is haunting him in the form of Dexter. So, Dexter only appears as a hallucination in the play. Michael comes back to see Jane, but got pushed away by John. Desperate and sensing something wrong, Michael goes to Inspector Ahmed (Hassan) while the woman from before is suspicious of what Michael is up to continues to follow him around to know what he's doing. It turns out that the woman is Bubu. So, yeah, when Michael confronts John again with Bubu trailing him, things got ugly. The play ends with Michael dead, John arrested by the Inspector with Dexter laughing at him.

(from left to right)The Cast of Tangled Lies: Me, Shawn Mahashi (John), Hassan (Inspector Ahmed), Michelle (Bubu Backbone) and Christian (Michael Backbone). Dilshan (Dexter) was M.I.A

With my lead actor after the show. My onstage brother. I DID SAY THAT WE WERE ADOPTED, DIDN'T I??  :D 

I think the story here sounds really confusing, right? Though they did film the performance, so, we'll be getting it soon enough. I'll post it up as soon as I have my hands on it. :)


Our show under the coincidental common theme of "love" was named "The Thing Called Love" was a medley of four plays. Ours was up first and everything went perfectly well. My death scene was epic (a lot of gasps when I fell and hit my head real hard on the floor- UNPLANNED), Michelle really did slapped Christian (her disloyal husband) like how we all, including Christian himself, wanted her to and Michelle even cried at the end, when Michael died. It was all perfect. No one forgot their lines (even if they did, they all managed to improvised smoothly and got the play on track again), people laughed at the comical scenes, reacted appropriately at the death scenes, the entire cast stayed in character the whole time. The whole thing went extremely well, all in all, we, as the first batch of acting and theater class did tremendously well. Even Mr. Mano was surprised. HAHA. Because even our last full rehearsal was not close to satisfying yet. I guess it was adrenaline rush that did the job again.


At the end of our play, we all went to the back and started hugging each other. I seriously felt like a proud momma that night. I couldn't help but cried crazy ass tears of joy. It all felt so intense. :') I would go back and do it all over again despite all the late night rehearsals, behind the scenes drama, confusion with the exits and entrances. The feeling of being so well received by the audience was just, indescribable. Now, this may sound cheesy but it's exactly what I want to live for.

My other classmates and Mr. Mano (some people weren't there)

"..it (acting) acts as a lever to lift us out of the world of actuality into the realm of imagination. "

 -An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski (Translation by Elizabeth Hapgood)

And Mr. Mano Maniam most definitely did help me up that lever. Thanks again, sir! :)