SCHOOL OF EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SCIENCE

ELT20203 : THEATRE IN TESL

SELF REFLECTION

MOHD. IKHWAN SYAFIQ BIN CAMILLUS

(012014110617)

MISS SUGANTHINI A/P NAGALINGAM

Self reflection

As part of our theatre subject, we were asked to do a theatre production for the
semester. I was chosen as the playwright of the production. Basically I need to do the
script for the production. The theme that we choose was more towards a modern
type of genre or perhaps one may call it as a modern theatre. We rambled our
heads with the class to find what type of story that we want to pull of for this
production. Because we were warned to not chose any story relating to horror and to
explicit content. Which means no ghost stories or no over the top romance story.

From scratch, me and the committee members tried to propose a few stories but
it was up to the director and also to the producer to chose which one the most
suitable story. For me, I proposed a few stories such as the one that I used to do
during my foundation at UiTM and also the one that I once did for a theatre club back
in my hometown. But at the end of the day, we came to an agreement that we
wanted to make an original production which is I had to write a new entirely different
script.

So we had a few ideas for our original script, but then we came up with two story.
One of the story was about relating each of the characters in one end point and the
other story was about suicide prevention. None of them worked out as what we
planned but we had a brilliant idea to take parts from each story that we proposed
and mash it into one story that we call Home. The story was a challenge for me to
write because it was the first story that I wrote that had more than 4 characters that
have different plots in the story. The story also took me about 3 days to complete with
the help of the producer and also the director.

We held an audition to seek for the cream of the crop in our production.
Personally, I was chosen to play the role of Hakeem in the story but I refuse the role
because I would like to give the opportunity to someone else. I saw some great
talents and potentials in our production but pity, some of them didnt get the chance
to fully show their true colours in acting. Probably they need to be assisted in helping
them to brush up their talent. To be honest, we had so much talent in our production,
some of them were dancers and some of them were singers, some of them were
even athletes.
 The day of our production was great, before anything else, we had a kumbaya
session which was a theatre tradition that I picked up during my treatre days when I
was a rookie in theatre. During that session we had a speech from the producer,
director and also from me but I only gave words of wisdom. Some of them was art is
not what you see, but what you make others see. Even though it sounded lame and
obnoxious but the it was words to live by and it was food for thoughts. At that
moment, we all prayed that the night would be a night that each and everyone of us
would remember for the rest of our life.

Its no lie, every production has some skeleton hiding their closet, us included.
We shared our moments of ups and downs and all the success that we gained to
together. I know I didnt have much work, but I can see that almost everyone gave in
each and every ounce of their time, energy and effort to make our production a major
achievement. Even though I was just the playwright and the videographer for the
production. I was more than happy to work with a such great team such as this and
and strong committee. It doesnt matter if people talk rubbish about our production,
but a wise man once said, beauty lies on the eyes of the beholder, and we saw
greatness in each and everyone of us, and that what makes it Home.