The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Arts & Fashion |
| Fighting an uphill battle, the outreach way Posted: Instant Cafe Theatre Company has an outreach project that may help encourage more schoolchildren to be involved in theatre. AN ARTS school may be a start, but the general feeling is that a more systematic approach to bring arts appreciation into the mainstream is needed. "Corporations often moan about how graduates these days don't know how to think out of the box," says Jo Kukathas, a seasoned theatre practitioner. "Well, maybe that's because we've taken all the creativity out of our schools!" Kukathas thinks getting more schoolchildren to engage in theatre would be a great way to bring back critical thinking. In fact, she tried to do just that, with the Instant Café Theatre (ICT) Company's Parah School Outreach Project. She envisioned getting schoolchildren to actually do parts of Parah, a thought-provoking play about self-identity in a pluralistic society told through the eyes of four secondary school students. The play by Alfian Sa'at has been widely acclaimed and ICT has had to re-stage it to sold-out houses in order to keep up with demand.  Theatre veteran Jo Kukathas wonders if the reason corporations feel many graduates can't think out of the box is because the creativity has been taken out of schools. Getting permission to conduct the workshops in government schools, however, proved impossible. And without funding, the programme would have been too expensive to roll out, even if it was just in international schools. With characteristic perseverance, however, ICT instead adapted the Parah project into a more affordable format: a DVD project. This will include a video of the play itself, a documentary on the play that doubles as a teaching kit, plus an online teaching component that can be used by co-curricular drama clubs, for example. "Through the DVD, students will be able to learn about the wider aspects of theatre, through interviews with practitioners," Kukathas said. "Our lighting and set designers will talk about what they do, the playwright will talk about scriptwriting, and the actors will talk about their roles and how to do character development." The Parah project is quite unique in that it is creating a reusable infrastructure of sorts, which can be used by educators anywhere to teach students about theatre wherever they are, and whoever they are. Other outreach projects exist too – Hands Percussion and the Actors Studio, for example, often take workshops to more isolated communities where there is less access to arts than in the capital. Most are fighting an uphill battle despite recent government initiatives to pay more attention to developing the arts. For example, Kakiseni's new grant scheme, under the National Creative Industry Policy, disburses funds from the National Department for Culture and Arts. While appreciated, it is just not enough; many practitioners who believe in bringing the power of the arts to the masses are still struggling to make their ambitions a reality. ICT received seed funding for its project under the Arts in the Community grant, but it received just RM6,000 whereas the the DVD and documentary kit will probably add up to around RM60,000. It hopes to find sponsors to help fund the rest, so that even if ICT members cannot be there in person to conduct workshops, the project will at least empower teachers or mentors who can do so. — Natalie Heng Related stories: |
| Posted: In Part Two of our series on 'What's eating the performing arts?', we examine its role in and value to society. ART IS a vehicle though which a community can celebrate its collective identity – history may furnish us with dates, names and landmark events, but to truly grasp the essence of society, we turn to art, which affords people the freedom to express, reflect, inspire and think. June Tan is a member of the multilingual, multidisciplinary arts group known as the Five Arts Collective. She's been producing shows for over six years because "Every time I sit down to discuss how to stage a performance, a part of my brain opens up – it's the part intent on discovery, on answering questions about what makes us human." What makes it special for her, she says, is the raw and honest nature of how an artist performing live can connect to an audience. There is an immediacy originating from the lack of physical boundaries, which simply cannot be replicated through any other medium. But theatre is powerful for other reasons too. Actress and director Jo Kukathas has the perfect anecdote to illustrate how theatre can help us cast the light of public discourse upon the buried roots of a society's insecurities. During a talk-back session after a staging of Alfian Saat's Nadirah, which tackles Malaysia's love-race-religion triangle of taboos, a university student who was watching theatre for the first time stood up. "He said, 'As a science student, I like to ask questions. Now, all my friends are Chinese, but there are some Malay girls in my class, and I was speaking to one in the canteen. I asked how she would feel if her husband decided to take another wife, but my (Chinese) friends told me, you shouldn't ask questions like that, because it is her culture, nothing to do with you,' " recounts Kukathas. Kukathas recalls how he stated that this made him feel sad, because he wasn't trying to be difficult – he was genuinely just curious about polygamy. Having watched Nadirah, however, the student said he felt the play was talking about all the things that he wanted to talk about, but felt he wasn't allowed to. The most moving thing about it was seeing the tears in his eyes when he said: "This is what I want, so much what I want, and I feel this is what people want." Kukathas' story shines a light on the important role the performing arts can play in reflecting the issues and concerns of contemporary society. "Seeing someone literally embodying a dilemma that you are facing can be very moving, and that's the power that theatre has. It's a very cathartic, transformative power," she adds. Types of art In assessing its value to society, it is important to acknowledge different interpretations of the term "the performing arts". Some may use the term to refer to all forms of art, such as dance, drama, and music performed before an audience. Others however, such as Kukathas, draw a distinction between art created in response to market demand, and art created in its own right – be it as social commentary, the expression of original ideas, or as an exploration of new and groundbreaking aesthetics. The classical Indian dance icon Datuk Ramli Ibrahim points out that such a distinction is important: "It's the difference between products that pander to the common denominator, and 'serious art'. "Anthropologically I find Starbucks and Lady Gaga to be valid representations of the cultural pysche; however, whether those things need as much support as the Mak Yong, or serious films, or experimental arts, is another matter."  No easy access: The five dancers in Joseph Gonzales's Wirama extract the emotive essences of the Practitioners often say there is a difference between "entertainment" – a banner under which many consider to include the popular musicals of the West End and Broadway, and "art". A defining characteristic of the latter is perhaps that for it to truly thrive, it must not be held captive to market forces. Part of this is caused by the often exploratory nature of art, which Pentas Project founder Loh Kok Man elaborates on: "Art is like science – you need time to experiment and try new things. Sometimes it becomes a failure, sometimes it becomes a success." For him, traditional art is important because it tells the story of humanity's cultural evolution. Of equal if not greater importance is contemporary art – because it says something about who we are now, and how our society and culture are evolving today.  Theatre can help cast the light of public discourse upon the buried roots of a society¿s insecurities. Alfian Saat¿s Nadirah, which tackles Malaysia¿s love-race-religion triangle of taboos, has had a cathartic impact on audiences. "It represents what we are living and feeling now, and what we understand about our society," Loh adds. But the question is: can art in this context sustain itself? It would seem that there are some things that can't run on capitalism. In fact, the British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) once called the exploitation of art by prostituting it to the purposes of financial gain, "one of the worser (sic) crimes of present day capitalism". As such, he believed in supporting the arts, and was instrumental in the setting up of an arm's-length government institution that would channel funds into the arts – the British Arts Council – the model of which has been emulated by nations all over the world. Many recognise that for art to thrive, there must be room for risk. In a famous recorded radio broadcast aired a year after his death, Keynes offered his definition of "the artist": The artist walks where the breath of the spirit blows him. He cannot be told his direction. He doesn't know it himself. But he leads the rest of us into new pastures, and he teaches us to love and enjoy what we often begin by rejecting, enlarging our sensibilities and purifying our instincts. Related Story: |
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