A Favourite Film

There was reasonable coverage of the death of Ingmar Bergman in the press here today, though I doubt we'll be treated to a Bergman festival on tv anytime soon. I'm no film buff, and I don't entirely get a lot of his work, but if I had to name an all time favourite movie it just might be Fanny and Alexander. I watched it on the BBC when it was shown in three or four parts (I can't quite remember how many) over a long-ago Christmas and was stunned. In those days movies were not quite so easy to access as they are now and being able to get to see Fanny and Alexander had something of the feel of a privileged event about it. Magical is an overused word (and I admit to being a major offender in that regard) but if any film ever deserved the adjective, this is the one.

Under the Weather

I spent much of the day in a forgetful post-production haze, fueled in no small part by a streaming cold which emerged around 8.00 am and increased in intensity (headache and streaminess) as the day went on. With my usual brave stupidity I did six laps of the running track in the afternoon, though these had the saving grace of being accomplished at a very slow pace. This followed six lengths of the big pool at Bedok Swimming Complex yesterday afternoon, where we took Fi Fi and Fa Fa, who'd stayed with us over the weekend to watch Saturday night's show. So at least I'm back to some kind of exercising.

Moments

Ferdinand often uses the word 'moments' in directing the cast, in the sense of creating dramatic, meaningful, usually funny, moments on stage. It's a useful term and after the enjoyment of seeing Made in the Middle Kingdom finally reach its audience it's obvious we created many moments in the show. In every show I've ever done there's at least one moment that resonates powerfully in memory. The one that most stands out for me in this show, and I suspect for Ferdinand, is not a funny one at all, but, for me, a moment of the odd sort of magic that can happen in theatre when everything comes together. In this case a confluence of lighting, costume, the storyline, and fine acting. It was when Edward, as the tiger, finally shed his costume and delivered the 'moral' of the tale - the utterly trite, but profoundly truthful: He who knows who he is, and does the best he can / He is the happy man. I suppose it had something to do with an effect we never planned for: the unexpected frailness of the actor emerging from that bulky costume. And something that was always there: the truthfulness of the performance. But it invested the words with the power of the reality latent within them.

That curious ability of drama (all art, I suppose) to pull back the veil of the surfaces we inhabit to peek at the light, or darkness, of what's behind, seems to me beyond analysis, and it seems to work only in the moment. The memories left are potent, but not the same.

The curiously satisfying yet shocking smashing of our 'Ming' vase in Black Comedy was of the same order - in that case fueled by the improvisational quality of something deliriously destructive taking place that we'd never actually been able to rehearse. I suppose that was a glimpse of the dark side.

I think (and it's not in any way an original thought) the ability of drama to achieve such disturbing magic was at the heart of theatre in ancient Greece. This was brought home to me, oddly enough, in a reading of Aeschylus's The Oresteia, rather than an actual performance. When I say 'brought home' I'm not talking about any kind of knowing of the intellect - I'm talking of the actual experience, the cliched shivers down the spine, the glimpse of the real. I was reading Ted Hughes's translation of The Eumenides, in a crowded hawker centre one lunchtime in a break from a workshop, and had got to the bit about the Kindly Ones, the Furies, being invited to reside in Athens and I saw what those lucky Athenians saw all those years ago - the dreadful and wise powers that live amongst us, and just how fragile, just how close to the edge we are. Those Greeks certainly knew a thing or two.

Yet More Progress

I'm feeling more than a little tired at the moment due to the long hours of rehearsal for the production which have eaten up the last few days. But it's a pleasant kind of tiredness considering the good work we've been able to see. There are lots of things I'm enjoying on stage, moments when I lose myself in what the performers are creating. It's not a bad way to earn a living, all told.

Joy in Repetition

Looking again at the entry for yesterday I realise with a fair amount of horror that I used the adjective 'excellent' no fewer than four times in a single paragraph. I thought of doing a little cosmetic, face-saving editing but have decided to leave the offending paragraph as it is - as a testament to the disabling power of the RSC on a good day.

Highlights of the day: an entertaining take-no-prisoners, TOK lecture from Alistair on the (largely pernicious) influence of the scientific paradigm on just about every other subject discipline; plus a lively rehearsal of Ming Lee & the Magic Tree with Ferdinand firing on all cylinders to powerful effect. If we could only get all the cast there we could really nail the thing before the dress rehearsals begin (on Wednesday.)

Highlight of yesterday: Noi's return from Melaka. We ate rojak at Veenath's after I picked her up at the bus station and suddenly life was good.

Soaring Seagull

I spent the early afternoon at The Esplanade enjoying Chekov's The Seagull as performed by a touring company from The RSC. (Sadly I wasn't able to attend the same company's King Lear, with Ian McKellen in the title role, which is playing in tandem with the Chekov, due to pressure of work.) The excellent William Gaunt played Sorin for this matinee performance instead of McKellen, which is probably why I was able to get a ticket relatively late. The even better news was that I found myself upgraded from my seat in the far circle to an excellent, centrally located, seat in the stalls. And the best news of all was that it was, as I expected, a uniformly excellent performance: a showcase of excellent acting which remained true to the spirit of the play in every respect. The last act was suitably sombre, and beautifully prepared for with an impressively dramatic attempted suicide by Treplev on-stage at the end of Act 2. Somehow this made the low-key off-stage ending work even better. All the self-referential theatrical stuff came to life, as it usually does in RSC productions. My only complaint about the whole experience was that the air-conditioning in the theatre worked rather too well and I was glad to get out into the warmth of the late afternoon after the show.

I arrived at The Esplanade fairly early in order to make sure I could easily pick up the ticket I'd booked on-line, so I had a bit of time to visit the branch of the National Library there. Essentially this is a performing arts library, and very good it is too. They have a substantial collection of plays and this alone set me thinking I need to go there more often.

Last point: I was struck by how utterly modern Chekov's characters seem in their relentless, and often comical, brooding on life. I suppose people have been given to such navel-gazing in all ages, but Chekov developed the art to put this on stage so we can see ourselves doing it. I certainly spent no small part of the afternoon uneasily recognising myself.

Progressing

I spent most of the early part of the day in school making the Middle Kingdom. It was a good way to stop me missing Noi too much. I've spoken to her a couple of times on the phone since she went north and she seems to be enjoying herself, but I think she was a bit worried about the prospect of driving up to KL this morning. She's never driven in KL before and I think she finds the traffic there a touch intimidating (Malaysian drivers being even crazier, if such a thing is possible, than their somewhat more regulated Singaporean counterparts) but she knows the route well enough so I don't think it will be too much of a problem.

Rehearsals went well today. I've been particularly pleased at the ease with which we fitted the music into the show (most of which has been written by a couple of very talented students, who have a real feel for how drama works.) A number of performers are visibly raising their games. The older students don't 'hide' their performances, as younger kids are prone to do - only unveiling exactly what they've got in mind on the first night - but we've really not been working on the show that long and I think they're just finding the arcs of performances clicking into place. We've also now decided on almost all the links for the show, so there's nothing left to write. It's now just a matter of making sure it all works by Friday. (Just!)

Only the Lonely

Noi went north today, to attend another wedding ceremony for her younger sister in KL over the weekend. She's just rung from Melaka. I suppose that if she has to go away this is the best kind of time to do so as I'm ferociously busy with school stuff, so home is coming second for a while. But it's still disorientating without her, and it'll be a relief when she gets back on Sunday. Until then it's cheese sandwiches all the way.

Further Anxiety

Just to add a bit more to yesterday's comments: anxiety in its less useful form (a debilitating fear of failing or doing something wrong or unacceptable) is accepted in schools in the sense that everybody, teachers and pupils, know it well and attempt (often remarkably successfully) to live with it. So we forget about it while knowing it's there and suffering its effects. Most kids in most lessons worry that there'll be something they are not going to understand and that the subject in question is going to get away from them. Joy in learning is often simple relief at coping. Most teachers worry that today's the day they are going to mess up on something very public and important, and since almost anything can suddenly become important, even what may seem entirely trivial details, they pretty much worry about everything all the time.

If this is going on in a reasonably sensible, balanced environment, the damage caused will not be quite so telling. In my experience schools in Singapore are singularly inept at establishing that kind of balance. This ineptitude derives from the simple fact that the need for such a balance is simply not recognised. The endless striving for chimerical excellence precludes clear-sighted recognition of what's real - and who can argue with excellence? So schools here breed worried people.

The solution, I suppose, is to choose not to worry. Easier said than done - but it can be done, or at least cultivated. Central to that cultivation is keeping a sense of proportion. Useful saying: All this will pass.

High Anxiety

I had an enjoyable time at the finals for the Plain English Speaking Awards yesterday, even though our girl, Rekha, didn't come away with anything. Standards were high and she acquitted herself admirably, especially in an excellent main speech. I was pleased that all the contestants performed on the day and could feel good about themselves after. (At least, I hope they did since they certainly should have done.)

Rekha's father, who came to watch, commented on just how nerve-wracking it felt in the audience and how much the speakers were to be admired for having the courage to be up there. Absolutely correct! It's a lot more pressurising than being on stage in a play where at least you've had lots of rehearsal and time to learn definite lines. This kind of anxiety seems to me essentially positive. It reflects the demands that life sometimes makes on one and genuinely feels like an experience from which it is possible to learn.

I've been thinking lately about another kind of anxiety though. This is more insidious, less useful. And schools breed it, I think. Oddly it's rare to find in any kind of writing on matters of education an acknowledgement of the part anxiety plays in the classroom (and elsewhere in schools.) But it's part of the air breathed there, and sometimes exudes a peculiarly heavy scent.

This is the anxiety that is wrapped up in failure, or, to be more precise, fear of failure. There is an extraordinary modern myth that classrooms either are, or should be, places of enjoyment. Enjoyment is occasional, and welcome when it arrives, but anxiety is perpetual and accepted.