Ismail Starts Singing

Right so now with Mervin back from his travels, we are now left to the hands of the musical director. Who very clearly stated down his rules.

1. He won't encourage us, cause that is just plain well ridiculous. He believes that you as a performer will know when you've done it right. So he won't give us false pretense of "Oh you guys are doing well"
2. No directing of oneself, be it tapping the foot, movie your hands up and down the air, and even bobbing your head to the tempo.
   
3. One is not allowed to sit down as long as the musical director is standing. (Phew and that can be a very long time - aiiiee bad for the back)
4. If one person sings out of key or screws up, the whole group will get a shelling.
5. Oh yeah mistakes on the first day is ok... Mistakes on the second day... NO NO NO!
   
6. Don't change anything that he has not changed in the pieces.

Hmm did i miss anything out?

So those are the rules, and we first studied the overture and the song for the 'rakyat'. Of course like any musical we are separated into three parts :Soprano, Alto (Both sung by women) and Bass (Men).

The men singing were so cute! You'd never have thought they could be so well behaved and look actually worried that they weren't going to do well. Sweet!!! lol. The song actually sounded pretty good when all the sops, alts and basses, were in unison. Harmony people.... Harmony!!

Besides it's the first time singing to this script. Overall I think we gave it a good go.

Rehearsal Day 4,5,6,7,8

Ok this is how lazy... i mean busy.. BUSY.. we are with rehearsals. Over the past rehearsals we have been having nothing bu movement training and haven't touched anthing on vocals yet.

Lex our captain has been mostly teaching us to get ready with certain movements along together with some appearances thrown in here and there. With much pain in the thighs, we've learn about 3 traditional dances so far, which are the zapin, basic zapin, joget, and imang .
They aren't that hard to learn, but whats hard is getting the style and the correct timing for it.

Yesterday was the first time we actually did do something different, which was dancing with simple step ball change steps along with.... a variety of music.. ranging from Saturday Night Fever, Immortality and Put Your head on My Shoulder. They wanted to see how we reacted to the music through our movements.

This is the closets i could get to what we've been doing, in terms of movement and even the song, that we are using for practice.




Take a look at the shots.

Rehearsals Day 3

Being in a lot of pain from the second day of rehearsals, it was no surprise that it was an incredible feat to walk up the four flights of stairs at KLPAC. You see, i'm walking like a penguin and anytime that i get up or sit down, its like a knife in my thighs. Yes, i'm in pain.

Thankfully Lakshman, our dance captain, was slightly easier on us today. We started off with the same warm up routine, but our second half was more fun. Learning the Zapin and the Joget. Still trying to get the Joget down without tripping over my own feet. Not easy having 4 left feet.

Not going to say much due to the fact that i'm not so much a writer. People who know me will know my blog is filled with photos, so in true Nick Dorian tradition, i give you the first in many many MANY photo filled posts. I will therefore leave Linora and Fang to write, purely because, their better at it! Hahaha....

Rehearsal Day 2

Right on to second day of rehearsal.

A couple of us had arrived early to practice of course, just to ensure that we weren't late. Day two was all about movement. Purpose of this was to nimble ourselves and get us prepared for any action command that is thrown at us by the director or movement director.

But before that we had a half hour session with breathing master Dominique Lonchant, the breathing guru. While not many or any theatre groups out there practice on breathing, here for the KLPac production we are trained to concentrate on our breathing. As an actor, our voice and body are the most important things to us, so naturally some exercise to loosen it up is necessary. One important accessory you will need for breathing exercises...

A pillow! If not say hello to bruises on your shins and knees.

Moving right on after breathing exercises, was the movement exercises. The movement director wasn't around so we were left in the very capable hands of our Dance Captain. Starting first with some warm up and stretches which I think some of us wanted to die, from not being used to stretching a lot. And even worse when we had to do a side split (or as far as one can go) and go down with your forehead touching the ground... Yeah we could cry! When Laks told us to relax... you should have heard the sigh of relief from the entire cast. Hahaha.

I have to say, we did a lot of rolling. The two words stuck in my head now is "Pink Paper". lol See there is this pink paper stuck on one of the pillars smack in the middle of Studio 5, which we all use as our focus point. So imagine this.. We are all walking around and then suddenly we are to stop and look at the pink paper. Then shift our head to the clock at the back of the class and then pink paper again.. woohee.. and then clock and then pink paper..

Pink paper clock pink paper clock... aiii - there's a purpose for all this and it is great practice for testing how sharp we are. Back to the rolling..

Our captain, was teaching us how to roll... so we had a lot of rolling on the floor, which concludes with us using our thighs a lot. Along with our butts being very very strained. Roll to the right.. now to the left .. oh wait pink paper clock.... roll right, left.. pink paper clock... pink clock... roll right.. left... you get the picture :P

It was personally fun to see how some got confused :) Which is alright actually because the cast we have - some are new to performing arts and some have been doing it for a while. It's a learning curve and what a fun start it is.

Let's see what happens tomorrow!
yes.. we have rehearsals tomorrow.. :P

First Day of Rehearsal

Well, it looks like we now have a blog. The cast and crew finally came together last night for the first reading of KLPAC's big musical this year, Ismail The Last Days. It's a pretty well thought script with some interesting insight to the man that is Tun Dr. Ismail. To be honest, when I heard that there was a musical based upon Tun Dr. Ismail's life, I didn't know what to expect.

So keep tuned to this spot to receive updates from myself, fang and linora as well as several other cast members!!