…The Cry of Child Sexual Abuse…

When will we begin reaching out to the children who have surrendered to male predators, including brothers, fathers, grandfathers, uncles and cousins or perhaps neighbors or male servants? When we will acknowledge that Child Sexual Abuse occurs in our innermost family circles? Society have closed one eye to this serious and powerful issue in which it is being clarified as a taboo or a sensitive matter to be talked about. Since then, the victims of CSA (Child Sexual Abuse) have fallen deep down into the world of silence which surrounds them and later result negatively towards the victims. Most of the victims are afraid to speak up and they keep on blaming themselves and have misplaced their blame or anger to themselves instead of on their perpetrators. The same goes to Mala, the protagonist in Mahesh Dattani’s 30 Days In September who has been traumatised by the haunting memories of being sexually abused by her abuser---her own uncle. Looking at the situation in Malaysia, we do have cases on Child Sexual Abuse which most of them are incest. We have a strong support system such as counsellors, legal activists, sex education and campaign for awareness; unfortunately all these are not helping enough because of the rejections by the society. In my opinion, our society---citizen of Malaysia and other countries of the world---should not take this issue lightly so that the painful problem of CSA could be healed and prevented.

Mahesh Dattani’s 30 Days In September…

30 Days In September by a famous Indian playwright, Mahesh Dattani is a rare attempt at addressing and confronting the problem of Child Sexual Abuse---through the medium of theatre. This play is commissioned by RAHI (Recovery And Healing from Incest) and I found out that it has had over 100 shows staged in India and abroad. Dr.Edwin in the class just now, told us that the play also has been staged in Malaysia for quite some time ago. How I wish to watch it!! I love the ways the play is presented; such a smart and well turned-out stage directions. The issue being concentrated on is serious, powerful and matured which has been a common thing happened not only in India but also in Malaysia and other countries all around the world. The play endeavours to lift the veil of silence which surrounds child sexual abuse as what is portrayed through Mala and Shanta. In the real world, whether we realise or not there are very big number of children being sexually abused at any points of time. The play tries to bring the message that the children feel confused by the betrayal of trust of people they know and that the process of healing and recovering is very much painful and slow. The actions of the abuser leaves a seal of silence in which the victims would suffer mutely. In a nutshell, I think the best way families and friends can help is by listening and taking time to educate the children. Overall, Dattani’s idea to tackle the issue of Child Sexual Abuse is tremendous.

…My Time…Evaluating others…

My head went relieve after I had presented the micro teaching and I went to class without books stuck at my hands…wooo…so relax and full of pleasure.. It was the time for me to evaluate my other friends on their preparation and presentation of the teaching session. A vengeful spirit suddenly went into me..yah, I am kidding! It was fun to evaluate people because that was what people normally like to do. Love to evaluate and hate to be evaluated. The peer evaluation checklist forms were distributed and the criteria of evaluating and assessing were just the same. I just followed what the form required me to do and it was really based on the list, I assessed my friends. Some of them looked fully prepared and there were only minor obvious grammatical errors but, there were also quite a number of them made a whole lot mistakes, for example, missing the SVA and the use of tenses. I realised that I was not really good in English because it is not my first language but, somehow TESL students should not have a difficulty in pronouncing any English words with a Malay or any dialect accent. We were not requested to speak in British accent but they should try to sound more English. There were certain of them whom voices cannot be heard and they spoke in an unclear manner. Honestly, some of them made me sleepy and their voces were like a lullaby for me. On top of that, the evaluating process was good and I also did learn some other friends’ better presentations and performances. I took down many things which Miss Baiti told us effective and also the Do’s and Don’t’s in teaching.

On Being Evaluated…

It was the week of Micro Teaching, we got ourselves very fully prepared for it. The micro teaching required us to start the lesson of any plays from the beginning of Set Induction until the While- Reading stage. The plays to work on is either Oedipus Rex by Sophocles or Antony and Cleopatra by Shakespeare. We are told by Miss Siti Nur Baiti that we can do the teaching in pair and that makes me and my friend, Izzatie decide to put our heads together to come out with a set of micro teaching on Oedipus Rex. The first hour of class, we are called to be the third pairs to do our teaching. For the set induction, we previewed a video of people who are curious and turned out to be fooled around and pranked by two guys. We related the video to our teaching; the theme of curiosity in Oedipus Rex. The extract quoted was very much suit the theme and the exercises also related to the theme. Everything went evenly. We handed a form of evalution beforehand and during the process of teaching, our friends evaluated our teaching and also our appearance as a teacher including the teachers’ language and preparation for the activities. After we finished, we were handed back the forms and it turned out that most of the evaluators gave me A grade besides several comments on my good voice projection and the use of simple and straight instructions. Besides that, they wrote that, I appeared calm yet funny during teaching---maybe because Dr.Edwin (hehehe..my anxiety) was not there…oopss..Over and above, the process was quite good and I was satisfied with my performance. Being evaluated somehow was scary but it did give me encouragements and suggestions to improve myself.

Have you taken your bath…?

Sounds familiar? I did hear a lot of it when I was a small kid; mom ran around to catch me because I prefer to go naturally unperfumed without those sweet smell of Carrie Junior. Throughout the play A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Blanche bathes herself. Several times in many scenes she is seen bathing. Blanche is known as a fallen woman in society’s eyes because of her family’s fortune and estate are gone, lost her young husband to suicide years earlier and her promiscuity. Her sexual experiences have made her a hysterical woman, but according to her, the baths calm her nerves. These baths represent her efforts to cleanse herself of those dirty memories in the past. As long as cannot erase the past, then her bathing would never done. Besides Blanche, Stanley also is taken into shower to calm him after his misdeed of beating Stella. The shower serves to soothe his violent and animalistic temper when, afterwards, he goes out from shower feeling guilty of his actions and looks naïve searching for his wife. Any moral of the story…? Think about it yourself.

…smashing performance…

That was my first time stepped into the KL Performing Arts Centre in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur. A new step, a new vision, a new experience and everything that I cannot put into words. Do I sound excited…!? We watched three plays; Uncut, Untitled and Paper House which all the plays were directed by Malaysian and acted out by Malaysian whom some of them have already had names in our local industry like Aishah Sinclair and Fish Fadzil. Before this, I had twice went for theatre in Istana Budaya---yup..it’s Malay theatre---and the surroundings or the conditions between English and Malay theatre are obviously different. For the English theatre, they use only white boxes as the props and all other hand props are mimed. Meanwhile for Malay theatre, all the props are provided even the smallest one. I was amazed by the actors’ performances; their voice projections, dictions, intonations, facial expressions and others. There were only two or three actors for each play and two of them needed to pretend as if there was another character among them which was a young girl who did not appear in front of audiences’ eyes. But we can feel that they were talking very naturally and it did not look awkward at all. I jotted down some of their skills in order to help me for my acting in Shakespeare’s Taming of The Shrew. Other than that, the price of ticket was very affordable compared to Malay theatre. I think maybe our government can do something to make peole realise about the English theatre in Malaysia and support them to establish English theatre to all levels of society from any social economic class. Well, I hope to drive myself all the way from Kajang to Sentul, to find an authentic piece of work and experience.

Antony and Cleopatra

It was the time for Shakespeare great masterpiece, Antony and Cleopatra which personally I think was the most difficult play to study and acquire. I long knew that Shakespeare language was very difficult that made me felt hard to read the works of this famous writer. However, there was something terribly interesting about the play which attracted me to read and read the play. It was the storyline and the history being told in the play about Mark Antony and Octavius Caesar who ruled the entire Western world which I think was damn interesting. I love the idea of a powerful general became a fool to woman’s love and beauty; Antony was a great lover---very loyal and pure. However, I certainly disagree with Antony’s actions on accepting Caesar’s challenge to fight not on land but sea when he ignored the advise of his aides to do otherwise. Another thing was about the fidelity of friends and servants towards their masters. For example, Antony’s best friend Enobarbus killed himself for Antony. Then when Eros was asked by Antony to kill him, Eros took his own life rather than killing his friend. Besides that, when Cleopatra, of grieving the death of her lover, killed herself by letting poisonous asps to bite her and the Chairman, attendant of Cleopatra followed suit, commiting suicide also by asps and soon Iras died from the shock and grief of losing her Queen. This play was indeed a heart- rending tragedy.