The thing about staging what most people regard as an awesome (Thank you for your encouraging words!) show with our limited experience, resources and talents is in its right, a amazing testimony to how God uses the weirdest combination of people to achieve what He sees as relevant to our times.
Dinner with someone who knew me well enough led to the statement;
"When I sat in the hall, and listened to the songs, the lines and the characters. I see so many bits of you."
I was taken aback, sure there were parts of me inside (I believe that every writer engraves his or her essence inside their creation) ways I would react towards there fictitious situations and circumstances, maybe my present struggles as well.
But certainly not my past.
”No, Suit Lin, you might not see it, or even realize it. But your past is etched as strongly as the person that you are inside the characters of the Musical.”
Vertigo.
As I have drafted once, writing this musical is a tireless process. Ideas are fun to play with when they are hot and fresh. They bounce of nicely on the empty canvass that you have set. The initial excitement of having the power to tie and create characters and plots ‘exactly the way you want them to be.’ was more than sufficient to make us crazy with the virginal enthusiasm of writing a story and telling it our way.
You have your ideals and you play ‘god’ to those people whom you have created. You choose your story and who tells them, you even say how and when they ought to tell them. Everything was your prerogative.
You plunk yourself endlessly with your co-author cum song writer and the ever faithful laptop and allow the creative process to take its course, each playing the other’s devil advocate and encourager, each pouring whatever lines or phrases, both pitching whatever little we had, pushing doubts aside and laying the very first foundation and ground of the musical.
I must say that Jon is incredibly patient with me when I get writer blocks and all sorts of stupid mood swings. He is my never ending idea feeder and stress reliever, a person that I can trust to complete this with me even when the going gets tough. And after many meet-ups and coffee, the script was done.
As it was finally printed, all in it’s 50 plus pages, we thought we could focus in now translating the script to action, we have written out ideas on paper, now it’s bringing these ideas to life in the people on stage. Seeing our character become tangible humans, seeing the scenes put together, making the story alive, all such euphoria.
After the script reading and week two in to the practices, Jon and I have already a major headache.
Chaos strikes.
Your characters evolves with your story and with the change in that character, there was a need to change the method of imparting the scene, there was a need to write more songs, to rewrite lines and scenes, to create or erase visuals.
The idea was beginning to stale and it was then the real test begins, the once blank canvass is anything but blank now, places where the idea bounced off leaves it’s mark, concepts, progressions, songs, semi-conceptualize scenes, random lines lay all over it, begging to be shown, begging to be explored and to be justified of it’s existence, yet how lost was I looking at the mess and the flattened idea in my hands, I was unable to throw it around, unable to navigate between the waste land of everything, unable to move, unable to turn back.
We were stuck. And it sucked.
I had to then remember how the idea was like and hold that memory framed in the very edge of my brain. Present although not always visible. Then we rolled our sleeves and started to get down from the cloud of our idealism to actually make something out of what we have already came up with.
Re-writing 4 major scenes (which consists of 70% of the script) was pure madness and horror. Staying for practices until late into the night and returning to MSN to talk to Jon about scenes and songs and etc was draining for both of us, we still had to post mortem the practices. Find ways to teach the casts things that even we ourselves were not sure of.
You never know. Whether the lines has meaning to the audience or even the actors, you never know whether we can pull certain long lines off, you never know so many things that sometimes I feel like we know nothing much at all.
To be honest, if I was doing it alone I would have called it quits then, the idea was so big, we have bitten off more than we can chew. There were ideas from the some PKVians especially from Ben at this stage, yet it was hard to piece these together to fit the different gaps and holes in the plot, to weave the scenes together.
Many a times the co-writer was frustrated with our lack of progress, sometimes (or most of the times) due to how picky I am with words and phrases. I tend to drone on and on (syok sendiri la) sometimes to the point of going off tangent. Whereas Jon is better in short lines that can deliver a full impact, I on the other hand love the momentum that long lines build. A mix and match of our different yet coherent styles brought you to what I would now call a fusion of the expressionist and the philosopher.
We just did what we could the best we could, but even now I can only say that it was a good creative experiment and it was refreshing to hear new ideas and use them. But oh, the constant uncertainty and fear, the inexperience experimenting, and the insanity of it, all in all, a roller coaster ride.
If it weren’t for God, no way you could have seen Wednesday happen. No way you would have understood the story, as I have often ask myself whether I am making any sense after writing each dialogue. On the contrary, I am sane, sometimes.
I am somewhat satisfied with the end product. The process of writing it was rewarding, never have I written something for so long in my life. In fact I look forward to other opportunities to story tell. To (hopefully) shed light on issues that are more common than we dare admit it to be based on my very limited experiences as both a writer and a human.
Who knows what lies ahead for this wild effort, I don’t know about my co-author cum song composer, but I believe that we have gain valuable insight on our abilities and have seen how far believing in a vision, together, even in disagreements have brought us. Truly the supernatural strength to pull through is from God and God alone.
Until now as I end this so long can die (see my point of me being wordy) I cannot say for sure how much of me is inside the characters and to be frank, they were never created to mirror me.
But maybe, just maybe, by planting the lessons or the questions in my life subconsciously inside this story, I have given voice to myself in ways I will never be able to do in real life. To the actors who took the time to understand their characters, I am fortunate to work with the person that you are.
I can’t answer for everyone. But where do I go from here? Does this question even need to be answered?
