ProGRes - Alfian Sa'at's The Optic Trilogy, Iswadi Pratama's Sebuah Kenangan Antara Kita

It's been months since I was last at DPAC for a play, but when one of the productions is an adaptation of an Alfian Sa'at play, I had to go see. 

I would've gone on Friday night, but I remembered that parking on Saturdays and Sundays was a flat RM2, so Saturday night it was. 

THE OPTIC TRILOGY

The Optic Trilogy asserts that some acute level of self-understanding is a requisite if at least the possibility of real love, real relational connection, can transpire.

A play in three parts, the first part deals with a woman who is alienated from her homeland, and who hires a male escort as a misguided means of dealing with this alienation. The second part examines the long-standing desire of a male photographer for a woman he had fallen in love with when they were both teens. The last part looks at the attempt by a heterosexual woman to partner a gay man so that she might have a child - with the complication that they have actually shared the same lover, who had planned to marry her, but who in the end committed suicide.

I've tried to re-read the text after buying a ticket, but I only got as far as the second play before life got in the way. 

First half of the show I had no problems with. Alfred Loh and Amanda Ang were pretty good as Man and Woman. The overall theme hit close to home. They even got me to shed a tear towards the end. I don't know why they bothered with the Malay subtitles for this, but there were a lot of Malay people in attendance, so maybe it's for them? 

When intermission was announced, we were told to clear the space so that they could set up for the second play, Sebuah Kenangan Antara Kita (A Memory Between Us) 

This is an original Indonesian script won Best Playwright in 2003 at Alternative Theater Festival GKJ Awards (Gedung Kesenian Jakarta) and have been adaptation into German at Theatre Koln, Germany in 2009. Now, its a new interpretation by local and young director, Remy Eldhani to staging in new perspective within our contacts in Malaysia. It a story about of memories three couple when their come back to the city where they have meet before. However, memories remain a memories for them self. - this is the copy I got off the website, very powderful England. 

This is what we came in to after the intermission... 

They were going around in circles

Until intermission, I had no idea that a pair of idiots brought their toddler along. TO A 2 HOUR LONG THEATRE PRODUCTION. WTF IS THIS BULLSHIT. YOU DON'T DO THAT TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE PAID GOOD MONEY TO SEE THE SHOW!! THAT'S JUST RUDE AF!!

You know you're not invested AT ALL when all
you notice is this guy has too much highlighter

It's presented in Bahasa Malaysia, Indonesia and English and people weren't getting it, but the toddler was starting to get antsy, so they moved to the back (like it was a good idea) and she started crying about maybe 20 minutes in. Her parents actually let her distract the place for almost 10 minutes with the crying until one of them took her outside, WHICH THEY SHOULD'VE DONE FROM THE START. I don't blame the child in this situation, I blame those two for bringing her there. In retrospect, I should've confronted them outside after the show about this, but I was just ready to go home. Or perhaps I should've just left during intermission. 

It was also laughable that the director of this production thought it didn't warrant English subtitles for those of us who aren't entirely fluent in either Bahasa Malaysia or Indonesia. But apparently someone thought it was a good idea to have (Malay) subtitles for the English play, which was projected unto the wall behind the action, which I noticed that it was being  projected faster than what was going on on stage. What happened to equal opportunity subtitling?

I don't know if it was the direction, script or the structure of Indonesian plays, but it seemed kinda messy to me. It was literally too much song and dance for me.

As far as double billed productions go, I would never have put these two together on the same bill. Production value pun tak sama. I don't know how they relate to each other. My guess was that people would've been upset if it they were paying to watch an hour long play, so they just add on another one to make it worth the price of admission? That's just my theory. 

TL;DR version: 

The Optic Trilogy - Thumbs up

This particular production of Sebuah Kenangan Antara Kita - Thumbs WAY DOWN 

There's still a couple more shows if you want to catch this. If you're not a masochist, maybe you don't come back after intermission je...