My opera troupe had just travelled up to Klang for a performance on the 31st of December and returned on Monday night. I went along too, and this is my first time performing out of Singapore (previous cameo appearance not counted.
Prior to our journey, we were warned that overseas performances are not meant to be relaxing and skiving, and that it would be very demanding and tiring. Indeed, we had to compromise with quite a number of things in order to cut cost for the organising organisation, Klang Hokkien Assiciation. We did not have the luxury of having a big truck to carry all our luggages over the customs, and hence we had to tug our stuffs by ourselves. This is no easy feat! For me, I have to pack my costumes (troupe property, of course), opera shoes, stage props and makeup kit into my own luggage, and it was already rather bulky. The dan actresses were more of a disadvantage as they have more things to bring along, including their wigs and hair accessories.
Another tiring thing was the departure time from Singapore. Previously during the Christmas long-weekend, it was reported in the news that the customs were so heavily jammed that it required 1 to 2 hours just to get through it. Hence, we had to bring forward our departure time from 8.30am to 6.30am, meaning we had to get there by 5.45am latest if we choose not to stay overnight at the Kong Huay. Fortunately, everyone arrived on time and hence we need not have to waste time waiting for one another. On the bad side, though, was that we arrived at the customs too early, only to realise that there was no crowd at the customs, and we had to wait for about an hour for our Malaysian bus to pick us up.
We arrived at our hotel after 6 hours of bus ride. It was past our usual lunch hour, and hence we quickly had our luggage stowed away at a corner of the reception and head for the restaurant. The chairman of the association was already there waiting for us. It was very kind of him to welcome us personally, even though we may not be any very distinguished VIPs.
After our lunch, we checked into our respective rooms, took a short break before heading to the association, which was just next to the hotel, to dress up the performing venue. On the first night, our troupe was supposed to stage a short opera alongside some nan-yin singing and cultural dance segments. A bit of hiccups took place, as we were told that there would not be any wireless clip-on microphones available, hence we had to change our performing venue from the main hall to the conference room. Quite a bit of time was lost during this period, and the actors who were supposed to perform that night had no chance to have a final rehearsal with the musicians. The musicians, though, were lucky that a fellow member Teck Seng helped them by singing all the songs and speaking all the dialogues of the opera with the script in hand while they played along. Fortunately it wasn't a full-length opera, or else I wonder how Teck Seng is going to survive through!
The turn-out of the show that night was disappointing. This was supposed to be a cultural interaction event, and I had expected the media and representatives from various cultural groups to turn up. However, only some members of the association and the Traditional Nan-yin Society came. We were told later that this event wasn't highly publicised and hence not many people were aware of it. But we were heard that those who turned up were impressed with our performance that they decided to come for our actual performance the following day, as well as getting more people to watch too.
That night after the performance, the association's cultural education director fetched us for supper at a seafood restaurant. It was inside this restaurant where I celebrated my first new year countdown in a foreign land and with a huge group of people. It was really fun and rowdy, as the restaurant had light up firecrackers outside their compound at the strike of midnight. The festive mood was strong, and our troupe leader also made an exemption to allow us drink a bit of alcohol. Previously, we had been banned from drinking before we complete our performance duties, even if you were just a stage helper.
On the following morning, our breakfast was arranged at a bah kut teh stall located just behind the association. This stall, from what I heard, is the most famous bah kut teh stall, and once you tasted their soup, you won't want to drink Singapore's one ever. Sounds exaggerating, but they actually have a website of their own, and even had 3 branches in Hongkong. It is actually not easy to set up outlets in Hongkong if your food is not up to standard, as there's too much good local food over there. Anyway, the soup was really very nice, and the yew char kueh that they served, although after being soaked in the soup, was still chewy and tasty too. If they had preserved peanuts and pig small intestines, that would be even perfect!
After our breakfast, we were invited by the association to watch a mass wedding ceremony being held at the association's main hall. The ceremony was a long one, and we did not stayed throughout as we need to have an early lunch so as to have more time to prepare for the big show. We had actually scheduled our rehearsal to commence after lunch, but we could not proceed as the hall had to be cleaned up first. We had yet dressed up the venue yet too, and hence our rehearsal timing was futher pushed back, until we only had barely half an hour to rehearse just one small segment of the show.
After the rehearsal, we retreated to our own rooms to prepare for the big show. There was 3 hours to go still, and I had no intention to start making up so early. Hence I took a nap first. When my other troupe members came knocking on my door at around 6pm to deliver dinner, they were shocked to see that I had not even started my makeup! It is a common sight for our troupe members to make up 3 to 4 hours before the actual show or full-dress rehearsal, but that is simply not my style. Not that I'm an expert in "express makeup", but I don't see how much better I will look if I do my make up earlier, or if I spend more time doing my make-up. Anyway, The hotel room's lighting was really terrible, as it was simply too dim to see. I think the toilet looked much brighter!
Halfway through my makeup, I heard thunder rolls outside the window. It was raining heavily outside and I was very concerned how the turn-out would be. This is our first major performance in Malaysia, and it would not look nice on us nor the association if the turn-out were to be very poor.
Fortunately, the rain stopped before the show started, and people started streaming in. I think the hall was almost 3/4 filled by 9pm, and I could hear thunderous applause from the audience after each segment. The audience was obviously enjoying our show very much, and as I performed on stage, I could see some people referring to the subtitles being flashed on the side of the stage and nodding their head to the advancement of the plot. This is the first time I've ever seen people so engrossed in our show! Our performance ended smoothly, and we were greeted with warm applause. During the interaction with some members of the audience, we realised that many of them had not watched Hokkien opera for a long period of time. Some were even touched to tears by our show. I never expected our show could have such a positive response, especially in a relatively foreign place.
That night after the show, we had a celebration supper at a coffee shop together with the various organising committee personnel. They were happy with our show, and there is high chance that they'll invite us again at the end of the year, or even tour around Malaysia.
On our last day of stay at Klang, we were very relaxed, after having a tight and hectic schedule for the past 2 days. We checked out of our hotel at 8am, went for dim sum breakfast, followed by a short shopping spree at a local shopping centre. AFter which we headed off to the same seafood restaurant we had countdown in for a video-watching session cum farewell-lunch. I could not eat well for lunch as my breakfast was still undigested in my stomach, and I was also too tired to eat. We left Klang at around 2.30pm, feeling a bit sad. Alas all good things must come to an end!
We reached Kong Huay at around 9pm. That was considered rather early, as we had anticipated a massive jam at the causeway. All of us helped bring everything back to our office, unpacked everything and stow them away accordingly before heading back home. What a tiring trip this is! But it is nevertheless very fulfilling as this is our second chance to step onto the international stage, and hopefully we will have more of such opprtunities to come.
Prior to our journey, we were warned that overseas performances are not meant to be relaxing and skiving, and that it would be very demanding and tiring. Indeed, we had to compromise with quite a number of things in order to cut cost for the organising organisation, Klang Hokkien Assiciation. We did not have the luxury of having a big truck to carry all our luggages over the customs, and hence we had to tug our stuffs by ourselves. This is no easy feat! For me, I have to pack my costumes (troupe property, of course), opera shoes, stage props and makeup kit into my own luggage, and it was already rather bulky. The dan actresses were more of a disadvantage as they have more things to bring along, including their wigs and hair accessories.
Another tiring thing was the departure time from Singapore. Previously during the Christmas long-weekend, it was reported in the news that the customs were so heavily jammed that it required 1 to 2 hours just to get through it. Hence, we had to bring forward our departure time from 8.30am to 6.30am, meaning we had to get there by 5.45am latest if we choose not to stay overnight at the Kong Huay. Fortunately, everyone arrived on time and hence we need not have to waste time waiting for one another. On the bad side, though, was that we arrived at the customs too early, only to realise that there was no crowd at the customs, and we had to wait for about an hour for our Malaysian bus to pick us up.
We arrived at our hotel after 6 hours of bus ride. It was past our usual lunch hour, and hence we quickly had our luggage stowed away at a corner of the reception and head for the restaurant. The chairman of the association was already there waiting for us. It was very kind of him to welcome us personally, even though we may not be any very distinguished VIPs.
After our lunch, we checked into our respective rooms, took a short break before heading to the association, which was just next to the hotel, to dress up the performing venue. On the first night, our troupe was supposed to stage a short opera alongside some nan-yin singing and cultural dance segments. A bit of hiccups took place, as we were told that there would not be any wireless clip-on microphones available, hence we had to change our performing venue from the main hall to the conference room. Quite a bit of time was lost during this period, and the actors who were supposed to perform that night had no chance to have a final rehearsal with the musicians. The musicians, though, were lucky that a fellow member Teck Seng helped them by singing all the songs and speaking all the dialogues of the opera with the script in hand while they played along. Fortunately it wasn't a full-length opera, or else I wonder how Teck Seng is going to survive through!The turn-out of the show that night was disappointing. This was supposed to be a cultural interaction event, and I had expected the media and representatives from various cultural groups to turn up. However, only some members of the association and the Traditional Nan-yin Society came. We were told later that this event wasn't highly publicised and hence not many people were aware of it. But we were heard that those who turned up were impressed with our performance that they decided to come for our actual performance the following day, as well as getting more people to watch too.
That night after the performance, the association's cultural education director fetched us for supper at a seafood restaurant. It was inside this restaurant where I celebrated my first new year countdown in a foreign land and with a huge group of people. It was really fun and rowdy, as the restaurant had light up firecrackers outside their compound at the strike of midnight. The festive mood was strong, and our troupe leader also made an exemption to allow us drink a bit of alcohol. Previously, we had been banned from drinking before we complete our performance duties, even if you were just a stage helper.
On the following morning, our breakfast was arranged at a bah kut teh stall located just behind the association. This stall, from what I heard, is the most famous bah kut teh stall, and once you tasted their soup, you won't want to drink Singapore's one ever. Sounds exaggerating, but they actually have a website of their own, and even had 3 branches in Hongkong. It is actually not easy to set up outlets in Hongkong if your food is not up to standard, as there's too much good local food over there. Anyway, the soup was really very nice, and the yew char kueh that they served, although after being soaked in the soup, was still chewy and tasty too. If they had preserved peanuts and pig small intestines, that would be even perfect!
After our breakfast, we were invited by the association to watch a mass wedding ceremony being held at the association's main hall. The ceremony was a long one, and we did not stayed throughout as we need to have an early lunch so as to have more time to prepare for the big show. We had actually scheduled our rehearsal to commence after lunch, but we could not proceed as the hall had to be cleaned up first. We had yet dressed up the venue yet too, and hence our rehearsal timing was futher pushed back, until we only had barely half an hour to rehearse just one small segment of the show.After the rehearsal, we retreated to our own rooms to prepare for the big show. There was 3 hours to go still, and I had no intention to start making up so early. Hence I took a nap first. When my other troupe members came knocking on my door at around 6pm to deliver dinner, they were shocked to see that I had not even started my makeup! It is a common sight for our troupe members to make up 3 to 4 hours before the actual show or full-dress rehearsal, but that is simply not my style. Not that I'm an expert in "express makeup", but I don't see how much better I will look if I do my make up earlier, or if I spend more time doing my make-up. Anyway, The hotel room's lighting was really terrible, as it was simply too dim to see. I think the toilet looked much brighter!
Halfway through my makeup, I heard thunder rolls outside the window. It was raining heavily outside and I was very concerned how the turn-out would be. This is our first major performance in Malaysia, and it would not look nice on us nor the association if the turn-out were to be very poor.
Fortunately, the rain stopped before the show started, and people started streaming in. I think the hall was almost 3/4 filled by 9pm, and I could hear thunderous applause from the audience after each segment. The audience was obviously enjoying our show very much, and as I performed on stage, I could see some people referring to the subtitles being flashed on the side of the stage and nodding their head to the advancement of the plot. This is the first time I've ever seen people so engrossed in our show! Our performance ended smoothly, and we were greeted with warm applause. During the interaction with some members of the audience, we realised that many of them had not watched Hokkien opera for a long period of time. Some were even touched to tears by our show. I never expected our show could have such a positive response, especially in a relatively foreign place.That night after the show, we had a celebration supper at a coffee shop together with the various organising committee personnel. They were happy with our show, and there is high chance that they'll invite us again at the end of the year, or even tour around Malaysia.
On our last day of stay at Klang, we were very relaxed, after having a tight and hectic schedule for the past 2 days. We checked out of our hotel at 8am, went for dim sum breakfast, followed by a short shopping spree at a local shopping centre. AFter which we headed off to the same seafood restaurant we had countdown in for a video-watching session cum farewell-lunch. I could not eat well for lunch as my breakfast was still undigested in my stomach, and I was also too tired to eat. We left Klang at around 2.30pm, feeling a bit sad. Alas all good things must come to an end!
We reached Kong Huay at around 9pm. That was considered rather early, as we had anticipated a massive jam at the causeway. All of us helped bring everything back to our office, unpacked everything and stow them away accordingly before heading back home. What a tiring trip this is! But it is nevertheless very fulfilling as this is our second chance to step onto the international stage, and hopefully we will have more of such opprtunities to come.
5 comments:
hahahah.. u guessed correctly! leader is now working with them to do 12-day show.. Better keep all our annual leave from now!
12 days.............. abit too long, we aren't professional troupe and u sure we have that many days of leave?
Precisely.. If that's the case, I think I have to give up of the tours, or even two! a.c.
I searched for 'Chinese opera' blogs and found yours, Miko's and Amai's. Perhaps other opera like Teochew, Hainanese didn't show up. Likewise those blogs in Chinese.
I think your troupe members are a dedicated lot and there is strong team spirit.
Performing before an appreciative audience is very fulfilling indeed.
its 12 days according to the plan... but :( i dont think i can go... its my year end accounts closing peak.. haiz... so sad oh...... some more its clam lady which i like. xj
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