back down kid. you ain't ready for this.

Plays are overrated.

You know that feeling you get, when you've got a big presentation all prepared, your suit's pressed and your breath minted, only to find that everyone else's presentation before yours just about blows yours out of the water? You try and reassure yourself, and then second guess yourself, and then reassure yourself again that nono, it's just the nerves talking, and everyone else is probably thinking the same thing/ no wait OHSHIT THIS IS FUXXORED/ etcetc.

Now transplant this feeling to that of being on stage, about to present a play to an audience of judgemental peers and schoolmates (are those girls in the audience?!?) You've feared this moment of course - every play before yours has had the crowd rolling in the aisles with laughter or following each emotional rollercoaster drop with tearful glazed eyes; how're you going to match up (But of course it's just the nerves?)

But what if your work really was crap? There's nothing like kicking off what you'd intended to be The. Best. Play. Ever. and suddenly sensing that every single head in the audience was thinking the exact opposite. And this is right at the very beginning. By the end of it, the place has turned into a hellhouse, calling for your heads for subjecting them to 15 of the worst minutes of their lives and wasting a sixth of their $7 dollars admission ticket.

Amazingly, I've just dug up "Fall On Tears/ I Know Because..." - the play that a bunch of us from 4.15 concocted and unleashed upon a poor unsuspecting student population (and I mean that in every sense of the word) back in 1998 for an annual school event called Centrestage. The title's been slashified as I've found two copies of the script with conflicting titles, otherwise the content is generally the same. The second title, I suspect was just an extraction of one of the lines from the play, much like naming a song "I Want It That Way" or something equally inane and uninspired.

I do remember though, that we came up with the former title because (some of us) had been infatuated with a song of that title by a band, Love Spit Love, that was popular at the time. I know this because strangely enough, a printout of the lyrics to the song is buried between the transcripts of the play. So someone must've been loving it. I have no recollection of the tune, but lyrics such as

"Nothing can save me now/ no one hears you fall/ and who cares anyway" and "This is the end/ fall on tears all my friends"

suggest angsty emo rock which is all the rage these days. See, even then we were futurists, trend setters who just happened to be in the right frame of mind, just the wrong place/wrong time. And so the hyperbole begins...

Right, I'm too lazy to transcribe the entire script here -I might scan it in someday i guess-, so here's the gist of the entire play:

Prologue
MiB (played by Cow) is on stage, with the rest of the cast. MiB introduces characters.

Scene 1 - Classroom

Duncan, the smartest wiseass in school (played by moi) is in the classroom with two goofs, Max (Zacky) and Stanley (Bonos). Duncan reaffirms his genius by answering all the questions that everyone else is dumbfounded over. Oh and he also gets full marks in the test that everyone else fails in.
As you can see, I may have had some trouble identifying with Duncan.

Scene 2 - Home

Duncan's dad (Daryl) and his Uncle Ben (Choo) are hippie tree-hugging idiots (no offence to hippies and/or tree-huggers). They're planning to travel to the Arctic to save the penguins. Duncan points out that there are no penguins in the Arctic. Wiseass.

Scene 3 - Classroom again

Duncan continues to prove himself to be an anal-retentive clever scumbag. "Oh come on! Your notes are so crappy that they can even contradict each other within the same page! Look over here... Your notes of oil palm said that insects were not used to pollinate the flowers because pesticides were used, and since manual pollination was not economically viable, weevils are used!"
At which point the MiB inexplicably gets up and clarifies: "A weevil, W-E-E-V-I-L, is a six-legged black insect."

No, I don't know what we were thinking either.

We also cue a fight scene between genius Duncan and 94% scoring Max, which gets promptly censored by that MiB bugger. We do show the ending though:

MiB: Finish him!
Duncan walks forwards and pokes Max once. Max falls to the ground.
MiB: Flawless victory!
Duncan does a double victory sign or a Raiden pose. Thunder sound FX. Flashing lights 4 a while.

Don't ask me, that's what the script says. I think I settled on the Raiden pose though. Wasn't too hot on the Chun-Li idea (and are those girls in the audience?!?) By this point everyone's pretty much hating Duncan, and I don't just mean the characters in the play.

Scene 4 - The Arctic Trip, Part 1

Dad and Ben while reclining in their beachwear and deck chairs, receive a letter hand-delivered by MiB. It's from school, talking about Duncan's atrocious behaviour, despite his flawless results. Dad is nonplussed, Ben expresses some kind of concern (there's your character development right there!) Dad mentions something about Duncan fending for himself and only recently becoming so intelligent. They proceed to dig for penguins.

Scene 5 - The Dream

MiB issues a mental advisory warning. Too apt.
MiB now becomes part of the play, 'awakening' Duncan from his slumber with a giant hammer. I can't remember if we actually got the prop for the giant hammer, but I do remember just wanting to curl up and die while lying there basking in the non-adoration of the audience. That trap door looked mighty enticing.

Time for the big reveal!
But first, Uncle Ben, dressed as a penguin, penguins across the stage with the Imperial March in the background.

MiB: "Duncan, I've known you since you were a little kid. I've seen you grow into the young man you are today. However, you have let me down. Do you know why you suddenly became so smart Duncan? I gave you this. Your birthmark. You didn't see it growing did you? Well, once it grew to it's current size, you would be smarter than most people -except me of course- But YOU WASTE IT. I'll just have to take it away." /swipe.

Yes.

Anyway Duncan continues to school in his dream, only to find that Max and Stanley have had identical results in a test, both getting full marks. Duncan though, predictably surprising enough, FAILED. Thus prompting him to learn that his arrogance has/will cause him to suffer "the most horrible pain and (he) will be so wrong for the rest of (his) life, leaving to rot within (him)self into the mangled person (he) has caused (him)self to have."

Dad then appears on stage, with Penguin Ben in tow. "Son, penguins DO live in the North Pole!" Dad does victory sign and walks of stage.
Duncan does that dramatic NOOOOOooooo thing while MiB bwahahas in the background.

Scene 6 - The Arctic Trip, Part 2

Dad and Ben are taking photos.
Dad trips and falls off cliff/table.
Ben grabs his arm and promises never to let go, shivering.

Scene 7 - Back in School

Duncan tries to make amends, not jumping to answer any questions and volunteering to help his classmates. In true Greco-tragedy fashion, his classmates have already shunned him, and redemption eludes him.
However. MiB tells him he can still make amends because "Your dad's in danger. Go save him now."
Duncan runs to the Arctic.

Scene 8 - Arctic Trek: To Save a Father (By the way I can't remember if we had the Voice narrate these titles. I hope not.)

Duncan helps Dad back to his feet.
They go home.

Scene 9 - The Empty Stage

MiB: Good thing Duncan's changed, isn't it? Then again (points to audience), what if he didnt? Then this story wouldn't have the nice fairytale ending, would it? It would be dark and grim and Disney wouldn't like it. Oh well, just to make sure this grim chapter in Duncan's life doesn't psychologically tramatise you...
(Takes out Neuralizer armed with powered camera flash)
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you don't mind, please look towards this red light here...
(Lights black out)
Sorry.
(Proceeds to blind the audience with the flash)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now that I've read it again, with the ever reliable power of hindsight, I find it incredible that we managed to pull off this farce of a play and managed to escape with our reputations and mental/physical well-beings (relatively) unscathed. All around it smacks of well-it-sounded-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time, and I'd try to go all out and label it as being somewhat surrealist, representing a post-modern hyperreality that makes the audience descend blissfully into a state of self-reflectiveness; a pastiche of geeky pop culture references and class in-jokes about the inconsistency of some textbook entry about pollination. For the record, we had two (2!!) Titanic references, an ever-present Shakespherean narrator dressed as a Man In Black, armed complete with Noisy Cricket and Neuralizer (well, we had the toys lying around), a dream sequence with Choo dressed as a penguin, a Mortal Kombat reference, and the Imperial March. Ok this isn't sounding that good anymore. Wait let me go read it again...

To be fair, it did have one or two standout sequences. On one hand, we had some really hammy school-play dialogue and Choo in a penguin suit; on the other we had this gem of a line (well it got the biggest pop from the audience):

"Today class, we'll be talking about Sex"
Cue class -and audience- hooting and hollering.
"That's right, SEX, S-E-T-S"
Cue much jeering.

as muttered by the Offstage Voice, Xianzheng, and we had Choo in a penguin suit. Sophomoric humour FTW! So it really couldn't have been that bad? At the very least, we all came out stronger for it, and we learnt much about what not to do in a play. Oh, and much thanks (and quite possibly face-bound eggs as well) go to Drama teach Brian Churnside for actually vetting and approving our play for the event. Ah, the memories...

posted by crapshoot @ 6:21:00 PM