4 months on...

Wow... haven't blogged for ages!

Well, probably have to thank my iPhone & Twitter for that. Nowadays anything I think of I will just twit instead. It takes so much time to go to the computer, log in to blogger before I can speak my mind:)

Anyhow, life has been pretty interesting lately. I have finished my show "Adam:The Musical" in June and will be doing another one end of Nov. This time, however, will be different because:

1) Practice time is only 2 months
2) Show is running for 10 days only
3) I am one of the principals
4) I am doing comedy for a change

Actually I auditioned for 2 shows and had to pull out of one. Not quite pulling out, since the director of the 2nd show was still deciding whether to cast me or not. Basically I had to inform him that I would take up the first offer instead of waiting for him.

If I had waited for the second show and if I got the role, I would probably be playing Joseph(of the new testament) and acting with people like Juwita Suwito and Liang. Instead, I have chosen to do a comedy directed by Mr Potato. Hope the other show does well when it opens in December - the music is fantastic!

Seriously, he is Mr Potato

We've been meeting up once a week for the last 3 weeks to do some mental exercise and have not really done much of the script reading yet. Some of the people involved are fasting. So, practice will pick up pace once Raya is over.

Shall write more about this when the day approaches! But if you know my boss(es), please don't tell her/them about this, ok?

Shhh....

Adam the Musical- media preview pictures!

Last Wednesday, the Actors Studio held a media preview and below are some of the pictures taken.

scene from Lollipop

lollipop!

X-tra large JUMBO!

Zap!

The cast with our director Joe Hasham OAM

Please come see us at the Actors Studio!

Presenter The Actors Studio& the Malaysian AIDS Foundation
Date 12 May - 20 June
Time 8.30pm daily except 3pm on Sundays (no show on Mondays)
Venue The Actors Studio @ Lot 10
Ticket Price RM60 (adults - centre), RM40 (adults - side), RM30 (students, sr. citizens & the disabled)
Promotion RM30 flat for walk in purchase 2 hours before showtime (only at TAS, first-come-first-serve)
Box Office
Call or walk in | The Actors Studio @ Lot 10 (03 2142 2009 / 2143 2009 - ticket collection at The Actors Studio)
Call or walk in | klpac (03 4047 9000 - ticket collection at klpac)
Walk in only | Axcess HQ (Jln. Semangat), Axcess 1-Utama outlet & Alamanda Putrajaya outlet

Adam The Musical Promo

If you are in KL between 12 May & 20 June... come watch the show la!

Interview: Cast of Adam The Musical - Miaw

Ok, it's time to promote the show I'm involved in.

I haven't done an interview for a while and I thought this is probably a good chance to do it again. Today's feature is our youngest cast member of Adam the Musical - Miaw!

Miaw is so young that she just got her driving license and she currently studies at a local college and will probably be going off to Australia by the end of the year.

What motivated you to be involved in performance arts?

I joined a drama club when I was 8 years old. It's a long story. 

According to my mum, on the 1st day of joining Drama Club, Madam Song Mee Lan (Our Drama Teacher) and us were dancing, many parents were outside the classroom peeking on their child (my mum wasn't there, cause I'm not being pampered.) 

Those parents took notice of me, and they told my mum, "Wow, your daughter is good. First time joining the class?" 

Mum:"Ahh.. Yes. Just wanted to let her try something out." 

Kids' Parents:"Ehh, You should let you daughter join some performing classes or something le.. She's good." 

Mum:"Ahh.. No larh.. Just let her having some fun." 

So, that's when she started considering to send me to drama class, singing classes, dancing classes and also various competition and performances. Since then, I felt that I'm in love with the stage. I love to perform just to entertain but not to show off. I never experience stage fright during performance BUT I will have butterflies in my stomach during audition and competition.

Also, involving in Kaki Blue the musical, made me felt in love with the spot lights. It was my first time to experience the spot lights on me. It felt woah.. It's beyond words. It's so bright like a star and you can't even see the audience. Basically, it's something like that. x)

I can't even remember what I ate over the weekend... how come you can still remember your teacher's name?

Erm.. Oh well, cause I've known her for years. So it's impossible for me not to remember my teacher's name. Hehe.. Besides, she was quite famous over the days as a news reader. =)

WHat was your first production?

My first production.. Hmm.. I think it's Kaki Blue The Musical which went on Last year 2009.... unless you consider the recording of MTV for chinese new year songs is a production. Personally, I don't think it is counted as a Production. Haha.. =D

How was Joe Hasham like in Kaki Blue?

Joe Hasham hasn't change much since the last production I'd worked with him. Oh! Except the new thing about him, He uses the bell, which I find it tiny bit annoying. (Shh.. Don't tell him XD) 

I personally think that he was slightly more strict during Kaki Blue. I'm not sure, probably this time around I got used to the way he handle things? =) Anyway, he LOVES to say this "I throw you out the balcony." Haha.. 

Now come to the serious part of the Director. I really really respect him as a director. I NEVER DONE ACTING before Kaki Blue. But because of his guidance, and the things he said, I finally done acting! Oh well, not very good, but acceptable I suppose. 

Joe Hasham said:"Acting is reacting. This is because you are reacting towards each other. And it comes from the inside, Feel it inside you. Every action has its reason behind it." Though these are simple sentences but I find it hard to achieve. Probably I'm not mature yet or something. But he guided me through the high mountains, and I don't regret with my performances in Kaki Blue as a beginner. 

Another thing amazing about Joe Hasham is he gives you the space of creativity to do your own acting. For example, acting as an old lady, You can choose to act as a happy go lucky old lady or you can choose to act as an old lady that always got worried about everything, AS LONG AS IT'S LOGIC TO THE STORY. Yeappy Yeap. You heard it.

What song did you sing and what monologue you did for the audition?

I sang Shining Friends from 2R during the audition. I googled the monologue I did. But I didn't manage to do my monologue cause when I started my first 3 words, Joe said:" Okay thank you. Now please go back to your seat." and I was like. O____O Scared the hell out of me. @_@

I remember you mentioned that you are in this not because of money... can I have your pay then?

Oh well, in your dreams that you can have my pay. =D Haha.. You should know that the transportation fee is not cheap. =)

What have you learnt from this musical practice so far?

What have I learnt from this musical practice so far.. Hmm.. Quite alot I suppose. But all of them are more of like a reminder in life to me.

For example, when you sing, relax, don't get too tensed. Look at the pink paper.. etc.. =)

If there's one thing you want the audience to learn from the musical, what would it be? 

I will want them to understand how the AIDS patients think and feel. Besides, I will want them to learn not to criticise other people or look down at other people no matter what.

Thanks for the time, Miaw. I believe she's still single and available. Anyone interested, please leave a message and I'll try to hook you up with her.

ADAM THE MUSICAL will be staged from 12 May - 20 June at the Actors Studio @ Lot 10 Rooftop. For more info, please visit The Actors Studio.

BODYCOMBAT ALLSTARS

Fitness First IOI Mall gym floor was exceedingly quiet last Sunday....

Not just the cardio machines, but the weight machines too...

Have a good guess where the crowd was...

Believe it or not, 100 plus members waiting for the class to start.

It was BODYCOMBAT ALLSTARS: BRING IT ON!

It wasn't just the members who came and gave their best, all the instructors also performed their 100% for the class.

If Scott tried any harder, shit would coming down from his pants

I may be biased, but I dare say this is probably the best ALLSTARS event yet!

Thank you BC ALLSTARS.... KEEP SHINING!!!!

Why I've not been blogging lately

As usual, the answer is... "BUSY-LAH...."


It's actually one of those good "busy-lah". I've been attending the musical practices religously and having loads of fun with the cast.

It's so great to have friends outside of gym- not that I don't appreciate them. But sometimes I look at the people I hang out with, they are either my gym members or colleagues.

Now, it's refreshing that I make new friends and at the same time, learning how to be a better performer on stage with guidance from our music director Tracy, dance choreographer Lex, & of course the big guy Joe Hasham. Incidently, Joe Hasham was awarded some title "OAM" by the Australian government. Wonder what it means.... Originial Australian Made"?

Besides having fun practising together, we had the priviledge of going out for one Fri night supper(coz Joe decided to let us off early) and also attended one of our cast member's wedding.


Wing Leong married his sweetheart over the weekend and we had so much fun with the impromptu dance for his entrance. Not forgetting, we had Tria Aziz singing "Sweet Love". She is absolutely fantastic. I would never ask her to sing for my wedding(if I'd known her 1 year earlier), coz she'd probably steal the show from wifey & me:)


Ee Wen also sang 2 numbers and the night ended with the groom singing a song for his wife.

Oh I'm so blessed!!!

Adam The Musical Week 2

Last week's practices were somewhat affected by the sad news of the demise of our Music Director's grandma. Here I was, going there to look for her so that I could wish her "Happy Birthday", only to be informed by our pianist Elena that Tracy wouldn't be coming that day.

Still, the show(or rather, the practice) must go on and Lex atarted with us again before Elena took over with the singing. The singing focus was to get the phrasing accurate. With Lex, we have begun dancing to the song as well.

We welcomed Tracy back on Wednesday and we started with her instead. I guess it was so that she could leave early for her grandma's wake, since she didn't stay back till the very end. We sang the first song and she has a new song for us to learn. It's so different from the first song. The first song was Broadway-ish, while this song is err... sound a bit Ah-Beng-ish:) Not as catchy as the first song, but still fun to learn because unlike the first song which has only 2 parts for harmonizing ,this one has 4. With 4 parts, the song seem to sound "rounder" compared to the first one. we all had to learn the chorus where we sang "pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.... ya!" in 4 parts I thougth they(musical notes) we simple though it has an off-beat feel.

Again, Lex added a few more layers to the choreography we learned the night before, which was quite simple to follow. I can almost see how we would look at the Actors' Studio!

Friday night, I was thinking of taking pictures of the production team but unfortunately, Joe, Dato' Faridah & Rosheen were not around. We had Aple, our 2nd stage manager, in charge, together with Lex & Tracy.

Lex taught us the last bit of the choreography for our first song. It's beginning to appear that the guys would not be on stage for this song, since the moves are quite feminine... Either that, or we would need to cross dress for the song:)

I was looking forward to learn the 2nd song because earlier I had already looked at the music sheets and learn how the notes sound. Actually for baritone, I got arguably the easier part, compared with the tenors. It's like we only need to sing around 4-5 notes which were repetitive.

Tracy got us all to learn the song and by the end,we were enjoying ourselves because of the funny lyrics. I felt weird singing the line "Before they come between my thighs"... not going to tell you what the title is and what it's about. You will need to buy the tickets and watch the show!

Anyhow, we managed to get the gist of the song and Aple asked us to know the song by heart for the coming week's practice. So far I've got 80-90% sorted out. I should be 100% by Monday night.

Hopefully get to take pics of the team this week. Maybe will take pics of the cast as well for the following week.

Adam The Musical Week 1

And so, last Tuesday we started our practice for Adam the Musical.

I was a bit kiasu - I took the day off(part of my plan to clear my 2009 annual leave). I even left home to KLPAC at about 5.15pm. Reached Jalan Ipoh and had dinner at one of the stalls around 6pm. Still got lots of time left, and ended up going for round 2(dim sum) & round 3(Old Time White Coffee).

Nowadays, it's better to be very early then 5 mins late, no?

Almost all was on time - I guess nobody wanted a tongue lashing from our director Joe Hasham.

I managed to talk to a few people, including one Michael Chen who was recently in the show "The Swimmning Instructor". Incidently, Michael is now training Janis @ TNT Kickboxing.

First day wasn't much of a practice - we got the script for the show and did the reading. Took quite some time to finish but it did give us an idea how the show is going to be like.

Again, before we ended the night, we were reminded by Joe again that "There is only 1 director and nothing is more important than the production".

Wednesday was more interesting as we started with something I didn't expect to happen so quick - learning my first dance!

Stage manager Rosheen & Executive Producer Dato' Faridah Merican

We did some streching which included the Sun Salutation. Though I have never really done yoga before(the closest thing I ever did was BODYBALANCE), it was quite easy to follow our choreographer Lex since I've seen the moves so many times in our class audit(QCC).

 

Waiting for the practice to start

We then proceed to learn quite basic moves from Lex. The moves involves a bit of shoulder isolations(which took me 2 days to understand how to do them better). Thankfully, Lex did the mirror image method:)

More waiting

After we got the moves right, Lex then put in the CD and out comes Spice Girls' "Who Do You Think You Are" and we had to dance to the music!

Preparing to shake our booties!

I wasn't feeling confident about dancing again, and I began to wonder if I could pull it off.

Rolling the shoulders out, together with the arms

I started with quite few mistakes.

What have I gotten myself into?

That's Michael on the left

After doing it a few time, though, I began to adjust to the moves and eventually I was moveing rather well(or at least, I thought so). In fact, I was beginning to enjoy it:)

 

Lex looking pleased with the progress, apparently

After doing them a few times, Lex handed us over to Tracy our Music Director and we received our first song to learn. It's quite a Broadway-ish number and rather catchy too. In fact, I'm quite proud that a local song writer could do such a high quality number.

The practice was made simple with Tracy singing the melody for us. She was fantastic! The catchy tune is very easy to learn, but getting the phrasing correct is another challenge. Not to mention, we have to sing in parts to support the main singer Sandra.

Again I took leave on Friday. The practice started the same way with the warm ups and we had to do the dance again. This time, Lex added a few move arm/leg movements to the dance steps that we've learned on Wednesday(sort of like BODYJAM's layering, methinks). It wasn't that difficult to learn the additional moves once I've got Wednesday's moves right.

And again, we had to dance to "Who Do You Think You Are".... man, I feel like a Spice Boy!

Day 3 dance

Basically we've managed to learn the entire choreography for the first dance that night... unless Lex has something to add on to this week.

Tracy took over after that and we were divided into soprano, alto, tenor, bartione. Not surprisingly, I was in baritone. The good news was the guys got to sing the melody till the very end, where we sang the harmonizing part.

A few of us, including me, was still struggling with the phrasing but I am thankful that I could read the notes. Otherwise, it would be difficult to learn at home- so mom & dad did the right thing to send me to Yamaha Music School, despite me not keen on learning organ.

By the end of the night, Joe gave his pep talk again. He wanted us to learn the song over the weekend so that the next practice(today) we could do it without looking at the sheets.

Anyhow, I did my homework over the weekend and I can tell you that wifey can hum the tune already:)

Tonight we'll be practising again - hopefully I will not forget my phrasing and hopefully, I can impress Tracy and make her feel proud, coz today is her birthday!

BC 42 Launch in IOI

Last sunday was quite happening in Fitness First IOI Mall, with 3 programme launches - BODYATTACK, BODYSTEP, BODYCOMBAT.

 For me, I had the priviledge to launch BODYCOMBAT 42 with 4 other instructors.

(L-R)Jayson, moi, June, Peggy, JX(who's there as a participant), Simone

June started the ball rolling with the first 3 tracks.

our latest import from HK, popularly know as Miss 6-pack

Peggy was not supposed to be teaching that day, but we sort of have a last min arrangement.

She taught track 4 & track 5

And I took care of the next three tracks.

BC 42 theme was muay thai, hence the shorts

I would say it was a rousing success with the members flocking into the studio for all three launches. We have not experience such electricfying atmosphere on a Sunday for a while.

Jayson was entrusted to teach the conditioning track which was the Sean Kingston hit, "911".

One of the famous three Klang boys in Fitness First BODYCOMBAT team

And sweet Simone ended the class with the sweet cool down.

Wow... never realise she has a big mouth literally

I would say this is one of the few launches that I really enjoyed.

Thanks to the instructors who made it happening in all the 3 launches, and also to the members who came for whatever reason- nothing would have happened without your participation!

See you on 4 April for BC 43!!!

Happy New Decade!

Bye bye 2000s, Hello 2010s....

Looking forward to great happenings in the new year!