Five Arts Centre returns with a show bridging the gap between generations

Eight years ago, veteran playwright Leow Puay Tin co-organised a three-day workshop about research and documentation for art practitioners.

The sessions were facilitated by Professor Mohd Anis Md Nor, from the Cultural Centre (School of Performing Arts) in Universiti Malaya, who was a passionate storyteller.

Leow was so enamoured by the professor’s thought-provoking musings that she embarked on a year-long journey to piece together Anis’ lectures into a performance script called Cakap Dapur: R&D Stories.

The one-man show was performed and directed by Penang-based theatre practitioner/director Chee Sek Thim at the Damansara Performing Arts Centre in 2015.

Funny and insightful, Cakap Dapur was Leow’s way of bringing the real life Anis character to the stage. But Leow felt that Cakap Dapur was still academic in tone. She admits a revision was necessary but life got in the way.

After shelving it for some time, Leow finally began her revision last year and says “it soon became obvious the monological form was not working.”

Being the sharp playwright that she is, she decided to introduce another character into the story, a struggling twenty-something actor-singer-songwriter.

That’s the story behind Oppy & Professor Communitas (Oppy), Leow’s latest play presented by Five Arts Centre.

'Both are angry and disgruntled men who don’t see eye to eye when they first meet up,' says Leow about the characters in her new show. Photo: The Star/Faihan Ghani

Directed by playwright/theatre director Fasyali Fadzly, the online performance will be streamed live from Five Arts Centre in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, Kuala Lumpur via digital theatre platform CloudTheatre on April 2 and 3.

The two-hour (ticketed) play, which will be presented in English and a side of Bahasa Malaysia, features Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri and Iefiz Alaudin.

Supported by Yayasan Sime Darby and Cultural Economy Development Agency (Cendana), Oppy combines live performance as well as videos created by multimedia designer Syamsul Azhar.

Working together again

This show is not Fasyali and Leow’s first creative partnership. In 2019, Fasyali directed Leow’s The Carer’s Monologue & Chorus (2019) and Are You Game (Sau)dara? (2019), which was inspired by the playwright’s critically acclaimed 1998 play Three Children.

Despite the cultural and generational gap, Fasyali, a theatre studies lecturer at KL’s Akademi Seni Budaya Dan Warisan Kebangsaan (Aswara), has always been drawn to Leow’s works.

“She has her own way of presenting her ideas and stories which is very unique. And this challenges my approach in directing, ” says Fasyali.

Oppy is set at a weekend workshop for arts practitioners where the two main characters encounter one another as participant and trainer.

Oppy (Iefiz) is a happy-go-lucky young man who is feeling stuck as a freelance actor. The Trainer (Faiq), who breaks all the rules about being nice to people at workshops, is an ageing professor who wants to teach people like Oppy a disciplined approach to making great works of art.

Suspicious of anything that could make him lose his freedom as an artist and an individual, Oppy resists the older man’s teachings. But along the way, he also begins to wonder if he is missing out on something.

“The tensions between the two characters are not really generational in nature. They are both cut from the same cloth.

“Both are angry and disgruntled men who don’t see eye to eye when they first meet up, ” says Leow, an associate professor at Sunway University’s Department of Film and Performing Arts.

Faiq plays the cranky professor in 'Oppy & Professor Communitas'. Photo: Five Arts Centre

In this show, the older man is someone who romanticises the past, a time where things were more tolerant and humane.

“But what remains unchanged for him are the wonderful and powerful moments of ‘communitas’ when ordinary people come together spontaneously of their own accord to make and share something meaningful together through dance and music and other performances, ” explains Leow.

Oppy on the other hand is going through a life crisis. He feels like a perpetual outsider.

“He represents the younger set of arts practitioners, caught between having to earn a living and holding on to a sense of purpose as an artist in a society where the arts are absent from everyday life, ” elaborates Leow.

The arts and life

Fasyali, who got his theatre training from UiTM in 2010, and a masters of fine art from University of Calgary (Canada) in 2015, mentions that the themes explored in the play such as contestations for power, the longing for belonging and the healing powers of the arts, are very close to his heart.

“It is my everyday struggle too. As a young artist and educator, my students always ask me how to be a good artist; they ask a lot of difficult questions which I don’t even have an answer to.

“This play offers wisdom and ways of thinking differently. But more importantly, this play resonates with me not just as an artist and educator, but what it means to be a Malay man in Malaysia, ” says Fasyali, who published his collection of plays called Teater Juta-Juta last year.

Fasyali says staging an online play comes with its own set of challenges and required him to learn new ways to present the story. Photo: Fasyali Fadzly

Oppy is Fasyali’s second online production after he directed Singaporean playwright Alfian Sa’at’s Causeway last August. He says staging a show virtually is not an easy task.

“The main challenge is definitely not being able to come together in the studio to rehearse. By going online, we lose the immediacy and physical interactions.

“I also had to learn new ways of presenting ideas with limited space. I needed to add more visuals to the storytelling.

"I would say, it is like a combination of film and theatre production but emphasising the theatrical aspect and discipline, ” says Fasyali.

Oppy is part of Leow’s four new performance texts which she began working on since 2019 with The Carer’s Monologue & Chorus.

They are a departure from her earlier works such as A Modern Woman Called Ang Tau Mui and Family, which are more autobiographical in origin.

“For instance, The Carer’s Monologue & Chorus is about the elderly Other, where age, and not gender or culture, is the ‘Othering’ element, ” says Leow.

The playwright will be working on the remaining two scripts. One will be about Japan, using materials from Leow’s fellowship there, and the other is about our ancient cultural past as a human race.

She says for her new works, she is consciously seeking out new collaborators through the Five Arts Centre circles and theatre practitioner/researcher Mark Teh.

“I want to cross some language and cultural boundaries. I want to work with a younger set of the Malay-language theatre people who also are looking for collaborations.

"Through such work, I hope to reach an audience beyond the English-language audience that I am used to, ” she concludes.

Oppy & Professor Communitas will stream on CloudTheatre (cloudtheatres.com). Show dates: April 2 (8.30pm) and April 3 (3pm and 8.30pm). Ticket prices: RM15, RM25 and RM50. Facebook: Five Arts Centre.