Quotes of the Day

When a man is wrapped up in himself, he makes a pretty small package.
- John Ruskin


The only people who find what they are looking for in life are the fault finders.
- Foster's Law


Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
- Don Marquis


If you wish to know what a man is, place him in authority.
- Yugoslav Proverb


In love, one and one are one.
- Jean-Paul Sartre

Auditions, Auditioning and Audition (the book)

I've had my first dose of being on the other side of the audition table for the first time recently, as the HR dude for The Oral Stage. They were casting for their upcoming 2 productions, Orkishly called Quikworks and Biggworks (the Biggworks play's called The Illusion, by Pierre Corneille but the adapted English version by Tony Kushner). Interestingly, not long before that I bought quite a treasure called Audition by Michael Shurtleff, quite cheap at Kinokuniya (sorry I think I bought the last copy there). And of course, not long before that I had a successful audition for Rose Rose I Love You, which I'd like to reflect on with all I've learned since.

Auditions
I'd previously heard of some producers' dislike for posting auditions on kakiseni.com . Also, I'd heard of their dislike for open auditions at all. I never quite understood why until I did myself - not so much the latter but the former. I did get a considerable amount of response from the posting - I was quite surprised how quickly some came in. For the first set of auditions, the number of people who followed-up with properly booked auditions was about 2/3rds of the number of people who made contact. And the number of people who actually showed up was about 2/3rds of that. The result at the end of the day was that about 2/3rds of those who came in were suitable for casting (note that this production was looking to take in newbies). 2/3rds of 2/3rds of 2/3rds is 29.630%, or under 30%. Having 15 decent candidates at the end of 2 days (about 8-10 hours in total) isn't the best of results. And some of the nonsense people you have to go through for these results.

Oops. I just realised that I've mentioned some of this before.

The 2nd set of auditions proved better in terms of quality. Of course, the people who came were more experienced (with an exception or two). But more of the candidates who came were through word of mouth, many of whom I've worked with before. So - people through word of mouth tend to be more eligible than through mass calling.

Interestingly, and perhaps shockingly, of all the people who got rejected only ONE asked for feedback on how to be better. Here's my response in user-friendly format:

• Keep going for auditions – the practice is good.
• Keep trying your best – casting is very subjective and sometimes it may not be a matter of ability.
• Watch plays – they provide great sources of inspiration and learning (sometimes it’s what to do, sometimes it’s what NOT to do).
• For monologues – have a couple prepared, and get them from established plays (unless you’re an amazing writer). Make them interesting, they don’t have to follow the piece that you got them from but that could serve as a guideline. Practice it, you’ve all the time in the world to prepare a monologue. By “interesting” I mean dramatically interesting – you must be heavily emotionally involved. Something must vary over the duration – your emotion could change, your tone must change, your feel, your thoughts. Your physicality may or may not vary, depending on your piece.
• For readings – much like the above, without the preparation time. You don’t have the context the piece is from, so you can do ANYTHING you want to with it. Make it interesting. Make it ridiculous. It’s all up to you, just make sure it shows what you’re capable of. For example, you could take a piece and go “1st half I’m angry with you, 2nd half I’m madly in love with you”. A useful guideline is to 1) think of all the possible ways of reading that piece, 2) choose the one that’s slightly unusual that you think you could pull off and 3) do it.
• For improvs – watch Whose Line Is It Anyway on TV and Actorlympics on stage. They’re great inspiration. Basically, you can do ANYTHING with what you’re given – a useful guide is to take the most unlikely thing (if you prefer funny) or the worst thing (if you prefer drama) and make it happen, then react to it. The key is to keep introducing events to a scene so it flows and things keep happening so you got things to react to. For example (going with the funny), the scene is “you’re about to have sex with your boyfriend and something happens”. So you ask if he has a condom, he goes “yes” and pulls out some chewing gum. You react, you start arguing. Your Dad walks in (new event). You react, now you start defending yourself. Your boyfriend reveals that your Dad is his uncle (new event). You react, shock and horror. Your Mum walks in (new event). Of course, you could choose to end it with that, depending on how long you’ve been going on. You get the idea?
  

Some lessons I've learned about how I've posted auditions on kakiseni.com:

• Make it very clear that you need to book your audition time (maybe don't even put a time there to force them to make contact)
• Minimum 20 minute slots are better - maybe 30mins is ideal (allows for breaks)
• State consequences of tardiness (if any)
• Make it clear that it's theatre

On a final note on these auditions, I think the director's choice of cast is most interesting. Not necessarily in a good way.

Audition
Picked up this book on a whim when at Kinokuniya (love the place, they need another one in a more friendly location) and thought I'd need to audition seriously well over the next few months to make sure I'm constantly performing. Even though it's old (printed in the late 70s), it kicks ass. Damned useful reference for that 30mins (or thereabouts) where you have to give it your all for that job.

It's main crux is the 12 guideposts he recommends people to follow in bringing a reading to life - Relationship, "What Are You Fighting For?" Conflict, The Moment Before, Humour, Opposites, Discoveries, Communication and Competition, Important, Find the Events, Place, "Game Playing and Role Playing" and "Mystery and Secret". Some notes on what I liked and learned:

• Ask "Where is the love?" in every scene and always find one (or a distinct lack of one). Find it in your scene-partner (or blame him/her for the lack of it) and fight for it. Love is a powerful creator of emotional commitment.
• Make things IMPORTANT. The character talks about something or is in a scene because s/he finds it important. It may be inane to you, but regardless it's life or death for your him/her.
• The desire to change someone else is very powerful and always leads to conflict between people. Use it.
• Revenge is another very very powerful emotion.
• "Ignore so-and-so" does NOT mean shutting him/her out. It an intentional means of communicating silently to get what you want.
• Limiting yourself may be the most dangerous thing to do. Always find a way to have your character do it. ie don't say "But s/he wouldn't do that!"

Aside from that, there are a great many notes and pointers about 'the little things' that make all the difference. The book's scattered with little anecdotes and examples from the writer's experiences, and it's always nice to hear of how now-greats such as Dustin Hoffman and Robert de Niro had such humble beginnings. Highly recommended.

Auditioning
My Rose Rose I Love You audition turned out quite nicely in that I almost didn't go, thinking it'd be too soon after Tunku. Very happy I went, as I landed a supporting lead role with my name on the postcard (and in the papers - NST's Streets p8 20th Oct)! Wahey and happiness!!! I had a great audition, though I'm not quite sure what cinched it for me. Definitely it's an overall thing - a decent amount of skill and talent and a healthy dose of confidence and self-worth. Let's see if I can compile a list of what worked:

• Not getting intimidated by a room full of Girl Power
• Not caring that I wasn't listened to after a minute of "Tell us about yourself" (I didn't ramble on, just waited as they were obviously deciding on something)
• Going in wanting to give them my shining best
• Singing like I just didn't care

What didn't work:

• Not being daring enough with my reading (I read for a lead role but didn't take enough time or create enough physicality where relevant)
• Not sufficiently different between my 1st and 2nd reading

I think I should have asked for a minute or two to just skim through the script to get a better idea of the scene. Perhaps even asked the context. In the end, absolutely no regrets. I got far more than I expected to, and am working with such a different group that the experience alone is invaluable.

Thanks, guys.

Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts

The minute I heard that this was out, I had to get it. Anyone who plays Real-Time Strategies (RTSes) would have at the very least heard of Company of Heroes (CoH), though whether or not one likes it is a different matter. It's a squad-based strategy game that's set in the World War 2 era, where getting resources for your armies was done by capturing points on the battlefield itself (and they're all usually between yourself and your opponent). None of that 'build miner' 'tell miner to dig gold in my backyard' business - your soldiers are out there earning your money for you, to build more soldiers to earn more money for you, kicking opponent ass all in the meantime.

Now CoH is Axis vs Allies, Axis being German obviously (erm Italian army, anyone?? Click 'special abilities' - 'deploy reinforcements to wrong country') but the Allies being Americans (hooo yah go GIs! Hey they speak funny here in France!) - with CoH Opposing Fronts (CoHOF), it's Panzer Elites (German special forces kinda dudes) vs British. I've only played halfway but it's quite a different playstyle here, with things happening at a more micro-intensive level. Lots of little buttons to kick more butt here, be more kickass there. Less variety of infantry but more variety of vehicles - lots more smaller vehicles, and then lots more very big vehicles (each side's got a new mother artillery piece) and then some variants on the medium-sized ones.

Overall, I'm loving it so far. It adds so much to the game, and of course their original engine was so brilliant, 'more of the same' can't go wrong. I'd luuuurve to play the new armies vs the old ones just to see the new balance, but unfortunately our cyber cafes are STILL filled with the same old shit - DotA, CS, DotA, occasional WoW, and DotA. Ugh hairy bollocks.
Some technical issues though:
1. I first bought pariah at 1U for RM30 (it's 2 DVD5s) but it didn't work. I changed it but it still didn't work. So I bought original (I wanted to put it off until they had a double-set) and THAT has its own set of problems. But buy original.

2. When you first run the game, it'll go online and check for patches, then ask you to patch. The first patch is 135MB (or so). If you cannot wait for such nonsense and are dying to play (single player, since for online you MUST have the patch), disconnect your internet before starting the game. Then it'll ask you for your DVD to verify it. Note that it MUST be in your first DVD drive (yes the software is dumb) - if not, disconnect the rest to make sure it finds the right drive.

3. If you decide to patch, and decide against the in-game downloader, you can go here to get the patch. Or Google for it, there are a few games sites that hosts the patches. If you get the following problem:
(that reads Error code 10077:00000070) it really DOES mean you don't have enough space.
I had 4GB spare when I got this (multiple multiple times). Empty, clean, destroy; until you have about 8GB. I'm serious. It's a great game but the software for 1) authenticity verification and 2) patching are as dumbass as dumbassedness goes.

4. Any other problems (and from the looks of it there are some), go to the Relic forums. They tend to be very good there.

5. Problems IN the game? Well, practice! The Relic forums above are a good guide to strategies and other help. Another favourite of mine is GameFAQs.

Extras:
A. This thread is a Technical FAQ from the Relic forums, but has one bit of very useful info: if, for any reason, you install CoHOF before CoH, you can't install CoH (it'll say you've already got it). To play CoH, all you have to do it run CoHOF, click 'Add Product' and input your CoH CD-Key.

B. You can unlock another 2v2 map called Bedum by adding a registry key using regedit. The map is a special unlock available to Best Buy customers (which we don't have in Malaysia) but this adds it for anyone else to play with. Instructions:

• Open regedit
• Press Ctrl-F and search for "THQ"
• When you find the THQ entry look for Company of Heroes and select it. If you see an entry called "CoHOFProductKey" in the right pane you have the right registry entry.
• Right click and add a new "String Value" called "CoHOFRetailerContentKey" and in the data field for that key type in 4B9E-488D-B797
• The direct path in XP and Vista 32 bit is [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\THQ\C­ ompany of Heroes]

Alternatively, if you see this BEFORE installing CoHOF, you can just add the key (4B9E etc) into that funny Retailer Key box during installation.
What can I say. CoH kicks ass, CoHOF does too. Go get it!

PersonalDNA calls me a Dynamic Director

If you're curious (it's lengthy), my personalDNA Report. It posts on your Facebook profile if you want it there, clever stuff.

The short version:

Dynamic Director

These tests are always interesting, aren't they? Sometimes as a guide to where you are (as compared to where you think you are, or where you'd like to be), ofttimes as a guide to how other people see themselves. "Agency", to save you some serious clicking, refers to how much one believes one is responsible for one's life. ie High = I create all my own results, Low = God/the world/luck/fate is out to get me.

It's a really cleverly done test though, so I'd recommend it if you've time. No multiple-choice nonsense, it's all slidey bars and graphs and stuff. Check it out!

Quick funnies

Came across this entertaining blog:
the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks
which is funny for anal people like me (in reference to punctuation).

Which led directly to this rather ridiculous one:
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century
yes. It IS as WTF as it sounds.

If you haven't seen it, this one's always entertaining:
I Can Has Cheez Burger?
where cats are actually funny and cute. Well, its the captions that come with them that are funny. Por esempio:

more funny pictures

AND they make it easy to take pics from there, too! Instant code to paste.

Small worldness

I go to a primary schoolmate's wedding dinner at the Renaissance Hotel, sit myself down at a table and, being the friendly guy that I am, start introducing myself to the people on the table (of which there were 3 when I arrived). 2 of which I already knew from 2 decades ago (3rd one's the wife). Sheesh.

Nice nice catchup catchup, and turns out that one of them (primary schoolmate)'s cousin was in Tunku. Playing Malik. The other one of them's cousin was in Enemy of the People, and Six Characters Looking For An Author.

Small world 2 - Big world 0.


I go outside for a drink, I greet the groom and who does he introduce me to? A dude from my secondary school, who I re-met through Facebook and is old family friends with the groom. I look around, and who do I see? Rashid Salleh, being MC of the night, who knows the groom through the dad through the rugby club.

Small world 4 - 0.


Halfway through the night, I bump into another secondary schoolmate, who knows the groom through their siblings. No, my primary and secondary schools are very different.

Small world 5 - 0.


She's involved with her family business which is interestingly to do with recycling. Seriously Plastic, apparently (no idea where Beranang is though). After my compulsory "why aren't you doing more in Malaysia"-type interrogation, turns out that, as with many more-advanced things here, our infrastructure is incomplete.

As a mini side-note, we've done wonderfully well in terms of basic modern society infrastructure and we're keeping it up pretty well. Seriously. Transportation, waste management, plumbing, electricity, legislature, governmental, political, etc - all present and decent (just about, for some). Our concerns are very much more developed-country nowadays - human rights, animal rights, freedom of speech, freedom of press, etc. Malaysia's Level 4 in Maslow's pyramid man, pretty damn good over 50 years. Not saying that we should stop or anything, just that we have it good and we can still have it all better. Ok rah-rah side-note done.

So her company takes in all the scrap plastic and makes new stuff out of it. So noble eh. Thing is, we don't have a sufficient collection system here, so there's limited supply locally - and her company IMPORTS SCRAP PLASTIC. Container-loads of used plastic from Europe and shit. Can you imagine? Affluent Malaysia, with take-aways in plastic bags, kopi ais in plastic bags, tau foo far in plastic containers, shopping malls with hundreds of people carting away loads of plastic every day, sited in a region of billions of people hastily adopting American consumer mentality - and we're buying Europeans' waste plastic?!?

Mind boggling.


The good news is, this status quo won't last for long. Some people are already collecting plastic, and soon it'll be crazy not to do it. Imagine - people give you their scrap plastic for free, all you gotta do it collect it and deliver to these recyclers. It's all about logistics. Then, regionally. We've got some very populous neighbours who are developing rapidly.

Malaysia, Green Capital of South-East Asia.


Sexy, innit? Question is, why not?

The world's too small to not care.

Rose Rose I Love You

Set in post-war Malaya during the 1950's, "Rose Rose I Love You" follows the lives of a travelling troupe of performers, each struggling just to make it. The performers nightly earnings are dictated by applause - the more they get, the more they earn.

Needless to say, they stop at nothing to outdo each other at every performance. All that glitters is not gold, and likewise the glamour of being an entertainer does come with a flip side, and can indeed be a double-edged sword...

Though "Rose Rose I Love You" is inspired by the life and times of Rose Chan, the legendary cabaret queen of Malaya, the characters in the show are a representation of a composite of people the writers have come across, in some way or another, in their lives.

"Rose Rose I Love You" is written by Yim Mei Choo and Low Ngai Yuen and features a stellar cast consisting of Tin Tan, Carmen Soo, Tony Eusoff, KK Wong, Maria Yasmin Domingo Amon, Zalina Lee, Gan Hui Yee, Ho Soon Yoon, Lim Tiong Wooi, Johann Lim, Kerry-Ann Khoo, Bella Rahim and The Stilletos comprising Angie Teoh, Anrie Too and Colleen Daphne Chung, amongst others.

With musical direction by Penny Low and choreography by Loke Soh Kim. Presented by Integrated Expressions.

[from the kakiseni.com entry]

When?
2nd-4th & 9th-11th November 2007

Where?
Genting International Showroom

What time?
8.30pm

How much?
RM68, RM88, RM118
*10% off for Astro subscribers
*15%off for Genting WorldCard members
*limited student concessions available, RM38 - limited to 2 tickets per student card (hunt down Sharon @ 012 396 2840 or Cindy @ 012 292 3803)

For general tickets/enquiries call 03-2718 1118.
----------------------------------
NB: Both Sunday 4th and 11th shows (8.30pm) are SOLD OUT. However, we will have an additional 3pm show.
-----------------------------------

Check out the blog here and win free tickets!

Quote of the Day

The world is round; it has no point.

- Adrienne E. Gusoff

Into the final quarter

Yes yes it's been too long. Maybe I've been too scared to face my thoughts, my reflections. Maybe I just haven't had time, running around desperately making this wonderful life of mine work.

Responsible citizenship

So let's start with being a good Malaysian. Save our judiciary (oh dammit requires a Facebook account). Ok this one's good too. Check it out, e-mail the dude, sign the petition.

Moving on to being a good Earthling. Join the protest against Burmese (Myanmarese?) tyrannical crackdowns. According to my Dad, 50 years ago Burma was ahead of Malaysia. HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED. That's what 20 years of military dictatorship does to your country.

Just to add to that note, Sri Lanka was ahead of us 50 years ago too. Now's what happens when civil war doesn't end. The Philippines were ahead of us 30 years ago (in fact, even ahead of Japan). Now's what happens when corruption is rife, and military coups come by every so often. Are we fucking lucky? Hell yes. We have it so damn good here, we have to compare against the best in the world to get upset.

Of course it's no bed of roses, but we're actively making things better (start with that petition). And we generally fight hard against overly dumbass behaviour. So, so far so good.

Life's a stage...

... and the stage is my life. In a nutshell - Tunku's over, rocked. Next up, Rose Rose I Love You (blog here). Yay, first supporting lead role! Name on postcard!! KICKASS!!!

Possible Christmas event at a shopping mall, to be confirmed in a week or so. Little dance sketch at the end of this month, which I'll find out more about soonish. Possibly stage managing a KLPac production in Dec. Possibly directing a short play I wrote, in 6 months; more info when 1) the play's written and 2) I know more.

Helping out The Oral Stage with setting up auditions for their 2 forthcoming productions (a triple-bill in end Nov and The Illusion by Pierre Cornielle in mid Dec) and managing their people database. I so love that kind of data. The Illusion's audition will be this Saturday, which should be an interesting and fun day. Interested, e-mail people.theoralstage@gmail.com to book an audition.

Their auditions last weekend was most enlightening. It was posted on kakiseni and sent out to friends of TOS, with a reasonable turnout. Some of the characters that turn up, wow. It's quite an experience sitting on the other side of an audition table. After the event, I went nerdy on the results and seems that 67 was quite a key number.
- Percentage of people who booked auditions from the number of contacts: 67%.
- Percentage of people who turned up for the audition after booking: 67%.
- Percentage of people who can possibly act from the turn-ups: 67% (by my generous estimate).

Invaluable experience, in terms of both sides of the table. I understand better why people can be hesitant about open auditions. I also see better what works and what doesn't work as an auditionee. Funnily enough, the person who irritated me the most was not the person who rambled pointlessly like he loved the sound of his own voice, but the person who took too damn long to do everything. Tell us about yourself: 3 minute answer (avg time being 1 min). Perform your monologue: 1 min to start it, 1 min to restart it, can't remember if I stopped him after 3 mins. Perform the readings: 1-2 mins to start each (of 3) readings. Do improv: 1 min to prepare, 1 min to restart. Holy shit fuck off my stage!

Another interesting point is feedback. I've been dying to give some feedback on what they could do better, but I'm reserving it for people with the initiative to ask. So far, only a few people (who know me) have asked. C'mon, sure it's hard to hear that you sucked, but don't you wanna know how NOT to suck at the next audition?

Money makes the world go round...

... and my world revolves around making enough to sustain this journey of mine. To be self-sufficient. To be able to shove it into someone's face and go - see, I did it, now go away and don't presume to tell me what to do!

Unfortunately, Tunku took a toll on my Agel and I've yet to get that engine running again. I've recently finished reading Timothy Ferriss' brilliant Four-Hour Workweek, and I'm so inspired. Been scrounging around for ideas for an automated information business, anyone with potential ideas and a desire to be more in this life give me a yell.

But thinking about all this people database thing, I've just been thinking about having some kind of actor's database here. A one-stop destination for actors, directors and producers to find each other, something superior to what kakiseni currently has. It would maintain good, clean records that ensures a certain standard to the applicants. No more "I'm a singer... for the tone-deaf club". Could it work? Not financially, but as a service for the community. Hmmm must test.

The written word

Just finished Mitch Albom's For One More Day. Brilliant brilliant brilliant. It's my first Mitch Albom, and I finished it in under 24 hours (I think). Simple, poignant, tear-jerking. I try to apply it to myself, to see what lessons I can learn from it and be personally changed by it... but I just can't. There just aren't those moments in my life. I don't know lah.

Through a magnificent series of fortunate events, I landed myself with a freelance writing job... for a marketing e-zine. Pays amazingly well for a relatively short article - I just hope my marketing bullshitting skills are up to par. Done the main article, just gotta review a book called Leadership Brand. Life is good.

Working on a short script for production next year. Working on a musical for production... sometime in my life? Well the theatres are practically packed for the next 12 months so I suppose it'll have to continue on slow-motion. Anyway we'll see.

So I semi-recently wrote a tech article on Aggregators, and had to do some research on it. To cut things really short, check out Google Reader (it'd help more if you had a Google Account). Put in the URLs (links) of all the blogs you read, and it's a one-stop centre for all your blog-reading needs! Handy stuff... except that I've put too many in there and I can't keep up. :P If you've already added blogs as your Firefox as Live Bookmarks, fret not: check out this OPML exporter extension that allows you to export all those Live Bookmarks and then you can import them into Reader (or another Aggregator out there). If you don't know what the hell I just said last sentence, ignore it - your life won't be made better by understanding it, trust me.

Another funky thing I used recently was Gmail (excuse me - Google Mail)'s Vacation Responder. Now it's a brilliant thing to use at the office (thanks Tim Ferriss), and for e-mail addresses for specific functions. I used it for the Oral Stage auditions - it'd just respond to every mail answering FAQs or asking for the relevant info I needed. It's in Settings, the General tab. However, if you encounter problems using it, this thread will help.

Enough seriousness

Indeed. Couple of colleagues from Tunku performed for Reshmonu's MTV - The Way It Makes You Move. Check it out on YouTube. Pretty good video, looks like good production quality. Don't know about Reshmonu himself endlessly swimming.

Now THIS you have to check out for the cleverness of technology. Coolness.

My self-definition of Metrosexual:

Walking into Body Shop wanting to buy a loofah ("bath lily" in Body Shop talk) and walking out spending 10 times as much, with a moisturizer ("clarifying night treatment") and a mask ("3-in-1 deep cleansing mask") in the bag. Sheesh.

fin

Yeah I'm done. About bloody time eh. Quotes coming up!