4 posts tagged “ashley”
Another year has come and gone, and around the time February decides to take a twelve-month long vacation, the SEA Forensics tournament at ISKL happenth. Thirty years in now, this edition of the much-revered annual speech/debate/acting competition sees a great number of changes.
A lot of clashing of opinions were placed on the fact that it seemed that the ISKL Forensics admins were trying to sneakily shift Forensics into a "Speech/Debate/Acting" tournament with a generic name ("The SEA Tournament"), and this was a focal point of dislike for many longtime people, who thought this was some sort of Conspiracy Of Change. Me, I didn't worry too much, but I did like the name Forensics, you know? It gives a sort of class to it, since in Malaysia we don't have anything of that type.
Big-O-Vision for the Tournament.
The honored Jim Kem, him of photography and extended-family, joined us after some months of begging. It's awesome having him over. It kinda makes the Sri Inai entourage a bit bigger, y'know? Beloved English teacher Cik Roges was coach this time, and for the most part, our scripts were much better than last year or even those years before.
As I did in 2007, I was judging again, though I didn't have the bonus of being super-young like I was last year - "I wuz only sixteen last yeah, dincha know?". Judged about six times this time around - twice Solo Acting, Oral Interpretation, Extemporaneous Speaking, Original Oratory mostly.
With the help of judge coordinator and wholly-nice-guy Michael O'Brien as well as some careful prodding on my part, I was also able to judge finals. C'est dream come true. Did the OI finals. More about that as I get into the story.
Roslyn and Aween preparing in the early-mornings of SEA. This pair-up was probably the best they've both had. Their piece this year was very damned good: a shame they didn't get too far. They deserved Semifinals, at least, and seeing the rather depressing quality of certain semifinalists, I'm surprised no judge actually gave Roslyn a chance.
Some manner of congregating in the middle of the ISKL chamber.
We had Jim take most of the photos, and as a result, he's hardly in any of them. However: here's a shot of his feet by Danielle.
But then again, she also took this photo.
And this one, too.
It's safe to say she likes shoes.
This was the OI preliminary round, where Danny and Jim came over to watch me judge. Some quality there, but nothing outstanding, y'know? At least I didn't have screamers. Some rooms were so full of screaming. I was judging in room 307, and in room 306 I could hear bloodcurdling screams.
I actually like this photo very much. It looks like I'm doing work. Photo credit: Danielle.
I really, really liked Aween + Roslyn's performance this year. It's their best ever. This was the first day, and they got a 1/3 to reward their efforts. Even though that's Roslyn's best ever score, she still spent most of her time whining about how mean the judge who gave her a 3 was. I agree. Her adjudication sheet was completely empty except for the number "3", and the sentence "Good choice of script." As a two-term judge (alleged "one of the more experienced ones", too) I've always had a strong belief that judges should give as much information to the contestants as much possible.
I came up with a continuation of my 2007 judging system, which involved copious amounts of non-mathematics, giant ticks to reveal bits I liked, and tiny minus signs on parts I thought could do some work. Hopefully the contestants I judged would see my comments as constructive criticism. Also, I implemented my Big Word Verdict: a single giant word at the bottom left corner to summarize what I thought of their performance.
My personal favorite Big Word was what I gave for this KTJ girl who did a Roald Dahl poem in the finals:
MALICIOUS!
Also, at some point or another, under some strange influence I gave the big word to someone doing a speech with:
SLOVENIA!
Nope, I can't remember why, but I distinctly recall mentioning that the skiing is nice there.
My last judging session on the first day was Solo Acting, and my last performance there was by Hong Kong International School's Roahan Kapoor, who performed a rather-very-controversial piece from Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues.
The magic of YouTube means I can share it with you. In all honesty, I marked it down, and maybe you'll get why. In any case, he added me on Facebook, so we must be cool, ey? IT BETTER BE. Video here. See the guy in black sitting in front of the camera on the left side of the frame? That's me.
I can't thank the person who recorded this enough.
Ashley and Danielle hard at practice. Now: happy part. Ashley and Danielle, Sri Inai's first semifinalists since Amirul B Ruslan, made it to the final this year! Their piece, Anything For You by Kathy Celesia is generally remembered as "that lesbian one". It was really, extremely awesome, and I'm not just saying it out of bias. Very awesome, though their finals performance was not as stellar as their second preliminary round.
OK, they're not really kissing, but Jim planned this shot so it would take this exact angle. Photo credit: Jim.
Among my personal favorite portraits now: Jim brought sunglasses he said was his "Morpheus" ones (which I think you'll agree is quite similar), and I was wearing them all day. I wasn't the only one, too. Ashley did as well, but where I looked like Morpheus, she looked like an out-of-place poet.
Also: if you read this blog, you've probably heard the name Samantha being bandied about many times, both as a person as well as the legendary blog-commenter "mysterioussphinx". After about a year of knowing her, I've finally had the chance to meet her. It was fairly good, too.
The long-awaited picture. I don't like me in this photo one bit, honestly. The shirt - I dinnae like the shirt.
Whilst my boasts of being a "coach" had been dismissed quickly by her (my input for her SEA Forensics career involved harassing her into auditioning and contesting, as well as throwing piles of books at her - Only Revolutions and The Whalestoe Letters being a few of them -, oh! And rewriting her speech, only to have her discard it and keep her original)
To be honest, Samantha: I liked my version better.
Even if yours did win Bronze for OO.
To complete the trifecta, here's a voyeury shot of me and her sitting together at the Original Oratory and Duet Acting finals. It was our first full chance to have a long chat ever, even if it involved tedious amounts of You Are A Man And Thus You Victimize Me feminist slants. See, there was somebody giving a Men = Victimizers speech. My personal favorite OO piece, Samantha's aside, was the Facebook speech by HKIS student Isabella Litke.
The finals itself: Ashley/Danny's performance wasn't as good - personally, to me - because they fumbled a few lines, and drastically shortening it, probably out of nervousness, but still among the best I've ever seen. A common quote on their adjudication sheets would be "Best chemistry I've ever seen in this tournament", and I agree.
The awards ceremony came. Ashley/Danny, the only reason we stuck around for the finals, didn't win a medal, but did get a nice-shiny "2" score from one of the five judges. As mentioned previously, Samantha won Bronze for her speech, and her school Kolej Tuanku Ja'afar went on to win huge amounts of medals.
With the 2004+ Sri Inai Forensics bunch (Roslyn, Zayaana, me, Aween, Ashley, Danielle) now ineligible for future years as performers, I've actually suggested to coach Cik Roges to stop sending a Sri Inai team, so we could quit while we're ahead.
If I can do any guessing, it's going to be a long, long, long way to go before we see a Forensics team as close and Forensics-worshipping as our team. It's the end of a generation.
But at least I'll get the chance to watch from the sidelines as a judge.
So it's the first day of March, a Saturday no less, and the entire Sri Inai community (all six of us! Plus one. Or two. Whatever) has communed to align our destinations toward the International School of Kuala Lumpur, the first such visit since the always-good-but-this-year-slightly-less-emotional SEA Forensics 2008 tournament, which had ended just last Saturday. Complimentary tickets were procured with the help of the ever-helpful Mr. Alan McLean.
I took photos of the Dance portion of that night, so here it is in Preview Mode, before I foist upon you the miracles of Big-O-Vision.
But! Back to the topic at hand.
ISKL was hosting two shows running on what I believe was billed as "IASAS Dance/Drama". To avoid me using overly wordy words that end up taking much of my sentences, as is seen in this current one, I'll try to limit my obvious word-text-communication excitement. The Drama bit, which played first, was a retelling of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, performed under the name The Further Adventures Of Amanda And Her Children. It is my deepest regret to announce to you that I had not taken any photos of the very well-performed play. You can use that admission to hit me on my head multiple times, though preferably not enough to induce incapacitation.
AMANDA AND HER CHILDREN
Photo: Amanda and Her Children: the programme's cover. Starring Elissa Daniels, Marcus Friend, Synnove Eriksen (can I just take a moment to declare my undying love for your first name Synnove? So awesome), and Amrit Sharan, the play was split into two halves - a dramatic and suitably moody version of Tennessee Williams' work; followed by a second half with a more humorous approach, adapted from Christopher Durang's parody For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls, itself a parody of The Glass Menagerie (I happen to know all this because my brain is so crammed full of drama knowledge... or perhaps through Wikipedia). The combination worked to create an atmospheric dynamic, with evocative costumes, a lush set, and extremely professional lighting.
The inclusion of the delightfully funny second half really helped me get my mood up; Williams' work never ceases to depress me.
Extremely well-acted by all four members of the cast, it's a slight shame that the character of Tom lacks an overt humorous side to him in the second half: everybody else has. Eriksen's Amanda gains a more pronounced sarcasm having to deal with her two sons; Daniels' Ginny is the core of the second half's laughs with the recurring gag of her deafness and her lesbianism; and Sharan's Laurence is just absolutely delightful in his portrayal of tragic, exaggerated hypochondriac Laurence.
All this was fit into a highly memorable roughly-forty-five minutes at the Robert B. Gaw theatre, followed by a fifteen minute interlude.
The big three posters in the center were the very exciting promotional posters for Amanda and Her Children, though in hindsight I want to accuse whomever made this awesome set of misleading me. There was absolutely no flying during the show whatsoever.
INTERLUDE
Jim was there, too, and strangely, he is not seen in any of the 60+ photos taken all night. He's so invisible I'm beginning to suspect he doesn't exist, and is solely a figment of my imagination.
FARRAGO: A CONFUSED MIXTURE OF THINGS
Oh! What I meant to say was, it's great being... oh, screw that, why don't you just stare at the photos, and imagine that you're receiving some highly erudite word-text-communication from me regarding artistry and dance.
I'd give this a score, but then again, spending all one's time watching people dance with pulchritudinous grace, staring at eloquent lighting, and, uh, nudging Jim into taking photos of me is more fun than you can usually have with the lights on... Oh wait, the lights were off, it's a bloody theatre.
Now here I am bemoaning my absolute lack of word-text-communications in the category of Dancing, probably something I'd attribute to my own Dexterity rating of 0.
POST-DRAMA/DANCE ELATION
====
So there you go, my first long post since returning from the Eastern Provinces.
(and no, Mom, by "Eastern" I actually mean, "so far East, it's across the sea!")
My sincerest apologies for not dishing out a Forensics or Paul's Kuching Adventure (more about that later) post yet, but rest assured: it... will... happen.
Roslyn, dearest of all my friends - sorry, I've been playing Max Payne 2 - celebrated her sixteenth birthday recently. Her party, a truly surprising surprise, was a major major thing yesterday. My parents secretly booked her and her friends Aween, Ashley, Nissa and Zayaana a hotel room at the rather nice Berjaya Times Square hotel. Friday night was told to Roslyn to be just a simple birthday dinner, at DOME, but with some skillful (or not so skillful) disguising by the parents, they brought her up to the room under the guise of meeting one of Dad's "friends", only to be surprised by the said friends.
I rushed from class to Times Square, a treacherous journey that included three different types of public transportation, made especially treacherous because of my bad eyesight (I had foolishly left my glasses at home this week).
So here are photos from Big-O-Vision (tm). Meanwhile, music plug!
And this here, thus, is Big-O-Vision.
Too lazy. Will post more later.
====
Today I must have walked more distance than I do normally. Me and Roslyn, plus Ashley and Aween, went to the finals of the National Cheerleading Championship, Cheer 2007, and here is what I come back with: