By Puteri BalkishÂ
GOMBAK, 25 October 2016 – Four production houses, Juragan Pentas, Notorious Playhouse, K Production and All Nighter Production House went head to head against each other for the title of the champion of #ETS16.
The competition went on for two days, on 16 and 17 October, at the Main Auditorium.
The emcees for both nights were Umar Abdul Aziz b. Azizi and Kautsar Alia Mazlan, third year students of BENL. The show started with the recitation of du’a to ensure that the event runs smooth.
The line of distinguished judges were Jamal Raslan, a veteran in the KL spoken word community, Abdul Raouf, a regular in the theatre scene (there was one point where he was doing almost all the events in IIUM) and Kak Shan a.k.a Liana Shazni, an experienced lecturer in theatrical arts at IIUM as well as Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.
The competition was segregated into two days, the first day with performances by K Production and Notorious Playhouse and the second day with performances by Juragan Pentas and All Nighter Production House. The plays focused around the theme Confession.
On the first day, they commemorated the show with an opening speech by the Programme Manager, Atika Asram, a third year second semester student from ECONS.
K Production was the first to perform. Directed by Fathiah Salehhudin, they came out with the play, ‘I Do. But…” which is a love story revolving around a man, by the name of Amar (played by Amar Syahin) who found himself falling for a lady out of his league, who is the daughter of Tan Sri Syed Amin (played by Amirul Amin), a known businessman. He comes from an average, middle-class, conservative Muslim family and was brought up by a single mother, Cik Yan (played by Zur’ain Harun).
The conflict arises when they decided to secure the knot in holy matrimony and had to instead face rejection and disagreement from their families and friends, Sam and Muhaimin (played by Syamsul Kamal and Muhaimin DZ).
Unfortunately, the odds were against them and the spark that once kept their love alive is burning them into flames. How did they juggle between meeting their parents’ expectations, reputations and values and retaining their friendships? The play certainly appeared like a cliché Malay drama in description but it certainly grabbed the hearts of the audience throughout the whole play.
Next, Notorious Playhouse performed Mindwars directed by Firzana Redzuan, which has Kamal (played by Amirul Rashad) as the pivot. He is a school dropout and would go all ends to ensure his family’s happiness. Then, an unexpected guest made an appearance in his life to disturb his family and got murdered unintentionally. He attempted to deplete the evidence completely and hide the incident. In the end, their happiness is retained as the police could not find any evidence linking towards the murder. This particular play was mind-boggling and it got the audience questioning a lot about the next oncoming scene.
Moving on, on the next day, the show began with a play by Juragan Pentas titled Happy, directed by ArRasyideen Abd. Halim, which circulates around Daniel (played by Mirza Mokhtar), husband to Sarah (played by Nor Afiqah) who is apparently an avid shopaholic. They are a newlywed couple and Daniel, being the breadwinner for the family, just got fired.
The play surfaced around sorting out their problems, letting all of their emotions out and that led them to finding out that Sarah was pregnant with Syakirah (played by Mawar Mutiara). Fifteen years after, it turns out that Daniel was just reminiscing because he misses Sarah and Sarah actually died at childbirth. This particular play brought me to tears and was executed very well.
On the other hand, All Nighter Production House, directed by Nur Izzati Hamdan, performed the Perfect Life, focusing on Peter’s dream (played by Fazirul Aqmal) where he envisioned his wife, Carol (played by Sheera Shaheera) quitting her job to dedicate her time to him.
Also, he aspires his son to be the top student, his mother close to him as she looks after him from a distance, his co-workers being supportive to an extent where he gets constant promotions, to be praised by his supervisor. In his thoughts, he craves for everyone else to divert their priorities towards him, to satisfy his wants and needs.
Since the reality contradicts with his aspirations to have ‘the perfect life’, he came with a diabolical plan to slaughter all of them. Without a doubt, his decisions backfired on him and he sits in the asylum rummaging through his thoughts with the realisation of what a big mistake he has done.
The reveal of Unknown (played by Sarah Naqibah) as his unborn child gave him a big slap on the face and proves that with any actions taken, the circumstances would haunt him. This bawls back to the thought of to what extent we would actually go to achieve things.
This particular play definitely pulsated into the souls of the audience, opening up the varied dimensions of their thoughts. Its was nerve-wrecking to be a part of the audience.
Juragan Pentas with ‘Happy’ emerged as the champion, winning the grand prize of RM300 and the judges’ choice as the Best Script, followed by K Production with ‘I Do. But…’ at the second place overall with RM200, and the judges’ choice as to having the Best Props, the Best Actor (Amar Syahin), Best Actress (Farhanah Norazhar) and Best Direction. The third place goes to Notorious Playhouse with Mindwars.
Altogether, the show was absolutely stellar and definitely a success.***
