Creative Writers Club SMK Bukit Bandaraya, Bangsar

6 Feb 08 @ 8:30am.

Yes, I had to get up at an ungodly hour to get to the school. Luckily, it was the eve of Chinese New Year and most were already on their 'balik kampung' journey.

I was supposed to give a talk about writing. Like, what do I know! Met some cool teenagers 10 of them. Blabbered on about how little I know about performing arts and some of fun but hard work that I do.

Flashback: I remember the time I was invited to this school, I think in 2005, when there this teenagers who had written scripts and asked for my opinion. One of it had potential, it was about the school Open Day when parents come to collect report cards and it showcases some strange but life-like characters. The play was then featured at Yayasan Budi Penyayang's Keluarga Bahagia event at Genting Highlands. Branavan was one of the script writer / actor.

Back to this group. They want to do a Malaysian version of Romeo & Juliet.. aww. They should have come for KLPac's Romi & Joo Lee. The teacher, Pn. Zaleha also said that the school would like to participate in script-writing competition involving science related matters. There were also some who were there purely for the fun of it.

To start them off.. I got them to write a short piece involving an object. It was very interesting to hear the short stories [I didn't start with a script for 1) it was a creative writing club 2) that was what I experienced at the Dramatic Writing at NIDA]

We explored on what we can do with the stories - dramatise it on stage or any other media. As much as I wanted them to do a dialogue piece, I felt that perhaps helping them to create characters might help them to acheive what the school wanted. So we went on to create a character each.

Again it was interesting to see some characters take life. Opps.. way beyond the 10am limit that I had with them but managed to work on till about 11am.

Now question time - their big concern was to create the Romeo & Juliet characters and if their slapstick joke would work. My advise was to create and let the characters do things together. Never to edit themselves for that was the advise given by all my instructors at NIDA.

We exchanged e-mails and I told them that I would like to see the completed script. "Guys, just e-mail me or call me will try to share with you whatever little bit I know." All the best to the Creative Writers Club of SMKBB! Hope to see more of you.

[Yay! I managed to stick to my 08 Chinese New Year resolution! i.e. to ensure I update my blog everytime I do special projects. But this is only the first : ) ]