Cinderella... My first Panto experience as an SM

22 December 2005 - 1 January 2006
The classic kid's panto based on the story of the kitchen maid, her fairy godmother, two ugly sisters, a glass slipper, and a handsome prince. With contemporary rock songs, jokes and a bewildering array of men dressed as women and women dressed as men. A not-to-be-missed barrage of fun for the entire family. Crude, rude and delicious. Watch out for the forthcoming announcement on who will be playing the ugly sisters. ...

My first ever experience of stage managing a panto. Boy! Or Girl! Is it crazy! Crazy because the Ugly Sisters were actually men (Indi Nadarajah & Reza Zainal Abidin) who had to strut in 5 dress changes of female Elvis costumes all with wigs and 3 inch heels. Poor Reza even had a fractured toe.

The part of doing this was that people (families, children of all races and creed) were laughing from start till end and the good old Elvis fans sand along to the King’s hits.

Everything is not all that it’s seems to be... Cinderella is the beautiful Elaine Dally who falls in love with a very blur Prince Charming; Mirzan. Zaibo her father just returns from the jail; her mother; Joann Kam. You really wonder how the two managed to get 2 cross dressing, men and a lovely daughter.

There’s Buttons; sweet old dependable Douglas Lim who kicks start the whole show by getting the audience to cheer and boo... At one point he is throwing sweets to the audience and argh!! Rats! (Rubber rats that people get to keep.)

There is a scene whereby while going to the palace; one of the ugly sisters look up and a bird (or something that looks not quite like a bird) flies past and Sfx “Splat!” One day we all forgot to reset the bird so it had to fly back-wards. My! We don’t know if the audience realized it but did we have a great laugh.

The glass slipper was not a glass slipper; the pumpkin was a thorny durian; the carriage was an antique Red Buick which we had to push from back stage with lots of light effects and smoke.

The Fairy God Mother? None other than Sham Sunder; who kept appearing in different manner. Once in his towel and loofah; even on a children’s scooter with emergency siren light on it. Paul Loosely the Director, was actually even thinking of flying him down from the catwalk but it didn’t seem like the safest thing to do.

The whole cast of actors; chorus and crew were absolutely great except when they are not on time for rehearsals; or commit to something else on the day that their parts are scheduled. I had to painstakingly look into each and everyone’s availability and plan the scenes to be rehearsed accordingly and they do this! (We had to sack one girl from the chorus for being at the right place at the wrong time; but the rest never improved!)

Pat Chan our choreographer had her share of problems of trying to work with her chorus; rehearsing scenes with Paul; dealing with ‘primadonna’ new comers who fussed a lot and the fun part was she finally got Douglas to move.

As with all my SM assignments nothing goes without a glitch and my usual one is that my ASM are never able to commit to the all the days of the production. Therefore, lots so frantic calls here and there and trying to get friend’s, friend’s, friend to help. But eventually all works out fine and my wonderful stage hands prove to be a great team!

Aladdin Dec 2007 - Jan 2008

17 December 2007 - 6 January 2008

Usher in the new year with Aladdin, his mother the widow Twanky, his daft brother Wishee Washee, a magic ring, a magic lamp, a very confused pair of Genies, and a whole host of other colourful characters in KLPac's brand new panto, Aladdin! And because we all know that 'it was 40 years ago today Sgt Pepper taught the band to play', except a magical mystery world of head-spinning, psychedelic fun!.. 

Must record this...

(I started with the first line and never got the chance to record my SM experience working on Aladdin which is officially my last SM assignment at KLPac. Sob! Sob! but then again...)

Today is 18 Nov 2009 - my God how time flies and how lifes change.

Aladdin the Pantomime was indeed very special. I forget now how many cast and crew were involved but I will never forget the experience of handling Aladdin.

Aladdin for starters was acted by Joanna Bessey; her err his mother the ever so vogue Indi Nadarajah. Aladdin's love interest is Paris, Princess mind you. Evil Uncle Abanaza is Chacko; Douglas Lim is Wishee Washee; his love interest Won Ton is Nell Ng; Joanna Kam & Monti as The Emperor & Empress (or maybe the other way round). Oh and we can't stage Aladdin without a Genie or two.. Sham Sunder the powerful Genie of the Ring and Badrol the 'more' powerful Genie of the Lamp! Phew! Now what a montly crew.

Oh! did I forget the props? How can I? There were the 3 huge wicker basket that moves on its own till  Douglas, Nell & Indy appear from inside it. By the way, Indy has a submarine telescope coming out of this basket. Hint! Hint! Wink! Wink! Of course, we had the whole 'bloody' Yellow Submarine that was huge as hell and I had to maneuver it from stage left to right and drop and pick up them actors!! (This was just like driving my yellow juara but less maintenance!). (And you know why the pix of it is not here.)

Unstoppable Me! Where The Wild Things Are (6 & 7 Dec 2008 @ Lawn Area, KLPac)

About the same time last year; we were wondering if The Academy will be able to produce our yearly year-end production. As we have been informing our students and parents year after year that only if we get commitment from the students and if there are enough; only then we will be able to produce our show.

From planning to have a musical with at least 12 young actors to not knowing what do as we had not received confirmation from the parents. Only eight students confirmed.

Finally, one other student confirmed just 1 week before the school holidays and I decided that I didn't want to disappoint the rest. But what do we rehearse for? I was not prepared and needed to work on something fast.

Initial idea was to do a musical based on Dr. Wayne Dyer & Kristina Tracy’s 10 Ways To Soar Through Live. I even had a tune playing in my mind for the Theme Song. Now with so little time, what do I do? What do I do?

Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are came to the rescue. What I did was to create a play within a play - 1) to provide the children with the experience of working on a play within a play concept. 2) It was much easier for me to manage!

A group of young actors are rehearsing for a play called “Where The Wild Things Are” and they are struck by disaster – first the director meets with an accident, and you have the Stage Manager running the production. One by one problems pop up and using messages from “10 Ways to Soar Through Life”; the manage to stage the play.

I still wanted some musical element and since I didn’t have time to make it into a musical; Tony Leo helped to get the children stomping during the ‘wild rumpus!”.

So in 3 weeks we managed to get the show on the go! Yes, from publicity material, to rehearsals and right up to costumes.

I got the children to draw up their Wild Thing Monster character and Joel very cleverly put them together as our poster, with an adorable pix of the kids at the back.

Thanks to Deda, who always comes through as my costume designer /maker, make-up artist and the actual Stage Manager. Nora's intership was timed in such a manner that she could help Deda.

Lawrence, my usual sound man. We needed some music during the time the actors were changing into their costumes.  

Oh, by the way, did I mention that this play was done in the open. The turf under the big rain tree was our ‘rehearsal space’ and ‘back-stage’ area. The deck was our stage area. We made use of the trees already there and the stairs effectively.

Though I’m writing about it after about almost 1 year, it seems like it all happened not so long ago. It was great fun and it was really good to see the children work so hard to make it happen.

Of course, the parents of those nine children. How could we have done it without them? Making travel arrangement for the children to ensure that they get there for rehearsals from Monday – Friday for 3 weeks. (Mind you, this is during office hours.)

"Thank you wonderful parents for all your support. Never did I imagine that I would be so far away, nevertheless, all of you are very special to me. I will always cherish all the little fun moments that we have had together with your children. Thank you!"

The Actors

(Front-row from left to right: Yasyika, Aminah, Divya, Putri

Backrow from left to right: Natasha, Michelle, Hakeem, Keshyan, Joshua)