Reported by:
Ong Chen Xi Jr2Z(2)
“After glimpsing at the colours outside, would the fog in your eyes evanesce?”
From sappy romance stories to brutal dictatorships, the Drama Club’s show “Peeping In” (偷窥) has quite a variety of plays. Having been split into two parts held on 11 and 18 September each, up to two hundred people came to watch both shows. However, making these nine plays certainly was not an easy task. As such, we interviewed the Vice President of the Drama Club, Liau Wen Chi, in hopes that there was more – besides the fog – than meets the eye.
Our first question was about the drama club’s reason to name the show “Peeping In”.
Over these past two years, many negative things have happened all over the world, especially because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite all this, Wen Chi believes that we should not continue being trapped in this darkness. Instead, we should learn to look for the light in darkness. Even if we can only peep to look at what is only a sliver of light, being able to see it means there is still hope. That is why they decided to name it “Peeping In”.
However, this was not the original idea. At first, it was meant to symbolise evil. “Peeking In” here meant to peek in to observe the dark side of humanity.
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Naturally, the Co-curricular Department was not too keen on this idea. During these rocky times, the last thing anyone wanted was more pessimism. As such, the Drama Club had to change the show’s subject matter, which led to what we have today.
We then asked about the troubles they encountered while filming the show.
Since the production was pre-recorded, most of the work was done separately. People filmed their parts on their own and then sent them in to be edited. In that process, they faced many problems, such as time constraints. All the work, including the screenwriting, acting, and editing had to be done within a month, not to mention that the Co-curricular Department requested an overhaul of the show’s theme.
Another issue was that most actors had more than one role to perform across all nine plays, and because of that most actors were very busy. Wen Chi even said that one person started acting from 3pm right after school until 5pm, and then from 8pm until 11pm. Evidently, every member of the drama club worked their hardest to get this four-hour long show finished.
Next, we asked about what makes a play a good play.
Wen Chi stated that from her experience, the most important thing that actors should do is to speak with emotion, instead choosing to simply read off their script. If not, viewers can’t relate to the actors and their performance can come off as artificial. As such, Wen Chi believes that emotion is one of the most important parts of a play, and can make or break one’s performance.
Our fourth question touched upon the play “Shining Stars” (闪耀的星星), a show about a group of terminally ill teenagers, one of which – Wei Lin – has a rapidly worsening health condition. The other two friends try to fulfill all his wishes before he dies and have fun together during his last moments.
As the play touched upon the topic of death, we asked about Wen Chi’s thoughts on the subject.
Like the original producers of this play, Wen Chi believes that we should face death head-on. Unlike most people, these terminally ill patients are forced to confront death. They are fully aware that their life has an expiration date. They can choose to spend their final days in sadness, but instead the main characters of this play opted to make the most out of them and to leave with no regrets. This aspect of the story was something the screenwriters hinted at.
We then asked: What did the Drama Club want to tell the viewers with this show?
In response to this, Wen Chi said that “Peeping In” had covered various topics like death, sexism, and school grades with their nine plays. Despite this, most of the audience still remarked that some of the themes in the show were too similar.
Of course, teenagers would not have as much inspiration as adults would, since they have less experience in the real world. They can only try their best to act with more emotion and energy. Regardless, Wen Chi hoped that the audience had learned something from their plays, and thanked the audience for their support.
Our sixth and last question was about the award ceremony held after the drama show.
According to Wen Chi, the “Magellan Award Ceremony” (麦哲伦颁奖典礼) was originally conceived to let club members know about their performance, acting as their “report card”. However, in order to prevent club members from comparing themselves with others, they did not give them an outright ranking, but rather split their performance into five categories. This year, all club members’ results were within the bottom three categories (between 50-90%), which was quite an improvement from the previous years.
