MUSICAL theatre...learn how to act...meet new friends! A fantastic four-day musical workshop, now enrolling. Young people aged 7 to 18 will have a chance to act in Lion King, Mamma Mia or Hairspray, shouts an advertisement displayed by a music academy.
This hip workshop is one of the extensive options available for summer. After all, school is out for three months and restless teens are inundated with opportunities to choose their creative fields and hang out with others of like mind.
They can test out the fantasy of a glamorous Broadway musical career even.
Given a chance, everyone can be passionately creative. I am talking about indulging in performing arts. The performing arts are those forms of art where the artiste makes use of his own body, face, and presence as a medium. This includes dance, music, opera, drama, magic, spoken word and circus arts. The artistes are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, magicians, musicians, and singers. My first foray into the world of performing arts was when I was studying at Universiti Malaya and acted at the Experimental Theatre.
So, I was glad I was invited to see the outcome of the musical workshop for amateurs last Saturday. Looking at the young ones prance and sing on stage, anyone would think that they had practised all their lives and not just four days. I could see that their faces were beaming. Beaming with pride, joy and expectation. After the performance, I went backstage and I could hear squeals of excitement.
An actress in Hairspray said, "Our sweat could probably flood a whole house but it was definitely worth it. I so totally want to join this again next year. It was a non-stop run through and we all were just freaking out hoping not to forget any lines, lyrics or dance moves but thank God, it was a success! It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty awesome!"
I am glad I appreciate the arts.
Even at school we were always caught up in the battlefield of Science versus Arts. Everyone seemed to clamour to enter the best science class, never the Arts. I remember I was in Form Four Science One and after one semester I knew I was more inclined towards the Arts. Making the switch was unheard of at that time. Every well-meaning teacher discouraged me from doing so because unfortunately, the Arts classes were synonymous with poor teaching and classroom management and certainly students who were thick in the head. It was good that my parents were behind me and I have no regrets making that switch.
And now, I have just returned from watching Les Miserables at the Queens Theatre in London and a strange feeling starts to wash over me. It was the same kind of bliss that I experienced when I watched the amateurs on stage: seeing the actors, singing along with them as every song is as familiar as a nursery rhyme, my shoulders untangled and a feeling of appreciation was all around. I felt so relaxed I almost forgot to breathe. The performers had the same passion as the young amateurs. The only difference was these were professionals acting almost every day of their lives and they carried out the musical very well.
The performing arts remind me of the need to stop and smell the flowers. From the day we arrived on the planet, we have not stopped blinking, running and working. It is almost a crime to enjoy life. So like Tracy in Baltimore who notices that the rats on the street all dance around her feet shouting, "Tracy, it's up to you", it is really up to us to make a life for ourselves, to choose how we want to live it to the fullest.
Carpe Diem, seize the day. If not now, when?
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