From the people we had in our class, we knew we had good game. So, we salvaged whatever resources we could find; we chose directors, playwrites, wardrobe and props managers from amongst ourselves and formed a core team. We then took to ourselves the then soon-to-be story for our play, in order to form a script to act by. It wasn't easy. We had various ideas; from a robot and its maker, to a flower in the village tribe, and finally to a more realistic/futuristic society without creativity. We settled with the final idea and started producing the script, all thanks to our playwrite, Zhao Lyng. The script itself was not that all perfect, I mean, it was really good. Just that I had noticed a few typo errors here and there, a redundancy in terms (martial arts artist *smh*), and that it needed to be edited along the way during our practices as we noticed that we had a time limit for our act and that the script was all a tad bit too long-winded, due to unnecessary scenes and the narrator's long lines.
We then chose for ourselves suitable candidates to be our players. The main characters are: Alexander Knight, our hero; the three powers of creativity: Tiffany Jean the Musician, Josephine Koo the Dancer, and Alan Tyler the Artist; the antagonists: Mr P. Salvatore the Dictator, Lana the Assistant, and the six henchmen.
We then discussed characters and traits that relate between the characters and classmates, and soon after, held an audition within the classroom during our English period. At last, we managed to settle the cast within two days and it was on to practice! We were rough around the edges; it took us what seemed like forever to get that one fight scene down! But after a while, we managed to nail it down and continue with the other scenes. It was during practice when we discovered we were dragging the time as we found out later on that we had a time limit of 12 minutes for the entire play! So it was here then, that we had to edit parts and pieces of the script to make it more concise and efficient for us throughout.
Weeks after weeks and to of no avail was our play rehearsal able to be under the stated 12-minute time limit. It was the last week before the drama competition. In all desperation did we throw in and take out ideas, scenes, parts of the script and etcetera. Throughout most of the rehearsals, you could see us directors, Zhao Lyng especially, try our very best to direct the cast (in my honest opinion, I think I did the least "directing" work compared to Ryan and Zhao Lyng). When all didn't seem to go well, we sat down, took a good look at the script, and started reading the script aloud by ourselves to see how it would go, whilst measuring the time with a stopwatch. Guess what? It was perfect, but we didn't understand why we couldn't do it under the time limit. So we sat down. Ryan became anxious and then started to sing a hymn, hoping his prayer to God would work a miracle, and I sang along with him, being familiar with the chorus of the song; but Zhao Lyng scoffed at him, saying, "at this point even Jesus won't bother hearing you" or something along those lines. I know that for that statement, she would be proven wrong; a miracle was definitely bound to happen.
It all came down to competition day, where we drew lots as to see who was first to present their play. I can't recall exactly in what order were the classes but I remember we got to be the last class to perform. After witnessing the other classes' plays, I must say, some of them were better than ours in certain aspects; 5 Cengal's fight scenes had put ours to shame! But we had nothing to worry about as we had already covered everything we had got from storyline to presentation and everything in between. The other classes' stories as presented are: the chief of a tribe seeking the longest and funniest story in the world, investigating a murder case, seeking vengeance for the loss of a loved one, and opening an ancient artifact. The other classes did a splendid job presenting their play. Finally, after a long wait, it was our turn. Before we began, time had been given for us to set up. Whilst other classes brought their laptops for sound effects and backing tracks, I brought my phone (and that was one of the biggest differences between us and the other classes. HAHA) as I was in charge of the sounds, and I began to test my phone; everything was just right (sort of). Ryan then called the cast together and had a small motivational talk with them. I, on the other hand, was busy checking this and that, hoping everything would go fine (I did go there for a while, but I didn't stay long with them and I don't remember what Ryan said to them).
At long last, our show began. Everything was going well as planned. The scenes transitioned smoothly, and the actors played their characters and said their lines efficiently. Although there was a slight delay in the sound effects (*cough cough*), overall, it went pretty smooth, and guess what!? Our play went so well it was under 12 minutes and 49 seconds, which is so much better than our previous rehearsals! To cut the already-long story short, we did it; we won first place amongst the others due to our storyline being the best with the right message portrayed! Dhurka, who played Lana, got the "best actress" award too (and from what I heard, our main "bad" man, Kaveenesh aka Prakash, a longer name for Mr. P, was supposed to get "best actor" but the judges felt that it would be unfair to give everything to us, so they let the main actor of Cengal's play get "best actor" instead).
Truly, our hard work definitely won this out for us. Should we have had any doubt, all we had to do was just have a little bit of faith and go according to plan. Truly, I say, it was a miracle for us indeed.
Thank you, 5 Angsana.
It was an honour working with you.
What a memorable day indeed.
