Have I told you lately that I love you?
I know Malaysia Night was over about two weeks ago, but trying to reduce the backlog of work has kept me preoccupied until now. It was a pretty brilliant event if I was to be honest with you. I'm sure the audience, based on the feedback I've got, were pretty impressed with the show we put up at great expense and effort in order to maintain some profound sense of pride of having 'the best MNight in the UK'. Whether it's going to be better than everybody else I don't know, and frankly I don't really care. Perception is subjective, and will always stay that way.
But for me, this project felt like one of those things that 'could have been', which I (thankfully) have not encountered much in my career of getting involved in things. It 'could have been better', or maybe the phrase is 'should have been', but at the end all it felt like was a sort of hollowness that is telling you 'you never got there'. Sure, there was a lot of enthusiasm and adrenaline running high all around the place, but at the same time the effort put in lacked cohesiveness and efficiency, often lagging behind schedules and generally lacking the proper cutting edge. Yes, this is the time when you roll your eyes and say, 'Malaysians', but frankly that is not an excuse for being mediocre. You will notice that I am using a lot of indefinite articles, but based on experience, this could have been a much more polished, if not better experience for everybody if there was a higher degree of organisation and professionalism around the whole thing. As part of the production team, I cannot, and will not shirk off my responsibilities, though I believe I've tried my best to get involved, and there is only so much a stage manager can do in terms of the technical side of the show.
I agree with the seniors on one thing: you do get to meet a lot of people whom you would usually never meet when you take part in dikir and the whole project in general. Whether the whole show brought people closer though, is still up for debate. Sometimes everything feels so disarrayed that you just feel like going up and strangling the person standing next to you. THAT wouldn't be too helpful for caramaderie. Every day that brought me closer to Malaysia Night, I went to bed with an increased feeling of annoyance that things were not going as well as they should be. Everybody felt like they were doing their own thing and somehow things never really got together as a whole. Behind the curtains during showtime, it felt almost like any other circus with disjointed performances and lack of flow. Maybe with the limitations placed upon us such as not having the actual stage until the day itself and lack of transportation hindered our ambitions somewhat, but it just felt like being in a bunch of headless chickens running around in circles chasing each other. On stage, individuals shined and there were some truly virtuoso performances, but the show as a whole stopped short of being a true
'tour de force' and IMHO did not live up to the promise of the entire talent pool available in the cast and crew.
'It's over, screw it.' I'm sorry that shouldn't be the case. This project is probably one of the most unsatisfying of the bunch I've been involved in. There was no euphoria after everything ended despite being such a bigger production compared to House Singing in KTJ, and no, I certainly did not feel any of those PMS (Post-MNight-Syndrome) symptoms which others claimed to exhibit. In retrospect, it felt more like 'it's over, next please', rather than 'wow, it's over'. Maybe I expected abit more after putting in so much effort, but for such a flamboyant project you would expect a little more panache and sense of pride or satisfaction after it all ends. I feel neither. It might possibly just be my cynicism getting ahead of me and I might change my opinion after awhile, but I doubt it. The 'high', if you can call it that, *should* have been there but it just wasn't; Or maybe I was just too tired or sick to care.
Anyhow back to normal uni life. No more dikir pratices at night or play rehearsals to go to. Do I even care?~Zhongy~
Favourite bit of MNight, the awesome trailer. If you want to watch I think the whole production's pretty much online on Youtube or Facebook.