I am back from Japan!!!! (and I miss it) Would love to just type away about my holiday in Japan but I think i shall retrace my steps and go on to talk about a play I watched before I left. Not forgetting, the leaders’ retreat! 

2 weeks back, caught an arts fest play/musical/cabaret. Initially I felt like just backing out due to laziness BUT I’m glad my laziness didn’t take me far. ‘For All The Wrong Reasons’ asks what it means to be stupid. How stupid can one be? How big and sad can be the consequences of stupid behaviour? Can stupidity be seen as a form of intelligence? Six talented performers challenge one another in a raucous end-of-the-pier revue at a place reminiscent of the faded grandeur of a Blackpool-like seaside town. They party, sing and dance, fight and make-up, and roll off discomforting confessional soliloquies as pretend-fairground music plays on the background.

For Pauwels, creating theatre is a confrontation between different personalities, excavating “the uncensored inside of human beings”, translating the clichés and details of humanity, revealing the human incapability to communicate, delving into notions of love and impotence, lies and truths, melancholy, dogmas, collective traumas and more.

(courtesy of the arts fest web)

Like every other soul in the audience that night, we laughed our heads off at the way people treat an outsider, and unknowingly I was sucked into that cycle whereby when we view others as different, we question them, provoke them, condescend them, laugh at them-secretly and blatantly. The cast was brilliant to start off, the way they displayed every change of expression was dramatic and hurts you like a pin. Oh, on top of that, there was this actor that looked like the lead singer from Coldplay!! For a moment I thought I was seeing things but Crystal agrees with me. The show lasted for about 100 minutes, and they sang this song ‘I started a joke’ about 2-3 times. First time in which they sang it, I laughed very hard, because my Coldplay look alike guy was so melodramatic and the song was ridiculously hilarious. Second time the song was played, I observed the other characters, listened to the lyrics more intently and realized how sad it is. There was this particular verse that stuck in my head like a broken recorder, ‘till I finally died, which started the whole world living, oh if only I knew the joke was on me’. Then, I couldn’t join in the laughter with the audience, but I felt so immensely sad that people were laughing at this…and so did I.

There was this other character that was annoyingly trying to get attention, even imitating the way characters who was given attention in terms of the way they dressed, walked, talked, lived. Because I was part of the audience, that ability to disengage yourself from the whole situation, to see it from a very different perspective from the people who were directly involved in that situation. Carelessly I gave my laughs to her, and then laughter turned to disgust to sadness. Simply put it, it was desperation to the point of ridiculously stupid. Scary thing is that it happens in our society today. Let’s not talk about macro, but micro itself. Sibling rivalry, close to losing your boyfriend/girlfriend/bestfriend. The soliloquies were honest to the point of heart wrenching that I was close to tearing at one point. ‘For All the Wrong Reason’ allowed me to appreciate that whole identity, outsider theme that was frequently discussed about last year.

The saddest part was that none of them were genuinely happy even when they place their security in things that they thought would make them happy, satisfied, contented,…...

What about you?





On a lighter note, after ‘For All The Wrong Reasons’, went for fondue with Crystal and Andrew. The verdict? I’m a messy eater and I don’t like Haagen Danz. Coffee Club fondue is way better and there are MORE FRUITS. Dazz, let’s go there once you’re back from Spain and being all English! 

Simply can’t wait to catch Temple and Amjad!!!!!