Day 29: Wayang Wayang

Its hard to believe, but in a short 29 days, we have finished the project for Project Management. After presenting to Mr Chia in the morning, we went off to polish and rehearse our performance item for tonight's Cultural Performances.

And look at the lecture theater where we will be performing! In front of the entire new Year 1 batch of students at the OEC and the Year 2 batch! Pressure!!!

luckily they provided us with some snacks & sweets to fight out anxiety. heheh

Our performance was a short play about how Singapore got its name, which according to legends originated from when Prince Sang Nila Utama came to Singapore after spotting it across the sea from another island while hunting, and then coming across a majestic beast that they mistook for a lion where they landed near the mouth of the present day Singapore river. thus Sang Nila Utama named our island Singapura, which translates to Lion-City (Singa-Pura).

But I'm sure you are all familiar with the story already. Have a look at some of the other performances.

nobody nobody but you ~

us guys singing ‘吃的起苦’ and ‘关怀方式’, both theme songs from Singaporean dramas

our MDE finale item, singing a Home medley in English and Chinese

And of course, heres a look at my group's amateur wayang kulit production of Sang Nila Utama and the founding of Singapura.

Reflection:

To perform in front of such a big audience takes courage, and to speak impromptu in public takes even greater courage, and I'm glad to say I did both tonight, although my performance allowed me to not show my face. At first, I was really not confident of my performance, mainly because we have all along been the ones behind the screen, so I did not know how the audience would see and feel about our performance. When we finished our performance, one of the local students who had accompanied us in our first week, Xiao Wei, came down to ask me how we did our performance. Initially, I was really surprised, because the whole idea and tools behind the wayang kulit was very simple, so I thought everyone would understand what was going on and how we did it. However, when Xiao Wei told me that she had never seen anything like it before, and that our play and effects looked really good, I too, felt very good. I also explained to her how we did the play and how we animated the shadows. Indeed, this truly feels like a cultural exchange, because we exposed them to a South-East Asian traditional art-form (although ours is really far from the original).

Oh and thank you Yu chuan, Houng sheng and Hao Teng for helping us in our performance!