Don’t judge a book by its cover.

Hi! Certainly, there is nothing to be scared of when you once decided to go for any theater show. Although it’s live, where real human beings were acting, you wouldn’t get killed by the violence acts on stage!(Hah) Perhaps the reason why most Malaysians are just not into watching theater is because, they didn’t know what to expect. It’s like you are invited to watch a theater and a movie at the same time from your friends, which will you prefer? A movie you expect to be around two hours show, famous actors or actress, beautiful views – setting and it does make you feel worth seeing it.
On the other hand, perhaps theatre expected to be a stage with actors (can be of known or unknown actors), props – setting and on your second thought you decided not to go for it. Well, there are a few things to what actually illustrate a good play. During our session with Dr. Edwin, he discussed with us some tips to evaluate a good play. First, a play needs to satisfy the intellect where it makes you think and process the information. Then, it shows organization which is the movement of the play. Next, it shows the ideational content – the ideas, issues or concepts being put up. Most importantly, it concerns with human experience like who we are or do. It needs to have economy, novelty and impact to audiences as this will be meaningful to us when we step out of the theater. Finally, we feel a part of the play when it moves our emotions and its characters and conflicts grip the audience.
I must say that by knowing the list above, I shouldn’t ‘judge a book by its cover!’ when looking at play later on. Now, I’m looking forward to go for a theater as it’s just beneficial to me. Thanks Dr. Edwin!

Chapter One: A new beginning....

In the first week of lectures, we were introduced to the development of theatre. When I first started this course, I was familiarize with drama and plays through titles by great playwrights rather than knowing first how theater actually develops. William Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Sophocles, Bernard Shaw and to name a few have their own story on how they came about in the history of theatre. It dated back in 384 B.C when the great philosopher Aristotle, contributes to the understanding of poetry in Greek Theater.
Then, it leads to the various forms of theatre throughout the changes of entertainment and last to drama in the 20th century. At this point, there are more emergence of Modern Drama to suit the realistic tradition of time. What came in mind when I’m relating to this are epic films or movies that I’ve watched over the time. Movies like Gladiator, Troy, King Arthur and etc help me in understanding how exactly the Roman or Greek setting as in the past centuries. However, I enjoyed watching although at that time it wasn’t of any academics purposes. Now, after had gone through the development of theatre, I can tell that this was going to be interesting because I’m no longer watching movies as above for nothing, but so much of being able to get the knowledge of the world.