Atomic Jaya by Huzir Sulaiman

Written and directed by Huzir Sulaiman.

 

The play is a wicked satire on what would happen if Malaysia decided to build an atomic bomb. If you know something about life and politics on the other side Causeway, you will appreciate this political parody, especially when you think of the slogan “Malaysia Boleh”! It pokes fun at everything Malaysian, and has reached some notoriety for its satirical incisiveness.

In Atomic Jaya, Huzir Sulaiman sets his sights on a broad range of targets in Malaysian society. His satirical arrows are aimed not only at the Malaysians but also at American and British journalists and an American Secretary of State. And his barbs are not always politically correct, which adds to the enjoyment. According to Sulaiman, no offence is taken as the play celebrates the craziness of life in Malaysia!

In case you are wondering about the word “Jaya”, it’s a Malay word meaning ‘big success’. Fortunately, there is no successful regional nuclear program in real life but judging by its track history, this restaging is bound to be a success!

Performances:

1.  The upcoming production also marks the 15th anniversary of the play that was first staged in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 to rave reviews. Then, it starred Malaysian actress Jo Kukathas, who played all the roles.
2.  It was first staged in Singapore in 2001
3. Next, in 2003.  In 2003, Huzir and Claire Wong under Checkpoint Theatre performed it in Singapore and KL, with cameos by Gani Abdul Karim (in Singapore) and Fahmi Fadzil (in KL). For this outing it will star Claire Wong and Karen Tan.

Synopsis :

The physicist, Dr. Mary Yuen, is surreptitiously recruited by the ambitious General Zulkifli for a top-secret national project to build the region's first atomic bomb. But first, they must source for uranium, which seems to be available only through illegal means. As she gets drawn deeper and deeper into the ambitious scheme, she meets a madcap assortment of characters from uranium smugglers to cabinet ministers, and a special canteen lady. As the plot twists, turns and thickens, Dr. Yuen finds herself swept from one hilarious situation to another, while she grapples with a growing moral dilemma.

Interviewed between Huzir Sulaiman & Claire Wong:

1.Why has Checkpoint decided to restage Atomic Jaya fifteen years after its premiere in 1998 

Claire: It's a really funny play that audiences love. It's become something of a contemporary Asian classic and has had productions, workshops and readings all over the world - in Tokyo, London, New York, and of course Singapore and KL - regularly since its premiere, and has been published and excerpted several times. So it seemed right to celebrate its 15th anniversary with a major new main stage production

Huzir: Almost every week for the last ten years (since the 2003 Checkpoint production) someone asks us, "When are you going to stage Atomic Jaya?" Well, here it is!

Claire: Atomic Jaya is one my favourite plays and is also, deservedly, one of those “evergreen” plays that withstand the test of time very well. The story and characters are really compelling. The themes remain relevant, with some aspects being more striking today because of current socio-economic and international political conditions. The script allows the actors and the director to be very creative and inventive while also demanding from them a high degree of skill to execute well. This means it becomes a real joy and lot of fun to watch as a performance, while also giving the audience a lot of food for thought.

 2.What was the original inspiration behind “Atomic Jaya”?

Huzir: I was inspired by the burgeoning sense of national pride in Malaysia in the late 90s, that pretty much amounted to hubris, with all these mega-projects being willed into existence in a (pretty successful) attempt to put the country on the map. So I thought to myself, what would be the most extreme version of a mega-project? The atomic bomb seemed like a good way to explore the foibles of a nation with crazy ambitions.

3.The world in 2013 is very different from the one in 1998. Will “Atomic Jaya” be updated for a present day audience?

Claire: In terms of the production, it will be very new and different, but as for the text, the funny (and maybe also a little tragic) thing is that in terms of both the Malaysian scene as well as the international arena of countries with nuclear ambitions, very little has changed. So the play is still amazingly relevant as it was written.

Huzir: I'm fortunate that the play still resonates with audiences as it is. As a director, what I'm exploring is new ways to tell the story with these two very accomplished actresses, Karen Tan and Claire Wong.

4.What will appeal to the audience about Atomic Jaya?

Claire: It's a really funny script, where everyone and everything is both skewered and celebrated. You get to see everyone from generals to canteen ladies to politicians to socialites to dodgy expats, and everyone has a part to play in this madcap satire. What I really like is that it's a story told with a lot of love.  At Checkpoint Theatre, we make theatre with honesty and humour, head and heart. So, this play captivates because the stories make us laugh and ponder – we recognize the characters and we feel for them, inasmuch as they make us reflect and think about our own lives and loves.

Huzir: Audiences will have the pleasure of watching two of the finest actresses on the local scene play 17 characters between them. Karen and Claire are hilarious together, and it's really something to watch.

5.Both of you have acted in Atomic Jaya before. Are there new challenges when it comes to directing/performing in the play?

Huzir: On a directorial level, I am really interested in exploring different ways of having these two actors tell a story with so many characters. That's been a really fruitful and exciting aspect that we've worked on in the rehearsal room.

Claire: It's both a pleasure and a challenge to take on Huzir's writing again: he writes with great precision, and each character speaks with a different speech pattern and accent. So it demands a great deal from the actor, but it definitely repays the effort!

Huzir: It is always challenging to create work that is authentic and complex, that challenges and inspires. As the director together with my actress and the creative team, we have had to dig deep. We have had to rely on not just our skills and experiences in theatre making but also our own life experiences to find the layers of meaning and to create an experience in the theatre for the audience that will continue to resonate long after the curtains close.

So, I hope this has whetted your appetite for some incisive, thought-provoking satire.

Biography of Huzir Sulaiman

Huzir Sulaiman (born in 1973) is a Malaysian actor, director and writer. One of Malaysia's leading dramatists, acclaimed for his vibrant, inventive use of language and incisive insight into human behaviour in general and the Asian psyche in particular. His plays, often charged with dark humour, political satire, and surrealistic twists, have won numerous awards and international recognition. He currently lives in Singapore and currently married to  Claire Wong, a Malaysia-born Singaporean stage actress.

His father is Haji Sulaiman Abdullah, who was born G. Srinivasan Iyer, a Tamil Brahmin who later converted to Islam. Sulaiman is a veteran lawyer who served as Malaysian Bar Council president. His mother is Hajjah Mehrun Siraj, who has served as a professor, lawyer, consultant for United Nations agencies, NGO activists and a Commissioner with the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia.

Careers:

1.  hosted an afternoon talk show on WOW FM, a now-defunct Malaysian radio station.
2.  He also contributes articles to the The Star.

Plays which have been published in his collection of "Eight Plays" by Silverfish :

1.  "Atomic Jaya",
2.  "The Smell of Language", 
3. "Hip-Hopera" the Musical, 
4. "Notes on Life and Love and Painting", 
5. "Election Day", 
6. "Those Four Sisters Fernandez", 
7. "Occupation" 
8.  "Whatever That Is"

Green is the Colour by Lloyd Fernando

Lloyd Fernando's Green is the Colour is a very interesting novel. The country is still scarred by violence, vigilante groups roam the countryside, religious extremists set up camp in the hinterland, there are still sporadic outbreaks of fighting in the city, and everyone, all the time, is conscious of being watched. It comes as some surprise to find that the story is actually a contemporary (and very clever) reworking of a an episode from the Misa Melayu, an 18th century classic written by Raja Chulan.

In this climate of unease, Fernando employs a multi-racial cast of characters. At the centre of the novel there's a core of four main characters, good (if idealistic) young people who cross the racial divide to become friends, and even fall in love.

There's Dahlan, a young lawyer and activist who invites trouble by making impassioned speech on the subject of religious intolerance on the steps of a Malacca church; his friend from university days, Yun Ming, a civil servant working for the Ministry of Unity who seeks justice by working from within the government.

The most fully realised character of the novel is Siti Sara, and much of the story is told from her viewpoint. A sociologist and academic, she's newly returned from studies in America where she found life much more straightforward, and trapped in a loveless marriage to Omar, a young man much influenced by the Iranian revolution who seeks purification by joining religious commune. The hungry passion between Yun Ming and Siti - almost bordering on violence at times and breaking both social and religious taboos - is very well depicted. (Dahlan falls in love with Gita, Sara's friend and colleague, and by the end of the novel has made an honest woman of her.)

Like the others, Sara is struggling to make sense of events :

Nobody could get may sixty-nine right, she thought. It was hopeless to pretend you could be objective about it. speaking even to someone close to you, you were careful for fear the person might unwittingly quote you to others. if a third person was present, it was worse, you spoke for the other person's benefit. If he was Malay you spoke one way, Chinese another, Indian another. even if he wasn't listening. in the end the spun tissue, like an unsightly scab, became your vision of what happened; the wound beneath continued to run pus.

Although the novel is narrated from a third person viewpoint, it is curious that just one chapter is narrated by Sara's father, one of the minor characters, an elderly village imam and a man of great compassion and insight. This shift in narration works so well that I'm surprised Fernando did not make wider use of it.

The novel has villain, of course, the unsavoury Pangalima, a senior officer in the Department of Unity and a man of uncertain racial lineage (he looks Malay, has adopted Malay culture, so of course, that's enough to make him kosher!). He has coveted Sara for years, and is determined to win her sexual favours at any cost.

The novel is not without significant weaknesses. It isn't exactly a rollicking read, and seems rather stilted - not least because there are just too many talking heads with much of the action taking place "offstage", including the rape at the end, which is really the climax of the whole novel.

If we're interested in Yun Ming, Dahlan and Omar it is because of the contradictory ideas they espouse, but in each case their arguments could have been explored in greater depth and the characters themselves have been more fully fleshed.

The plot of Green is the Colour never really holds together as well as it might but seems to be perpetually rushing off in new directions (as actually do the characters!) without fully exploring what is set up already. (I was particularly disappointed that we don't get to spend more time with Omar in the commune.)

But the strengths of the novel more than makes up for these lapses.

There's been a lot of talk about local authors not being brave enough to write about the great mustn't-be-talked-abouts of race, religion and politics in Malaysian society. Here's one author who was brave enough to do just that. (And look, hey, the sky didn't cave in!)

Here's an author too who was able to think himself into the skin of people of different races - how many since have been able, or prepared, to make that imaginative leap?

Here too is an author who is able to convincingly evoke the landscape of Malaysia both urban and rural in carefully chosen details.

Above all, though, one feels that here is an author who says what needed to be said. Heck, what still needs to be said!

Here, he's using Dahlan as his mouthpiece, but the sentiments are clearly the author's own :

All of us must make amends. Each and every one of us has to make an individual effort. Words are not enough. We must show by individual actions that we will not tolerate bigotry and race hatred.

Scorpion Orchid by Lloyd Fernando

SYNOPSIS

An exciting first novel set in pre-independence Singapore. Scorpion Orchid follows the lives of four young men—a Malay, an Eurasian, a Chinese and a Tamil—against a backdrop of racial violence and political factions struggling for dominance. Excerpts from classical Malay and colonial English sources appear throughout the narrative, illuminating the roots and significance of this period in history.

SETTING & THEME

•Set in 1950’s Singapore – a time of racial tension and nationalistic uprising 

•Theme of national birth and the anxieties present regarding racial conflict and ethnic self interest 

THE TEXT AS METAPHOR

•Text is a metaphor for growth of a new nation 

•The four young men gain a new awareness of their ethnic identities as the negotiate the race riots that destroy their complacent sense of camaraderie 

•The new awareness is central to their transition from adolescence to adult life 

•Represents the Malayan society and the transition between former tolerance and present assertiveness
•Scorpion Orchid generally preserves an allegorical distance between the personal and the political. 

• The personal and the political develop along parallel lines and mirror one another, and when they do intersect they remain clearly defined

CHARACTERS

•Santi, a Tamil Indian, Sabran, a Malay, Guan Kheng, a Chinese, and Peter, a Eurasian.
•Santinathan – Indian, refuses to observe conventions of university life, gets expelled – ends up as village schoolteacher
•Sabran – Malay, involved in politics, gets arrested and his future prospects somewhat set back considerably .He reflects on his family in the kampung (village) that has sacrificed for his education and which exerts a strong emotional pull on him, but is in no position to offer him either comfort or advice.
•Guan Kheng – Chinese, comes from wealthy family, feels betrayed by the Malays who suddenly consider him a foreigner. Peter D’Almeida – Eurasian, confused about his identity, loses faith in ‘new’ Singapore, emigrates to England after he is beaten up in a riot (comes back at the end)
•Sally – uncertain ethnic background and origin, works at a hawker stall, part time prostitute, has an ambiguous relationship with all four men involving sex, money and love, although they pay her for sex she is treated as a friend

Biography of Lloyd Fernando

Lloyd Fernando is a MALAYSIAN but he was born in Sri Lanka in 1926, and in 1938, at the age of twelve, he migrated to Singapore with his family. This early migration across the Indian Ocean had an enriching influence on Fernando, the writer and scholar, as it was to plant the seeds of a transcultural, diasporic imagination in him at an impressionable age. Life was moving along at a steady pace, and Fernando continued his schooling at St Patrick’s, but the Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1943 to 1945 dealt a severe blow, interrupting his formal schooling and, most tragically, costing his father’s life in one of the Japanese bombing raids. Following his father’s death, Fernando started working as a trishaw rider, construction labourer and apprentice mechanic, to support himself and the family. He also joined the Ceylon branch of the Indian National Army, not impelled by any ideology but out of a sheer necessity for self-sustenance.

After the war, Fernando completed his Cambridge School Certificate and embarked on a school teaching career. In 1955, he entered the University of Singapore, graduating in 1959 with double Honours in English and Philosophy. In 1960, he joined the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur as an assistant lecturer, and returned to the same post four years later, having obtaining a Ph.D. in English from the University of Leeds, England. In 1967, he was elevated to Professor and Head of English at the University of Malaya, posts he held until 1979. People retire at Malaysia at 55, and so when it was time for him to retire, Lloyd didn’t want to have to continue on a yearly contract, and not be certain of anything. He decided to take up law. He went to England and studied law at City University and then at Middle Temple, coming back with his law degrees. He joined a firm, and eventually started his own practice here, which he continued right up to the time he had a stroke, which was in December 1997.

Works:

a) Scorpion Orchid , 1976
b)Cultures in Conflict , 1896
c)Green is the Color , 1993

Biography of Tash Aw

Tash Aw was born in Taipei to Malaysian parents. He grew up in Kuala Lumpur before moving to Britain to attend university. He is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, The Harmony Silk Factory (2005), Map of the Invisible World (2009) and Five Star Billionaire (2013), which have won the Whitbread First Novel Award, a regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize and twice been longlisted for the MAN Booker prize; they have also been translated into 23 languages.
His short fiction has won an O. Henry Prize and been published in A Public Space and the landmark Granta 100, amongst others. 

1. FIVE STAR BILLIONAIRE

 

Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to Shanghai with the promise of a job—but when she arrives she discovers that the job doesn't exist. Gary is a country boy turned pop star who is spinning out of control. Justin is in Shanghai to expand his family's real estate empire, only to find that he might not be up to the task. He has long harbored a crush on Yinghui, a poetry-loving, left-wing activist who has reinvented herself as a successful Shanghai businesswoman. Yinghui is about to make a deal with the shadowy , the five star billionaire of the novel, who with his secrets and his schemes has a hand in the lives of each of the characters. All bring their dreams and hopes to Shanghai, the shining symbol of the New China, which, like the novel's characters, is constantly in flux and which plays its own fateful role in the lives of its inhabitants. Five Star Billionaire is a dazzling, kaleidoscopic novel that offers rare insight into the booming world of Shanghai, a city of elusive identities and ever-changing skylines, of grand ambitions and outsize dreams. Bursting with energy, contradictions, and the promise of possibility, Tash Aw's remarkable new book is both poignant and comic, exotic and familiar, cutting-edge and classic, suspenseful and yet beautifully unhurried.

2. MAP OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD

What does it mean to lose your home? Adam and Johan are orphans, torn from each other at an early age in post-Independence Indonesia. The year is 1964, the start of Sukarno's so-called Year of Living Dangerously, and sixteen-year-old Adam once again finds himself alone as his foster father is taken away by soldiers. In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, Adam is forced to travel to the capital Jakarta in search of his father, and of his own identity. Memory, loss, the turbulence of international politics of the 1960s – multiple strands entwine in this novel of love and belonging.

3. THE HARMONY SILK FACTORY

 

A landmark work of fiction from the twice-Man Booker prize-longlisted author: a devastating love story set against the turmoil of mid-twentieth-century Malaysia.
Set in Malaysia in the 1930s and 40s, with the rumbling of the Second World War in the background and the Japanese about to invade, 'The Harmony Silk Factory' is the story of four people: Johnny, an infamous Chinaman – a salesman, a fraudster, possibly a murderer – whose shop house, The Harmony Silk Factory, he uses as a front for his illegal businesses; Snow Soong, the beautiful daughter of one of the Kinta Valley's most prominent families, who dies giving birth to one of the novel's narrators; Kunichika, a Japanese officer who loves Snow too; and an Englishman, Peter Wormwood, who went to Malaysia like many English but never came back, who also loved Snow to the end of his life. A journey the four of them take into the jungle has a devastating effect on all of them, and brilliantly exposes the cultural tensions of the era.

Biography of Sybil Kathigasu

Sybil Kathigasu was born Sybil Medan Daly to an Irish-Eurasian planter (Joseph Daly) and a French-Eurasian midwife (Beatrice Matilda Daly née Martin) on 3 September 1899 in Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia. Her middle name reflects her birthplace, Medan. Her paternal grandparents were an Irishman and a Eurasian woman while her maternal grandparents were a Frenchman (Pierre Louie Martin) and a Eurasian woman (Evelyn Adeline Martin née Morrett). She was the fifth child and the only girl. She was trained as a nurse and midwife and spoke Cantonese fluently. She and her husband, Dr. Abdon Clement Kathigasu, operated a clinic at No 141 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh from 1926 until the Japanese invasion of Malaya.

Sybil Kathigasu's husband was Dr. Arumugam Kanapathi Pillay, a Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) Tamil from Taiping. He was born on 17 June 1892 in Taiping to Kanapathi Pillay and Thangam. He married Sybil in St John's church (now cathedral) in Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur. Initially there had been a religious objection from her parents as he was a Hindu and she was a Catholic. However with agreement from his father, the wedding took place. They were married on 7 January 1919 in St John’s Church, Bukit Nanas, Kuala Lumpur. Sybil's first child was a son born on 26 August 1919, but due to major problems at birth, died after only 19 hours. He was named Michael after Sybil's elder brother who was born in Taiping on 12 November 1892 and was killed in Gallipoli on 10 July 1915 as a member of the British Army.

The devastating blow of baby Michael's death led to Sybil's mother suggesting that a young boy, William Pillay, born 25 October 1918, who she had delivered and had remained staying with them at their Pudu house, should be adopted by Sybil and her husband. Then a daughter, Olga, was born to Sybil in Pekeliling, Kuala Lumpur, on 26 February 1921. The earlier sudden death of baby Michael made Olga a very special baby to Sybil, when she was born without problems.

So when Sybil returned to Ipoh on 7 April 1921, it was not only with Olga, but also with William and her mother who had agreed to stay in Ipoh with the family.

Sybil Kathigasu died on 4 June 1948 aged 48 in Britain and her body was buried in Lanark,Scotland. Her body was later returned in 1949 to Ipoh and reburied at the Roman Catholic cemetery beside St Michael's Church in Ipoh.

A road in Fair Park, Ipoh was named after Sybil Kathigasu (Jalan Syabil Kathigasu) after

independence to commemorate her bravery. Today, the shop house at 74, Main Road, Papan, serves as a memorial to Sybil and her efforts.

works:

• No Dram of Mercy (Neville Spearman, 1954; reprinted Oxford University Press, 1983 and Prometheus Enterprises, 2006)

 Sybil Kathigasu, is an epitome of a freedom fighter, who happened to live in the then Malaya during the Japanese Occupation. She was married to Dr. Abdon Clement Kathigasu and they had two daughters, Olga and Dawn, and an adopted son William. They lived in Ipoh, Perak but spent much of their time during the Japanese Occupation in Papan, outside Ipoh.

Sybil Kathigasu and her husband known as the Doctor spent much of their time treating many wounded and sick anti-Japansese guerillas as well as local people who are ill and in need of constant medical attention during the Japanese Occupation. They were constantly under extreme stress and dangerous situation while carrying out their duties to heal the sick and wounded anti-Japanese guerillas. The call of this selfless concern and act for these wounded guerillas came at the start of the Japanese Occupation from God.

Even with the help of many kind people of Ipoh and Papan, Sybil Kathigasu and her husband were eventually betrayed to the Japanese authorities. They were both interrogated and tortured for hours on end by the extremely ruthless and cruel occupied forces. All because she answered the call from God to treat the anti-Japanese guerillas as well as in the possession of a wireless set to listen to the broadcasts by BBC for the progress of the Allied forces in the World War II battles. Although Sybil and the Doctor had to endure extreme cruelty from their Japanese captors, never once they buckled under the extreme stress and torture inflicted upon them even though the physical and mental pain were beyond description.

However, the physical injuries suffered by Sybil were horrendous and she never completely recovered from them. She even suffered a fractured lumbar vertebrae form repeated beatings during interrogations, which resulted in partial pralysis. She underwent numerous surgeries in the effort to restore her health but with limited success. She managed to walk again unaided and attended a ceremony where King George VI awarded her with the George Medal in the honour of her bravery during the Japanese Occupation. Unfortunately, Sybil died on June 12, 1948 from septicaemia from a fractured jaw sustained from the boot of her torturer, Ekio Yoshimura.

Sybil's heroic efforts were not well-known by the younger generation of Malaysians today, even to myself. I only knew of her story in its barest form, having first encountered it in an English Language reading comprehension exercise when I was in secondary school. Thus, recently when I finally managed to procure a copy of her book, the above-mentioned title, only then I realised that she is one of the lesser known heroines of the Malaysian history, espcially on the Japanese Occupation.

This book should serve as a profound reminder to all, especially those who have read it and/or know her story well the price she had paid in the name of freedom for our country, Malaysia. Although we may have our political forefathers to spearhead in the freedom and independence of Malaysia, the story of Sybil Kathigasu should never ever be forgotten; her contributions to Malaysia's freedom is very much an invaluable part of the Malaysian history.