Seeds Stuff

In a space of a month a team of volunteers went about putting on an original musical play…from scratch. This is everything, I mean everything from nothing. What costumes should be worn, when the music should start playing, how large a fish prop should be, where the audience should sit…the list goes on.

Well, I got the feels once we cleared the hall of everything and all that was left was an empty stage. An empty stage was the first thing I saw when I entered that hall. No decisions were finalised, and we literally had to fill it in with whatever we could think of.

The cleared empty hall reminded me of the daunting moment when there were question marks when there should have been full stops. When the possibility that no laughter would be heard, came very close to being. When I drove to rehearsals thinking I should lay off the coffee and have a nap instead.

This is what a theater production – or any art – is essentially about, filling an empty stage with stuff. Stuff like lights, sound, a cast, props and a willing audience. Stuff combined to get you on the edge of your seat and laugh, cry and bawl your eyes out, go back home to your loved ones and give them a long meaningful hug. But what is more incredible is how the stuff is held together, not just by glue, staplers and whatever else we could muster, but through an unquantifiable drive. This is what Seeds is all about.

Seeds is what keeps the stuff together, it’s what makes you paint till 3am, what makes you laugh even though the seats aren’t filling up fast enough, it’s what makes you chuckle at a scene over and over again even though you’ve seen it hundreds of times before, it’s that stuff.

After curtain call all the people who worked on Amas stood together. Probably for the first time, we were all in once place. Technicians, choreographer, publicity, costumes, cast, choir, props, producers, directors, musicians and many more. Each of us working separately but towards a similar goal of putting an original production about Brunei on stage. When the audience left and the lights turned off, maybe they left with that Seeds stuff that binds, propels and motivates us to create. That Seeds stuff.

 

[crosspost from instagram]