Giant - MPH Stamford Road. January 1982.

Page 3

A Giant (with a ) Headache

There I was, the Giant - in the final scene - chasing Jack (played by Jasmin) down the Beanstalk.

My head was throbbing - must have been the tension - I was muttering to myself - "Please, please, please, Jack, chop down the bloody beanstalk and let us get it over with fast."

And when the moment arrived, I dramatically and gratefully plunged to the ground. While Jack and his Mother (Ruby) were bringing the proceedings to a close, I lay there thinking - "Is this the only memory I will have from our first ever performance as ACT 3 - a giant headache?"

That was January 1982 - MPH Bookstore, Stamford Road - barely two months since we had formed the group.

Wah! So much we learned in those two months.

We were to produce and stage five different famous tales over the period of five weeks. This meant I had to write five plays in that blink of an eye period. No choice, I trained myself to focus and work efficiently. Mind you, I was hand-writing my scripts (I was doing so right right into the 1990s). It developed my biceps, too.

The fact was we were a cast of three actors playing multiple roles - male & female, young & old characters for that matter. For example in Jack & the Beanstalk, while Jasmin played Jack, Ruby had to be his mother as well as the Giant's helper; I was the Giant plus the man who sells Jack the magic beans; in Hansel & Gretel, while my partners played the two children, I was their Father and the Wicked Witch.

My script writing had to take this into consideration, giving the transforming actors enough time to disappear and appear while the action on stage continued.

Costume changes had to be effective yet achieved in a matter of seconds - no dilly-dallying, having a drink in-between and all that.

Costumes were designed for instantaneous changes (thanks to "velcro"). Yes, even make-up needed modification.

I achieved the transformation from Hansel & Gretel's father to the Wicked Witch - with a skirt & blouse, straggly wig, blackened tooth, hooked nose, red lips, crackly voice, bad attitude - in the 70 seconds it took the children to get lost in the forest and stumble onto the Gingerbread House.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson we learnt as actors was how to convincingly play differing characters - voice modulation, restructuring posture, adopting varied mannerisms, juggling accents...

The fact that Jasmin and I locked ourselves in a windowless room (thanks Ken Sunn) during the Chinese New Year holiday period that came before our run at MPH - Ruby joined us when she could escape her CNY obligations - experimenting and improving on the look and make-up of characters like the Big Bad Wolf, Witch, Giant, Rumpelstiltskin, convinced us of our collective sense of professionalism.

Having produced a set of dramatic wolf ears stuck on a hat to be worn by the character, we realised I shouldn't have exposed human ears (the children would see two pairs of ears.) Therefore we pasted fake hair on my ears to give the impression that it was part of the hair on my head. Each time we pasted and tore off the fake hair the natural hair on my ears got ripped off as well, only to reappear thicker, coarser and longer.

Big Bad Wolf - MPH Stamford Road. February 1982.

Now, I blame that exercise for the fact that I need extra facial grooming time, pertaining to the ears, on Saturdays.

The Journey continues with - "Living Room Theatre".

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