I went to watch the poetry recital Tempestuous Beasts at NUS UCC Foyer with Weewee and Miss Pooja Nansi rocked. The rest were too gay for my liking.
-Alexis K, http://iskcentric.wordpress.com/
in my mind, tempestatous [sic] beasts, judging from the title alone, would be a passionate angsty emotional angry sarcastic literary reading... but instead...haiz. i'm not sure how to describe it. let's just say the feelings wasn't there, lah. it was tame. ... and that guy lee-sheng just annoyed me. what's up with the cape?? a little too much. my mood couldnt take it today. http://nineflavours.blogspot.com/
Yeah, I know I should laugh it off, especially since I'd deliberately made a decision to read my less well-known pieces at the event. But it still hurts a little.
That's one of the paradoxes of my life. I believe strongly in the long-term value of good criticism, but I don't take criticism well, whether it's good (I assume it's flattery) or bad (I believe it and it depresses me).
I say this partly because tomorrow, my extremely negative review of Jocelyn Chua's "A Brief Affair With Infinity" comes out. And I'm friends with both Ruby Pan, the director, and Richard Chua, the Artistic Director of Little Red Shop. It's the maiden production of his theatre group. Whether they remain friends afterwards... time will tell.I know that Jocelyn's going to take this hard, which is why I made sure to use the review to promote her book of earlier plays - "Restless and Other Plays", available at BooksActually, Kinokuniya and NLB. It really is very good; she consistently places her characters into desperate situations, chaos birthed of perverse hierarchical systems (governmental, sexual, familial, whatever), exploding into grotesque influorescences of violence.
Even so, I know that my lack of mercy will come back and haunt me when 251 opens next week.
Let them criticise. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
4 comments:
The theatre community in Singapore is so small.. everyone knows everyone else, theatre critics included.
Take eg the ST Life Theatre Awards. KK Seet, who's been in the judging panel forever, is probably on buddie terms with some if not most of the nominees. Same goes for the ST, BT, LHZB and freelance writers who sit in the panel. Can they really fully separate friendship/personal feelings from professional critique?
Anyway I'm delighted with this year's results. Power to Yann Yann and Adrian!!
Hello Mr. Ng Yi-Sheng.
Just to keep the record straight, I admire and respect your work, I really do.
For someone who has accomplished so much, there's no need to be affected by low-life bloggers. Yeah, laugh it off!
All the best for your upcoming works!
Awww. Thanks.
... or weakens ya for the next meanie that comes along.
Seriously, your review looks fine. Hope to see more in print instead of just on Inkpot.
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