Whose Business is this?

One of the latest news in the Hong Kong media in the last few days is the “covered up” marriage and divorce of two well known artists. The guy is the second generation of a token music family and the girl is from the super Hong Kong girl group Twins. It has been rumoured for quite a while that they were going out but when someone leaked the information that they were actually married for 4 years and currently in the middle of a divorce, the Hong Kong media completely exploded. Eventually under the pressure of the media and with all the different “versions” of the story, they called a press conference and explained themselves. This is the second time that the Hong Kong media condemned artists for not telling them their marital status and being dishonest to them. Last year it was another super star Andy Lau who got stung by them – at the funeral of his father-in-law.

As a communication graduate who was taught to be a responsible journalist, I can never understand this fuss. I have accepted the fact that nowadays a lot of so called journalists are really not journalists. They are story writers who just write whatever in fashion for them without actually accepting their liability for what they wrote. Journalism is all about selling copies and getting rating today instead of providing a factual and neutral view for readers or audience to judge. I have accepted that. But calling artists liars because they didn’t disclose certain private information to you and then gang up against them, condemning them days after days and weeks after weeks? I am totally baffled by these “journalist” behaviours nowadays.

Certainly they are in a very public business. Entertainment business earns big money from the public. But that doesn’t mean that they have to surrender every single piece of information about them to everyone. A lot of times people said that “you do this business, you accept the consequence”. That is total crap to me as for my understanding; you are responsible to your employers not the general public. If the general public wants to put you on a pedestal, it should not be certain artist’s responsibility to live up to their expectations – especially about their private lives. They can be condemned of being liars if they front an anti-drug campaign but they are junkies themselves. But why is it that whether someone is married or not anyone else’s business?

For me, the most annoying part of this saga is that neither one of them had ever talked about their relationship in the public but then now being crucified for “not talking”. In a recent interview, the girl from Twins even said that she just didn’t talk about things. Whether it’s true or not she knows or if other people know then that’s fine. She doesn’t want to say yes or no to things to feed unnecessary media frenzies. Similarly, the guy had never admitted or denied anything about their “rumoured relationship” in the past 6 years. So calling them liars and condemning them of dishonesty is really beyond my comprehension. Further, if that traitor in their social circle didn’t leak the information to the press, nobody would have even known that ever happened. So why does it matter when it isn’t something that matters to begin with? Is it because the media itself is angry with them because their marriage managed to sneak under their radar for that long? So is this their way of getting back to them and “teach them a lesson”?

The most amusing part of this saga is that they condemn the artists about dishonesty but at the same time composed new stories about things as if suddenly they were sleeping under their bed in the last 4 years. Now I really want to know who the bigger liar here is – the artists who wanted to keep their marriage to themselves or people who wrote untrue stories to sell copies. This kind of blatant and shameless double standard really put me off the Hong Kong media in the recent years. If there is a stone to cast and someone cast the first stone, it is still fine. But in this case, there is no stone to cast at all, but they built a boulder to roll over and knock down others – that’s not on!

I am saying this not because I like those two artists. And to be honest, I am never a fan to either of them. But I just couldn’t believe that the Hong Kong media has gone to that low in their practices while at the same time waving the moral flag in the air calling foul. It is not surprising that a lot of established Hong Kong artists like Maggie Cheung and Faye Wong nowadays prefer to live overseas or away from Hong Kong and just go back to work if they feel like to. Just that magnitude of media intrusion and “judgment” is enough a reason for them to stay away as much as possible.

I know the current frenzy will die away as soon as the Hong Kong media found new targets and move on. But I just really feel for this couple that they even couldn’t grieve their marriage breakdown privately and being pressured to become “responsible” to something that is nobody else but their own business.

Sex, Lies and a Father Figure?

It seems that these days we are facing scandals after scandals of prominent people in the media. First we have the undying saga of “the tiger living in the woods”, then we have “a cheating husband of a Hollywood darling and Oscar winner”, and now it is the “husband of a prominent acting agent and a lovable father figure in Australia”.

Now if all these people ever want to live a life as just another human being, they successfully did it – as they could have committed a sin as every other human being could commit on Earth. For Mr Wood and Mr James, they were involved with adults – not that their adulterous actions are correct or justifiable, but at least they are consenting adults. How messy they got, adults are dealing with adults. What distressed me most is the allegation of two powerful personalities – one leading actor and one major producer – trying to execute and cover up evil deeds against children worked on set. I don’t want to jump into conclusion that Robert Hughes is guilty as there is yet a trial on that. But I really dislike people taking advantage on helpless people and exercise their power to a magnitude that it helped to “conspire” and “perpetuate” such evil acts.

Everyone in the acting business knows that this is a tough business. Every time we got a job, we want to do our best to keep it (well maybe not all but most of us). So when a 6 year old who is on the set earning bread and butter for her family was experiencing such horrible thing, what could she do? According to the information she eventually sought help and advice from an elder cast member who was eventually told to shut up or “risk not working in the country anymore”. Now what interested me was why did that producer do that? Is it also just to keep the show running so he could earn a lot more out of it? If that’s so and if it was proved that the allegations are correct, the media industry should unite against this producer and throw him out of business too as he is equally guilty.

Another thing that kept me thinking was that if according to all the actors who came out to talk about this that Hughes’ behaviour is well known throughout the industry, why didn’t his wife know and take actions? As one of the most prominent agents of the country, surely there would be wind blowing pass her letting her know about this. So how could that kind of behaviour continued for so many years behind her back? I am not saying she had a part or she allowed this to happen, but then if she really didn’t know about all these, people surely had kept her in the dark very well. I could only feel sorry for her.

At this point it is really difficult for us to make judgement as there is no real judgement unless the case is officially filed and a trial is officially carried out. However, in due time hopefully the truth will come out as I do think that with such allegations, Hughes does have the responsibility to let the society know the truth because as I said, this is not private fun between two consenting adults behind his wife’s back but the exercise of power one a helpless kid in a wrongful manner. How many more people will come out and make further allegations is still unknown but I think not only for us but for just for human conscience, actions have to be taken. And should the truth prove Hughes is guilty, as I said earlier, the producer in question should be hung too.

As for all of us, as my friend said in his blog, if you are in the acting business or media industry and experienced harassment of such magnitude, do not hesitate to report it to the union: http://www.alliance.org.au/ as the more we tolerate such behaviour, the messier and more unprofessional the business becomes. Hopefully, bit by bit we can clear out the cancer cells in the industry and people who deserve to work will get work and not a bunch of conspiring evil wankers.

How Sweet is Short+Sweet?

Been having a blast attending different shows at this year’s Short+Sweet. For those who don’t know what Short+Sweet is, it is the world’s largest short play festival. All plays are strictly limited to 10 minutes and it is also a competition among participants to see who put on the best play of the year. Short+Sweet has been around for 9 years and is going from strength to strength. Maybe one day it will become like Tropfest, something that attracts more and more international attention (at the time of writing, Short+Sweet is already starting up in Singapore, Malaysia and New Zealand).

I’ve never been in any Short+Sweet production but in the last two years got involved as one of the adjudicators. Still remember how flattered I was when I got the invitation. Many people asked me how come I got to be an adjudicator when I’ve never been involved in any production. Well not to blow my own horn, I do have a formal qualification in Theatre and am a fully trained dramaturg (though not many theatre companies can afford to employ us). But this is not about me it’s about all the people who bleed and sweated to put the festival together. Alex Broun has been at the helm as an artistic director the last few years and with him and Mark Clearly, the scale of Short+Sweet was just ever expanding.

Going to Short+Sweet is like going to a restaurant that provides only set menus according to the ingredients available on the day. So you are really in for some surprises from time to time. One week it could be really short and sweet, while some others they could be “Short+Missed”. Productions that managed to squeeze into the main program will usually be staged for a week. Audience will vote for their favourite play of the night and the judges will rank the plays according to (for me) writing, staging, direction and performance. Productions that got into the Wild Card sessions are more like in a sudden death judgement situation – one performance to determine whether they can enter the second round and thus from the second round to the Final Gala.

I had a great time judging on Short+Sweet. It is good to see so many people writing and putting themselves out there. However with the massive number of productions squeezed into around 8 weeks, you bound to have disappointments from time to time. For me disappointments can come in several ways:

Writing:

Mediocre and generic writing is one of the deadly sins in Short+Sweet. Sometimes you felt you have seen it all and the dialogues are as tasteless as filtered water. At times you will get plays that swore their heads off throughout the whole 10 minutes, and even after that you still don’t know why they needed to swear. I know this is Australia but do Australians just swear that much for the sake of swearing? I remember this year there was a production that uses the “c” word repeatedly. I am not against swearing or the “c” word specifically but then my company and I were looking at each other wondering what were they doing?

Staging and Directions:

This year I have seen a lot of productions using an extremely boring approach in terms of staging and directions. This is not limited to Short+Sweet but also to some amateur theatre productions. The most commonly seen approach is to just have people walking across the stage again and again for the sake of using the stage space. However, because they are walking to and fro that much, you just got distracted because you couldn’t figure out why they were doing so. Staging doesn’t necessarily means you have to use all the space available – use it only if it enriches your story telling. I remember in one of the productions this year, the two ladies were just using a small stage front area next to a double deck trolley most of the time and it worked extremely well. The other well-staged production involved placing the actors symmetrically on the stage. They only move out of their space when they needed to interact or when it was required to move the story forward. That was a pleasure to watch. However, there were quite a number of productions where they just have actors running around on the stage “doing their stuff” and after 10 minutes you felt more exhausted than they did.

Performance:

One of the common issues I found in Short+Sweet performances is the actors’ voice. Being a voice student for over 3 years now made me really pay attention to what came out of actors’ mouths. I remember in one of the productions, there were four actors. Two of them were spectacular but the other two were just awful whenever they opened their mouth. The words came out were mostly inaudible and one of them spoke so quickly that you just felt like popcorns were coming out of her mouth. There was another production where there were non-English speaking actors delivering lines in English. However, they were so heavily accented that it was quite difficult to understand what they were saying. Being someone from a non-English speaking background I know how difficult it is, but then when it comes to performing life, this is really something that need to be addressed – seriously. There were other productions that even when I was sitting on the second or fourth row, I couldn’t hear a word from the actors. Now I am not saying they need to yell cause I hate people just yelling for no reason and I’d seen too much of them on Australian stage and screen already. But clear articulation and projection are essential for all stage performers and I don’t think that is something a stage actor can get away with. To cite a good performance this year is the girl who was in the play about ranting. Her projection and articulations were clear but she managed to put so many dimensions and layers into the ranting that it was just enjoyable.

The Short+Sweet Final Gala will be held on 12 and 13 March this year and unfortunately I won’t be able to attend. But I am sure the program will be a wonderful and entertaining. It sounds like I am very critical when it comes to judging but I do think as a member of the local theatre and acting scene, I do need to be critical about our work so we can make improve each time. I enjoyed most of the program this year and there were certainly some really good stuff among them. So if you have missed Short+Sweet this year, remember to mark your calendar for next year’s festival. After all what is better than a night of aspiring theatre?