Thursday, April 28, 2011

Do I have to grow up?

The whole Jeremy Piven incident has made me nostalgic about the days when I was a teenager...

So when I was 13 - 17 years of age, I was madly in love with the local theater scene. I used to watch all kinds of plays with Hana. Hana and I went to high school together, and found each other due to our love for theater. None of our other friends cared for sitting through a 2 hour play.

There was a local production group called The Instant Cafe Theatre, and we made it a point to watch EVERY single show they put on. We fell in love with Jit Murad, Paula Malai Ali, Chae Lian, and many others.

We probably went to about 8 shows a year.. After every single theater performance, we would stay back, wait for the actors to come out so we could talk them to death, take pictures, and get yet ANOTHER autograph specific to the playbill.

Which brings me to a memory I was reminiscing about this evening:

We were 17, and there was a spare moment between the end of a play and when the actors were to come out. I looked over at Hana and said something like "Oh Hana, I want to be 17 years forever. When we grow up, how will we easily justify this silliness?" We looked at each other sadly, realising that our days of being young and acting silly with the actors were coming to an end.

Hana and I had dreams. We also made a bet that whoever made it first to the Actor's Studio gets 50 Malaysian dollars. She made it first.

I have to give major props to Hana. Due to the old folks not wanting to disrupt the status quo in Malaysia, she was asked to pursue medicine. Halfway through her course, she returned to Malaysia and pursued acting. She is now in Boston studying music at Berklee.

Let's not talk about what happened to me...

I'm going to leave you with a picture of Hana and I in our first play together. :)

Group shot with the cast!