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Ma'ma Yong
May 12, 2008
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Singaporean theatre company Panggung Arts will be presenting their inaugural production called “Ma’Ma Yong, which is an Asian-influenced version of William Shakespeare’s play Much Ado About Nothing. Find out more about this unique production in Arts Arena this week with me Shereena Sajeed.
Ma’ma Yong will be performed in Malay, Mandarin, English and even some Kelantanese, with English subtitles from the 16 of May to the 18th of May. With a cast of talented young actors and actresses, the audience can expect a witty yet contemporary adaptation of a Shakespearean text.
The director of the production Ma’ma Yong is Mohammed Najib Soiman and he gives us an overview of the play.
NS: Mama Yong is mostly a very loose adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play which is called Much Ado About Nothing. So in Mama Yong, we do an adaptation of the play and we only retain the storyline. Everything else, meaning the characters, places, dialogue, even the timeline we alter it and make it more local. So in this play we make it more similar or more close to the classical Malay tale in this William Shakespeare’s play.
And going into more detail, how have you actually made it modern in that sense, did you incorporate some themes that you can talk about maybe?
NS: Ok, we make it modern and also traditional in this play by incorporating hip hop. We also did incorporate other traditional elements from other races, for example, we use kung fu, which originated from the Chinese. We also use Mak Yong, especially for the play, which originated fom Kelantan itself. So what we did was we mixed or we even fused Shakespearean play ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ with the elements of Mak Yong, which is an Asian dance theatre form. So there’s a lot of elements of ritual, stylized dancing, acting, vocal, instrumental music and we include improvised spoken text for the play itself.
Tell us a bit more about this Kelantanese art form called Mak Yong. I mean tell us more about what’s incorporated into this dance form.
NS: Mak Yong itself is ritual dance theatre performance. So what we incorporated is the movement of Mak Yong which has not been seen in Singapore itself, which also has the influence of feeling-process, means that we heal patients in a performance. So it’s more like a ritual, stylised performance and we also incorporate the music of Mak Yong. Mak Yong orchestra is usually made up of a three-strings pipe fiddle, which we call a rebab, a pair of double-headed barrel drums, a pair of hanging knobbed gongs. So we use the repertoire of the Mak Yong musical in the play itself and we make it ‘live’ music. We don’t even use any CDs for the play.
Is that why the title of the production is called Mama Yong, has it got something to do with Mak Yong?
NS: Yeah Mak Yong, Mak actually means mum or mother so we changed it to MaMa because the main character, the prima donna of the play is called Fatimah. So in the play, Fatimah is called Mak Ma so we incorporate MaMa into Mak Yong and we take it as Mama Yong.
While you were coming up with the concept of this production, did you ever have to face the dilemma of in the process of translating it from you know Much Ado About Nothing was back in the Shakespearan times, in that language, to English then back to Malay. Then adding all these influences, did you ever fear that things will get lost in translation?
NS: Yeah, at the beginning I did feel that but what I did was that I did a thorough research on the Shakespearean play Much Ado About Nothing. Other than reading the book, I also did some research on movies or even theatre plays that have been staged, so that the main plot is not lost. But in the process of translating, the meaning might be lost in terms of the language used, but for me, I’m trying to retain as close as possible to the plot and the storyline itself. What Shakespeare needs to show the audience is also being showed exactly in this play.
As the director of this play and Panggung Arts, what do you want the audience to watch and get out of the play?
NS: This kind of play, mostly traditional elements fused with contemporary style, is seldom seen in local plays so I’m trying to bring this element in to the audience about how we do it. Especially in Singapore where we are multi-racial and it can be done in Shakespeare play to make it clearer for us, even to make the students who take Much Ado About Nothing as their literature text, to understand the play better when it’s being visually staged.
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