‘Research’ is a word that doesn’t seem pertinent to the arts. Many people assume the arts to be wholly inspired and created through the artist’s natural or divinely-given talent and passion or genius and impulse. But this is never the whole picture. “There is no such thing as an impulsive artist!” -- this is a line from the author’s recent play (‘Oppy & Professor Communitas’, performed online in April), spoken by an exasperated professor to a bunch of research-shy artists. “Sorry, guys”, he says, “to make good art, you got to put in the work to discover and test out new information, new ideas, new materials, and sometimes, new methods and tools as well”.

To give an example of the kind of research done in theatre is by using a student’s project the author supervised late last year. It was called ‘21’, an almost hour-long performance collaboratively produced by 13 Diploma in Performing Arts students as their final-year project. They began working on their project on campus but ended up performing it from their homes as ‘Theatre on Zoom’ in December 2020 due to the then COVID-19 movement restrictions.

Their project’s theme was ‘under-estimation of youth in our society’. What was the justification? Each one had personal stories to support the validity of their choice.

What was their research? They were required to get stories and experiences from the real world. So, they went online to find and retrieve all kinds of news, articles and videos that spoke to the theme of ‘under-estimation of youth’. They interviewed friends and acquaintances and also a parent. These stories were recorded on their phones and later transcribed. Portions of these were selected and reworked into a script that also contained pieces from their personal stories.

Over time, what started out as disgruntlement at the perceived unfair treatment of young people at home and in public life became fleshed out and complex. Their script gave insights into a bigger and truer picture of Gen Z. Far from being fragile and complaining, they could care for sick parents and younger siblings. Some had to earn their keeps. They talked of the trauma of failing to achieve what grown-ups wanted of them, the fear of stepping out into the working world, the desire for romantic love as well as a longing for protection from parents while looking forward to more freedom and responsibility.

Because of the forced migration to the Zoom platform, these so-called ‘digital natives’ had to carry out another kind of research. They went online to see how professional theatre-makers were transitioning to performing online. This was at a time when theatre companies across the globe were generously sharing their archives and showing their new works online for free. Most of these works had been pre-recorded and then streamed – but this wasn’t something they wanted to do. Collectively, they (and me too) wanted to honour the spirit of theatre and to perform ‘live’.

But there was a bug that just could not be fixed – unstable internet connections in 13 locations! That forced the students to finally decide to pre-record the whole performance at one go, ‘live’ on Zoom, and then show that (unedited) to the public and to retain the live-ness of theatre, they repeated the last piece, an ensemble performance by all 13 of them, live for the online audience. Suffice to say, ‘21’ was a winner! They sold over 160 tickets and raised RM973 from donations to give to Mercy Malaysia. However, the icing on the cake was when these students received an A+ grade from the three external evaluators (theatre-makers who were likewise grappling with making shows online) who were so impressed with their performance.

Link to ‘21’ by DPA 2019 students 

Besides being an arts educator, the author is also a playwright.

Associate Professor Leow Puay Tin
School of Arts
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