This article was first published in The Straits Times, LIFE ! on Jun 12, 2008 & written by Tara Tan. It featured some details of the Arts programme in our school.(PS: I hv higlighted it in green & bold it.)
Sme ppl featured in the article: My Bro,Bernice,Lim Yen,Joey Tan,Li Kiong,Donald,Steph Loh,Lena,Chloe,
etc ... ....
THE King Lear Project by Ho Tzu Nyen, showing this week as part of the Singapore Arts Festival, is far from a conventional staging of Shakespeare's famous play.
The first night is an audition, the second revolves around rehearsals of the play's notoriously difficult scenes, and the last night features a post-show discussion between the actors and audiences.
But this has not deterred Serangoon Junior College literature teacher Melissa Chew from booking 194 tickets for each of the three nights, filling up a third of the Drama Centre Theatre at the National Library each night.
Miss Chew, 25, says: 'King Lear is one of our A-level texts and it would be good for the students to be exposed to different interpretations of the work.
'Also, I think this piece would give them a unique insight into how artistic decisions are made.'
Students are an emerging - and sizeable - force in the theatre-going market.
It is telling that big theatre companies such as the Singapore Repertory Theatre, Wild Rice and The Necessary Stage have at least one full-time staff each dedicated to marketing and coordinating ticket sales to schools.
Others like Mandarin theatre group Drama Box set up an education arm, NeNeMas, to put on youth-orientated shows.
Most of the school-going crowd apply for the Tote Board Arts Grant, administered by the National Arts Council's (NAC) Arts Education Programme. It was set up in 1995 to subsidise up to 60 per cent of the ticket price for students.
So for a show at the Singapore Arts Festival, for example, a student would have to pay only $16 for a $50 ticket after factoring in a 20 per cent student discount on top of the subsidy.
More schools are making use of this grant now, compared to 10 years ago, an NAC spokesman said, adding that the number of students participating in the programme has jumped from 39 per cent in 1997 to 60 per cent in 2006.
It's hard to ignore the burgeoning trend. Last year, students snapped up 4,500 tickets for SRT's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the performances of King Lear and The Seagull by The Royal Shakespeare Company, which the theatre company brought in.
Students also accounted for 3,072 tickets to Wild Rice's Beauty World earlier this year, making up about 10 per cent of total audiences.
They made up more than half the audience for shows in smaller-sized venues, like TNS' Off Centre at the 200-seat Esplanade Theatre Studio and Survivor Singapore at the 388-seat Jubilee Hall last year.
Industry players attribute the increase to factors like higher production quality in local shows and the awareness of the importance of arts education.
Some schools, such as Raffles Institution (RI) and Swiss Cottage Secondary School, make it compulsory for their literature students to attend at least one performance a year.
Miss Felicia Kuo, 27, RI's literature subject head, says: 'It's been a longstanding tradition to expose our students to various art forms.'
The school chooses the shows based on relevance to the curriculum. For instance, the entire Secondary 1 cohort watched Wild Rice's Animal Farm in 2002, as it was part of the syllabus.
She adds: 'More recently, because we were studying black comedy, we booked 100 tickets for our upper secondary students to catch young & Wild's Hypochondriac and 50 for SRT's The Pillowman.'
Yeap Choon How, 16, a Secondary 4 student at RI, watched Wild Rice's Blithe Spirit last year with his schoolmates. It was the first time he had watched a play.
He says that theatre-going is 'an experience we need'.
'To see and synthesise what we learnt in the classroom with what is on stage is such an enjoyable experience,' he adds.
But it's not just the independent schools that want in. According to the NAC, 13 government and government-aided schools bought tickets for Singapore Arts Festival shows this year.
Mayflower Secondary School in Ang Mo Kio, for example, is enthusiastically jumping in on the action.
Miss Jean Mok, 36, the school's arts activity coordinator, started taking students to shows four years ago.
Hooking young students to theatre for life
For this year's Singapore Arts Festival, she block-booked a total of 107 tickets for the ballet The Architecture Of Silence and The Lord Of The Rings Symphony. Outside the festival, the students have also been to see Moon Bird by I-theatre and Hamlet by TNT Britain this year.
She says: 'For those who can't afford it, the school helps them with the ticket costs.
'Prior to the event, we would brief them on theatre etiquette, like how to be considerate to other theatre-goers. We always try to arrange an interactive session with the artists after the performance, so the students can ask questions and have a better understanding of the work.'
Secondary 3 student Chua Jia Qi, 15, stepped into the Esplanade theatre for the first time when she and her schoolmates watched The Architecture Of Silence, a contemporary ballet piece accompanied by 65 musicians and 80 singers.
She says: 'It was so nice to see the dancers who were so organised and flexible. It was very different from what I learnt in dance class, and I enjoyed it very much. It was an amazing experience.'
Her schoolmates, Chloe Pek, 16, and Lim Yen, 14, also enjoyed themselves.
'Forbidden City by SRT was my favourite,' says Chloe, who has seen shows as varied as Off Centre and Moon Bird.
Yen adds: 'I really liked Hamlet by TNT Britain, although I didn't understand some parts.'
Once they start, they can't stop, says Miss Sukhjeet Kaur, 29, literature teacher at Swiss Cottage Secondary, whose literature and drama club students catch three to four plays a year.
She says with a laugh: 'Before, I had to literally beg the students to come to shows, now it's on a first-come-first-served basis. Four years ago, we didn't even have a drama club, now the upper secondary students are putting on plays like Stella Kon's Birds Of A Feather.'
Gaurav Kripalani, SRT's artistic director, says: 'If you get the two-year-old and the 14-year-old into the theatre and they enjoy themselves, they are hooked for life.
'It will spark off their interest in the arts and they will start seeking more shows to watch, generating our next wave of theatre-goers.'
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THEY'RE EXCITABLE, AND WE'RE IRRITATED
MORE students might be going to the theatre, but not everyone is enthusiastic about sharing their theatre experience with excitable students.
In 2004, dance student Lee Mun Wai got so irritated when some Katong Convent schoolgirls giggled at the transluscent leotards worn by dancers from Korea's A-Soon dance company that he stood up during the interval and scolded them.
The kerfuffle at Victoria Theatre was reported in the papers and sparked off a debate about students being taught proper theatre etiquette.
More recently, disgruntled theatre-goer Brian Tan wrote in to Life!, saying his experience watching The Necessary Stage's Off Centre last year 'was marred by the students' incessant chatter and commentary that filled the auditorium'.
He wrote that 'they also kicked the seats on purpose at regular intervals' and 'their inconsiderate behaviour caused others to miss important lines and sound cues'.
But big groups can be difficult to control, say five teachers Life! spoke to.
Miss Sukhjeet Kaur, 29, from Swiss Cottage Secondary cites the time she took the entire cohort of 320 Secondary 1 students to a play, which she declined to name.
She says: 'They got too excited and during a show, you can't really control them. Some of the audience members got irritated.
'But the public needs to be more understanding and patient towards students. To me, it's fascinating to see how they react, because their responses are usually more immediate and honest.'
TNS resident playwright Haresh Sharma, 44, whose play Off Centre has become part of the O- and N-level literature syllabus, is used to hordes of students attending his plays and says they can be noisy sometimes.
He says: 'We usually tell the actors beforehand if there is a large group of students coming in, so they can focus their energy differently.
'But whatever the problem is, even if there is inappropriate laughing or talking, there is nothing bad about teenagers or pre-teens going to the theatre. It is all about nurturing future audiences.
'There is so much energy because they don't have this theatre-going experience often enough. I can imagine if I were in their shoes, I might get a little over-excited myself.'
Actor Tan Shou Chen, 26, who performed in Off Centre last year, says: 'Some of our best audiences have been our most challenging. It's great because they are so into the play that they had to share their reactions with their friends.
'It can be very distracting, but I think all actors should perform to rowdy audiences to train their focus and commitment.'
Miss Mary Loh, 42, a lecturer at Lasalle College of the Arts and a regular theatre-goer, notes that apart from that particular incident in 2004, there haven't been any recent bad experience with disruptive school children.
She says: 'Whether the schools are teaching the kids proper theatre etiquette, or we have a culture now where we engage young people, things have moved on.
'I advocate bringing students into the theatre so they're exposed to this sort of experience and may not get as over-excited.'
Ms Sangeetha Madhavan, 33, a freelance writer, says: 'Perhaps it's also a question of age-appropriateness, which educators should take into consideration when choosing a play.
'An abstract piece could be lost on secondary school kids. Perhaps they need more concrete verbal ideas or visual cues to think about.'
