An essay on my love - by Azhari

Lomographer: Aishah

Camera: Colorsplash

I was brought into the theatre scene when I was at primary five by my class teacher whose unfortunately I forgot what her name was. She casted me to play a small role in a school play entitled Sakaratul maut. I played the role of a doctor back then and honestly the role was so small I think I had only less than five lines given , but every second that I was on the stage were such incredible an experience. When I was in secondary school in Sek Men Dato Penggawa Timur, I was summoned by my Bahasa Malaysia teacher, Cikgu Normala for my lack of discipline in the class. Along with me, were few of my class mates which happened to be my best friends. We were lectured and she proposed that we enroll ourselves to the theatre club because she thought that we were really bunch of noisy and out of control students and we ought to channel it to a batter cause. To my surprise, we agreed to join it mainly for the wise reason that we might be able to skip more classes and the fact that our theatre club was desperately looking for people to participate in the grand Pekan Teater Antara Sekolah-Sekolah Peringkat Johor Bahru that annually held in JOTIC JB (Johor Tourism Centre).

I was so ecstatic when for the first time under the guidance of my first true theatre guru, Cikgu Saini, our team won the competition. Since then we were really became serious and committed to the club and won several other theatre competitions including Pekan Teater Johor, Pekan Teater Berasaskan Teknologi Peringkat Johor and the most memorable win that I was always proud of is we got ourselves in the third place in Pekan Teater Kebangsaan Antara Sekolah Malaysia despite us being labelled the underdog. We even changed the name of our club to ANAK DATO’ and today ANAK DATO is still going strong in theatre scene in Johor.

After SPM I got myself enrolled in IIUM. I wasn’t sure whether I can still participate in theatre but to my delight, I found a great community of theater lovers in BEN and soon after that, I got my first chance to participate in a theatre production produced by my seniors. Despite being more active in technical team during high school, I was surprised when our seniors chose me to act in their play entitled the importance of being earnest as one of the lead actor.

Since then, I just can’t stop and with bunch of my great friends we soon became the young activists of theatre scene in UIA and since our first year up until now, we managed to produce several plays and various theatre based events inside and outside of UIA. We even established a legal production company named The Masquerade and performed in Istana Budaya, hence making my dream a reality. Having to live among a healthy group of theatre lovers and activists in UIA particularly among the BENL community, I am proud to say that I have spending my life in a full worthy kind of living…