4.48 Psychosis

On 16th September 2007, I had the opportunity to watch a play in KL Pac entitled 4.48 Psychosis with my other coursemates. Actually, this is my first experience to watch a play and I’m so excited about it. I try to find some information about the play in the internet because I don’t want to be puzzled and look stupid during the play and guess what I’ve found. 4.48 Psychosis is a 1999 play by British playwright named Sarah Kane and this is her last work (that makes this play another reason to watch, isn’t it?). The play is written from the point of view of someone with bipolar disorder, a disorder from which Kane suffered. The title of the play refers to the exact time of night around which suffering people report feeling very clear and sane.
Do all these information help me when I watched the play? It does but not much really. There are 3 actors in this play, 2 women and a man and I failed to guess which one of them is the patient as they are taking turn to be the patient and the therapist. However, with limited actors and only a few of props, this play is not a disappointment. The management of the lighting is great as it helps the audience to better understand with the play. Sometimes there is no light at all, it is totally dark and I am afraid that when the light is on the actor is standing next to me (sounds very foolish for a first timer). I am amazed with their performance because they really taken up their role very well. Their facial expressions really portray their feelings and to perform in front of live audience and at the same time memorize such a long script really fascinates me a lot. At first I thought this play is carried on a stage but in contrast the sitting for the audience is surround the play. The actors are in the middle hence the eye contact between them and the audience is there. In the end I am satisfied and I think I became addicted with it. So guys, tell me what play we are going to watch next?

Goneril + Regan = cuckoo + kite

In the play King Lear, Shakespeare had used a lot of animal imageries. This type of figure of speech is to compare Goneril, Regan and other characters with the negative qualities of animals. All these imageries are used to show that human are greed for power as well as other bad qualities such as being ungrateful or disobedient to others. Bird imagery consists a great deal in this play and one of them is cuckoo. This type of bird is used to refer to ungrateful children because they laying their eggs in the nests of other bird. This parasitic cuckoo’s egg hatches earlier than the host’s and the cuckoo chick grows faster and sometimes in most cases the chick forces the young of the host species to leave the nest. The mother still feeds the cuckoo chick as if it were her own. In my opinion, cuckoo totally shows the truly image of ungrateful children because we can see nowadays that there are many cases that children disown their parent by sending them to the foster house and even worse did not taking care of them at all. Goneril and Regan really go well with this imagery as they treat their father, Lear cruelly after get a hold of shares of his kingdom.
Other animal imagery in this play is kite, a bird prey which feeds on small land animals, fish, garbage and carrion. In Act I, Scene IV, we can see this line as King Lear speak to Goneril,
"Detested kite! thou liest." (line261).

BASTARD

The word bastard is considered as a taboo word in our culture. It is also being labeled as a foul word. The meaning of bastard is a person born of an unmarried parents and long time ago, the law of England states that the baby who is born of unmarried parents must be called as bastard. But now it is not practiced anymore. In King Lear by Shakespeare, Edmund the illegitimate son of Gloucester is called as bastard and in some scene of the play, he is referred as bastard without name being mentioned. The idea of illegitimate or unnatural which differs from natural is considered as evil. All these showing that how women were being downgraded during the Elizabethan period because the word bastard is not insulting that person but obviously the mother. The role of woman during that period is so limited or nearly come to nothing at all. They are not allowed to take a part in a play but their roles are acted out by a boy or a young man. The list of characters for example in King Lear also the same as the hierarchy showing that the three daughters of King Lear are put last after the maid. All these prove that women are not being taken very seriously at that time.

Ages of Man

Writers tend to relate their writings with human’s life or experiences whether in plays, poems, short stories or even in novels. They like to talk about the stage of life and challenges that men going through in their life. For instance, the play "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare, the character Jacques makes a speech about seven ‘ages of man’ where the first age or stage is the infant, followed by whining school boy, then the lover, a soldier, the justice (a judge), a wise men and lastly second childishness meanings man becoming baby again as now they have no teeth, no eyes, no taste and no everything.
William Butler Yeats in his poem entitled "The Four Ages of Man" also talks about the stage of life of human being. Each of the four stanzas represents an age of man where they face different problems which getting more complex. In this poem, the first stanza reflects the physical struggle man faces in order to face the world. In the second stanza, man deals with emotion where now they’ll experience guilt and cause them to be more mature. In the third stanza, man intellectualizes things and become rational and finally in the fourth stanza, he talks about God and faith as human will die sooner or later though they try to avoid it.
As in the play "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles, Oedipus has to answer a riddle asked by a Sphinx who sat outside of Thebes. The riddle also about ages of man and it sounds like this; What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening? The answer is a man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.

Between Anike and Antigone

If I have to choose between Anike by Wong Phui Nam and Antigone by Sophocles, the latter will be my choice without any hesitation. I know it is not fair to make a choice between these two plays since Anike is adapted from Antigone but suit with Malaysian context, however it is sad to say that the story failed to catch my attention. Yes, the language is not an old language likes Antigone’s but it is easy to understand rather than Anike. The speech for one character is too long and keeps repeating the same thing. Besides, poem style play is not worked for me. However, I should give credit to Wong Phui Nam because he willing to make the initiative for students to easy for them to understand Antigone but now in Malaysian context. They’ll understand easily because the story is taken from the legend of Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat with the Sultan of Malacca. The conflict involved in this legend is as the same as conflict with Antigone and also Haemon with Creon.