if you want my honest opinion, i don't think dick lee is very talented. and i've never bothered to watch any of his musicals. but then you know, i realize i don't enjoy musicals as much i used to. maybe i've become more serious ... or maybe it's because Westside Story really sucked. i don't know. and you ask why i'm ranting about this so early in the day but i suppose it's because yesterday at the samsu uchicago gathering (YES, i did go) it went something like this every single time -

'what are you majoring in?'
'possibly theatre.'
'that's so cool. hey you know we staged beauty world last year?'

and then i was subjected to videos of beauty world and dick lee on tv and 'omg beauty world is the seminal singaporean musical!' X 10000.

i don't want to sound white-washed or like i'm straying from my roots or anything but, beauty world? no self-respecting theatre major would really care much for staging it. at least not me. well as it is i don't take musicals very seriously anyway. they're just enjoyable and good entertainment but it kind of stops there.

what IS intrinsically singaporean anyway? does it have to be something drenched in singlish and slapstick humour - because if that's so, it explains why i feel so displaced from this country. how ironic that my poem made it into that piece of ndp drivel that was 'what makes us singaporean'. because singapore could mean so much more to me other than the cabaret or hokkien. is that such a distorted or wrong view?

there are so many other local works much more worthy that people don't care to shout about. something of alfian's, eleanor wong's or the necessary stage or something. reproduce those. heck, CHAY YEW'S stuff is awesome (though previously banned here of course)! so enough about beauty world and dick lee. like, enough, seriously.

+ posted by M @ 3:29 AM