When the task to produce a P Ramlee theatre in a week was given, one of my first remarks was that the exercise would be more of a test of organisational competency rather than a creative endeavour.
I was not completely off the mark, but then again, as any of the jawatankuasa would attest to, doing justice to P. Ramlee require more than just the sum of both.
From the very beginning, we had to throw out the idea of doing historical justice to any of P Ramlee’s films. Here were an assortment of individuals, less than 10 were ever involved in a theatre production prior, and even smaller number could be assumed to be P. Ramlee-literate (or should I say that most of us are irramleeterates) to help with fact checking and research. The solution? We played to our individual strengths and ‘winged it’ the rest. Those who were unfamiliar with decorations and making props, searched high and low for reusable sofas and cocktail tables. Those who had never touched a unidirectional stage beam, found delights in blinding us for a good half a minute on stage. Those who never acted on stage, improvised the script and channelled their inner Ramlees.
At different points of the production, sipping sirap and reflecting on our day lecture on honorific titles and medals, we sighed over the short span of time given to manifest our crafts. A year or more of research and incubating ideas in a traditional production was cut short to a two-day period of choosing scenes from the 60 plus movies P Ramlee acted in, compiling script from limited online resources, and having at the end of the second day, sleepless and lethargic, a semblance of a story flow. The more we learned of the man himself, however, the more time constraints became just an excuse. In his short 25 years of artistic life, he acted, directed, wrote, produced, and/or composed songs for about 66 movies. There were more than 400 songs under his name. Prior to his debut as an actor in 1948, he was already active in bands and singing, and numerous stints in badminton and other sports. In 1973, he died at a relatively young age of 44. He was right in singing ‘Jangan Tinggal Daku’, if the target was future diplomats who have no sense of the expanding and contracting nature of time.
Theatre in its purest form, is a concentration of human experiences, played out on an artificial stage not to mimic actions and words of an individual, but to expose the core of the era and humanity. Audiences must see gist over gestures. An adaption of this level, speaking remorsefully, had sidestepped the need for ‘concentrated purity’ and began like any other clueless replication, with a point of reference. In this case it was YouTube. We learned through the black and white videos, punctuated with ads for CNY angpows, that words are spoken in a way that broke our preconceived notions of strict Malay baku-ness of the era. We tried to understand how slapstick comedies, along with sarcasms well known in P. Ramlee’s works, were choreographed for maximum effects. How era-specific props and settings were made to fit the storytelling. How a sense of rhythm that defined not just the time period but also the evergreen lyrics and symbolism could be evoked in Dewan Serba Guna, a place so versatile in its shabbiness, we danced over slashed carpets without slipping and the spectators did not know any better.
There were eight scenes from eight different movies adapted for the night. Initially, flow and coherence became a difficulty since there was no way that Sarjan Hassan, a historical war drama set on the 1940s can fit snugly between scenes with a more metropolitan (Tiga Abdul) or fictional (Ahmad Albab) settings. Somehow we opted for a ‘there-are-methods-to-the-randomness’ approach. A kedai kopi set in the current time portrayed young millennials trying to learn from P. Ramlee’s films over fake kuihs and fake black liquid(?). Strict acting was limited to five scenes, while others have a mixture of dancing and singing. Along with the hall decor that took inspiration from the many props and scenes of P. Ramlee’s varying cinematic moments, we also had an invitation party that paid homage to the gang of bandits in Ali Baba, a modern song ‘Lagenda’ to the tune of a single keyboard, and a life band that came to life with an introductory “Ha, coba!” in one of the scenes. Randomness worked in our favour.
In those messy combination of scenes and transitions, I could not believe that there were still moments of clarity. When Sarjan Hassan defeated Buang and claimed he was no longer a coward; when Syawal won the audiences over by cynically extolling the virtues of salt and sugar to his father in law Mashood Al-Buaya; when Kassim Selamat poured his heart out in singing ‘Di Manakan Ku Cari Ganti’ – vignettes that made more sense in a longer filmic context, but somehow turned up equally powerful in this amateur production. There were pain, sarcasm, and most importantly there was fun.
And fun was one thing we totally had despite everything.
Close to the end of the show, we managed to slip in a pantomime portraying P. Ramlee at the end of his career. Of course there were poetic licenses here used to dramatize what otherwise would be one liners in the competing narratives of his life we found online: ‘fallout with film studios’, ‘getting booed on stage at the cusp of Pop Ye Ye era’, and ‘died of a heart attack’. In between lines of sajak, we could see a man doubting himself and his journey, asking whether he would be remembered or not. Ultimately, it was not out of line to project a man, in spite of the number of followers and a loving family by his side and a long list of achievements locally and globally, who thought he would die a lonely death.
This was the sombre reflection that lingered in us until today. In playing P. Ramlee, we hoped to honour him, and even if we fell short of that, at least two hours were spent in remembering him; as a performer and most importantly as a person. And hopefully that would make him, and us, less lonely.
In our sarong and kebaya, we hugged and congratulated and thanked ourselves for the memorable event. We were tired but relived. A long holiday was upon us, and somehow the event pulled us together into a family eager for what’s to come.
9 more months to go.
Asfa
Gladius, Imperius.
