I am working with two young actors for the upcoming Penang Short & Sweet Theatre festival. I am directing a script written by RLT member Jackie. The script is called “Noticed” about a girl who brings an eating disorder on herself by wanting to be thin and wanting to change her life.

As a director, I’m having fun bringing a new twist to the script in having both girls dealing with issues within themselves while dealing with the eating disorder with each other.

It’s a real emotional piece where I’m trying to get the actors to dig down deep and bring out the tears, frustration, and utter hopelessness of being in a situation where one ultimately does not like who she is.  If we can pull it off, it should be powerful.

This is definitely a stretching exercise for my young actors. I find that a lot of young actors tend not to do the hard scenes. Whether monologues or school plays or practice scenes, they tend to gravitate toward light fare – comedy. It’s an easy choice (though hard to do it well). Serious drama can so easily fall into insincere melo-drama if one’s not careful. So that’s why I find a serious script like “Noticed” to be somewhat refreshing, watching the actors try to figure out how to say a line just right, or how to place a hand on the other hand in order to coax a response.

The real challenge is to get them to cry, for real. Today we talked about personalization – bringing in a scenario from one’s own real life in order to replicate the essential feelings and responses you need on the stage – and substitution where you substitute one scenario (seeing your beloved cat lying dead on the ground, for instance) for another scenario where you need to cry or bring deep emotion.

It’s fun to see what they come up with. But it is a challenge to make them cry. After all, crying takes practice.

So if you are in Penang the week of September 11-14, I hope you’ll come out to the Short and Sweet Festival and catch “Noticed.”