It’s the last hour of my last day working at The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (klpac) for my Asialink Creative Exchange. It’s been a helluva ride.
I came up thinking I was doing one project, that fell apart, I came up with a whole other project and then realized that wouldn’t work when I got here. At which point a bunch of really personal songwriting started to happen.
I’ve ended up spending my time writing songs that have helped me process a year of pretty extreme difficulty, and that tell the story of my first trip here with my wife and son. Not the kind of thing I thought I would ever do. But here we are. Turns out my subconscious didn’t want to give me a choice in it and these songs just kinda spewed outta me.
If that wasn’t out of my comfort zone enough, I’ve written material I have to play on a ukulele. I’d packed it *because it fit in my bag* and couldn’t even really play at the start of the process. There’s arrangements around it – 8 bit synths, casio keyboard orchestra hits, drum loops from corner-of-your-grandmas’-house kinds of organs… it’s an appropriately “dinky” lo-fi approach to songs that are otherwise among my most grandiose.
Meanwhile, I’ve also making animations using a crummy 2014 stylus tablet I bought with some cash I got for my birthday. I wanted to explore a different way of bringing this story to life than just filming it. The end result is capturing these grand moments in Kuala Lumpur with… again, quite a dinky lo-fi appearance. It’s all sitting together incredibly well.
I’ve still got a bunch of work to do before the show opens in Perth at Fringe World Festival
(it’s at Girls School on February 3-9 at 9:40pm) and then heads to New Zealand Fringe Festival in March, but it’s shaping up to be something incredibly special. There’s songs in this show that I sometimes have a hard time playing without getting emotional – whether laughing, angry or, more often, quite upset. I mean, at my end, it’s been a quite upsetting year on the personal front. So it’s going to be an interesting thing to take out into the world. It’s the kind of thing where I think it will be as cathartic for the audience as it will be for me.
I’m not sure I come off very well in this show. But I rarely come off very well in my cabaret shows. The interesting bits about humans aren’t the ones that make us look good though. It’s kind of how I know the show must be good.
A few thankyous ‘cos manners;
Mega-heeeeouuugee thanks to Pippa & co at AsiaLink Arts for arranging this and supporting me throughout it, especially when I’ve had to break it up into smaller chunks. It’s been incredible to finally come up here and work, and it’s not the end of that road – I will be back here to tour this show and the other projects I now have quietly boiling up here. If you’re an Australian artist, it’s worth having a look at these exchanges – especially for performers, I think that outside of a few artforms, we look at Asia and put it in the too-hard basket. There are a lot of countries aren’t natural theatre markets (I’d include Malaysia in that), but there is so much to be gained by making friends and engaging up here.
Big thanks to Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre for letting me use their studio and just being lovely folks. It’s been a real delight. I will miss having this space for playing around and bumping into you all in the hallways.
Also big ups to Joe Sidek Productions and Rainforest Fringe Festival, who made us feel so at home and welcome in Kuching earlier this year. JOE! I HAVE A SHOW AND IT’S PERFECT FOR THE FESTIVAL! LET’S CHAT!
Also big thanks to Siva Zaphod Chandranand the VIMA Music Awards – it was such a huge boost to get the award for Best Dance Release for ‘Til Death Do Us Part (the award presentation video has been shot and will be up soon – it has been SUCH a year that I’m behind even in that).
And Ze Rebelle, who won the award with me, but also who started this whole Malaysian adventure. I’ve been able to see how much of a challenge it must’ve been for her to be the queen of sexy glam-punk electroclash in Malaysia and it’s really given me a whole new level of respect for her. A truly brave, transgressive artist who deserves a lot more recognition. Go stream her stuff and watch her videos already.
It’s been lovely to find new pals including Chae Lian, Jaemy and my amazing Malay tutor/translator Nurin as well. Nurin ended up being absolutely vital to this working, helping me navigate malaysian culture on the first trip, helping me (slowly) learn (so slowly) language and eventually helped me write and translate some utterly ridiculous lyrics in Malay. I don’t know if she knew what she was getting herself into at first but it would have been a very different show and residency without her.
Biggest thanks of all though - my son Preston, who has been along on two of the three trips up here – it’s been the best bonding experience we’ve ever had and I can’t wait to travel more with him. We fought like mad when we first got to KL but that seems to have made our relationship superdupertight. Thanks buddy – I know you know how much you’ve helped me get through this trip when it’s been hard. And to my wife Eleesha for making space in our lives for this to happen and enduring such a stupid-weird year with me. It’s been messy enough for me that I spewed out a whole bloody show about it, but Eleesha’s born the brunt of it, and been incredibly graceful in handling it.
More importantly, this is a batch of material that is about the relationships between us three, and they have both been very generous in trusting me to include them in our story and share things that I wasn’t sure they would be OK with.
I used to be a bit confused by Kuala Lumpur, but I’ve come love it to the point that I crave it when I’m not here. It’s a city that took a long time to find the rhythm of, partially because there are so many parallel universes you can step into here, that seem completely separate from each other. When I’ve visited casually, I’ve found it frustrating because it doesn’t work the way I expect it to, even though it appears to on the surface. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of all the different things to experience and explore here. It’s not just the place - I’ve broadly found that Malaysians love to help people and quickly get into deeeeep conversations about what’s going on in your life, and I miss that when I’m back home. It sits with my way of being pretty well.
Anyway, I’ve gotta pack up because there’s a rehearsal starting in here in half an hour and I only have a short window to eat all of the things for dinner before I go see some pals. But wow. Weird this series of trips is ending. I suspected it would be transformative but didn’t realize the full extent of that until I’m looking at this nearly-finished show… it’s just SO UNLIKE ME. I’m equally terrified and totally amped to get it up onstage.
Jumpa lagi,
Tomás
ps, if you’ve read this far and you wanna see the show, here’s the current dates:
TOMÁS FORD IN KUALA LUMPUR
FRINGE WORLD - PERTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA
9:40pm, February 3-9, Girls’ School
Tickets & info: https://fringeworld.com.au/whats_on/tomas-ford-in-kuala-lumpur-fw2020
NZ FRINGE FESTIVAL - WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND
9:00pm, March 18-21, Te Auaha
Tickets & info: https://fringe.co.nz/show/43792
