Theatre company Five Arts Centre finally received the green light yesterday evening to stage 'Election Day', after having sent its revised script to KL City Hall for second consideration.

Publicity manager Mark Teh said City Hall licensing head Saringat Adnan had verbally informed the theatre company that its application for a performance permit has been approved, and that a written permit will be sent tomorrow.

'Election Day' will now be staged on Thursday at Actor's Studio Bangsar.

But Five Arts' executive producer Marion D' Cruz is concerned that going ahead with a revised play may have far more negative implications than obtaining the opportunity to stage the show.

"I am relieved that we finally got an answer, and happy that the play will go on, but this revised script...reflects a situation where creative space seems to be narrowing," she said.

While it was "encouraging" to see City Hall's openness to dialogue and the willingness of officials to heed views, Marion said there is still the question of censorship that looms over the city's arts scene.

"It is something we have to face, not just as an arts community but as a society," she said.

Moving backwards

Even more disconcerting, she said, is the fact that the play was good enough to be staged in 1999, but that revisions have been required for the 2004 re-staging.

Written by Huzir Sulaiman, 'Election Day' was first staged nine days after the 1999 general election. The script was published by Silverfish Books as part of a collection of eight plays written by Huzir.

According to Five Arts, City Hall did not state what it had found to be offensive when it rejected the original script. Instead, officers returned a copy that had been marked with a highlighter.

In particular, the marked script seemed to object to use of names of certain individuals and organisations such as 'Guardian Pharmacy', 'Anwar Ibrahim', 'Sivarasa Rasiah', 'Shahrizat Jalil', as well as terms like 'Hidup Mahathir'.

Censorship of reality?

According to Marion, the highlighted sections seemed to suggest that the city's censors "did not want any indication (that the play was based) on Malaysian reality".

"We were only told to 'tone it down'. Huzir, being a brilliant writer, was able to revise it overnight," she said.

There were no drastic script modifications, but references to individuals have, for example, been changed to say, 'an Indian Malaysian lawyer', she added.

Malaysiakini

reported last Friday that City Hall had rejected the play produced by Five Arts and directed by the centre's co-founder Krishen Jit, on grounds that it contravened six of eight guidelines for staged productions.

The theatre company was however allowed to submit an appeal if changes were made to its script, as the licensing evaluation committee found that its content was 'inappropriate'.