Mrs Phua Su Lin
Dear Mrs Phua...
I think I'm trying to understand you a bit more every day. You're a character who's so normal, yet so difficult to portray. You're not like any of the usual characters I chase after - in fact, I didn't even like you the first time I saw you, when I read your lines in the script. You just seemed like an ordinary middle-aged teacher, with a huge stick up her ass.
God, how wrong I was. It's only now, after reading more about you and your thoughts, after trying to understand your emotions, that I start to see.
You're so much more than just a boring, stuffy old teacher. You're a mother, a daughter, a friend, a teacher, a person struggling to survive and keep her passion for teaching when everyone else around her is showing her that passion means nothing in a school. You're a person fighting to save one boy from destroying himself, though you don't realise that you're still destroying him in a different way.
I'm trying so hard to carry you as a character. And it's so difficult - you're so heavy as a character, as an actual person. I speak to you, I ask you for help, and you try your hardest to help me. But Kami help me, I'm just not good enough to bring you out the way you need to be shown.
Please help me, Mrs Phua. We only have 5 days before we need to step out onto that stage, before I need to become you completely. Please teach me how to become you in every sense of the word. I know you're there with me, I just need you to teach me how to look past all these insecurities and worries and instead help me completely understand the love you have for your students, the worries and hopes you have for them, the problems you take on and the people who try to kill your passion for something that eventually kills you. I need you, Mrs Phua, to help me.
I think I'm trying to understand you a bit more every day. You're a character who's so normal, yet so difficult to portray. You're not like any of the usual characters I chase after - in fact, I didn't even like you the first time I saw you, when I read your lines in the script. You just seemed like an ordinary middle-aged teacher, with a huge stick up her ass.
God, how wrong I was. It's only now, after reading more about you and your thoughts, after trying to understand your emotions, that I start to see.
You're so much more than just a boring, stuffy old teacher. You're a mother, a daughter, a friend, a teacher, a person struggling to survive and keep her passion for teaching when everyone else around her is showing her that passion means nothing in a school. You're a person fighting to save one boy from destroying himself, though you don't realise that you're still destroying him in a different way.
I'm trying so hard to carry you as a character. And it's so difficult - you're so heavy as a character, as an actual person. I speak to you, I ask you for help, and you try your hardest to help me. But Kami help me, I'm just not good enough to bring you out the way you need to be shown.
Please help me, Mrs Phua. We only have 5 days before we need to step out onto that stage, before I need to become you completely. Please teach me how to become you in every sense of the word. I know you're there with me, I just need you to teach me how to look past all these insecurities and worries and instead help me completely understand the love you have for your students, the worries and hopes you have for them, the problems you take on and the people who try to kill your passion for something that eventually kills you. I need you, Mrs Phua, to help me.
It's supposed to be a funny picture, but it kind of makes sense when you think about it.
Otsukaresama deshita, Mrs Phua.
Comments
Post a Comment