New Malaysian play premieres

NEW YORK PREMIERE
READING OF NEW MALAYSIAN PLAY

Dates: March 3 & 4, 2001, 2.30 p.m.
Time: Library Auditorium, United Nations, NYC (Entrance 42 & 1st Ave.)
Admission: FREE Reservations (required) : (212) 864-5941 /
e100tc@yahoo.com

A new Malaysian play, At A Plank Bridge by Kannan Menon, will receive a
premier public reading in New York on March 3 and 4, 2001. The play, a two
character, hour-long drama, will also have received a prior reading at the
University of Ohio, in Athens, Ohio on February 24 where there is a large
contingent of Malaysian students. "It has elements of a thriller," says the
author, "based on real historical events of the time."

The New York readings will be held at 2.30 p.m. each day in the Library
Auditorium of the United Nations. Admission is free, but reservations must
be made by phone (212) 864-5941 or by e-mail at e100tc@hotmail.com.

The reading will feature two leading Malaysian actors. Ming Lee, who
appeared in Broadway in the chorus of Ms. Saigon¸ as well as understudying
and appearing in the lead role of the Engineer, will read the role of Tan
Fook Leong. Mano Maniam, who is visiting New York as a Fullbright program
Distinguished Artist will read the part of Chandran and was last seen as
Jodie Foster's Indian manservant in Anna and the King.

The play, which is set in August, 1945, in the immediate aftermath of the
Japanese occupation of Malaya. At a Plank Bridge is the story of two
strangers who paths cross on a back country road. Both are refugees and both
have secrets which they are reluctant to reveal, as well as hopes for the
future which are in conflict with each other.

The reading is presented by East 100 Theater Corp, which produced four
plays in Kuala Lumpur in the mid-nineties, including Haze Fever by Kannan
Menon in 1997, a socio-political satire that ran to sold out houses at the
Soma Auditorium. There are plans for a staging of the play in Kuala Lumpur
later this year.

In the background of the play are three of the most disturbing--but
forgotten--events of the wartime era. The first is the use of slave
labor--200,000 or so ordinary Asians who were either coopted or conscripted
to work on the infamous "Death Railway" by the Japanese (the subject of an
earlier film--Bridge on the River Kwai). Another historical occurrence was
the anti japanese resistance in Malaya, which after the war, developed into a
full-blown communist rebellion. The third event is the Indian National
Army--an army formed out of the Indians in Malaya who fought with the
Japanese to expel the British from India.

For further information, please contact Girija Menon (producer) at
(1-212) 864-5941 or by E-mail at girijanair@cs.com.