Acting some more...

I had to go on stage today. Haven't done that for ages. I thought I could escape acting as I'd already prepared the script and all, but no...

We are participating in a regional Quality-sharing forum in March. One of the events lined up is a series of sketches by the various units and subsidiaries of the parent Company. The sketches are supposed to display quality practices relating to work.

This event is usually a competition, and the winner of the regional sessions would slog it out at the biennial group-wide forum to emerge as THE winner. But this year, the organising committee decided to change it into a 'SHARING' forum. It will just be a showcase, not a competition anymore. When we were first informed of this change, it did put a slight damper on the team's spirits. After all, when we won the competition at our unit's own Quality Day, we all started dreaming of winning the BIG one and maybe get a mention by the President himself (company punya, not Bush). That would look good in anyone's yearly appraisal.

Today we had to go through an assessment by the organising committee. Again, we thought that it was a screening to select only four out of the seven entries in total. It turned out to be a sort of rehearsal cum coaching session, just to make sure the sketches are acceptable enough to be presented (we don't want to go around offending other people, do we?) and also for the committee to decide on the presentation schedule. (Apparently 3 will be presented during a formal dinner, while the other 4 will be during the forum itself).

We decided to put up our best anyway. The committee rep said it had to be a live performance, this assessment, so despite our busy schedule we still put in rehearsals during our lunch breaks. Nevermind that two of our cast had to go outstation at the last minute, and I had to replace one of them with only two practice sessions. Nevermind that two other units, who couldn't make it to the assessment, only sent in videos of their sketches.

In the end, I think we put up a commendable performance, and our efforts to get stand-ins for the missing cast members put us in a good stead with the assessing committee. So much so that the committee leader actually sought our opinion as to which sketch to present during the dinner.

One of the teams did the whole presentation on video. I thought it was very well done. The editing and shots were superb, so much so that it invoked envious remarks from some other groups who snidely claimed it must have taken tens of thousands of precious RM to make, when it only cost 50 bucks! Just goes to show there's a lot of hidden talent within the Group. Maybe we should start producing our corporate advertisements inhouse...