Summary of project goals with two sentences. Did other fund-raising efforts contribute to your projects? What were they

When The Dark Hits Me had ended successfully with a lot of positive responses and it created a big impact to the audiences which bring up the awareness towards mental health issues and Malaysia’s medical system. The other fund-raising efforts did contribute to our projects which are ASLI and ACTION Group, these are the groups that supported performing arts industry for over the years.

Provide details about how your project actually worked.

We took 4 weeks for the research and pre-production, during this period we had visited MyPsychology for a deeper study about depression and the creative team went to the hospital for an experience as a patient for a day. Mypsychology is a psychological centre based in Kepong, Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia's 1st Psychology Educational Platform started by a group of Psychology students who share Psychology knowledge via multiple approaches for general public to be able to learn, share and apply Psychology in improving life quality and mental health. Besides that, our publicity also started during this time, we went for several podcast recording and newspaper interviews to promote our performance.

After that, we used 3 weeks for rehearsal and 1 week for show. In the rehearsal, we used the previous field research data to more accurately interpret the character, combined with dramatic elements to bring greater shock to the audience. We had received a lot of good reviews for using theatre to raise awareness about depression.

Were there unanticipated difficulties? Budget constraints?

The difficulties we faced was the timetable arrangement, sometimes it is hard to gather all the people for a meeting or rehearsal, it is a challenging task for me but we did manage to complete all the tasks on time. In order to increase media exposure, we had sent our publication information to different media, even though we received a lot of rejected, and took us sometimes to found an effective way to approach the correct media, but still we manage to make it happen.

How many people benefited or will benefit from your project? Who are these people?

We had sold out all of our tickets with 250 audiences, we did a survey from the audiences we found out that the audiences across all fields, there are students from counselling departments, professionals in psychology, professionals in theatre, and more. The audience gets to know the performance through different media. This performance has successfully attracted the interest of different people in different field.

What is the long-term impact and sustainability of this project?

In Malaysia there’s only a few of theatre productions related to social issues. Through the production period, we discovered the possibility by using performance to bring out the awareness towards social issues. There’s some juniors were participated in this show as a crew, it’s also encourage them to continue their passion in theatre and hopefully in the future there’s different variety of performance which is related to social issues may occur.

Is there a future for your project?

The production in Now Theatre already completed in Sept 18, 2022, we are in the process of editing the video shoot of the performance to showcase in Cloud Theatre Revive. In the short time there will be no planning for touring because we haven’t find a date and venue to re-stage the production, but we’re planning another production for next year.

How does or will your project contribute to happiness?

The society we live in now habitually suppresses our emotions, especially after the MCO, many people are affected. Through the performance can achieve a kind of healing. After the last day of the show, we had a Q&A section with the audience, some of them express that it brings a big impact to them, it moves them and also make them understand more on how a mentally ill patient suffer. We believe this is a great way to highlight the issues to the society.

Has your project changed the way you think about the world? How has it changed you?

Yes, the project had changed the way I think about the world. In order to carry out the project, we have chance to dive in mentally issues and medical system in Malaysia. We understand that psychology is a new profession and it is still under research and experiment. In Malaysia, this is not common issue to discuss and there are lots of misunderstanding in mentally health. People are used to label instead of empathy. Through the research, we found out that in Malaysia there are some non-profit organisation trying hard to create awareness, this is also a motivation for me to develop the performance.

Addressing how and why this project was valuable and what was the most important thing you learned as a result.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, even though we manage to get 250 audiences, but still it is a long way to go. I will continue to tell story through stage play. Through audience feedback, I noticed that stage performance successfully heal other, this motivate me to develop more show in future.” Choong Yun Ling, Director.