Bila kita berhadapan dengan sesuatu teks, kita kena cuba untuk fahami and absorb it at multiple layers. Because for me, such text does not only carry meanings. It also carries feelings, it has histories, constructs. Even its meaning may have multiple layers waiting to be unraveled.
Teks boleh jadi puisi, skrip, lirik lagu, but teks di sini bukanlah bermaksud yang berbentuk tulisan sahaja. Anything you see, observe, film ke, teater ke, tarian ke, lukisan, whatever the medium is, can be treated as text, in a sense, and thus can be dissected, interpreted, appreciated, etc.
Bak kata Katherine Watson in her lectures, we must try to look beyond a text (in her case an image or painting la), there's no wrong answers and there's also no textbook telling us what to think. We are not required to like it, but we are required to consider it.
These are the principles yang Malaysia pegang bila berhadapan dengan texts of any sort. And most of the time, Malaysia akan revisits these principles when talking about theater ke apa ke.
In such cases, the theater itself will be treated as a text. Or a combination of texts (script, acting, music, visuals, etc.)
So, hope ni reveal sikit on my attitude when approaching any text. And I hope kita semua boleh try to adopt these principles or attitudes.
