Mediacorp tries to be funny again

I thought the “Per­anakan Ball” was Mediacorp’s worst idea of a joke. Then my friend and actor Bren­don Fer­nan­dez wrote about some­thing else our fine broad­caster appar­ently did, appar­ently for laughs:

Medi­a­corp has been call­ing up actors and mak­ing appoint­ments with them to attend an audi­tion at Medi­a­corp for an English-language project which has been described as a “still in devel­op­ment drama-dy”. This is in fact com­pletely disingenuous.

In the account that I heard from an actor who attended the audi­tion on 25 May 2009, the wait­ing time was in excess of an hour and a half past the sched­uled appoint­ment time.

When the audi­tionee is finally ush­ered into the area in which the audi­tion is sup­posed to take place, he or she is given sev­eral forms to fill out. The area is reported to resem­ble a badly-constructed mock up of a tv-set. The audi­tionee will be left alone in the room.

After some time has passed, the audi­tionee will hear a knock that appears to come from inside the wardrobe that is on the set. There will also be a voice of some­one claim­ing to be locked in the wardrobe, ask­ing the audi­tionee to let them out. When the audi­tionee opens the wardrobe, it will be empty.

At some point after this, the crew will burst out from con­ceal­ment, and announce some­thing to the effect of “Sur­prise, you’re on ‘Just For Laughs– Gags’!”

I was sad­dened and angered to learn that this is how Medi­a­corp treats work­ing actors today. This was a delib­er­ately con­cocted scheme to lure pro­fes­sional actors into a humil­i­at­ing trap. The peo­ple who attended devoted their time and their skills in prepa­ra­tion for what they believed to be an audi­tion for a role in a pro­fes­sional tv series. Some may have given up other oppor­tu­ni­ties for work in order to attend. These actors responded in good faith to what they thought was an oppor­tu­nity for work, and they were treated abysmally.

If you feel the same way I do, please spread the word. Let peo­ple know that this hap­pened. Tell friends in the indus­try. Tell friends who are not in the indus­try, but who watch Medi­a­corp TV. If you work in Medi­a­corp or for Medi­a­corp, please speak about this to your col­leagues. Ask whose idea this was, and who ok-ed it. Basi­cally, tell other peo­ple how you feel. I’ve reached my tag limit for this note, but you can link it, if you like.

I am aware that this is only one part of the story. Those from Medi­a­corp who per­pet­u­ated this cha­rade will undoubt­edly have their own ver­sion of events. Nev­er­the­less, at this time I find it nec­es­sary to state that I per­son­ally can­not imag­ine any cir­cum­stance or com­bi­na­tion of cir­cum­stances that can excuse such behavior.

It is never per­mis­si­ble to treat other peo­ple with­out respect.

Sin­cerely,
Bren­don Fer­nan­dez
Sin­ga­porean Actor

Shame!