BUSES AND ROADS: A BUS THEATRE EXPERIENCE by Singapore Heritage Festival

“Buses and Roads: A Bus Theatre Experience”

Reviewer: Yong Yoke Kay
Performance: 7 April 2019

After some difficulty in locating the pick-up point – neither the event website nor the Singapore Heritage Festival staff could direct me to the right place – I finally get there before the bus on which the performance is due to take place departs.

Two minutes after the bus starts moving, a passenger suddenly stands up, having lost his ticket, and his wife berates him for being careless. The audience is immediately drawn to the drama unfolding. And thus the show begins – but this sense of novelty does not last.

Four actors re-enact imagined scenes from the 1970s throughout the hour-long ride. With a very disjointed script comprising anecdotes, fun facts, and snippets of history loosely strung together by long pauses and randomly inserted singalong songs (to which the audience responds with minimal enthusiasm), the trip feels very much like a touristy gimmick.

The ten-minute intermission adds to the incoherence of the experience. After the break, the same actors reappear as four completely new characters who bear no relation to the first half of the performance. But perhaps that is the point – a bus ride is only transient; there are no complete stories, only fragments of strangers’ lives as they pass by, alighting as quickly as they boarded the bus.

Granted, performing on a moving coach is not easy. The aisle leaves little space for movement, and the close proximity to the audience means that every action and every flaw can be closely scrutinized. Unfortunately, this also means that it is more appealing to look out the window than to strain one’s neck to watch the show.

That said, this unconventional space does allows for countless possibilities and activation. Perhaps the audience could get off the bus, or the bus could travel along the roads that the actors speak about.

This is undoubtedly a unique experience, but more experimentation and workshopping is needed for it to become something more than an uneventful ride to nowhere.