“The Journey Continues“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 8 November 2019

As I sit down to draft my review of Journey to a Dream, I am stumped. How do I even begin to review a work that sits within a festival that purports to defy conventional understandings of a festival? Journey to a Dream is the Festival Production of the third Southernmost, organised annually by theatre company Emergency Stairs. Every year, the Festival Production is created by the participating artists through a process premised on dialogue and exchange between the artists and their different art forms.

The artists, many of whom have participated in previous editions of Southernmost, are clearly highly proficient in their respective forms, and arresting to watch. Near the start of the performance, I am mesmerised by dancer Makoto Matsushima’s slow walk up the stairs, across the stage, and out the opposite door. Kunqu opera performer Shen Yili’s voice fills the black box and almost spills out of it – I appreciate being so close and witnessing her performance in such an enclosed space, because for the first time I feel like I can hear the personality through what to me is a distant, unfathomable technique of Chinese opera singing.

There is a moment when performer Amin Farid sings with Shen a well-known Malay song in Singapore, Dayung Sampan. Hearing it sung by Shen is a strangely beautiful experience. It is a straightforward exchange between the artists, but something about that simplicity touches me powerfully and I cannot quite explain why.

However, despite there being captivating moments such as the above, I nevertheless feel like an “outsider”. Not belonging to the world of any traditional Asian performance form, I feel like I can only appreciate the movements and physicality on a visceral level, but I lack some of the knowledge and language to fully appreciate the intricate layers of interaction between the numerous forms.

Apart from form and physical movement, Journey does respond to a theme – the idea of “centre/decentring” comes across strongly in the text that is both narrated in a voiceover and visually projected. A repeated image is that of a white 17^th century French dress with wide panniers, worn by several of the performers – what I read as the team’s response to the obsession that King Louis XIV’s court had with chinoiserie and Chinese costumes. It is no accident that classical Javanese dancer Didik Nini Thowok, who specialises in cross-gender performance, spends a good amount of time centre stage in that dress.

But in the midst of the many bodies and images on stage are several concepts that could do with clearer unravelling. Is this a “de-centring” or a “re-centring”? Or a “re-claiming”? And of what? Culture? Gender? Power? All of the above? We are also told by the voiceover and projected text, “thank you for your cooperation” several times throughout the performance. I wonder what I am meant to be “cooperating” with. I leave this performance with more questions than answers; but perhaps this is an intended effect.

Southernmost is Emergency Stairs’ response to the question “How do you create an arts festival for the future?” I keep coming back to this as I try to respond to Journey. Unfortunately, my thoughts on this are rather bleak. Journey, and Southernmost on the whole, do clearly reject the traditional funding and production structures associated with the international festival circuit, and encourage exchange and process-development amongst the artists involved. However, from the perspective of an audience member, Journey, with its end-stage configuration and clear performance framing, does little to challenge conventional ideas of spectatorship and the relationship between performer and audience. As an interested and involved member of the arts scene – part of an “in-group” that inherently supports Emergency Stairs and the kind of work it is doing – I am all too aware that the work likely appeals to precisely this in-group. But I question to what extent performances like Journey can really, in our product-oriented culture, change the way the arts are understood and experienced, not just produced and consumed.

“Supervision“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 8 August 2019

It is a momentous occasion – this performance of Supervision that I am attending happens to be the first performance of the first run of a show in W!ld Rice’s new Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre. After three years of construction at Funan Mall and a delay in the theatre opening at the final stages, there is a sense of anticipation in the air as the theatre sees its first bums on pristinely upholstered seats.

Although not initially planned to be the opening show, Supervision seems a fitting choice for the occasion. Written by Thomas Lim, W!ld Rice’s Associate Artistic Director, Supervision debuted in 2018 at the Singapore Theatre Festival, and won the 2019 Straits Times Life! Theatre Award for Best Original Script.

Lim’s previous play, Grandmother Tongue (2016/2017), portrayed the relationship between a Teochew grandmother and her grandson in a painfully accurate and incisive critique of the loss of language and culture. In Supervision, Lim addresses middle-class privilege, the stresses of care-giving, the concerns of ageing, and the ethics of surveillance. This is a lot to handle, but he does it all in a three-character work with a relatively compact set.

The action takes place almost entirely in the apartment of Teck (Patrick Teoh), a wheelchair-bound retiree. His daughter, Jenny (Janice Koh), has hired Yanti (Umi Kalthum Ismail), a live-in domestic helper from Indonesia, to take care of Teck. In the first few scenes, we see Yanti caught between the overbearing Jenny and the cantankerous but witty Teck. Although the dialogue is often amusing, the situation gets increasingly discomforting. As Yanti goes about her first week in the apartment, she one day discovers to her horror that there are closed-circuit cameras in all the rooms, including her bedroom and the bathroom.

Actual closed-circuit cameras are installed on the set and linked to projectors, allowing the audience to see the footage “live”. While it may be fun to have a view into the bedrooms and kitchen of the apartment (that are obscured from the audience’s regular view), it also makes the audience complicit in the surveillance. This self-reflexivity hopefully spurs some reflection, especially as it is likely that the context might be familiar to many in the audience.

The play inspires thoughts about surveillance and power (recalling Foucault) that disturb me. One example: Jenny installs the cameras to watch the domestic helper, while complaining about traffic cameras, which have caught her speeding, on the public roads. She is completely oblivious to the irony. Here is a pessimistic view of human nature – that despite knowing what it feels like to be on the oppressed side, people will exercise power over others whenever they can.

I am also disturbed when Yanti has just arrived and is asked to take all her belongings out of her bag so that Jenny can inspect them. This elicits laughter from the audience – I slink slightly lower into my seat, feeling uncomfortable that at least some of the people around me find such a display of power amusing.

In any case, the work opens a window into the world of all three characters, and therein lies its brilliance. I realise that each character is struggling immensely; I feel so bad for each of them, and simultaneously feel a sense of stalemate and hopelessness. It is actually a very sad play, cleverly disguised under a veil of humour.

Lim is a playwright with an uncanny ability to transpose the nuances of real life relationships, in all their bittersweet complexity, onto the stage. At the same time he locates these relationships firmly within a socio-political context, making the implications of the characters’ struggles apparent without shoving commentary down anyone’s throats. This approach establishes first and foremost a connection with the audience on a personal level, perhaps something that is much needed in our current lives.

“Chinatown Crossings“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 13 July 2019

Armed each with a transmitter-earpiece set and a handheld screen fan, we set off from the Chinatown Heritage Centre on Pagoda Street, led by our protagonist Kunalan. He tells us that he grew up in this area, but has not been back in a long time. As we walk, he marvels at the changes – especially the tacky bright lights that are now a staple of Chinatown at night.

I struggle to keep up sometimes, having to jostle past the Saturday night crowds while keeping an eye on the stage manager – we have been advised to keep close to her in order to better receive the audio. Indeed this is one of the few slight annoyances of the evening, as my experience is marred by substantial audio interference.

I get used to it though, and devote my energy to soaking in the environment (we have also been told to immerse ourselves in the experience, but I am sceptical about this – more on this later).

What I value most about Chinatown Crossings is its treatment of the history of a place that is more culturally heterogeneous than the name “Chinatown” implies. I greatly appreciate the choice to show us the area through the eyes of an Indian protagonist raised by his neighbour’s Cantonese ma jie (domestic helper).

Despite being Singaporean, I am ashamed of my ignorance that the area was only christened “Chinatown” by the government authorities as recently as the 1980s, although I was aware of its other names, Kreta Ayer and Niu Che Shui/Goo Chia Zhui (牛车水). Also, much of the rich history of the neighbourhood is closely tied to the Cantonese community. Not being Cantonese, the experience puts me in an intriguing yet disorienting position – I actually feel like an outsider. I learn a lot, but it feels like being on one of those city walking tours as a tourist.

The touristy aspect is further highlighted at two points. The first is when we are given the opportunity to “make our own” chendol, complete with enthusiastic step-by-step instructions from Ting Ting, Kunalan’s feisty neighbour and childhood best friend. The second instance is when we get to decorate our plain fans with ink-stamped designs. While these segments feel slightly kitschy to me, I applaud the thought given to incorporating interactive segments that meaningfully share the area’s culture and history without being tokenistic.

Credit also goes to the skilful cast, who not only play characters but also act as “tour guides,” looking out for the audience’s safety as we cross roads, and facilitate the above-mentioned interactive segments. Jodi Chan as Fong Cheh, Ting Ting’s ma jie, has the especially challenging task of ageing five decades in the span of two hours, which she carries off admirably.

In an overall carefully thought-through piece, a minor quibble that I have is with the non-linear timeline. Whilst it is easier to designate time periods in a conventional stage setting, it is much harder to convincingly maintain a sense of the past in such an experience. Although this has been managed by having Kunalan (in contemporary time) take us through most of the touristy streets lined with souvenir shops, there are times when this is also done by Kunalan and Ting Ting (as kids in the 1960s), and Ting Ting (in 1986). It is during the latter instances that I find it difficult to be immersed in a strict sense, as I am concurrently bombarded with sights of toy Transformers and tourists snapping pictures on their mobile phones.

The ending is wistful, with the passing of Fong Cheh and the impending demolition of Pearl Bank Apartments – the comment on conservation issues in Singapore is not lost on me. Nevertheless, I come away from Chinatown Crossings feeling recharged. As Kunalan likes to say, Chinatown is full of “ghosts” from the past, and I am glad to have encountered some of them.

“Civilised“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 16 May 2019

“Tear up the maps” – this line is repeated many times during one segment of the play, as well as printed on the front page of the programme. It is an incitement to an inherently violent act, of metaphorically re-claiming one’s land and rights that have been wrongfully claimed. But the play is not naïve enough to suggest that such an act would be effective; it does quite the opposite, highlighting the futility of trying to decolonise in today’s dark times.

Following on the heels of another play, Miss British (part of the Esplanade’s The Studios series this year), which also deals with a similar topic, Civilised makes a clear point of understanding the idea of colonisation in the broadest senses of the word. I use “senses” in plural because here colonisation is understood not only in the narrow sense of Western European colonialism in the 15th to 19th centuries, but also in the myriad contemporary contexts where one culture oppresses another. In particular, the play examines marginalised communities, deeply entrenched power structures, and capitalist production systems that cause suffering for those at the bottom of the chain.

The play opens with the five cast members asking the audience what they consider “civilised” versus “uncivilised”. Big red books are passed around, in which audience members can write their suggestions. The performance moves quickly in the early segments. Before I have time to fully process this dichotomy, we are bombarded with an assortment of references to colonisation, past and present, that it is all quite overwhelming.

The play is divided into sections, each with a subtitle. One image from “Part 2: Colonisation Present” remains in my head – a troubling image that raises complex issues. A yoga teacher (Lian Sutton) exhorts his student (Koh Wan Ching) to “align your spine”, speaking in an exaggerated meditative voice, complete with clichéd spiritual mumbo-jumbo like “be in the present”. This on its own would be comedic, but at the same time, at the other end of the traverse stage, another cast member (Ghafir Akbar) lies on his side in the nude, facing away from the audience, shouting tirades about the violence currently going on in the world. This juxtaposition is powerful and disturbing. On one level, the commercial practice of yoga by many Western practitioners today can itself be seen as a form of colonisation. But also, if this is “the present”, as embodied by Ghafir, I struggle with exactly how one can “be in the present” yet remain calm with a clear conscience.

As the play moves into the later sections, the sense of futility of the whole idea of decolonisation becomes more apparent. I don’t believe the play actually says anything entirely new; however, it says things that need to be said, especially in this year of the Singapore Bicentennial. Indeed, this question is asked point-blank: which other country would celebrate the anniversary of their being colonised?

At one point, the cast debates how far it would be possible to “decolonise” in terms of the language that we speak – English is the language of our colonisers, but also the common language that provides some unity and ease of communication between different cultural groups. Ghafir indignantly starts speaking in Malay and declares that he will do so for the rest of the performance, although he caves and goes back to speaking English by the next section. I almost wish he had stuck to his guns, even though I would not have been able to understand him. After all, aren’t plurality and diversity, and all their accompanying messiness, what the play encourages us to fight for?

“FLOWERS“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 2 May 2019

74 Jalan Kelabu Asap. This is the address given of the venue of the work. When I arrive, several staff and volunteers are in the front garden, and I am immediately greeted warmly. As it draws nearer to my appointed time slot, my two fellow participants and I are gathered for a quick briefing by the director, Han Xuemei. We are each given a small sling bag with a cassette recorder and earpiece, to be taken with us during our experience inside the house.

The first few moments after I enter the house feel disorienting. I feel like I am visiting someone, but I don’t know who. I see an old man sitting in front of the television, watching a Channel 8 drama. He doesn’t acknowledge us – these strange intruders to his house. At the same time, I can still see the staff outside through the living room windows. This simultaneous awareness of the two worlds makes me more confused for awhile, before I decide to switch off to the world outside and focus on the one I am now in.

The living and dining areas in the house depict an unmistakably traditional Chinese household. The furniture is carved teak; there are Chinese calligraphy couplets on the walls. An abundance of fake flowers almost spills out of the heavy-looking vases surrounding the television. It feels stifling, and the allusion to the work’s title is not lost on me.

I press the “play” button on the cassette player. A woman’s voice starts speaking, addressing a “you” that I deduce is her younger brother. It is difficult to concentrate on listening and exploring the house at the same time. Sometimes I have to stop and sit and just listen.

I learn that the brother and sister were close as children. But as I keep listening, I learn things about their family that get more and more troubling. I learn of the traditional gender stereotypes that characterised life in this household – boys should not cry, women belong in the kitchen. I learn that the children listened outside their parents’ door while fights happened. I learn that it all becomes too much, that once they finish school, sister and brother leave the house, one after the other. I learn that their mother eventually dies of cancer, estranged from her children.

While listening in on this woman’s story, I watch the old man potter around the house, going into empty rooms and fingering the belongings of his now-absent wife, son and daughter. An intense sense of loneliness permeates.

I feel like I am a strange mix of visitor-voyeur – there is intimacy, from being physically present in the house and listening to the woman’s voice, yet at the same time, distance caused by the fourth wall behind which the old man remains.

It finally starts to make sense to me, about 45 minutes to an hour into the experience. On first encountering it, this house looks so nondescript, so everyday, so “normal”. But if you look beyond the “normalcy”, you realise how much pain is in the air. I suppose this could be an analogy to real life – hidden beneath the mundaneness of everyday life, the pain caused by patriarchy is there, and it hurts all of us.

For some reason, when the doorbell sounds and I leave the house, I don’t feel compelled to hurry away. I end up sitting at the table in the garden, drinking tea and talking to the facilitators, who gently hold space for me and the other visitors. After emerging from the intense loneliness of the house, I realise that I am craving the chance to re-connect with people. This is perhaps the most valuable part of the experience for me.

“The Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 6 April 2019

Loss is a central theme in many of Kuo Pao Kun’s plays from the 1980s and early 1990s – the loss of roots, language, culture, connection; of things that give life a deeper meaning beyond sheer economic progress. In the context of 1980s Singapore, amidst a socio-political environment with an almost singular focus on economic and population growth, Kuo astutely observed that there was a price we were paying as a society.

In The Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree, first performed in 1987, Kuo’s concern about this price is articulated through the relationship between a little girl and a tree, both seen as “misfits” in their own ways by others in their society. The girl is also lonely – we learn that she is a latchkey child who misses her late grandfather and the language and culture that he embodied.

Director Ang Gey Pin has worked intensively on this production with her ensemble cast of child and youth performers from the Young People’s Performing Arts Ensemble (YPPAE), as well as independent adult performers. While some parts of the play have been re-devised and re-worded, it largely respects the spirit of Kuo’s original work.

This is a challenging work to stage due to the non-linearity and sparseness of the script. Both the English and Mandarin versions of the script are only about 15 pages long, there are more monologues than dialogues, and while some stage directions and staging notes are included, much is still left to the creative team and performers to decide how exactly they would like to translate the written script to the stage.

Ang brings to the work her years of experience and practice in physical/movement work¹, which perhaps is both the production’s strength and weakness. The cast performs both coordinated and improvised movement; fast, animated actions as well as slow walks across the stage. For a work so steeped in the language of movement, the demands on the cast are high. Given that the cast comprises a mixture of ages and levels of professionalism, it is unrealistic to expect total precision and focus. However, this also means that while the movement is pleasant to watch, there is too strong an emphasis on this aspect.

This production chooses to highlight the loss of the languages spoken by different Chinese dialect groups in contemporary Singapore. In one particularly moving sequence towards the end, the performers come downstage one after another, sharing monologues that reveal their personal (dis)connections to their dialects. Most performers in their 20s or 30s can speak some dialect, but many also admit a lack of proficiency in it and an accompanying sense of regret. As the series of monologues progresses to the younger cast members, those aged 13 and under not only speak no dialect, but also declare that they do not even know which dialect group their parents belong to. Without lengthy exposition or melodrama, the message comes across loud and clear.

Three decades after its first production, the themes of Silly Little Girl do not feel in any way out of place. Demolition of sites with natural and cultural value to make way for yet another housing development, the linguistic and cultural disconnect that many Chinese Singaporeans have with their dialect heritage… the play could just as well have been written today.

¹Ang is also known for playing the titular role in the original 1987 production of Silly Little Girl; incidentally, that production was co-directed by Taiwanese Grotowski-trained director Liu Jing-min.

“Off Centre“

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 9 February 2019

“Where is your heart? Where?!! . . . Now, use it before you forget how.”

When I chose to take on this review, I was nowhere near prepared for the extent of the emotional deluge that I would have to grapple with.

Off Centre gives its audience an idea of what goes on in the lives, minds and hearts of people suffering from mental illness. Seeing these lives concretised in the flesh is a powerful and emotional experience that I am finding hard to describe. At the risk of sounding trite, I am putting it down to the magic of live theatre.

The play was first written and staged in 1993, and this re-staging comes at a time of increased awareness about mental health issues in Singapore (the first Singapore Mental Health Film Festival takes place at the end of February 2019), and the internet abounds with discourse on the importance of self-care).

Since this re-staging sticks closely to the original text, some of the language and contexts in the play feel dated, such as “Woodbridge” or “WH” (abbreviation for “Woodbridge Hospital”); the protagonists phoning each other instead of texting; and students queuing to register for courses at university. However, these anachronisms appear small when the main issues addressed by the play remain painfully relevant. It is as though societally, nothing has changed in the past two decades – one of the thoughts that remain the most troubling for me.

For this re-staging, the lead roles have been reprised by the actors from the 1993 staging – Abdulattif Abdullah as Vinod, Sakinah Dollah as Saloma, and also Aidli Mosbit as Mak, Saloma’s mother. While the committed performances of all three are apparent, Abdulattif does start off this performance uncertain; his transitions between Vinod-the-narrator and Vinod-the-character are not always clear. However, his performance warms up. By the time we get to the middle of the play – during a flashback to Vinod in the army – his (metaphorical) nakedness as he stands alone, and helplessness as his Platoon Commander yells at him, are agonisingly palpable.

I am also aware of watching this play in the Victoria Theatre, as opposed to a black box space, where the play was originally staged. The set in this production is sleek and transitions are smooth. But it feels somewhat like watching a film – the moments of direct audience address fall flat and feel awkwardly “staged”; it is difficult for the audience to respond because of the proscenium set-up.

Nevertheless, the power of the play is evidenced at the end, after the house lights come on. Tentatively at first, several audience members make their way up to Saloma sitting alone at the edge of the stage, offering her a hug and exchanging some words. More and more people soon follow, all visibly shaken, some holding back tears. Watching this, I myself cannot help the flow of emotions. But I also wonder how much more intense the experience would be with a more intimate staging.

What makes the play nuanced is that besides foregrounding the issue of mental illness, it reminds us of other systemic issues in our society – race, social/economic class, the education system – that can and do cause suffering for certain groups of people. The scenes between Saloma and Mak are particularly revealing in this respect. Saloma struggles to deal with her illness and fights to get better, all the while negotiating her loving mother’s blatant lack of understanding about mental illness, and an environment of low socio-economic status and educational background. I am hit with an uncomfortable awareness of my privilege, as I can only attempt to imagine what someone in her shoes must be going through.

Two days on, I am still affected by this experience. Ironically, in a way this play will only be a success when it is no longer relevant. Until then, much remains to be done in our society.

“Q&A (The 36 Questions)”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 25 January 2019

The “36 Questions” mentioned in the title of this piece refer to a set of 36 questions (or prompts) crafted by psychologist Arthur Aron as part of a 1997 study, in which pairs of strangers were tasked to respond to the prompts with each other.

In her quirky, warm-hearted piece Q&A, British-Israeli choreographer Rachel Erdos uses these 36 questions as a starting point to inspire movement. As the dancers physically respond to some of the questions, the audience probably couldn’t help but think about their own answers, too. While Aron’s study was primarily on building intimacy, Q&A shifts the lens slightly to consider the broader theme of human connection.

The piece begins with questions asked in turn by one of the four dancers through a microphone, following which they perform movements in solos, duets, trios or all four together. Such a structure could become repetitive, but it does not, which speaks for the dramaturgical coherence of the piece.

The movement responses increase in complexity as the piece develops, and mood shifts are appropriately timed. In response to the question “If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?”, a humorous section follows in which the Superman theme song plays while campy superhero actions ensue. At a later point, a darker section deals with issues of death and family relationships, accompanied by slower, more meditative music and movements.

A sense of warmth and gentle openness permeates the space, due to the dancers’ relaxed manner. Despite the thrust configuration, which can be difficult to handle, the dancers are conscious in making the audience on all three sides feel included. Audience members might be posed a question one-on-one by a dancer who comes up close to them, but there is no pressure to reveal their response loudly. A small number of audience members are also invited to take up seats at the perimeter of the stage; they participate in a variety of activities that are relatively low-stakes: reading prompts, responding to a question, or engaging in playful movement with the dancers.

Sitting within the larger M1 Fringe Festival, my only qualm is that the piece strikes me as relating only marginally to the theme of performance artist Suzann Victor’s work, Still Waters. The performance write-up mentions the “creat[ion of] mutual understanding and connection, ultimately forming a momentary community”, which seems like a tall order. My experience was more of individual reflection on how I do or do not make connections with people around me in daily life, rather than a significantly increased sense of community in the shared space.

However, I am aware that each audience member’s experience might differ depending on their involvement, especially in the final section of the piece. The dancers invite about 10 to 12 pairs of audience members down to the stage; each pair sits looking into each other’s eyes, in silence, for about four minutes. This is a beautiful moment, even for myself, an observer who is watching from the audience seats.
As the lights go out, judging by the warm applause all around, this moment of connection with a stranger, even if brief, has been much appreciated indeed.