TRIBES by Pangdemonium! Productions

“Listening to Sign”

Reviewer: Gan Soon Rui
Performance: 22 May 2015

Sometimes, the one who makes the most noise is not always the loudest.

Pangdemonium’s Tribes, for instance, stands as one such example.

Tribes, written by Nina Raine, is the second instalment in Pangdemonium’s 2015 season of “Transformation Trilogy. Billy (played by Thomas Pang), the youngest in the family is born deaf. In order to make him feel normal, the family chose to educate him in lip-reading as opposed to learning sign language. Yet, in their bid to shield him from harm, the family unwittingly denies Billy from constructing his own identity. Inevitably, the story eventually escalates into the two hour long performance, as boy meets girl (Sylvia), and boy attempts to find and reassert his identity.

Frankly speaking, this reviewer was chilled by how the performance was able to unceremoniously sucker punch you when you least expect it.

In one particularly poignant scene just before the show’s interval, Sylvia (played by Ethel Yap), rubbed raw by her encounter with Billy’s family, reveals in a moment of vulnerability how she is able to find solace through music. She then plays the piano in the darkening stage with this dissolving mise-en-scene

• Billy, who is deaf, looks on passively at the side, unable to comprehend the moment.
• Sylvia, who is going deaf, thoroughly absorbed in the moment that she will eventually lose.
• The rest of Billy’s family, who had fallen silent from their rambunctious bickering, gaining a renewed understanding and respect for Sylvia.

It is this direct, this raw.

Thomas Pang’s frustrations as he signs impatiently to Yap, forcing her to continue translating his thoughts to his family, creates a palpable intensity mirroring the actor’s situation. Thus, the effect is at once genuine and sincere.

The rest of the performance however errs too much on the side of melodrama. This slows down the pace of the show, but ironically increases the impact of selected moments of the performance .

Pangdemonium forces us to reconsider our often well-meaning but ill-perceived intentions to the Deaf; that in a bid to accommodate for their disabilities, we end up overcompensating and unconsciously alienating them for their difference.