“Increasingly Pleasurable”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 30 July 2016

Upon entering Esplanade Recital Studio for M1 Peer Pleasure Youth Theatre Festival 2016’s Programme B, I realise that a space filled with youths is always exuberant and energetic. Chatter and laughter bounce off the walls and there is never a quiet moment right up till the lights dim for the first performance.

This theatre festival is a necessary platform to harness all this energy.  It is here that youths can channel their energies and creativity into collaborating and cooperating, not only with their peers, but also with mentors, who have been in the industry for a long time.

Programme B opens with In The Cracks We Find. Performed by Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary), it begins by quoting the definition of “family” from the dictionary and Wikipedia. As the play progresses, we realise how wrong, or incomprehensive, these definitions are. Families in the modern society face unique challenges and no longer come in the prescribed forms. This gang of girls are a force to reckon with. They challenge definitions, offer their own and build human pyramids when you least expect it. Perhaps in the future they could consider a more stable and safer platform (not jagged blocks) to stand on when making their statement.

My personal favourite (from Programme A and B) is Pull Up by Clementi Town Secondary School. A play where life takes three fighter pilots in different directions after a freak accident. This is a well-conceived dramatic story that elucidates the theme of friendship and forgiveness. Lightbulbs on airplane models cleverly mimic their flight at night. Synchonised movements by the ensemble replicate the turbulence felt in a plane realistically. The emotional rollercoaster ride is made all the more memorable by the cast’s striking facial expressions. This thoughtful and theatrical presentation makes me overlook the illogical revival of one of the characters.

Dancing In The Dark by Buds Theatre concludes the evening. A girl’s fear of leaving the house and interacting with other people is so strong that it is paralysing. She stays at home, lives vicariously through movies and survives on delivery.

Everything is beautifully romanticised in this play and appropriately so I feel. For a girl who battles opening the front door, walking along the cobbled streets with a snack in hand is a dream. However, she doesn’t realise that her own existence is romanticised too. Using a typewriter and dancing like no one’s watching is a luxury one can rarely afford in a fast paced modern society like Singapore. What are the chances of a pet cat taking refuge in your own home and befriending the delivery man? The set, sound, and lighting design lends another dimension to the whole atmosphere too.

A home that provides a comfortable escape is something that all of us should be able to own.

“Simple Pleasures”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 26 July 2016

Peer Pleasure initially started out as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2014. Response to the programme has been so overwhelming that in 2015, it became a stand-alone festival on its own. With M1 as its title sponsor in 2016; M1 Peer Pleasure Youth Theatre Festival, this youth festival is probably here to stay.

Organised by ArtsWok Collaborative, this platform allows youths to showcase their works to the public. This year six original works, largely devised and performed by the youths themselves, will explore the theme of “Home”.

Programme A opens with Housing Games. Performed by CHIJ Katong Convent Secondary School, it resembles The Hunger Games novel and movie series. Set in SG100, students from the Dramatic Arts Society put up a reality game show where audiences double as television viewers. Three families are plucked from HDBs and battle it out on “Do You Belong?”, for the opportunity to continue living in Singapore.

The cast is dedicated and each contestant’s backstory and characteristics are nicely fleshed out. The flashy hosts have good camaraderie and are on point with their comic timing. Transitions come as a pleasant and refreshing surprise, when backstage crew reveal themselves and shout cues on stage instead of shifting props in the shadows.

The second item by Singapore Polytechnic is put up by students from Diploma in Applied Drama and Psychology. This performance follows the friendship of two young girls, the struggles of their respective families are thrust under the spotlight. An absent father’s presence is sorely felt and it seems the challenges of a single parent family are insurmountable. Parents who fail to achieve work life balance also fail to realise that nothing, not even money, can buy them time spent with their children during their growing up years.

Unnecessarily exacting movements and prop shifts during transitions are painful to watch. However, one can forgive the technical glitches when faced with a scene where both girls reveal how little they need to be happy.

Body of Land by School of The Arts concludes the evening. Students present excerpts from a series of signature Singaporean works by Haresh Sharma, Jean Tay, Kuo Pao Kun, Natalie Hennedige, Ovidia Yu, and Zizi Azah. The excerpts chosen are interesting and the students bravely put their own spin on the subject matter. The ensemble is bold and gives their all in performing. Insects are affectionately personified, even unscrupulous aunties are comically portrayed. Expect onesies, singing and dancing, and animal head gears.

“A taste of Forum Theatre”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 28 July 2016

International Friendship Day (IFD) is an interactive drama targeted at primary and secondary school students by The Necessary Stage. The programme booklet even comes with an educational kit and study guide.

IFD takes the form of Forum Theatre. Forum Theatre was created by Augusto Boal with the intentions of bringing about social and political change. Usually audiences would watch actors passively and leave when the play ends. Boal prefers “spect-actors” where audiences are involved and think critically about what they are watching.

In Forum Theatre audiences can halt the performance, suggest another course of action for any character or even replace the actors themselves, in an attempt to change the outcome of that scene. This way instead of being passive spectators, audiences are active participants.

Fortunately, International Friendship Day managed to achieve this.

Actors split up and join audiences for a short but revealing pre-show discussion. A quick round of introductions followed by us putting a number to how many foreigner friends we have. It is surprising to note how some of us have none at all. Perhaps the outcome would have been different if we were asked how many foreigners we know.

The play traces a group of students in a local school as they prepare IFD. Each scene is richly packed for students to intervene. Beginning from childish bullying and name calling, to the segregation of local and foreign students, to the retrenchment of a student’s father, to the unfair treatment of a girl who does not want to attend a classmate’s party etc

In anticipation of short attention spans, IFD keeps each scene short and succinct, scene changes are smooth and swift. Yet it refrains from commenting on each scenario, leaving it to the students to unpack the misfeasance. Comfortingly, the students are perceptive and thoughtful. Kudos to those who mustered the courage to go on stage and act out a short scene.

Post-its are distributed for audiences to pen their reflection sum up the post-show activity. A walk around the display of post-its is encouraging as students suggest ways their schools can promote foreign-local student cohesion through camps and workshops etc.

Perhaps if plays like these toured workplaces, xenophobia and bigotry amongst adults can be mitigated.

“We are all in this together”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 16 July 2016

Stigma is a youth-led community theatre project mentored by Rosemary McGowan and other members from the Singapore Drama Educators Association (SDEA) over a six-month period.  It compiles stories that highlight the struggles and spirit of youths with mental illnesses. A simple and straightforward play that hits home.

Directed by Tan Chia Wei and Shalyn Yong, Stigma cleverly condenses its messages into short vignettes. Each short story succinctly fleshes out the challenges youths with mental illnesses face in everyday settings such as in school, at home, and in the hospital.

Each story is personal and heartfelt. It is difficult to watch and disheartening to learn how they were bullied in school, misunderstood by teachers for coming to school late, deal with an alcoholic mother, and even hear disparaging and derogatory remarks from doctors.

The youth ensemble, who devises and performs the piece, moves like clockwork despite minor hiccups in scene transitions. Their ability to remain calm and collected in front of a live audience at such a tender age is possibly gleaned from all the curveballs life throws at them.

So invested and dedicated is the cast in performing that they forget a mic is in their hands. When they have to deliver more emotive lines, their screams and shouts reverberate well into my eardrums. That and the confusing coloured lights that flashes sporadically is amply compensated by the enthusiastic song and dance item in the finale.

Stigma also saw participation from Singapore Association for Mental and Singapore Polytechnic. Perhaps it is this influence that resulted in a scene from a therapy session. In light of everything that the play has starkly revealed, maybe it should be us in therapy instead of them.

“A taste of Playback Theatre”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 16 July 2016

Founded in 2002, Tapestry Playback Theatre Ltd is a community theatre company in Singapore that practises a kind of improvisational theatre where audience or group members tell stories from their lives and watch them enacted on the spot. Their rich experience and expertise is evident when competent playbackers warm up audiences quickly with a few interactive exercises.

The theme for Tapestry Playback Theatre’s performance is “You never knew I was.” A theme designed to allow the younger generation to find out how their parents and grandparents grew up. Fortunately, there is no lack of story-sharers as many enthusiastic silver-haired folks and families are in attendance.

Interestingly the young performers are always able to capture the essence of each story despite it being shared by someone much older. The words and emotions resonate, perhaps a testament of how the joys and pains of growing up are shared by everyone.

The facilitator and playbackers do a good job of creating an atmosphere where audiences feel safe and secure. As the session progresses, more intimate stories are shared. This is quite an achievement considering how deeply personal some stories are and the fact that the group are practically strangers until an hour ago.

No doubt playback theatre is a valuable tool for surfacing stories and creating ties. Connections amongst those in the audience are built and strengthened. However, it remains to be seen if those connections are fleeting, existing only within the confines of the theatre. Or if it is able to find root outside the play and develop into a dialogue where transformative change can happen.

“Fleetingly Haunting”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 21 July 2016

A painfully slow, but purposefully so, play about death that sets you thinking.

A lonesome light goes on and off.

I am intrigued and attempt to take in the space in between the flickering. A cup of water sits on a long rectangular box and a white shirt hangs loosely from a noose.

The orange light continues to flicker.

I am bored and twiddle with my thumbs. I cross my legs, I uncross them. 15, 16, 17… I lose track of how many times that light has flickered.

That flickering shows no sign of stopping.

I am frustrated by the lack of action. Quietly disquieting. It is unsettling to hear only the sounds of your breathing and swallowing. Someone behind me clears his throat to break the silence.

Melissa Leung Hiu Tuen enters, collapses and exits. Leung does this three times.

Repetition at a plodding pace seems to be the modus operandus. I still myself and let the quiet wash over me. I wonder if this is the play’s attempt to take me through the different stages of grief. The journey of recovery from the loss of a loved one is long and arduous.

Leung delivers a strong and sincere performance evidenced by the way she commands our attention.  Without uttering a single word, she manoeuvres slowly but skilfully. The only words you hear come from a recording. Like an audio journal, that voice states date, time, and event. The voice is monotonous and passionless. That voice asks for help but does not express helplessness. This is enough to stir my sympathies for those who are unable to carry out the minutest of daily tasks by themselves.

A gripe about the position of the subtitles. It is located perpendicularly to the stage and heads have to be turned at an awkward angle to be able to read it. It also flashes at the space where the stage cue operators are, illuminating them unintentionally.

Lighting is another aspect of the play that has made its presence keenly felt. The stark juxtaposition between the harsh orange light and the soft white ones are disconcerting. It is eerie to catch a play about death and see the shadow of a lady with long hair in a dress.

The final scene is poignant; well-positioned light outside the window comes to rest on the lonesome shirt. Perhaps each glass of water that we drink in the days ahead of us will not only give us life but also the strength to accept the things that we cannot change and the courage to change the things that we still can.

“Double-Bill: Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain & Hawa”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 30 June 2016

In Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain (Riders), four impressive looking motorbikes line side by side upstage composing an Instagram-worthy set. It is a coming-of-age story about four friends, within the oft-misunderstood mat motor community in Singapore, whose lives are anything but picture perfect.

Riders opens with its four protagonists gathered around a void deck’s circular stone chairs and tables. A versatile setting chosen for its possible negative associations as a place where rowdy and rebellious youths hang out or smoke. The chairs niftily change into traffic barriers in the last scene.

Broken families, unstable financial incomes and a knack for everything but academics, forces them to juggle familial responsibilities, work and school simultaneously. This leaves them with their love for motorbikes and makes their passion for riding the only escape from life. Unfortunately, their love for motorbikes is a double edged sword, binding them as well as dividing them.

During the soliloquies, characters pour their hearts out and turn stereotypes about motorists on its head. No doubt such a direct mode of presentation is at once personal and forthright but it comes across as too simplistic for a professional cast. After all, “show not tell” is the modus operandi of theatre.

In Hawa, Siti (Koh Wan Ching), a Chinese who recently converted to Islam, is overwhelmed by the sudden responsibility to oversee the funeral arrangements for her Malay girlfriend. As she grapples to come to terms with her loss, the funeral director and a “gate crasher thief” reminds her to fulfil her religious and social obligations.

Koh is sincere and sensitive in her portrayal of Siti. Understandably crude and curt in her exchanges with the others, she succinctly delivers the complex emotions and struggles of a homosexual faced with rejection from family and religion.

Saiful Amri is charming and comical as a funeral director who lives by the mantra “business is business” and “a human only has dignity when he is alive.”

Al-Matin Yakim is able to hold his own as Zaki, the uninvited mourner. A conscientious and conservative portrayal saves that character from coming across as a sleazy and one-dimensional hijab-chasing deviant.

Hawa boldly interrogates the position and value of religion in today’s society where faith seems to be waning in the face of progress in science and where heterosexuality is no longer the only sexuality endorsed. Non-Muslim audiences are also treated to a rare opportunity to peek into the rituals behind an Islam funeral.

“KopiO or AmericanO”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 26 May 2016

The clash between a man and his grandfather is at the heart of Kopitiam.

This performance is adapted from Cultural Medallion recipient Kuo Pao Kun’s 1986 play. It is the graduation production of ARTivate, the youth wing of bilingual theatre company Drama Box.

Specifically targeted at secondary school students, the programme booklet comes in the form an activity sheet – although I am not sure if the answers are can be found from the play.

A girl (Melody Chan) decked in futuristic white garb and hair opens the play, anxiously looking for her grandfather’s red notebook. As she sits and silently reads his writings, the stage conveniently presents the enactment of the chapter.

Jiacai (Toh Wee Peng) is the girl’s grandfather. He returns from Canada to see to his father’s funeral as well as deliver the news of his decision to immigrate. He attempts to convince his grandfather (Julius Foo) to sell the coffee shop and retire comfortably.

Differences in perceptions is the main cause of the riff between grandfather and grandson. What Jiacai sees as working to the bone is merely a daily routine that brings comfort to his grandfather. The way the coffee shop conducts business is considered backward and inefficient by Jiacai, but it is traditional and personable to his grandfather.

Toh fails to deliver the frustrations of a man sandwiched between the opportunities modernisation has to offer and the traditions of the past. His actions are almost perfunctory and he literally speaks to the wall while he is delivering his lines.

Foo is occasionally convincing in fleshing out the desperation of an old man struggling to grapple with change. Perhaps in his attempt to engage Toh, who faces the wall, he too presents his back view to the audience for an extended period of time, compromising the clarity of his lines. There is little chemistry between the two of them.

The erratic interjection of the audiovisuals is distracting and disconcerting. The presence of four other actors clad in white zentai suits prancing about is superfluous too. Instead, their final positions in the closing scene were so badly marked that they actually blocked the running Chinese calligraphy words in the backdrop.

The only saving grace is the set of table and chairs oft-found in older kopitiams occupying centre stage. It is completed by a boombox and traditional coffee cups. It cleverly transformed into a well preserved artefact within a museum towards the end. That moment made me realise that the power to keep these kopitiams around.

“I will catch you”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 13 May 2016

The  reason why you should catch “Falling”: the authenticity and accuracy in which it captures the reality of a family living with an 18-year-old severely autistic child.

The interior of an apartment is meticulously recreated. Like our homes, every nook and cranny tells a story. The secret cabinet where the father stores his alcohol. The sacrosanct calendar hanging on the wall. The lonesome string that connects to a box full of feathers. Each of them carries a secret only its inhabitants are privy too.

Simple everyday affairs turn into a gargantuan task that requires commitment from the entire family. To get Josh to leave for school, a ritual must be performed. Seemingly commonplace occurrences can potentially spark off Josh’s violent meltdown. Loud noises from a juice blender or the stray dog barking are no-nos. To combat such situations, the family invests in noise-cancelling earphones for Josh and adopts counting down with their fingers in front of him to indicate all-clear.

Living under such stressful conditions inevitably strains family ties and the cast captures this balancing act perfectly. Adrian Pang and Tan Kheng Hua once again prove themselves veterans by effortlessly delivering strong yet nuanced versions of Bill and Tami. Tan especially shines in fleshing out the inner turmoil of a helpless and hapless mother who is at once resilient yet vulnerable.

Andrew Marko is careful and convincing in his portrayal of Josh. Marko immerses Josh in a world where he is oblivious to his surroundings. His tics and twitches are not up to him and consideration is not a concept he understands. He cannot help but strike at his mother. He cannot help but touch himself when he wants to regardless of where he is.

Neo Swee Lin’s Nana is a delight to watch. She never fails to make me laugh with her impeccable comic timing. Especially when she is oblivious to the religious double entendre or when she forgets the code words and hilarity ensues.

The random song sequences bewilder me though. Its presentation is suggestive of it happening in an alternate reality. I can only suspect it represents the unfulfilled dreams and scarifies of the family. Perhaps if Josh was normal, the family will form a rock band?

In a bid to share more about autism, post-show dialogues accompany every show. A rare opportunity to ask or just hear more about autism in Singapore. Do stay if you have the time, the individuals who stand behind the mic on and off stage often have responses that will shape your perspectives.

“Listen to your mother”

Reviewer: Lee Min Jie
Performance: 5 May 2016

For a play innocuously titled Mother, the choice of lighting and set is gritty and garish. As you enter the space, an uncharacteristically giant baby hammock greets you. It steals your attention because it is a shade of red, almost like blood. A harsh spotlight envelops the rest of the space in an eerie fuchsia afterglow. This play celebrates motherhood in a different light, literally. Although I am unsure if the intentions of this creative decision is brought to fruition.

Ironically it is another long red stole that stole the show. In the hands of the nifty and nimble actresses, a simple cloth morphs metaphorically into a wedding veil, an umbilical cord, and an infant that they cradle in their arms.

Otherwise Grace Kalaiselvi and Nur Suhaili Safari Wijaya stand out only because they are clad in white against a dark backdrop. They hurry through their lines a lot of the time. This impacts the overall pacing and makes obvious the absence of pauses which can allow for the gravitas to sink in. Biting off each other’s lines also throws the subtitle coordinator into a frenzy, and at times what they are saying in their mother tongue can be completely lost on audiences who depend on the surtitles.

In the short span of an hour, it bites off more than it can chew. It runs a gamut of many issues, including abortion, adoption, conceiving, delivering, to infertility, and miscarriage. All these heavy topics whiz pass so quickly that the depth in each discussion is compromised. This touch-and-go approach has the effect of making the play appear like a rant or a comprehensive textbook that lists issues plaguing motherhood in methodical order.

As the play progresses, my eye invariably wonders around the space and the nondescript baby essentials hanging from the ceiling start to morph into portentous objects. Imagine looking at a one-piece baby romper hanging limply after hearing a recount of a miscarriage…

Towards the beginning and end, a recording of a series of voices in different languages are played on loop. I suspect that these are the voices of the twelve women who were interviewed for the play.  This is particularly thoughtful as an homage to the women who shared such intimate and personal material. It also allows audiences to “hear” these women first-hand and that is the allure of verbatim theatre.

Given that it’s the Mother’s Day weekend, this play timely foregrounds the challenges of motherhood and reminds audiences to not forget to show our appreciation to the women around us.