Everything, from the props to the set, to the actors themselves, is labelled in Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Photo: The Finger Players.

“No silences or gaps, please,” playwright-director Chong Tze Chien says to the actors, 14 students on the cusp of graduation from Diploma in Theatre (English Drama) programme at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). They are all dressed in black and wearing face masks – the surgical kind, not theatrical – and panting slightly from the exertion of the run-through.

It’s just gone past noon on 7 Oct 2020, and it’s my first time attending a rehearsal of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea in the NAFA Theatre Studio. As the production’s documenter, I observe and take notes from my vantage point in the last row of the house, surrounded by yellow-tape slashes on seats barred from use.

Although it’s cold in the theatre, and wearing a mask for an extended period of time isn’t comfortable, I am fuelled by my reverence for the play and its history, as well as a healthy curiosity about what is different about this restaging, and how the students prepared themselves for a professional production.

The students rehearsing a scene where the demons wreak havoc in the flat. Photo taken on 7 Oct 2020.

Tze Chien continues sharing his feedback with the students on the prologue of the show, a tightly choreographed sequence in which a multitude of characters traipse up and down a narrow L-shaped pathway marked out on the ground in white tape. The pathway represents the long common corridor of an HDB block of flats, skirting around the floor plan of a two-bedroom flat, the main setting of the play.

Devil is a triple bill of playlets, all about families living in an HDB block of flats. In the first playlet, a grandmother is desperately trying to get her grandson to buy over her flat before she dies. In the second playlet, a girl and her mother’s lecherous boyfriend are constantly at loggerheads. And in the third and final playlet, revelations of adultery and criminal activity threaten to tear a family apart. All three domestic feuds play out against the backdrop of the block’s residents voting for or against upgrading works by the government.

As Tze Chien runs through the rest of his notes, I note that it’s less than a month to the performance of Devil as the closing production of The Finger Players’ (TFP) Present/Future Season, presented in collaboration with NAFA. There won’t be an audience; Devil will be livestreamed over the Internet on 6 Nov.

Point of No Return

The last time Devil was performed was when it premiered in 2005. I wasn’t able to see it, and my only experience with the play had been as a published script. But what I did know was that Devil holds a huge significance in the history of TFP.

Tze Chien began writing what would eventually be Devil in the early 2000s. At the time, he could feel his time at The Necessary Stage (TNS), where he had been groomed as a playwright, was coming to end. But it wasn’t an easy realisation to arrive at.

“I was stuck artistically,” he admitted. “But I felt that whatever choice that I had to make at the time was a conundrum, in every possible way.”

The following year, he joined TFP as its Company Director to spearhead a new artistic direction for the company. TFP had been known as a puppetry company that produced children’s theatre performances; but at that juncture, the company wanted to venture into more mature content.

Tze Chien created Devil by revising a short play he had written while with TNS, and added two more. He also wrote in another defining feature of the play – its demons, wily creatures that creep out from the shadows to wreak havoc. Tze Chien explained that the demons satisfied TFP’s yearnings for both puppetry opportunities and a work that was an about-turn from their children’s theatre roots.

“So we had demons,” he said. “But what was even scarier? Everything around the production.”

2005 was not a great time for TFP. The company was waiting on an application for further funding. They had also sustained substantial losses from poor box office sales in 2004, forcing the company to do community productions, school workshop and evening performances, sometimes all on the same day. There was a lot riding on Devil to be a success.*

The programme cover for
2005 production of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Image: C42 Repository.

On 6 Apr 2005, Devil premiered at The Arts House Play Den and it was unapologetically darker than anything TFP had produced before. Performed mainly in Chinese dialects, the play broached topics of death, sex and crime. The visuals exuded the bleakness of the characters’ fates, with stark metal frames (designed by Tze Chien) carving out the cramped spaces in the flat. Grim indoor lighting (designed by Lim Woan Wen) was created almost exclusively with practicals, onstage light sources. TFP’s puppetry also went from cheery to chilling – puppeteers played poltergeist-like demons that made objects in the flat fly about. A policeman puppet, at one point, is dismembered.

“We were all experimenting,” Tze Chien recalled. “Everything felt new, everything was unprecedented. We felt like we were on shifting sands because we weren’t sure if any of these things would work out in the end. But it was a point of no return.”

Devil was an unexpected smash-hit with multiple critics lavishing praise on it. In particular, Matthew Lyon of the independent reviewing platform Flying Inkpot would award the production an unheard-of five out of five stars. In his review, Matthew effused, “[The Finger Players] are now the company to watch in Singapore. They have given me the kind of play the dream of which first ignited my passion for theatre: one that is intelligent, layered, truthful, intense, utterly theatrical, and acted and designed to the highest standards.”

At the Straits Times Life Theatre Awards the following year, Devil swept nominations in five award categories, winning in three – Best Actress (Goh Guat Kian), Best Lighting Design (Woan Wen), and Best Director (Tze Chien).

Devil was TFP’s clarion call for its new, bolder approach to puppetry and theatre-making, and became a turning point in the company’s history.

In 2018, TFP underwent a strategic review, which led to a restructuring of the company the following year. Tze Chien relinquished his role as Company Director, and Myra Loke and Ellison Tan were appointed as Co-Artistic Directors. 2020’s Present/Future Season marks a transition between the old guard of TFP and new leadership, with a brand-new work, Peepbird, juxtaposed against three restaged shows helmed by senior core team members of TFP, one of which being Devil directed by Tze Chien.

Far from the immense uncertainty and pressure of those early years, I sensed an ease with which Tze Chien is re-approaching Devil, and unexpectedly, jubilation about stepping down as TFP’s Company Director.

“I can fully devote myself to creating art,” he gushed. “It already feels like I’ve retired! It’s been very liberating – I can do what I want, on my own terms. ”

Double Trouble

“I wanted it to be fun for me,” Tze Chien said on returning to Devil 15 years later. If anything sets the 2020 production apart from the original, it’s that it features two sets of characters.

Actors playing the same two characters either speak in unison, or in quick succession, or even deliver the same lines in different languages. And despite having two actors playing the same character, each actor performs their role a little differently from their counterpart. For instance, in Act 2, one actor plays the lascivious boyfriend vulgar and lewd when interacting with his girlfriend’s young daughter; his doppelganger adopts a cheekier and more caring portrayal, making room for an alternate story of misunderstood intentions.

It was simply a case of mathematics – there were only seven actors in the original 2005 production, and there is double the number of students.  Instead of repeating the show with different casts, Tze Chien instead chose to have two casts performing at the same time.

“Because they are graded, I have to give each student something to play with,” Tze Chien explained. “But at the same time, I thought the play has enough room for some juxtaposition. So I experimented with the splicing, so that you can see the dynamism between the two sets of characters.”

I am reminded of Nine Years Theatre’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s Miss Julie in 2018, in which each of the three main characters was played by three actors at the same time. It made for a richer experience, but also one that was a challenge to follow.

Seemingly in anticipation of the difficulties audiences might face in Devil, the main characters are helpfully colour-coded – the actors in each act either wear red, blue or green T-shirts, and the two sets of characters within the same act are differentiated with a lighter or darker shade of the same colour. And if that wasn’t enough help, every T-shirt is labelled with the character’s identity and age.

In fact, everything on stage is labelled. A plain wooden stand downstage sports “Altar”. A human-shaped paper cutout is apparently an “Effigy”. Even the plastic chicken parts for the meal segments, if one looks really hard, have been stamped “Drumstick”.

At the end of rehearsals, the students gather around (masked and safely distanced) to hear comments from director Chong Tze Chien and stage manager Gillian Ong. Photo taken on 28 Oct 2020.

The labels leave little chance for confusion – when I return to rehearsals for a second time on 28 Oct, I am able to follow the show fairly easily.

The flat and corridor are marked out on the ground again, this time barely fitting into the smaller rehearsal studio. The sound design by Darren Ng, who also worked on the 2005 production, is ready. It’s a brand-new composition, I’m told, a soundtrack layering syncopated synthesised beats over plinking piano keys.

I watch the students run through the entire play again, and the rhythmic music greatly helps them with the snappiness of the choreographed prologue. The soundscape structures the play, clearly punctuating the beginning and end of each act with percussive notes and silences. The emotional arc of each act is also amplified by the score; I see the students’ performances similarly intensify.

“That was a good run,” Tze Chien comments to the students later. “But I also want to mentally prepare you for when we go into the theatre.” Stage manager Gillian Ong chimes in with warnings of how it will be far dimmer in the theatre and also stresses that everyone needs to be punctual.

At the end of the session, I’m helping to rip up the tape markings from the floor. It’s time for the production to move into the theatre.

Boot Camp

Tze Chien shared candidly that with the collaboration with NAFA, his main intent for re-staging Devil was more educational than artistic. For the students, working on Devil would be their first time working with a professional theatre company and performing in a full-length production.

“The actors’ bodies are young, so there’s no way for them to be performance-ready overnight,” Tze Chien said. “I think of the semester with TFP as a boot camp, to just drill them, so that when they graduate from the programme, they have a taste of professional-level acting.”

Marcus Kang, one of the student actors, plays the role of the pervy boyfriend in Act 2. He was really nervous to be working with a professional theatre company. He shared, “I thought they would be strict. I thought I couldn’t be myself. But I later realised I had to open up and show them what I can do.”

“I had the same thinking as Marcus”, his classmate Nor Sherina Binte Mohd Zailani, added. “I thought being professional means whatever the director says, you must follow. No talking back, just listen to them. But I love how they give us to opportunity to speak about what works for us and what doesn’t.” Sherina plays the wife who admits to committing adultery in Act 3.

Devil is truly a devil of a play for fledgling thespians to work on. Not only did the students have to grapple with a text first performed when most of them were still in kindergarten, they also had to plunge head-on into physical theatre and object puppetry, areas which they had not much experience in.

In preparation for the grueling demands of the play, the students spent three weeks exclusively with assistant director Chong Gua Khee at the beginning of the semester in Aug. She shared, “I wanted to work with the students on their body awareness. How well are you able to fill the space? How precisely are you able to start and stop? That’s about body awareness. For more inexperienced performers especially, the extremities like the hands and toes, they’re not fully aware of them.”

Gua Khee put the students through their paces with a range of exercises to strengthen and condition their bodies, and to sensitise them to moving onstage.

“I remember the exercises fondly,” Sherina said. “You imagine you’re a bodyguard and then you hear something. Or imagine you’re stepping on sand. It heightens your senses and your body immediately reacts.

“I love it! It’s really creative and it helped with my physicality, because I’m not really a physical person.”

Gua Khee also wanted to empower the student actors to be critical about their own and their fellow classmates’ performances. Adapting from Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process method, Gua Khee regularly had the students give constructive comments on themselves and to each other.

“It’s about getting feedback that makes you want to go back to work. And I think that is absolutely crucial,” she said. “For that, the artist needs to have the ownership and awareness of the material.”

The NAFA students had to come to grips with physical theatre, object puppetry and an enigmatic script within a few short months. Photo: The Finger Players.

To grow that sort of confidence in welding the play, the young students had to dive deep into Devil‘s 15-year-old text, which Tze Chien admitted, can be rather enigmatic. He said, “I wrote the play in a way that is deliberately very sparse, which means the words cannot carry the play; the actors have to carry the play. They have to do a lot of work as an actor to make sense of what the lines mean in context, in every single moment.”

“When I first saw the script, I didn’t really understand what’s going on,” Sherina said. “I was like what is this upgrade? Why are they fighting? And suddenly they’re eating bee hoon?”

“We had to do a lot of research, and we had to analyse the script for subtext and purpose,” Marcus added. “It took me a really, really long time to understand the subtext of some of the words.”

Sherina and Marcus shared that beyond having to go through the script repeatedly with a fine-tooth comb, the class had had many discussions outside of rehearsals over Zoom to discuss the characters and stories in the play, especially to ensure some distinction between the two sets of characters.

Between getting their bodies ready and immersing themselves into the minds and lives of Devil’s characters within a few short months, the students really had to step up their game. Sherina reflected, “After applying what I learnt from Gua Khee during those first three weeks, and the notes that Tze Chien had given me, I see myself improving. This experience has changed me – I feel like I’m quite good at this and I’m getting better every day.

“From the beginning to now, there has been so much change. Previously, I could see some of us holding back. Now, as a class, we’ve actually done so good.”

Something Old, Something New

I’m almost shivering with anticipation entering the studio theatre on the evening of 6 Nov – Devil would be my first live theatrical performance since theatres closed back in March. Besides me, there are a handful of invited guest in the house, and we’re spaced extremely far apart. We are told strictly not to applaud or make any sounds during the livestream.

As the lights fade to black and Darren’s evocative soundtrack rolls in, I feel the hairs of my arm stand. The lights come on and I see Woan Wen’s lighting design for the first time, an assortment of naked bulbs hung sporadically across the stage. Tze Chien’s new set – illuminated in morose shades of red, blue and green – comprises ropes hung vertically from the rig to bring the floor plan on the ground into sharp relief.

The prologue begins. A karang guni man wanders the corridor forlornly shouting for contributions. Soon after, more and more characters spill onstage in perfect timing. The actors, perhaps fueled by nerves, have found an intensity in their performances I’d not seen till now. The prologue escalates to a frenzy of movement, voices and sound, and then – blackout.

Although I’d only been following the production for one short month, in the momentary stillness before Act 1, I find myself silently rooting for the show to run smoothly, for the students’ success as they venture out into the world, for seasoned artists opening new chapters, and for a company to discover its desired new lease on life.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 20 Dec 2020

*Before Devil, TFP had staged 2004’s critically-acclaimed Furthest North, Deepest South, based on the story of the eunuch admiral Cheng Ho. But Tze Chien considered that production a “soft launch” for the new TFP, with production credits shared with collaborating company Mime Unlimited.

This article is part of the C42 Documents: The Present/Future Season series.

Centre 42 documents the creation process performances of the four productions in The Finger Player’s (TFP) The Present/Future Season. This documentation partnership with TFP aims to capture the inner workings of staging a production, illuminate the working relationships between practitioners and students, and create a textual record of the performance. Each production is documented by two writers, one focused on the performance-making process, and the other on the performance itself. The Present/Future Season was presented by TFP in collaboration with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), and ran from 7 Oct to 8 Nov 2020.

C42 Documents: The Present/Future Season
[Process] Of First Flights and Transformations: Documenting “Peepbird”
[Process] What is Love?: Documenting “Love is the Last Thing On My Mind”
[Process] The Art of the Seamless Transition: Documenting “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
[Performance] “Peepbird”: Decay and transformation
[Performance] “Journey to Nowhere”: Subversive, political take on a renowned classic tale
[Performance] “Love Is the Last Thing on my Mind”: Simple, poignant reminder to love”
[Performance] “Between Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”: From stage to screen

Prologue scene from Love Is The Last Thing On My Mind during full-dress rehearsal on 30 Oct 2020.

Love Is The Last Thing On My Mind 让爱常在我心中 was one of the four theatre productions presented by The Finger Players (TFP) in collaboration with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). It has been a pleasure and honour to document this work and its creation process, as I recalled my previous encounters with this play.

The original play (written by Ang Hui Bin) was created in 2015 as a community performance which toured various elderly care centres and charity organisations. I remember watching this version as an audience member at a void deck, sitting behind a group of preschool children. As a preschool educator myself, I was initially sceptical about the show’s ability to engage children due to their short attention span. As I witnessed how the children could remain seated for thirty minutes straight and stay focused throughout, I was deeply moved by how the piece could transcend language and age. The senior citizens in the audience were similarly engaged. The 2015 version was multilingual and included performance elements like mask, pantomime, and puppetry.

Right after the community tour, Love is the Last Thing on My Mind was adapted for schools and toured various educational institutions as an assembly play. I became one of the cast members during the school tours in 2017. I was once again moved by this collection of stories that questioned the value of love and concern in modern society.

This year, Director Ong Kian Sin (Core Team Member of The Finger Players) chose to restage this script as he felt that it captured the essence of TFP’s signature style. With creative input from the graduating students of NAFA’s Diploma in Theatre (Mandarin Drama), Love is the Last Thing on My Mind evolved once again and underwent a beautiful transformation, much like the caterpillar (Maomao) in the play.

TFP community tour performance Love is the Last Thing on My Mind in 2015. Photo: TFP Facebook.

The creation process started from a distance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first meeting between the director and cast members happened over the virtual Zoom platform on 12 Aug 2020. Kian Sin was back home in Malaysia, while many of the cast members were in China. During the two weeks of virtual rehearsals, Kian Sin introduced new dramatic forms, such as physical theatre and object puppetry, to the NAFA students. He also trained the students to work with the framing on screen as they moved their bodies and explored manipulating the different objects. Students then learnt to tell stories using objects and created their own monologues. It was also on the Zoom platform where they had their first script read.

Eventually, three other NAFA students were unable to make it back to Singapore to participate in this graduating performance. The team had to work with a final cast strength of six, and physical rehearsals finally began on the NAFA campus from 26 August 2020 onwards. Even so, one of the cast members, Wang Zhenni, only managed to join the physical rehearsals from 16 September onwards. Both the production and creative teams worked intensely due to the rehearsal time lost from being physically apart. With about 1.5 months left to the performance, Kian Sin started to rehearse the play while continuing to train the actors’ body language.

In my documentation process, I attended two rehearsals on the NAFA campus, and interviewed the director and the cast members. I also watched the full-dress rehearsal in the theatre space and the digital version on the SISTIC live platform.

New Creative Inputs to Old Script

When I entered the rehearsal space for the first time on 14 Oct 2020, what immediately caught my eye was the colourful tree-like structure made up of bamboo poles. Kian Sin mentioned that the bamboo poles reminded him of Singapore’s public housing estates where people use these bamboo poles to hang their laundry outside the windows.

Various household items hanging on tree. Photo taken on 30 Oct 2020.

Hanging on the structure were various household items, such as a plastic spray bottle, a mop head, tin cans and clothes pegs. Upon interviewing Kian Sin, I found out that he intentionally focused on the use of objects that can be found in everyday life to tell stories. There were minimal modifications to each object, except the addition of some mechanisms to help with object puppetry. For instance, the pair of slippers that were used as a butterfly underwent two modifications. Daniel Sim (Puppet, Props and Set Maker) removed the soles of the slippers and replaced them with thinner pieces of soft foam, which allowed more flexibility. A key ring was added in the middle and the two slippers were stitched together, so that the slippers could be hung on the tree and the puppeteer could hold and manipulate the slipper-butterfly more easily.

I also quickly recognised the caterpillar (one of the main characters in the play) as the cast (Wang Zhenni) breathed life into the flat bright orange microfiber mop head by synchronizing her own visual focus and physical movements with the caterpillar’s movement. I also witnessed how foldable fans, an eye mask, and even a pair of bedroom slippers, could become butterflies through object puppetry.

As I interviewed the cast members, I learnt that for most of them, it was their first exposure to object theatre. One of the cast members, Sun Zhenyu, said the process was difficult but also magical for him:

“我觉得还蛮神奇的。因为它就是我们一些生活用品…我们好像赋予它生命一样，然后让它跟我们一起呼吸。不过这个过程我觉得是难的。”

“I think it is pretty magical. Because they are just our daily household objects… We seem to give it life, and then let it breathe with us. But this process was difficult for me.”

When he first received the object (a spray bottle), he did not know how the object was supposed to move. Subsequently, he discovered its movement and the feeling of breathing together with the object.

Kian Sin paid attention to the relationship between the actor and the prop. He mentioned that every prop that appears on stage is precious, and a good relationship should involve the prop being an extension of the actor’s body. Kian Sin also encouraged the cast members to explore the different possibilities of each prop, and to discover how it can transform. For instance, the walking stick turned into a construction motor drill through the cast’s repetitive drilling gestures in the prologue, where sounds of the destruction filled the air.

Another creative input to this play was the inclusion of new monologues, written by the cast members playing the corresponding characters. Kian Sin felt that the cast members were better able to clarify their characters’ journeys through the monologues. These monologues also enriched the play as the characters found new background stories among themselves.

A few new scenes were also birthed from the creation of the monologues. For instance, the care-giver pushed the old man in a wheelchair out to enjoy the sunset in the last scene, depicting a tender and warm friendship between them.

The Local Flavor

The cast is made up of six NAFA students from diverse international backgrounds and most of them only arrived in Singapore within the last four years:

• Chen Sizhu (Beijing, China)
• Chin Sau Jun (Sabah, Malaysia)
• Heven Chan Heng Kim (Singapore – lived in Xiamen, China until age of 12)
• Meng Xiangzheng (Qingdao, China)
• Sun Zhenyu (Wuhan, China)
• Wang Zhenni (Dongbei Liao Ning, China)

Rehearsing the scene with Father chasing the butterflies away. Photo taken on 21 Oct 2020.

When I asked about their first impressions of the original script Love is the Last Thing on My Mind, many of them used the words “Singapore” and “unique” to describe the piece. As someone born and bred in Singapore, I was curious to know what they meant as I did not feel the same way when I first encountered the play.

Chen Sizhu mentioned that the script was fun and distinctive, in terms of its language and narrative. She did not know certain words used upon the first read of the script, such as 煮炒 (zhu2 chao3), which stems from a Hokkien term (Zi Char) used in Singapore to describe a Chinese food stall selling a variety of affordable dishes similar to home-cooked food.

Some of them also said that the script was different from other scripts they were exposed to while they were in NAFA and China. Hence, it was a unique experience graduating from Singapore with a modern local piece.

Due to the Safe Management Measures taken in response to the COVID-19 situation, it had been more than seven months since I last entered a theatre space to watch a live performance. The familiar smells, sounds, and temperature of the Black Box were welcoming, as I walked into the space and observed the cast members do their warmup before the full-dress rehearsal. More than half of the audience seats were blocked out with yellow gaffer tape to facilitate social distancing. Due to the limited number of audience member allowed for the live performance, many cameras and sound equipment were also set up to provide a video recording for the digital stream. I was reminded of how the arts industry in Singapore is still facing a crisis of survival as I waited for the full-dress rehearsal to start.

Heven Chan Heng Kim performing as Old Man. Screengrab from digital stream taken on 1 Nov 2020.

Members of the audience were told stay silent during the full-dress rehearsal and to avoid clapping after the play ended, since the performance would be recorded on video and any extraneous sounds would affect the quality of the recording. As a performer myself, I imagined it being a tedious task for the cast members to perform to a ‘non-responsive’ audience, and not being able to feed off the audience’s energy.

When the performance began, the beautiful theatrical lights and sounds (designed by Liu Yong Huay and Ng Sze Min, respectively) transported me into a different world and the cast members transformed the space through their physical movements. I was reminded of the magic of live theatre, as I listened, watched, and breathed with the show. Upon the stage manager’s (Ang Cheng Yan) cue that the video recording had ended, the audience (myself included) gave our warmest applause to this batch of young graduating artists.

Two days later, I was at home, seated comfortably at my #workfromhome desk and clicking on the link for the digital stream. Immediately, I noticed the differences in lighting and sound, as well as framings for the online version of the play. The light appeared harsher on the cast members’ faces compared to the live version. The music sounded flatter as well, although I suspect my wired earphones could be a main contributing factor. I definitely preferred the lighting and sound quality in the live performance, as the whole experience felt more visceral and engaging. However, watching the performance again on a two-dimensional (2D) screen allowed me to pick up some new details that I was unable to notice during the live performance, such as the characters’ facial expressions during their monologues.

At the last part of the play, the cast members improvised and expressed their answers to the question “What is Love?”

Some of them mentioned “companionship” and “support”.  This led me to recall my interview with Kian Sin, where he mentioned that this graduation project was supported by a big production and creative team from the theatre industry. This exchange between NAFA and TFP was a good opportunity for the students to learn from various professional theatre practitioners, and to gear themselves up for the working world. While the current climate may not be ideal for graduating students to start out in the arts industry, may they be able to find the support and love that they need to be ready for what is to come.

By Liew Jia Yi
Published on 20 December 2020

This article is part of the C42 Documents: The Present/Future Season series.

Centre 42 documents the creation process performances of the four productions in The Finger Player’s (TFP) The Present/Future Season. This documentation partnership with TFP aims to capture the inner workings of staging a production, illuminate the working relationships between practitioners and students, and create a textual record of the performance. Each production is documented by two writers, one focused on the performance-making process, and the other on the performance itself. The Present/Future Season was presented by TFP in collaboration with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), and ran from 7 Oct to 8 Nov 2020.

C42 Documents: The Present/Future Season
[Process] Of First Flights and Transformations: Documenting “Peepbird”
[Process] What is Love?: Documenting “Love is the Last Thing On My Mind”
[Process] The Art of the Seamless Transition: Documenting “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
[Performance] “Peepbird”: Decay and transformation
[Performance] “Journey to Nowhere”: Subversive, political take on a renowned classic tale
[Performance] “Love Is the Last Thing on my Mind”: Simple, poignant reminder to love”
[Performance] “Between Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”: From stage to screen

The ominous and dim look of Peepbird. In the background, tall panels threaten to fall over. Jo Kwek, fully decked out in black, sits on a bench. Photo: The Finger Players.

It feels invigorating stepping into the Esplanade Recital Studio on 7 Oct 2020. I am here for Peepbird by The Finger Players (TFP), one of the first few plays allowed to be staged under the National Arts Council’s pilot for the resumption of live performances following the closure of theatre venues since April. With the number of COVID-19 cases dwindling in Singapore, the theatre scene can take tentative steps towards normalcy with the implementation of safe management measures. I am excited at being able to watch a play live again, but it is a bittersweet moment, knowing that life—and theatre as we know it—has had to change, perhaps irrevocably.

In Peepbird, a similar ambivalence seems to be embraced, something I find myself musing about as I gaze upon the set in its entirety for the first time. Something feels ‘off’ – the looming concrete-grey panels on stage left are tilted precariously at an angle, barely standing if not for the almost invisible cables that hold it up. A chunky, dusty park bench sits off-center. The cool hues of the angular concrete set are juxtaposed against the earthy tones of the old tree that sprawls across the front of the stage. Despite the implicit discomfort from this lopsided set, the tension is apt. It captures the precarity of hanging in the balance, the same breathless anticipation of being on the cusp of transformation, in times a-changing.

Taking Flight

Peepbird is written by Ellison Tan and directed by Myra Loke, the newly-appointed joint artistic directors at the helm of TFP since April 2020. The announcement of their succession came as a pleasant surprise to the theatre community at the end of 2019, although the duo had already taken up artistic leadership of the company since March.

The Present/Future Season, which runs from 7 Oct to 8 Nov 2020, is TFP’s first major endeavour since its restructure and comprises four productions presented in collaboration with the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). The other core team members of TFP — Chong Tze Chien, Oliver Chong and Ong Kian Sin — are directing three pieces from TFP’s repertoire, performed by the graduating NAFA students. The fourth production, Peepbird, is the only new work, and the maiden production of Myra and Ellison in their new roles. Performed by actors Jo Kwek, Vanessa Toh and Al-Matin Yatim, Peepbird is a tale of a woman who finds herself so moved by the death of a crow that she subsequently transforms into one.

The premise reminds me of a simple Aesop fable or even a dark fairytale, but its meaning and experience are far more nebulous. For one, the play is non-verbal, employing instead a combination of puppets, costumes, movement and sound to tell the story. It also cycles through multiple transformations of the actors from human-like characters to non-human birds and puppets. These transformations are both gritty and magnificent, prompting the audience to interrogate the notion of an ever-changing identity.

These themes of transformation and identity can easily be traced back to the larger season, Ellison and Myra explained during my Zoom interview with them just three days after the show wrapped.

“Present/Future is especially meaningful because we are creating our own show, while our mentors are creating with these young people. At the same time, we are mindful that seven years ago, we were them,” said Ellison, referring to how she and Myra had taken on apprenticeships at TFP in 2014. I find it comforting that besides recognising the parallels in their own journey of learning, Myra and Ellison have also chosen to encourage the students to “move towards the future together” in uncertain times, as articulated in the season programme book. The imagery of little hatchlings leaving the nest and taking flight is not lost on me.

Haunting Visions

Where did the strange idea for Peepbird come about? As it turns out, Myra had her own unexplained, prior preoccupation with the humble crow.

“For many years, I’ve had people tell me about their encounters with crows. I also read stories online and I would save them in a folder on my desktop,” she said. “I think of the visceral sensation of walking down Orchard Road in the evenings. You can hear the crows as if they are right by your ear, but you cannot see them. You literally cannot see them at all.” That vividly terrifying experience of unseen swarms sparked many a creative thought for Myra, including the haunting vision of a woman transforming into a crow.

Jo Kwek wears a textured full body costume with removable wing appendages fastened on both arms. Photo: TFP.

In late 2019, the duo was brainstorming for ideas for the 2020 TFP season. Myra handed her research to Ellison, along with several excerpts she had written. Ellison immediately saw herself in the Woman.

“I really resonated with the idea of a destabilised identity. We had just stepped into this leadership position, and many times I felt like I had to change to suit the space I was in,” she disclosed. “I felt very affected by a huge shift in identity, so the Woman was very clear to me.” That personal experience, along with Myra’s image of the crow woman, crystallised their ambition for the work.

When Ellison began writing the script for Peepbird in February 2020, she quickly ran into several roadblocks, including having to find the most appropriate voice for the work.

“There’s literally no precedent in Singapore as to how anyone has ever written a script for a non-verbal puppetry play,” Ellison said. Her early attempts focussed largely on the transformation of the Woman, but she was well aware there was something lacking.

“A piece of feedback I’ve gotten many times before is that I’m always writing events. After the event happens, there’s usually nothing else. And I completely agree!” she said good-naturedly.

Ellison also penned some physical scores, but Myra felt that they left little room for experimentation. The two ended up having a long and serious conversation to clarify the character of the Woman and the aims of the work. They also consulted the design team, who suggested Ellison write a script that read more like a novel so there would be more opportunities for creative responses.

Then in April, Circuit Breaker happened. As the nation shut down and life ground to a halt, being alone with her thoughts gave Ellison the opportunity to experiment with a new way of writing.

“Every night at witching hour, I harnessed my actor side. I would turn off the lights in my room and speak into my phone’s voice recorder as if I was the Woman,” she shared. “It was like an audio diary of those two months of Circuit Breaker.”

“It was a bit scary,” she recalled, laughing at the memory. “Listening to the meditative, low buzz of my own voice saying things I don’t remember saying.” But as creepy as it was, the hard work paid off – Ellison was able to use the material from the audio diaries to piece together a performance text.

The end product is an emotive, prose-like text full of imagery, visual and aural word play. But because Peepbird itself was going to be non-verbal, the text became more of a launch pad for Myra and the designers’ innovations rather than a strict guide.

New Puppetry

Vanessa and Matin rehearsing a scene with two different kinds of puppets — one that fits on the hand like a glove and another, a marionette.

I am curious that they would go through the trouble of refining the performance text to this degree and yet choose to stage an entirely non-verbal work. I prod a little deeper for the rationale behind their direction.

“Puppeteers are usually quite expressive and emotive, so when there’s text involved, they become even more visible,” Ellison explained. “It’s not bad or anything, but we just want to shift it so that the puppeteer and the puppet becomes a more cohesive entity in performance.”

Myra and Ellison are so invested in this inquiry that they decided following Peepbird, their trajectory for future TFP works will be entirely in the realm of non-verbal puppetry performance.

I think back to the Peepbird rehearsals I had the good fortune of sitting in on in late September and am reminded of how different it felt to have all the scenes run in silence. It was subtle, but the silence made the little things that much more vivid: the soft rustling of costumes, actors shuffling along in the TFP studio, with designers humming in contemplation at the side and my own muted and sporadic clacking of keys as I tried to take notes on my laptop quietly.

In the silence, I heard – and saw – the puppet-puppeteer unit much better, from the strategic breathing patterns of the performer-puppeteer, to the soft, stiff, filmy and fluffy materials. I could almost perceive the hands that wrought and styled the puppets and costumes too, as the different textures and materials jiggled, flapped around and fanned up and down. The silence made materiality, and the combined efforts of all the collaborators, stand out.

Myra had encouraged the designers – puppet designer and maker Loo An Ni, costume designer Max Tan, and sound designer Darren Ng – to have their own artistic interpretations of the text, giving them free rein over whatever they wanted to design.

“It’s like setting my own challenge, guessing how my designers would interpret the piece [in their work] and how I can use that in the show,” Myra said. As each new puppet and costume design came through the doors, she spent long hours outside of rehearsals studying them, exploring the textures, movements and the material properties of the items.

To highlight the puppet and puppeteer as one unit, the team employed a straightforward but ingenious method – a suite of designs the actors can both hold and wear. That way, the performer themselves could become the objects of interest, rather than just manipulate them.

When worn, the pleats of the white bolero bounce and shimmy, reminding one of feathers on a proud bird. Slumped over with the pleated bolero down, Vanessa appears to be merely a defeated character. Photo: TFP.

“I think people would tend to say there’s very little puppetry in this piece,” Myra noted with a chuckle.

I can see why it would appear the case – many of these wearable pieces look very unlike any conventional rod and string puppet. They range from wing appendages that are fastened to Jo’s arms as she transforms into the crow, to a flat grey suit made of thick felt that distorts Matin’s own silhouette and makes him appear to emerge from a concrete slab panel in the background.

In another instance, Vanessa wears a white bolero pleated in layers for a scene where she appears to be both a beautiful bird and a sophisticated lady who grows frustrated with her outwardly appearance. She slips between the multiple states, stripping off her high heels and putting them on again as she totters across the stage. The layers in the soft and light fabric make the bolero bounce with Vanessa’s movements, an effect Myra affectionately called “抖抖” [Mandarin for “tremble”]. The trembling fabric has a life of its own, suggesting fluffy feathers, although Vanessa’s character is still visibly human.

Pieces like the grey suit and the white bolero exemplify the work’s themes of transformation and identity, blurring the lines between man, object and bird.

Becoming One

“Peepbird is a representation of our philosophy when it comes to puppetry,” Myra explained. “It’s that pure commitment to the object you are holding in your hands. That devotion, that willingness and that one-to-one connection with it, where the puppet and puppeteer can feel like one body.”

This ‘one-ness’ of bodies and energies is exemplified in a key scene in Peepbird where Jo Kwek as the Woman metamorphosises into the crow. It is a powerful and important sequence that the actors drilled over and over again during rehearsals to get just right.

During a rehearsal, inside the brown fabric manipulated by Matin and Vanessa, Jo writhes and struggles, undergoing her metamorphosis.

A large, stretchy brown fabric, welded by Matin and Vanessa, slides over Jo, enveloping her body like an amniotic sac. Stripping away the outer layer of her costume from inside the sac, she flails and recoils as the crow takes over her human form. There are three actors in this scene, but the tensile fabric is the fourth with its own life force, resisting the grip and pull of the actors and sometimes slipping out of their hands.

They move with the fabric and each other, timing their stretching and contortions, to keep the energy of the entire mass continuously flowing. I see only one pulsing entity – the human performers, wispy through the sheer fabric, bringing the lifeless material to life, yet also swallowed up by the transformation themselves.

I cannot shake off the twin sensations of discovery and danger that Peepbird manages to evoke. It is being caught in the liminal space between imagination and reality, human and object, man and bird.

Throughout the journey of Peepbird, there is a sense of being on the cusp of great transformation and change with its brave explorations of new ways to write, create and collaborate. For Myra and Ellison, as freshly-hatched leaders with new wings fastened on, this is only just the beginning of a long winding path.

By Lee Shu Yu
Published 20 Dec 2020

This article is part of the C42 Documents: The Present/Future Season series.

Centre 42 documents the creation process performances of the four productions in The Finger Player’s (TFP) The Present/Future Season. This documentation partnership with TFP aims to capture the inner workings of staging a production, illuminate the working relationships between practitioners and students, and create a textual record of the performance. Each production is documented by two writers, one focused on the performance-making process, and the other on the performance itself. The Present/Future Season was presented by TFP in collaboration with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), and ran from 7 Oct to 8 Nov 2020.

C42 Documents: The Present/Future Season
[Process] Of First Flights and Transformations: Documenting “Peepbird”
[Process] What is Love?: Documenting “Love is the Last Thing On My Mind”
[Process] The Art of the Seamless Transition: Documenting “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
[Performance] “Peepbird”: Decay and transformation
[Performance] “Journey to Nowhere”: Subversive, political take on a renowned classic tale
[Performance] “Love Is the Last Thing on my Mind”: Simple, poignant reminder to love”
[Performance] “Between Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”: From stage to screen