Centre 42 held the online premiere and watch party of The Vault: Who’s Asking? Who’s Talking? on 29 April 2021 via Zoom. It featured a double-bill of performance created by the students of the module TS3103 Theatre Lab to respond to the play Madame Mao’s Memories by Henry Ong

The two original works, Fragments and Nobody Asked!, premiered on YouTube live. (See here to view the performance video.) The screening was followed by a discussion segment with the creators of the two works, moderated by the module chair Dr. Robin Loon. Here are some highlights from the sharing segment.

Setting the Scene

Dr. Robin Loon began the segment by explaining the context of the Vault. He shared that the response element as a pedagogy was something he devised with Centre 42 for The Vault programme some years ago. It is “a way of documenting Singapore theatre with a way of creative reimagining or reengagement with the text”.

In the 13-week process, students underwent a series of physical workshops to awaken and engage the body, one of which was conducted by practitioner Lian Sutton. They had also attended a documentation workshop with Daniel from Centre 42, to guide them with the auto-ethnographic and peer-documentation elements of the module. They also embarked on research and made pitches across several key themes of Madame Mao’s Memories, such as gender, theatre and history, before formulating a performance response.

Impetus for the Responses

Nobody Asked! shared that they began with a visceral response to Madame Mao’s Memories: frustration that Henry Ong, a male Asian-American playwright felt justified in telling the story of a Chinese woman. The group thought he painted the life of Jiang Qing, or Madame Mao, in an “unfair” light.

They decided to devise a post-dramatic expression rich in sound design, choreography and vignettes to convey the frustration, as well as the attendant theme of female oppression.

Fragments took an interest in the foreword of the play, in which they learnt Ong had a “self-confessed lack of knowledge regarding the culture and the language” of the play.

In writing the individual journey of Jiang Qing, they realised he left out the amount of collateral damage the cultural revolution had wrecked on the people of China. As such, they wanted to “restore some degree of historical context” to the play as a response. To do so, they wanted to be self-reflexive in the work and acknowledge their own identity members of the Chinese diaspora, in order to caveat their disconnect from the subject matter. Xin Rui from Fragments shares one of the considerations was the question, “Whose truth are we presenting exactly?”.

Response and Commentary

One audience member wondered why the groups chose to engage with authorship and Ong’s identity rather than with the content of the play per se.

Gaiatri from Nobody Asked! shared that she was keen to interrogate the act of writing itself, and felt “personally affronted” by the distant positionality of the playwright. Her groupmate Sneha added that Jiang Qing is a real figure and so, one “cannot divorce a body from their story.”

Fragments shared they did use content from both history and the play to reimagine and offer healing around the Cultural Revolution. After the documentation workshop, the team realised the playwright had created a text in which he too was inevitably implicated.

Dr Robin Loon said of the approaches, “I’m always very surprised at what students choose to respond to in the plays assigned. I feel it’s a unique part of this module, that there is no set way to do it. Students will see certain meaningful things that they want to see and it’s what groups have to negotiated amongst themselves.”

Performance and Vocabulary

Both groups also investigated creating performance vocabulary to support what they wanted to convey.

For instance, Nobody Asked! shared they employed a selection of references to memes and contemporary issues as a strategy to evoke particular feelings of familiarity and frustration in the audience, and also to provoke introspection.

They also deliberately redacted the context of one of their key characters, Woman X, allowing her to escape the failings of the author and audience. An audience member shared that they found it hard to connect with the characters of Nobody Asked! with little information, to which the creators remarked that the ambiguity was precisely to further elude characters beyond simple definition.

Fragments relied on two conventions: Butoh and puppetry.

In order to restore some historicity to Madame Mao’s Memories, they employed Butoh to communicate the pain and anguish brought about by the Cultural Revolution. Embodiment was important to their investigation of intergenerational trauma, so choosing an appropriate form like Butoh to evoke those physical sensations and stark visuals was necessary.

Ci Xuan mentioned they used their massive puppet to do what the human body cannot, such as represent violence. It also communicated otherness, a metaphor for their relationship to and distance from the difficult subject matter. “We’re talking about something that is not like us. Our interactions with (the puppet) were clumsy and awkward; (it expresses that) we’re still trying to grapple with it,” she adds.

Learnings

For many, The Vault: Who’s Asking? Who’s Talking was the first time they were devising an original work. Gaiatri shared that group synergy was important. Where differences in thinking occurred, it made for more robust creative discussions, but it also meant learning to be clear and effective communicators.

Zhe Ern from Fragments reflected that one of her most crucial takeaways was on finding a voice and having something to say. “What do we take into consideration when we want to put something out?” she summarised.

By Lee Shu Yu
Published on 25 May 2021

It was over three decades ago when late theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun described Singapore theatre and its history as “severely interrupted”.

“The advantage of having an artistic tradition is that the younger artists could see an organic link between the real life of one’s country and its art work which is a sublimation of that life,” he said. “I see it as a worry because the lack of this tradition really means that theatre in Singapore never had an experience of delving deeply into the country’s life (past and present), to observe, research, reflect and then, often painfully, distilling it into theatre.”

Something to prove

The Repository, a digital archive of theatre ephemera, launched in 2015.

The record-keeping role of the archive is one important way to build and sustain a local theatre tradition. When Centre 42 launched its digital theatre archive the Repository back in 2015, it was meant to do just that.

We privately called The Repository a ‘proof of concept’ – the programme had a short development runway of six months and a modest investment, but ultimately we wanted to find out whether it was possible to build a collection of artefacts that could serve as a record of Singapore theatre history.

This collection of artefacts, as a whole, would give users an impression of the trends and developments in Singapore theatre history, and, hopefully, whet their appetites to find out more from other archival resources. For this scope and purpose, the Repository focused on theatre ephemera, specifically the programme booklets, posters, brochures and other publicity collateral which form the residue of past theatre productions.

Six years on, this proof of concept was, for the large part, successful. The Repository held a tidy collection of over 2,400 artefacts from 16 companies, covering the years 1966 to 2019.

However, the Repository collection was severely limited in the picture it portrayed of Singapore theatre.  There were many gaps, most notably an absence of the work of our independent peers, as well as documentation of the processes that led to the development of these theatre productions.

A bigger, bolder archive

In 2020, armed with feedback from members of the theatre community and an audit of Centre 42’s documentation work, we set out to envision a new archive that was much larger and complex in scope and bolder in its ambition, one that would fill out the portrait of Singapore theatre better than before.

We’re calling this endeavour the C42 Archive of Singapore Theatre, and it builds upon the Repository and our other documentation work, as well as introduces new ways of archiving our local theatre landscape. Briefly, the Archive will focus on the following areas:

1) Comprehensiveness

The Archive needed to have a broader range of materials to build a better picture of Singapore theatre. In addition to production collaterals from the Repository, the Archive will also contain reviews, publications, essays & writings, audiovisual recordings and photographs.

A new type of artefact that we’re introducing into the Archive is unpublished scripts. These are

Playwright Alfian Sa’at’s “Cook A Pot of Curry” in the Unpublished Scripts section of the Archive.

the play-texts that were performed but never received publications and risk fading into oblivion. They could also be early drafts of plays that represent important milestones of the creative journey. If you’re interested in submitting an unpublished script, or just interested to find out more this effort, please click here.

2) Connections

Another major aim of the Archive, and a mammoth undertaking, is to create linkages between the various archival materials.

To that end, we will have Productions & Staging pages, which function much like encyclopedia entries, pulling together the various artefacts pertaining to that particular theatre production.

Another way of joining the dots would be through the individuals and groups involved in the productions. For them, we have People and Organisation profile pages, which, when populated, will be able to aggregate the work that these entities have done, from theatre works to writings.

Theatre practitioner Grace Kalaiselvi’s profile page in the People section of the Archive.

3) Capabilities

And finally, we also want to build archival and documentation capabilities. For that, we’re introducing an Archival Residency, in which independent artists and groups can work with Centre 42 to build collections of artefacts, and organise them to tell a story of themselves.

There’s no limit to what the Archival Residents are allowed to archive, which makes for an abundance of documentation and storytelling opportunities. And it opens a world of possibilities for what could be contributed to the Archive!

We’re already working with our first Archival Resident, Yellow Chair Productions, to archive their works and organisational history. Stay tuned to see what emerges from this residency.

Embracing complexity

As ambitious and, at times, frustrating it has been to plan, develop and build the Archive, it’s in the knowledge that this is important work.

In a 1996 interview with The Necessary Stage, Kuo Pao Kun put out a clarion call for Singapore theatre to cherish and study our history: “We cannot actually do the art and call it our own without delving into our own tradition, our own history, our own experience. It is all really one. Different dimensions, different ways of seeing. How can you assert yourself without knowing who you are?”

Life is multidimensional and complex, and perhaps, so should an archive. At the time of publishing, we’re still building, testing and working out the kinks. But feel free to check out what we’ve been working on here, and we look forward to hearing feedback from you through any of our social media channels.

Welcome to the C42 Archive of Singapore Theatre History. Pardon the mess.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 25 May 2021

Critical Ecologies| Critical Anomalies doing an activity following one of their brainstorming sessions. The entire residency is held over Zoom as the members are from different Southeast Asian regions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to find new ways to think, work and play. While physical presences are crucial to human relationships and well-being, digital spaces can offer us creative alternatives to the way we connect, even offering opportunities to form global networks.

C42 restructured our residency programmes to adapt to the changing needs and circumstances of our community. One new programme is the Co-Lab Residency.

As its name suggests, Co-Lab is for collectives, inspired by laboratory-style experimentation and investigation, and altogether focuses on collaboration. The aim of Co-Lab is to create and grow ecologies of creativity and expertise. Co-Lab can take place in a physical space, a digital one, or a mixture of both.

Co-Lab is artist-centered – this means the Co-Lab Resident Collectives are allowed to determine for themselves what outcomes they would wish to achieve within the residency period, and how they wish to achieve them. It’s not just about devising new creations, but also new ways of creating and exploring.

In addition, Co-Lab encourages knowledge-sharing. Resident Collectives will be given opportunities to gather and discuss their explorations and processes. These sharing sessions may also be extended to the other residencies at C42.

Brown Voices

Brown Voices at one of their monthly meetings held over Zoom.

Brown Voices (BV) is Singapore’s first collective of Indian theatre practitioners and playwrights. A 12-member team, founded by freelance Indian actor-director-playwright Grace Kalaiselvi, BV supports, encourages and trains play-writing, especially for quality play scripts where the narratives by Indians in Singapore take centre stage. The group previously had their regular meetings at C42, and made their debut with a reading of original works at C42’s Late-Night Texting 2019.

BV is no stranger to adapting their practice and expanding their reach. In February 2020, they were already forming regional connections, having conducted networking sessions online with Malaysian Indian playwrights. They also had public online discussions on their writing.

Since the move to the cloud, they have found their stride in online monthly meetings. In Co-Lab, BV will be presenting a whole host of workshops and play-readings in 2021, where members will be sharing on their topics of interest and how they may intersect with theatre, as well as freshly written scripts.

Members of the Main Tulis Group having their monthly meetings

Main Tulis Group

Formed in 2016, Main Tulis Group (MTG) is Singapore’s first collective that works on developing English and Malay plays. With “main” meaning play in Malay, the group emphasises writing organically, without restrictions.

They are keen to exchange ideas and provide critique, with the aim of producing more original writing for the stage. Like BV, MTG has also regarded C42 as their home base, and has been a frequent feature at Late-Night Texting since 2017.

The group also organises regular readings of works-in-progress, conducts outreach events on writing, and mentors young writers. Members have also conducted playwriting workshops for each other, in areas such as adaptation and translation.

As part of Co-Lab, look out for MTG’s Script Circles, public sessions in which to share scripts to gain feedback or to learn about playwriting. Script Circles are slated to begin later in 2021.

Critical Ecologies | Critical Anomalies

Critical Ecologies | Critical Anomalies, led by arts researcher and writer Corrie Tan, consists of a team of 12 critics, writers, documenters and translators from Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

They have come together to imagine what performance criticism and critique located in and emerging from Southeast Asia might look like and how it can be theorised and documented.

In their attempts to formulate a regional understanding of criticism, the team has been meeting online in focus group discussions to unpack the practice. They will also be running workshops to facilitate mutual support and sharing of individual expertise.

A screen grab of a Google Jamboard used to capture thoughts and ideas during a brainstorming session from The Care & Intimacy Working Group.

Care and Intimacy Working Group

The Working Group emerged from a strong desire and need to be intentional about having more conversations about care and intimacy practices in the local arts scene. Made up of 20 members and divided into smaller sub-groups, they have been exploring and mapping information and knowledge on maintaining care in arts disciplines.

They are also invested in holding space for people to have these conversations about care, and advocating for broader considerations of care and intimacy, and the minimization of harmful practices across in the arts. The Working Group hopes to develop new best practices that we can adopt collectively.

By Lee Shu Yu
Published on 24 May 2021

The two dance artists, Shu En Ho and Syimah Sabtu, and Artistic Director, Hasyimah Harith, during rehearsal at P7:1SMA studio.

While the spotlight is usually on the stage, there is an immense amount of work and preparation that goes on behind the scenes to produce any arts production. Since January 2021, the Arts Management Collective (AMC) has been working to produce RE:CALL, a movement work presented under Centre 42’s Vault series. While the experience has been challenging, it has also pushed the team to fully comprehend how being an arts manager is an expansive role that involves much more than just administrative work. Arts managers need to be flexible and versatile, so as to support and enable the arts in multifold ways.

How It All Began

RE:CALL originated as a class assignment for ACM201: Introduction to Performing Arts Management, an Arts and Culture Management Programme module that was co-taught by Centre 42 at Singapore Management University in 2020. The assignment brief was to develop a proposal to promote Singapore theatre through a presentation which responds to a local theatre production created in the 2000s.

The RE:CALL team chose to respond to the theatrical work Recalling Mother, first written and performed by theatre practitioners Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed in 2006. Recalling Mother’s script is based on Claire’s and Noorlinah’s memories and relationships with their mothers. Through dance, RE:CALL would explore maternal relationships as well as spotlight a unique work in Singapore theatre history.

After ACM201 concluded, Centre 42 selected RE:CALL to be produced. The project team – comprising Victoria Wong, Janice Yap, Ho Shu En, Charlotte Tan, Megan Hon and Jeffrey Kang – began work under the auspices of AMC. The team is joined by Carissa Lim, an alumnus of the Arts and Culture Management Programme.

The Artistic Team

The first step in realising RE:CALL was to assemble an artistic team that would devise and perform the work.

Shu En, who originated the concept behing RE:CALL, is a street dance artist. She is accompanied by Syimah Sabtu, a Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts dance graduate whose practice is rooted in Malay folk dance and contemporary dance. Syimah is also an associate artist with P7:1SMA, a dance performance company that creates intimate and innovative movement experiences, and a key collaborator on RE:CALL. Devising workshops for RE:CALL have been taking place at Rumah P7:1SMA, P7:1SMA’s studio space at Stamford Arts Centre.

P7:1SMA co-founder Hasyimah Harith rounds off the artistic team as artistic director. Both Syimah and Hasyimah were personally interested in exploring the theme of motherhood through dance; the latter, in particular, recently became a mother herself as well.

“Hasyimah being pregnant herself adds another new lens as she would share her own anxieties about becoming a new mother during rehearsals,” shared Carissa. “Being able to collaborate with partners who have both professional alignments and personal interests in the project has deeply enriched the project.”

In addition, Victoria and Janice have been lending dramaturgical assistance to the artistic team. While dramaturgy isn’t something arts managers typically involve themselves with, Victoria and Janice have experience analysing texts – they helped the artistic team identify possible literary devices and tropes from Recalling Mother that could be useful for the devising process.

They have also been prodding the artistic team to explore questions such as: What are the unique characteristics of theatre and dance as two unique art forms, and how could this movement response acknowledge but also bridge the distinctive divides? How faithful should this response be to the original text? Is it important for the audience to be able to identify and relate to the original theatrical text during the dance performance? How can this movement response push boundaries and add value to the existing local arts ecosystem?

Shu En found the presence of the dramaturgs helpful in the devising process. She added, “Different collaborators contribute their own unique sets of expertise to refine and strengthen the art-making process. Having members of our producing team stepping up to act as dramaturgs shows that arts managers are not simply just administrators, but creative individuals who will prioritise and enable the art-making process by lending their unique strengths and capabilities.”

The Arts Management Collective during an online meeting with Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed.

A Living Script

On 5 March 2021, the artistic team and AMC met with Claire and Noorlinah over Zoom. In the conversation, the Recalling Mother artists shared that with each subsequent restaging, their script would change with the passage of time bringing new memories and life events, as well as fresh insights into their relationships with their mothers. In this way, Recalling Mother could continuously evolve as a “living script”.

For the artistic team, this living script methodology made it apparent that RE:CALL could not simply be a rehash of Claire’s and Noorlinah’s stories; rather, the movement response needed to be based on the artists own personal memories and emotions. RE:CALL could only hope to have subsequent lives if the dance artists had personally invested themselves right from the first iteration.

Another interesting point that emerged from the conversation with Claire and Noorlinah was how their friendship was integral to the creation of Recalling Mother. It allowed them to be vulnerable, sensitive and empathetic while excavating their personal memories. Creative work could also continue outside of the rehearsal room, particularly over a good meal!

Following in Claire and Noorlinah’s footsteps, the artistic team realised that they had to develop their relationship with each other – not just personally, but also in terms of an exchange of dance forms and styles. They spent many hours teaching and learning from each other to discover synergies between their differing dance backgrounds. For example, Shu En, with her street dance background, would reimagine Syimah’s delicate Malay folk dance movements with a groovier twist.

“Many rehearsals were often open-ended with no precise plan or goal in sight. They primarily consisted of the dance artists spending time learning and imitating each other’s movements,” observed dramaturg Victoria. “It was necessary to build trust, comfort and mutual respect between the two dance artists, and was key to improving their dance chemistry.”

Engaging Audiences

Charlotte, Janice, Jeffrey and Megan worked together to document the process of devising RE:CALL using a variety of recording methods, from note-taking and drawings, to photographs and video recordings. Documenting the journey of RE:CALL has been an integral component of the project, not just in terms of informing the artistic team’s reflection and refinement but also in heightening the producing team’s reflexivity and sensitivity to the nuances of the artistic process.

Additionally, the documentation material was also used to help attract, educate and engage potential audiences and facilitate a deeper understanding of the contextual information of RE:CALL. Janice, who co-designed the visuals for RE:CALL, pointed out that possible audiences also differed widely. With the interdisciplinary nature of the project, RE:CALL has the potential to attract audiences interested in theatre, dance, and/or interdisciplinary collaborations. There would also be audiences who would not know about Recalling Mother and its history.

With the complexity of the project, its communications strategy needed to accomplish several goals: explain what RE:CALL is about; promote the history of Recalling Mother and its relation to

The two dance artists devising movements based on their recollections of their mothers.

RE:CALL; and illuminate the devising process by the RE:CALL artistic team. Furnishing audiences with this information would both seed anticipation and promote appreciation of the artistic value of the project.

Janice said, “A key challenge has been to develop an overall communications strategy that would reach out to these multiple audience groups, but also not send conflicting messages.”

Going Above and Beyond

RE:CALL has been an invaluable experience for AMC to learn and apply our arts management skills and knowledge outside of a classroom setting. The team not only undertakes the production of the project, but is also heavily involved in artistic development, documentation, and even audience engagement. Being part of more aspects of the behind-the-scenes processes has afforded a more rounded perspective of and a greater sense of commitment to the project.

Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to arts management. Every arts project comes with its own challenges and opportunities – it is the duty of arts managers to meet all these head on.

The Vault: RE:CALL is originally scheduled as a public live event on 19 & 20 June 2021. In view of the health advisories and tightened safe management measures announced on 14 May 2021, this programme will be postponed to a later part of August 2021.

By Arts Management Collective
Published on 24 May 2021

The Vault: RE:CALL is an inter-disciplinary exploration of the creative synergies between dance and theatre. It is a performance response to the text Recalling Mother and its conceptual framework as a “living script”. RE:CALL is produced by the Arts Management Collective in collaboration with P7:1SMA and Centre 42, with the support of Checkpoint Theatre. For more information, click here.