TANAH•AIR 水•土 by Drama Box

“Sifting Through Seas and Soils”

Reviewer: Teo Xiao Ting
Performance: 16 October 2019

A shadow emerges from the drain covers in front of the Malay Heritage Centre, doused in a gentle blue light. An invocation to call upon histories of this land we stand on, histories that we have obscured and neglected, voluntarily or not. A few other figures emerge, their heads and backs affixed with dark feelers and antlers, masquerading as creatures. Thus begins Tanah, the first part of Tanah•Air水•土：A Play In Two Parts by Drama Box.

Through the Bicentennial programming this year, we see many stories excavated and obscured to different degrees. Tanah•Air is one of the few that excavates, makes clear the murky narratives of Singapore through meticulous and tender storytelling methods. Though I struggle to find synergy between the play in their respective two parts, the importance of Tanah and Air is undeniable.

Right after the evening prayer call, in the open air, I witness the script that Neo Hai Bin adapted from Isa Kamari’s Duka Tuan Bertakhta. As Koh Wan Ching narrates the heart wrenching tale of Marmah and Ramli, a cloud of performers cloaked in black dances across the ground of the Malay Heritage Centre. Are they spectres of the history lost in the soil of the sacred golden hill described in the tale? Or are they spirits raging on behalf of the histories we failed to honour?

Each word that emerges from Koh’s mouth cuts through the slight wind surrounding Kampong Gelam, and I can feel the weight of Marmah’s struggle between her loyalty towards the sick as a practising healer and her adoptive father. As Marmah is faced with an imminent rebellion, the black figures drape themselves in red, manifesting the bloodshed that is about to happen. Tanah ends with a wedding procession, and I almost mistake it for a neighbouring celebration that someone is hosting elsewhere. The line between fiction and reality blurs.

The story is mesmerising, but it’s a shame that Tanah excludes those who cannot afford to tear their eyes away from the surtitles due to language barriers.

After a short intermission, we enter the auditorium for Air, a piece of verbatim theatre that stitches together lived experiences of the Orang Seletar. The floor is covered with chalk drawings of geographical names, mutable and ephemeral. Leiti, played by Dalifah Shahril, tells of the excruciating experience of losing her child to the sea she loves deeply. She tries, desperately, to revive her child with ilmu (sacred knowledge) to no avail. When she sends her child to the clinic, he had passed on. As she crumbles at the corner of the stage, the rest of the characters narrate on, compassionate yet insistent that their stories be heard.

One line that stays with me is when Roslan Kemat’s character confesses to his son (Farez Najid) that he “no longer knows how to love [him]; [he] has become too different”. As the Orang Seletar, adaptable and capable as they are, are faced with the region’s ceaseless hunger for “development”, what is lost and what can be retained? In a sequence that follows, Farez pulls a string to a grey box overhead, and a stream of thin white sand starts falling. Is he praying for forgiveness, for divine assistance, or is he simply trying to invoke the spirits that have kept the Orang Seletar safe on the sea for decades? The cloud of white covers his face, then his shoulders, eventually forming a small hill at his feet.

At the end, a stack of court documents is laid to our feet, and I lean forward to read the impersonal legal language in which they are written. The coldness of how laws, constructed to protect and serve its people, can fail, invoked a surge of anger in my chest. After witnessing the deeply personal stories told to me over 90 minutes, these documents are achingly lacking. As I leave the theatre, the cast remain standing on one foot, struggling to maintain balance. A continuous balancing act that bleeds beyond this short run of Tanah•Air.