“To literally have your heart walking outside of you”

Reviewer: Jocelyn Chng
Performance: 8 May 2016

Mother I, performed in English, Malay and Tamil, is a nuanced tribute to motherhood, staged (rather predictably) during the Mother’s Day weekend. The work is performed by Kalaiselvi Grace and Suhaili Safari,  devised from interviews with women about their motherhood experiences.

I have always had mixed feelings about verbatim theatre because in some instances it ends up being little more than a collection of interviews with limited curation to help shape the piece as a performance.  In this case Kalaiselvi and Suhaili have shaped their performance with care and thought. It is also nice to watch a collaborative performance that for once allows more of a minority voice to be heard.

Mother I is at times playful, at times touching, and at times slaps the audience in the face with brutal reality. The strength of the work lies in the inclusion of points of view that run counter to the usual clichés of motherhood – stereotypical ideal of noble self-sacrifice, or a role that ‘completes’ a woman etc.  In this performance, we are shown fears, doubts and frustrations experienced by women – not having time for themselves, changes to the body that are difficult to reverse, not being fully prepared to have a child, not wanting children at all, and so on.

These stories are interspersed with movement sequences that are themselves intriguing to watch, as both Kalaiselvi and Suhaili are strong and clear in their gestures. Throughout the performance the motif of a long red dappled cloth dominates and is used in the movement sequences in varied ways.  These include using it to signify an umbilical cord or bundled up to represent a baby.

The set is striking, with a huge red sarong (a hammock-like cradle for a baby to sleep in) hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the stage, dominating the stage picture. Around this, several baby dresses and toys are also suspended from the ceiling. On entering the theatre and observing the set before the show starts, the feeling that I get is actually rather spooky, reminiscent of horror movies à la Chucky. My main gripe about Mother I is that there seems to be a sense of disconnect between the ominous-looking set and the genuine, thoughtful content of the piece.

Nevertheless, this independent project, rare in Singapore’s theatre landscape, has the potential to be taken beyond this initial showing and developed further into an even more substantial and tighter work. For now, I continue to ponder the many bittersweet aspects of motherhood presented by Mother I : Amma Naan : Ibu Aku.

“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.