Merdeka / 獨立 / சுதநததிரம் by W!ld Rice

“How is it possible to be disinterested in colonialism?””

Reviewer: Idelle Yee
Performance: 12 Oct 2019

The central conceit of Wild Rice’s Merdeka / 獨立 /சுதந்திரம் is deceptively simple. As the rest of the nation celebrates the Bicentennial anniversary of Sir Stamford Raffles’ founding of Singapore, a motley crew of six young, dissenting intellectuals – and also, it seems, aspiring thespian enthusiasts – form a reading group called Raffles Must Fall. They discuss and re-enact painstakingly researched hidden histories of this land, held onto only by a wisp of memory, negotiating with great ardency post-colonial identity and subaltern history.

As is typical of gatherings brought together by the spirit of youthful discontent, it is unclear at first what exactly this high-brow assembly is intended to achieve. The conceit of a reading group, of all the impractical things millennials get up to these days, inspires some degree of cynicism. Is this production yet another elevation of young middle-class intellectuals sitting about in tired criticism of the establishment with little actual change in sight? The set, resembling a museum exhibition, seems to lend weight to this skepticism. At certain junctures early on, the decidedly snarky, self-righteous tone adopted by several cast members veers dangerously close to obnoxiousness.

Nonetheless, the production’s strengths quickly reveal themselves in its ambitious re-enactments of stories from the past. Any skepticism regarding the set is soon remedied; the stasis of a museum gallery is transformed into a dynamic playing space for 200 years of history. The museum exhibits that frame the stage become costumes and props for this group of spirited storytellers, giving new life to tales from the distant past.

The soundscape, brilliantly crafted by sound designer Paul Searles, transports the audience across time and place, be it the ailing grandeur of Johor-Riau or the spirited Chinese students’ riots of the 1950s. The actors are intimately attuned to the nuances of rhythm and song, their bodies melding together with the soundscape in a manner that seems less rehearsed than it is intuitive. There is a sense of transcendence in the confluence of movement and sound; somehow, these stories from times past are converging with these bodies in the present. There are hints of an unarticulated intricacy yet in how these stories of the past shape and move differently the present.

As the production draws to a close, we find that these characters, and their actors, are bringing to the fore not merely heated intellectual discussions of post-colonial identity and ideas of nation. They bring also with their bodies, their skin colours and their accents their own intimate negotiations of racial narratives, the post-colonial era and the Grand Narrative a younger generation has grown up with. We see the obnoxious intellectual posturing of “woke” ideals in the light of anxieties a person from a minority culture might experience growing up in present-day Singapore. We realise just how much more we are required to question our past if we truly are to own our present independence. As the characters ask us: how is it possible to be disinterested in colonialism, when it is ever both our past and our present? How do we forge the decolonised future without courageous engagement with the colonised past? Perhaps we must first know that which from which we needed to be free, before we may truly declare with all the voices of ages past and to come: Merdeka! Merdeka! Merdeka!