“Brightly, then no longer”
Reviewer: Teo Xiao Ting
Performance: 14 September 2019
At the end of Knots, the theatre floods with momentary daylight. Pregnant with the complications of dreaming and its consequences (particularly in Singapore), the debut production by theatre collective 艺族STRANGER is set in the underworld crafted by Liu Yong Huay, Ng Jing and Han Xuemei. It walks us through Yuan Yuan’s (Judy Ngo/Teo Pei Si) life and afterlife, as well as her regrets. 结, the Chinese character for “knot”, holds the secondary meaning of “to bear”, as in 结果, literally “to bear fruit”. What is borne, and what is knotted as a result?
The production starts with the sound of a ticking clock resounding through the theatre as Ngo’s middle-aged Yuan Yuan enters the underworld. Her paperwork must be completed by the first ray of daylight, says her underworld case manager, Mr. Xie (Chng Yi Kai), or else she will be stuck in purgatory and unable to reincarnate. With suspended ropes marking the edges of the largely empty stage, this underworld reminds me of a prison holding cell, hostile and intolerant of errant emotions.
Awash in a subtle green glow, Yuan Yuan later meets her younger self (played by Teo), her mother (Goh Guat Kian) and individuals from her school in a series of flashbacks. We learn that Yuan Yuan had wanted to become a Chinese theatre practitioner by taking up an internship with a prestigious Taiwanese theatre company.
A series of complications and obstacles made this internship a difficult fruit to attain. They range from her illiterate mother’s belief that a university education – rather than an internship in the arts – is the only path to success, to the fact that Yuan Yuan’s grades disqualified her from obtaining a scholarship to pursue the internship. These issues scaffold intimately in Knots, resulting in a sprawling storyline that deeply resonates with me. I find myself still asking the question: what is borne from this knotty mess? In an emotionally charged conversation, the younger Yuan Yuan and her mother diverge in what is “best” for her. Yuan Yuan declares that even if the path to follow her dreams is fraught with obstacles, at least it is what she chooses to do.
Knots offers no easy answer to the question of what gives in one’s pursuit of dreams in the unyielding “system” of life (that persists even after death). And this is what hits me hard. Sometimes what remains is the pursuit itself – the destination bears little weight or significance. At the end of Knots, Yuan Yuan defies her case manager’s wishes, and opens the door wide to a daylight that will plant her firmly in the perceived terrible purgatory. She is unapologetic in her “unwise” decision to follow her will to the bitter end, almost as penance for the dream she has left behind.
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ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
KNOTS by Stranger Collective
13 – 14 September 2019
Part of Singapore Chinese Language Theatre Alliance (SCLTA) New Works Festival 2019
Esplanade Theatre Studio
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Xiao Ting recently graduated from Yale-NUS College with a major in Arts & Humanities and a minor in Psychology. Her writing practice started with poetry, and has since moved towards a sort of explicit response. She’s still feeling out the contours of a “reviewer”, and thinks that each review is actually an act of love that documents and critically engages with performance.
