“An Ode to Bukit Brown“

Reviewer: Gabriel Lim
Performance: 19 September 2015

A space struggling to be defined – a sanctuary for the dead but now it is land reclaimed for Singapore’s future. Perhaps, just like the eroding granite tombstones, Bukit Brown’s presence is slowly fading away. In time to come, I fear that people will proudly relate to the Botanic Gardens as a national heritage site and forget the quaint charm of a place that unjustly deserves less attention to be preserved.

This is Drama Box’s latest production, It Won’t Be Too Long: The Cemetery, unfolding in two parts (Dawn and Dusk performances). A self-reflexive piece examining our perennial contest for space in a tiny plot of land. What better way then, but to beat my fatigue and head down to Bukit Brown at 5.30 in the morning, to share this space with the spirits around and enjoy a site-specific performance that may never happen again?

We take a slow, 15 minutes’ walk from our gathering point to the performance site. All this while, there is just enough moonlight to light our path. As we continue walking, we are greeted by a barren land with still work cranes. This sight is oddly familiar and strange at the same time. Finally, we reach our destination, and a row of candles greet us, and we take our seats, waiting for a performance for us and for the spirits.

The actors move with great dexterity and fluidity (owing to the brilliance of movement director Koh Wan Ching), and their haunting moans brought goose bumps to the audience. Director Kok Heng Leun proves to us why this performance requires no text; the ensemble drags a piano into the space, playing a nocturne, an unexpected lorry (yes, and it almost seems like it is scripted) drives past the scene, interrupting the spirits, and them moving to the tunes of classic 60s Chinese songs. This experience is thoroughly enjoyable for me, especially since everything happens as dawn breaks, and the space gradually illuminates, signifying to the spirits that it is time for them to leave.

In the end, it is also time for us to leave. What remains of the fate of Bukit Brown?

Until next time, perhaps?

“The Cemetery, Dawn“

Reviewer: Jemima Yong
Performance: 19 September 2015, 5.30am

It Won’t Be Too Long, created by Drama Box, is one of twelve commissions by this year’s Singapore International Festival of the Arts. It is conceived in two parts – The Lesson and The Cemetery, within the latter a further division: Dawn and Dusk. I experienced only Dawn, so this is a review in response to a section of a much larger work.

It Won’t Be Too Long: The Cemetery, Dawn begins at 5.30am (yes! 5.30 in the morning!!) and moves through sunrise into the day. It is a site specific performance that happens in Bukit Brown Cemetery, Singapore’s first Chinese cemetery most recently in headlines when in 2012, the government proposed to build an 8 lane highway through part of the grounds. Many were outraged and the land was vocally contested, but ultimately (and frankly, unsurprisingly) plans went ahead. Over 3700 bodies have been exhumed, aluminum barriers erected and construction has begun. The contestation of space, a locally scarce resource, sits at the heart of this performance. The piece also confronts tensions between mythology and policy, and asks the extent of our responsibility towards our land and preserving physical traces of our history.

Though the staged piece of ensemble physical theatre happens at the site itself, for me the performance begins the minute I wake to go to Clementi MRT, where the company has arranged for transport to take us to the cemetery. It is dark outside and I am in a mini van with 5 other people heading to the site. It is an intimate affair so far and I’m thinking it’s going to stay that way until we arrive at the path before the Bukit Brown entrance. There are over 100 other people there! Audiences have either woken up especially for this or have come straight from the night before. Here we all are, in this most unusual of circumstances, drinking coffee and sharing biscuits that are also provided as part of our small breakfast pack. There is an unexpected solidarity in being together; a street lit warmth of a community. A charismatic production person conducts a briefing and communicates practical information (tips on the adjustment of our eyes to darkness), and puts us at ease. We are told the inspiration of the piece, a figurative “here are the gaps you fill”… I like that.

We walk in the dark till we come to the playing area. There are long backless benches (like the ones we used in primary school P.E) waiting for us across a gentle slope lined with candles. I meditate on the ember ends joss sticks in the earth near my feet. Then I hear the distinct grating of travelling wheels on gravel. I imagine a coffin being pushed up a hill, it is so dark I barely make out any detail: it is like a dream. A moving tableau of a small funeral procession travels slowly up the slope. A woman leads the way. The structure on wheels is parked; two bodies alight. These are the 6 performers who will be taking us through the next hour and a half. They prime us into the composition with the sound of flesh on flesh – the sound of mortality. The choreography is audible breaths and vocal vibration as much as it is physical exertion. They come together; they fall apart – playing the literal and the metaphorical in a dance of histories. The ensemble reconnects us with a fight, a movement and a spirit arguably more associated with the history of people in this country. They go through a trove of stories – like a culmination of all your grandparents’ memories dreamed into life.

The visual reveal comes gradually as the sun rises – how extraordinary to think of the sun as a collaborator! The mist and the haze, the wind and the trees are the scenographers. What I took to be a coffin is actually a piano, which is satisfyingly played, a song for the dead. There are tombs all around us. The birds and the humans sing the same phrase. The final sequence is one of hope, the ensemble sheds the skin of history and of time, they dance in the flesh, following the music from the radio of a passing cyclist.

It Won’t Be Too Long gifts us the time to think – to think about the relationship between heritage and progress, to think about the distinction between the concept of being land starved and the physical realities of negotiating space. What has to give?

This project is a vital contribution to the memory of Bukit Brown and this time in Singapore’s history. It marks the fact that we have not forgotten and we must continue not to forget. It reminds us that the people will change, but the land will stay the same. These stories and conversations must continue resurfacing if we want to keep our histories and our fleeting present alive.