The creators of The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl (from left to right): Sarah Amalina, Brenda Tan, Lee Shu Yu, and Eugene Koh. Photo: Gwen Pew
Written in 1982, Stella Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill is one of the most well-known and beloved plays in the Singapore English-Language Theatre canon. And now, 36 years after the monodrama was first written, a group of young theatre practitioners have decided to revisit the work and examine it in a new light through Centre 42’s Vault programme. Titled The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl, this new creation is written and co-directed by Eugene Koh, co-directed by Lee Shu Yu, performed by Brenda Tan, and stage managed and documented by Sarah Amalina. It mixes parts of the original play text with new writing and multi-media, and aims to explore what Emily might look like in the social media age through a new character called Elisabeth, who the team devised together.
The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl will be performed at Centre 42 on 29 and 30 June. In this interview, we chat with Eugene, Shu Yu, and Brenda to find out more about what we can expect.
How did the idea for The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl come about?
Eugene Koh (EK): We were taking the module ‘Singapore English-Language Theatre’ in NUS [National University of Singapore], and in one of the first lessons we were talking about Emily of Emerald Hill, and Dr. [Robin] Loon [lecturer and Centre 42’s co-founder] mentioned that you can never tell who Emily was addressing: the audience in the 1950s, or in the future, or in the past. It made me wonder why, then, is this play so recognized and remembered, if the audience are not sure where to place themselves? And I drew the parallel to YouTube videos, where everything seems like it’s happening in the present, even though you know it’s made in the past. So it started from that idea.
What are you hoping to explore through this work?
Lee Shu Yu (LSY): When you look at Emily as a character, there is a lot of debate about whether you should like her or hate her, so we wanted to capture that through Elisabeth as well. We wanted to represent a kind of performativity of identity through the lens of social media, because nowadays that’s what’s happening around us, so we wanted to represent that onstage.
Brenda Tan (BT): We also wanted to explore how Emily navigates with the space and interacts with different characters through Elisabeth. It’s interesting to see her as a sole character and focus on how her body and voice changes.
How did you go about exploring the characters of both Emily and Elisabeth in your upcoming work?
BT: Emily is a very established character who has been portrayed by a ton of really great actors over the years, and you see different people bringing out a different side of Emily – Margaret Chan was very motherly, Ivan Heng was more performative and funny, etc. So in drawing the parallel to Elisabeth being a millennial who uses the internet and navigates around the social media space, we wanted her to be someone who is approachable. She’s performative in a way, but still true to her own character.
Do you see The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl as an extension or an adaptation of Emily of Emerald Hill?
LSY: It’s a sequel, adaptation, and reinterpretation all at once. It is a sequel in terms of timeline and Elisabeth’s relationship to Emily; it’s an adaptation because we took our reference from the source material; but it’s also a reinterpretation because we took certain themes and moods of each scene but used them in our own way.
What was your process like in creating The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl?
EK: It was collaborative.
BT: We literally sat in Eugene’s room, and he had post-it notes of different scenes from Emily of Emerald Hill stuck on his wardrobe door. And we were like, “Hmm this one is nice. Okay, let’s move this here…” And we just kind of see how it fits and which scenes from the original text we wanted to keep.
EK: As for the voice of Elisabeth, most of it came from Brenda. She would improvise certain scenes.
BT: It can be difficult because I also make YouTube videos, so in many of these instances I am being me and I can relate, but at the same time I have to be very careful and remember that it’s also not me.
LSY: So every time Brenda comes up with something, we will take it apart and discuss what’s interesting about it, how it’s similar to Emily, or why it’s relevant to today’s life.
Brenda, you mentioned that you’re also a YouTuber in real life. What’s that like for you?
BT: I started making YouTube videos just as I entered university, so for two and a half years now. My videos are mostly about skincare, makeup, and fashion, but some people who follow me will request videos and I’ll do them. So it became about food, lifestyle, home, and other personal stuff. More recently, I started talking about social issues because not a lot of people are talking about them. It’s been such an adventure. I didn’t expect to have an audience, because I initially made the videos as a companion to my blog. I’ve always been a social media baby. I found that it’s the best way to make very quick, sincere interactions, and I never thought it’s fake because you know how Singaporeans are really shy, so when someone wants to reach out to me, they will write me an email or they’ll slide into my DMs [direct messages] [laughs]. It’s nice to be able to pour my heart out in front of the camera and find that there’s a group of people who feel the same way and actually want to have a sincere conversation about it.
There’s a multimedia element in The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl. Can you tell us more about that?
EK: Emily of Emerald Hill uses a lot of media that was fairly new at the time – things like voice recording or projector slides – to enhance the theatrical illusion of the play. And for us, we felt that we should pay homage to that by using social media in our performance as well.
LSY: I think one big thing that kept coming up as we were thinking about it was the staging of it. We have multimedia going on in the background, but we also have a live performer. So which is more ‘live’ and which is more ‘present’?
What were some of the challenges that you faced during the creation process?
LSY: Interestingly, the big challenges we had actually worked out pretty okay – in terms of when we were brainstorming about creative ideas, working out plot holes and things like that. The main roadblocks were things like looking for archive footages and going through the paperwork of obtaining them. Thankfully people like [producer] Jeremiah [Choy] and Centre 42 helped.
Who is your ideal audience for this work?
BT: People who are genuinely interested in seeing how Emily of Emerald Hill has evolved – people who are hopefully familiar with the play and the themes that it discusses. Hopefully, our piece will provide them with a platform for deeper conversation.
Do you feel like it’s more for the millennial generation – since you’re referencing the social media world so much – or is it for everyone else as well?
EK: I guess both. Those who are more familiar with the earlier stagings of Emily of Emerald Hill will pick up more on how things have changed. With the millennial generation, I guess they would recognize the environment that Elisabeth is in and, through that, understand what Emily of Emerald Hill is about. So, the net is fairly wide?
BT: Also, if it piques an interest in people who have never read or watched Emily of Emerald Hill to pick up the script to read it, you know, then that’s great!
By Gwen Pew
Published on 21 June 2018
