The Vault: Big Bird and the Cat was first presented in front of a live audience on 12 October 2015.
Theatre veteran and educator Margaret Chan remembers Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002), her dear friend and creative collaborator. Kuo was a humanist and patriot whose life and work indelibly shaped the course of Singapore theatre.
In this seminar-styled presentation, Margaret Chan shares her investigation of Kuo Pao Kun’s metaphors of Big Bird and the Cat. Features readings from Kuo Pao Kun’s plays by Ali Khan, Margaret Chan and her students from the Singapore Management University course THAR003: Nathan Al Taei, Terry Tan, Lou Shixun, Tai Jie Xin, Phua Jie Yun and Hiroshi Kondo.
The 70-minute Lecture-Performance has been repackaged into an 8-part video recording:
Part 1: Margaret Chan introduces the structure of her seminar, as well as her students from Singapore Management University (SMU) who will be reading excerpts from several of Kuo Pao Kun’s texts. She also shares the main thesis of her presentation.
Part 2: Margaret goes through the story of Kuo Pao Kun’s The Eagle and the Cat. SMU students Nathan Al Taei, Terry Tan, Lou Shixun and Tai Jie Xin read excerpts from the play.
Part 3: The discussion about the metaphor of big bird from several perspectives, drawing from linguistics and art history to support her claim that the big bird in Kuo Pao Kun’s plays refers to the revolutionary spirit.
Part 4: Margaret argues that Kuo Pao Kun was inspired by the revolutionary writers of China.
Part 5: Drawing out the similarities between Kuo Pao Kun and Chinese revolutionary writer Lu Xun. SMU student Phua Jie Yun reads an excerpt from Lu Xun’s Medicine.
Part 6: Margaret argues that Kuo Pao Kun’s works (those inspired by the Chinese revolutionary writers) were written in the manner of social realism, in that they often highlighted the plights of ordinary people. She cites The Coffin is Too Big For the Hole and No Parking on Odd Days as prime examples of Kuo Pao Kun’s social realist writing. SMU student Hiroshi Kondo reads an excerpt from The Coffin is Too Big For the Hole.
Part 7: Margaret argues that the trope of castration, surfacing in Kuo Pao Kun’s The Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and The Evening Climb, signaled Kuo’s dissatisfaction and feelings of helplessness as an artist and writer in Singapore.
Part 8: Margaret Chan and veteran actor Ali Khan perform an iconic scene from Kuo Pao Kun’s Mama Looking For Her Cat.
