SHADOWS IN THE WALLS by GroundZ-0

“Old shadows in new light”

Reviewer: Lee Shu Yu
Performance: 21 February 2019

There is always something novel about entering a public building after-hours. I suppose it is the excitement of gaining access to an otherwise restricted area, or perhaps it is just the unnatural silence that makes the experience more thrilling. Maybe it is the leftover energy from the day’s events that echoes like a bell through the walls.

There is even the promise of seeing something that is not quite there.

GroundZ-0 Collective’s latest work, Shadows IN the Walls, ticks all these checkboxes. In collaboration with the National Gallery of Singapore (NGS), the work is presented as part of the Light to Night Festival 2019’s Bicentennial edition. We are taken on a 60-minute night tour at the gallery, led by Qi En (Tan Weiying) and there, we run into characters from the yesteryears of Singapore.

The pristine NGS feels distant and even clinical at first. But even before our kind tour guide can finish her welcome message, the ensemble of actors flit in and out of the foyer’s balconies in a cacophony of voices and sounds. Just as it hits a crescendo, the activity disappears like a teasing apparition. It is a chilling but effective start to the night.

Tan is an enthusiastic and sincere tour guide, and her passion for the stories is infectious. She takes us through the beautiful sites in the former Supreme Court and City Hall buildings, dropping nuggets of history and of her own life. It makes the walk a little more personal, and the intimacy of the experience is its strongest point. At every turn, characters from the past tell their tales in little vignettes delivered by the competent actors. Director Zelda Tatiana Ng uses the unique venue and its acoustics to her advantage, having the ensemble leave phatasmic echoes of themselves for us to investigate as they run through the hallways. Jing Ng’s masterful sound design is also crucial in setting the mood and enlivening the massive building. By their hand, history comes alive.

The stories of the characters range from the familiar to the obscure. Johan the Journalist (Joel Low), introduces Cavaliere Rudolfo Nolli, an Italian sculptor responsible for the pediment on the building’s façade. Munsyi Abdullah (Yazid Jalil) recollects his service to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles in the glorious “Swearing Room”. Later, the tour group runs into a forlorn Blue Samsui woman (Catherine Wong) who laid the original rubber tiles for the building.

As we walk, our guide also problematises our squeaky-clean official narratives, which is refreshing and provides much needed balance to the work. But I am unable to shake off the cliché that Shadows IN the Walls, too, perpetuates the same diluted narratives. Perhaps the point of the work is to look beyond the light, and consider what is gritty and unsaid and left in the shadows. Still, given its length and scope, Shadows IN the Walls is a successful and confident piece of work that both locals and tourists enjoy. Against the backdrop of museum displays and the polished wooden floors, the anachronism of the live actors in traditional garb is provocative. It leaves me wondering about my own relationship with history, colonialism and nation-building in modern Singapore.

But by the end of the night, one melancholic thought trumps all: here in Singapore, it seems we have stories too big for the glass cases, and yet nowhere to put them.

One can only hope for more of such collaborations to refresh our collective history in the bicentennial year and beyond.