THE BLOCK PARTY by The Community Theatre, Beyond Social Services

“Human, After All”

Reviewer: Liana Gurung
Performance: 1 August 2019

The energy, from the first, is dazzling. Audience members step into what looks uncannily like a miniature National Day Parade, waving paper flags while red-clad youths shimmy and strut across the stage. Even the arrangement of the seats is coliseum-like, circling the heart of the stage: a minimalist void deck, which transforms over the course of the performance from gathering spot, to classroom, to Malayan kampong. This transformation re-impresses the point: this place is what you make it to be.

The Community Theatre’s Block Party is a series of vignettes, strung together by the overarching question of what community is. Sometimes uproariously funny, at other times painfully raw, the polish of the performances belies the experience of its young and talented cast. By looking behind the closed walls of the eponymous blocks and tunneling into the hearts of our ubiquitous HDBs, the work gives us access to another kind of reality altogether.

In a particularly wrenching scene, we see a father separated from his daughter by officers patrolling the void deck of their flat. Digging through some refuse, he unearths a parang, and relives in a rush a moment of remembered glory and emancipation. Before the kampongs of the city closed and our resident population was walled into blocks and districts and regions, he says, we were people of the land. The stage darkens; a single spotlight shines on him. But to the policemen watching, he is only a man holding a sharp, unsheathed knife with his small daughter watching on. The criticism is clear: there is always more to every story, something those who do not care for context will never be able to fully understand.

Moments of empowerment and purpose in the play are bookended by scenes showcasing the systemic shackles that keep poverty and disparity in place. Another striking scene is the more artistic exploration of the double-bind of getting “help” in Singapore. With lighting drenching the stage in National Day-red, a sharply-worded song begins to play as a couple seeks “help” from figures representing a mode or stage of assistance in Singaporean society. Here, the musicality of the production serves to emphasise the rote and routine nature of the process of receiving aid. At each juncture, they are asked to lower expectations, or told to let go of their dreams altogether. Echoing our society’s more recent conversations, the audience is left to consider: what is the price of dignity?

Throbbing beneath the cheer and dazzle of the production is the anger. But it isn’t the anger of resignation or capitulation – it is an anger that pushes, propels, and progresses. And while Block Party is unflinching in its crystallization of its cast’s experiences, it is still a party. The production challenges and celebrates community in a breath, encapsulating well the complex relationship with the reality of Singapore as a place they (and we) call home. What makes a community? What builds a home? It might be something we might have the power to create, block by block.

(Reviewer’s note: I didn’t want to write too much on The Community Theatre’s background in the body of the review itself because I wanted my focus to be on the power of the production’s technicality as separate from its social mission. But it is definitely an amazing project – please do check them out!)