THE BLIND CIRCUS | by Dora Tan

Once upon a time, there was a Ringmaster who wanted his Little Circus to be the best in the world. After observing the chaos caused by the bad habits in other circuses he told his vet to blind his animals to prevent them from copying these bad habits.

Despite their blindness, his animals performer better! But they were sad. To make them happy, Ringmaster allowed them to blind their own children. But this made them furious and caused a rebellion.

If the animals didn’t incite each other, there wouldn’t have been a rebellion! So Ringmaster decided to slice their tongues off. Look what happened to the circus where the animals could say whatever they liked? They were murdered! He was only thinking of the community. Everything he did was for his animals.

One day a Child came along. To cheer up the blind and dumb animals, she sang a song. However it reminded them of what they used to be. Tiger’s misery escalated during a rehearsal and she lost her temper and killed the Trainer!

Why did they listen to outsiders? Ringmaster really had no choice. He decided to slice their ears off as well. But their remaining senses compensated and the animals performed the best they ever did!

When the Child came again, she asked the blind, dumb and deaf animals if they were happy? They couldn’t hear her or see her tears but it didn’t matter. They nodded and smiled, doing what they had been trained to do. And the world saw how the animals in the little circus were oh so happy! Finally, just as the Ringmaster had dreamed of, his Little Circus became the best little circus in the world!

The Blind Circus is playwright Dora Tan’s latest endeavour that she begun writing for in 2014. Compared to her other plays, The Blind Circus went through a relatively short gestation period – just one year. Dora and her creative team spent 4 days in the Centre testing the script, and presented a dramatized reading to an invited audience on 5 October 2015 in the Centre’s Rehearsal Studio.

Dora Tan, Playwright
Versatile in various writing genres, Dora is most known for her stage plays including 41 hours (2006), Just Late (2007, 2008), I think I do (200), Why I don’t take ma on holiday (2011) and The Race, a public reading (New York 2014). Her most recent play A Wedding, A Funeral and Lucky the Fish was staged by The Singapore Repertory Theatre in 2014. She has also written short stories, screenplays and poetry. Her short stories include Selling your daughter for a pig and a carton of cigarettes (2nd prize, NAC Golden Point Award 2007), Seven views of Redhill(Balik Kampong 2012) and The only time I wished I could read(Junoesq Nov 2014).

Development process

Compared to my other plays, The Blind Circus went through a relatively short gestation period – just one year. In early 2014, I knew I wanted to write a play about censorship. Lots of stuff were going on – the NLB Library saga, the Charlie Hebdo massacre are the ones that come to mind. As I did my research, collecting articles that had anything to do with censorship, more incidents happened – Amos Yee happened.

Even now, in Oct 2015, Amos continues to stir debate about censorship. He is everything I detest about free speech – thoughtlessness, attention-seeking, offensive (intentional or otherwise).

Yet, why do people care so much about being able to say whatever they like? I realised it wasn’t so much the words. What they cared about was that a right was being taken away from them. A right that is as inherent to their being as perhaps one of their senses.

Style

And that is how The Blind Circus started. I used allegory because I wanted to distil the issues into its simple parts. I have often found Aesop’s fables ingenious in its simplicity and ability to get across a message clearly. So before I wrote the play, I wrote a story.

What are the issues?

I explored the role of censorship and its ramifications. How do we balance the rights of the individual with the interests of the community? Do we value social cohesion, safety and economic progress at the expense of personal freedom?

What are the rights of the individual? Does the indvidual have the right to jeopardise the safety of the community?

What about respect and trust between the state and community? The state’s version of trust is to come up with the ‘self-classification scheme’ for artists, which ends up making artists censor themselves. For the artist, this is not a show of trust. It is a show of who’s in charge.

The state’s reason, as it keeps repeating, is, it cannot risk insensitivities which may cause riots. Never mind the debate, the airing of views which can inform our populace.

The play also throws up issues of how the state measures happiness – in terms of GDP. Have we become such a materialistic society, that we see censorship as merely an inconvenience? It seems many of us are prepared to be censored if we have our HDB flat or more.

In the end, it comes down to a matter of balance – how much would the state need to censor before it becomes unacceptable? How far can we allow what we say, hear or do to be censored before we draw the line? Which is more tragic? Censorship? Or a world without censorship?

Research

I went through the usual newspapers and online blogs. Everyone had something to say about censorship.

Reflection during rehearsals and about the Read

I gained a lot from the process. As a writer, I tend to work solo. This process forced me to go ‘out there’ to look for collaborators. This was good because I reconnected with many actors I normally don’t speak to. In addition, when I sent out invitations, I also connected with producers and directors. I had to send my script in many instances. The process forced me out of a comfort zone and made me and my writing more visible.

During rehearsals, hearing the actors speak allowed me to write another draft. So all in all I wrote five drafts in 18 months. Working together as a team, I learnt about my collaborators’ capabilities. It was a good basic lesson in theatre production as I had to do non-writing tasks from budgeting to preparing the programme.

The Read itself went smoothly and professionally. Staff at C42 were very helpful. The actors performed their best. Certain pieces of music which were integral to my writing could be played and this gave the audience the tone of the work.

However, I’m not sure my goal to interest theatre companies to stage my play, was achieved. The people I wanted to see my play never got to see it. Perhaps I did not market the Read enough. Or perhaps it was the haze! Another learning lesson – remind guests two days before the event!