“Scroll” by Bound Theatre

Event: “Scroll” by Bound Theatre
Venue: Goodman Arts Centre Blackbox
Run: 28th Feb – 2nd Mar 2014

Through The Years

Previously known as inwardBOUND Youth Theatre Collective (that’s quite a mouthful there), Bound Theatre, formed by nine young theatre-makers, presents an intimate little play called “Scroll”, which played at the Goodman Arts Centre Blackbox over the past weekend.

The play tells of three generations worth of love stories, starting from a young couple’s chance meeting while being caught in the rain one fine day in the 60’s, and how they had to communicate via hand-written letters and not much else, to the point where they finally got married.

This is then followed by the love story of the couple’s son and his own tale about how he first met his future wife while back in school (this is presumably in the 90’s), and how they would go out on dates and eventually end up getting married to each other even though her family lived in the UK.

And finally, it came to the third generation, whereby social communication is done mainly via digital means such as texting, online chats and Facebook.

“Scroll” is essentially a commentary on how technology has deeply impacted our methods of communication over the years, and how we’ve lost that intimacy and sensitivity in this age of virtual connectivity.

Despite the fact that technology has made leaps and bounds over the past few decades, has it necessarily led to deeper and more meaningful communication?

Has it necessarily led to people forging richer and longer-lasting relationships with one another?

There is a scene at the end where the lonely old grandma (who was the young lady from the 60’s at the start), starts using her new phone – given to her as a birthday gift – to call all her family members, asking them if they would like to come visit her soon, but they all try to shrug her off.

Soon after, the grandma passes on, and when the family comes together to examine her belongings, they come across her box full of well-preserved hand-written letters which were the correspondences between her and her husband back in the 60’s.

The production obviously benefitted from having a large cast to work with, which gave it the luxury to introduce a myriad of characters.

The play was generally well-performed, with pretty strong acting from some of the cast members such as James Chia, Wee Jia Yi, and Shane Sabatino Arriola, which made for enjoyable viewing.

At just around an hour’s length, the play’s pacing was kept taut, which resulted in very few dull or long-winded moments, and the delicate sound design did wonders in illuminating some of the scenes too.

I will have to be honest and say that “Scroll” exceeded my expectations, and that it was a timely reminder of how dangerously wired we are starting to become, at the expense of possibly losing our sense of intimacy with our loved ones.