Buttons In The Bread

It was explicit. Graphic even. BUT it was an excellent script.

The discourse was intense and intimate from the outset. Just you and the man, John. A jaded man faced with the torment of his past 25 years, yet with hope of redemption as he runs himself through the story of himself and Anna. A love he never forgot, a love he will meet and seek once again.
An amateur in theatre studies, I was informed by my friend that the format was a traditional form (for a monologue?) where it was set in the premise of preparing for an event. It worked, and in a simulated confined space, we sensed the build-up of emotions to reach a point of final resolution, as he stepped out to face the moment.

Filled with metaphorical allusions, the script was overflowing with descriptive imagery and textual fluency enough to swallow you but yet, for you to devour and savour at the same time. I especially liked the portion about shoes with its allegoric references. I would really like to read the text just to study this aspect. And as intense as it was, it wasn’t all serious as there were more than a few subtle humour picks even though I admit some were lost on me as I wasn’t familiar with the references.

And ah, the man. Ivan was totally praiseworthy in his delivery of the monologue. Monologues are not easy, and it was a challenging script, but he executed it perfectly, bringing out its depth and engaging the audience in a man’s journey of conflict and emotions. It was interesting that there were portions when he stepped into the vacant space towards the back that caused his words to be echoed in the emptiness of that space, especially in parts that seem to emphasize John’s loneliness and desperation. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the set up was otherwise minimalistic, with just a chair and a rack of clothes towards the side. And why weight of silk? The remembrance of the sweetness of love, like a caress that clings to you, sheer, but always there.

I remember a quote of which Anna quoted from Rumi: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
I guess love is something you can’t fight nor hold back, even if you have built your own walls to defend against it. But rather, it is something which you should embrace. Do we seek love then fear it?

Even though being more on the conservative side made me feel a little uncomfortable with some of the explicitness, one must recognise that it was a good play especially for its richness. As a friend said, it’s been a while since a good locally-written monologue has been heard and staged. I left the theatre still feeling the intensity of it on me, and maybe (if I may use it), like the weight of silk clinging to me.

Event: “The Weight of Silk on Skin” by Checkpoint Theatre (as part of the Man Singapore Theatre Festival)
Venue: Drama Centre Theatre
Run: 3rd Aug – 7th Aug 2011

“The Weight of Silk on Skin” headlines the Man Singapore Theatre Festival, and I was privileged to be able to attend the opening night gala performance two nights ago.

It is an 80-something minute monologue written by playwright Huzir Sulaiman and directed by his wife, Claire Wong.

Expectations for this play naturally ran high, not least because it is Ivan Heng’s second big monologue of the year, although the characters of the matriarchal Emily Gan could hardly be any more different from the red-blooded, sexually-charged persona of this John Au Yong.

“Weight of Silk” is a highly intimate piece whereby John recounts the main lost love of his life Anna, and portrays his anxieties upon his impending meeting with her once again after many years.

Anna is the lover that most of us would know – the perfect partner, the love of our life, the one we want to spend eternity with, the one that no other lover can make us forget.

But sadly, Anna is also the one that we somehow never managed to hold on to.

I think Huzir Sulaiman has not only captured a very real and identifiable sentiment, but has done it in immaculate fashion.

His script is both incredibly lush and layered, and filled with wonderful imagery.

Ivan Heng has to be commended for executing what can be considered a highly demanding script, as it is filled with subtle nuances that requires the delicate portrayal of an upper-class New York-educated Singaporean man who is both self-assured and yet tormented by the spectre of Anna, who unfortunately left him in their New York days through no major fault of his own.

I thoroughly enjoyed “Weight of Silk” for the sheer richness of its script, and I am unable to recall the last time 80 minutes in a theatre watching one single actor ruminate on a relatively bare stage passed by so quickly.

Bravo to the essentially four-person creative team of Claire Wong, Huzir Sulaiman, Ivan Heng and Lim Woan Wen (lighting designer) for pulling off a piece of theatre that, though modest in production values, deeply impresses with its quality and elegance.

photo credit: Irfan Kasban

“The world is not colour blind.” – LTC Victor de Souza

And so it is, in this racially charged play. Playing the race card, or not.

“Charged” – a word that signifies prosecution, a word that signifies tension. I probably couldn’t identify with the context so well as a woman since I never went through NS, but the setting and premise isn’t the focus. Nevertheless, it was a choiced one. What else would prompt a nationwide prompt into addressing the latent tension that could make or break the peace we have sensitively strove to protect? A daring exposition of the politically incorrect, a verbalisation of things/stereotypes that we know, but never speak. Yes, it might be an exaggeration at points but theatre allows that, exploring the “what-if”s and “what-not”s.

Personally, I was expecting to feel more emotionally charged by the show. It could be due to the setting, or my expectations were highly-raised with the great reviews before. Nevertheless, it was a clever way that it was presented, different accounts by different people; a matter of you say, I say. Which is true? Which is not? Whose side should we take? And Tze Chien writes good lines.

It was still a mystery as to what actually transpired between the two recruits to lead to their deaths and why it happened. Was it a moment of insanity? Was it a racial conflict? Was it a matter of taunt? No one knows. But that just brings home the point that “anything goes” and the truth became not so important anymore. We hear what we want to hear, and we’re charged to make our own conclusions. And in the midst of all that cover-up, I believe the only truthful moment came when both mothers met. It might have started off as a means to pacify the public, and for show, but what mattered most at that point wasn’t about race or politics, but two people seeking and sharing their hearts and a common grief, a mother’s grief.

On the bright side, it makes you realise how difficult it is to keep the peace in a multi-racial society, and we shouldn’t take all these for granted. But then again, all these pent-up expressions… Try as we might, humans tend to be biased one way or another, whether consciously or subconsciously.

(photo credit: Irfan Kasban)

Event: “Charged” by Teater Ekamatra (as part of the Man Singapore Theatre Festival)
Venue: Drama Centre Blackbox
Run: 3rd Aug – 7th Aug 2011

The original run for “Charged” took place last December at the Drama Centre Black Box, and even though it was a short run, it had received many favourable reviews.

Since then, “Charged” has gone on to win Best Script (Chong Tze Chien) at this year’s Life! Theatre Awards.

I was unfortunately unable to attend last year’s initial staging, and thus I eagerly looked forward to watching it two nights ago.

It so happened that Thursday evening was also the book launch of Tze Chien’s new book of plays, thus before the play began I was able to have a quick chat with the gifted playwright whilst asking him to autograph on the copy of his book of plays that I bought.

I also asked if this year’s staging was any different from the original staging, and he mentioned that small tweaks had been made here and there, but not much.

“Charged” is appealing in many ways because it is a play set in a place which most Singaporean males can probably relate to – an army camp.

(After the play I asked Ilkosa if she could relate to the whole army setting of the play, and she said “not so much”, so I guess this setting is slightly more relevant to those who have served NS.)

The comparisons to Rashomon are inevitable, at least in its approach, whereby various army boys give different accounts to the investigating officer of what they believe was the true story behind Russell’s shooting of Hakim, and subsequently his taking of his own life.

The story essentially revolves around Officer Victor de Souza’s mission of making sense of this seemingly senseless double-death, and along the way we are awakened to the harsh unspeakables of racist sentiments, as well as the fact that the truth is always kept off the record, and that while “race can be used to explain many things, it can also explain away many things” (one of the best lines in the play).

“Charged” is a very powerful piece as it brings to the forefront many of the unspoken thoughts that many Singaporeans may or may not have harboured in their hearts with regards to this very fragile and delicately-poised equilibrium we’ve come to know as “racial harmony”.

It was basically a no-holds-barred barrage of highly-charged sentiments, and hardly anything that should not be said was not said.

Yes, theatre is meant to disturb and challenge and provoke, but I personally wondered if it was necessary to bring out all these racist sentiments wholesale through the altercations between the soldiers on guard duty.

I wondered if there were a more subtle way to bring out these sentiments, rather than by letting the soldiers just blurt all these out in a rather clumsy fashion.

Perhaps a more subtle approach might have been slightly more effective, rather than have everything thrown into our faces lock, stock and barrel.

Having gone through many years of national service myself, I personally wondered if such racial altercations are all that common or realistic in Singapore camps, because I had not personally heard of any such stories before.

Not that I don’t believe that racial differences and varying sentiments don’t exist, just that I didn’t believe that they would ever manifest themselves in such an explosive manner.

It took a leap of faith to throw myself into the plausibility of this scenario.

As such, I had a slight problem in the believability of the play, in that I did not find it likely that something like this would have happened in Singapore.

But that aside, “Charged” is very well-written as it gives ample development to all characters, from Russell and Hakim to Officer de Souza to Zubir to the two mothers.

It was highly-satisfying as we got to see all the different stories being adequately fleshed out.

Tze Chien, once again, provides us with many strong and memorable lines throughout the play.

The acting in the cast did seem slightly uneven though.

Tan Shou Chen was commendable in his portrayal of Corporal Russell, and the mothers of the two dead soldiers, played by Serene Chen and Aidli “Alin” Mosbit, were very convincing as well.

Lastly, just a small point to note that I found it difficult to empathise with either Russell or Hakim, because the fundamental problem was that we were never told the true story and were given three or four different accounts for us to form our own conclusions.

As such, we were not informed of what the real Russell or the real Hakim was, and were unable to decide if we wanted to sympathise with them or not.

But nonetheless, I found myself being riveted by this extremely tense and thought-provoking play from Teater Ekamatra, and it is fantastic to see such challenging new plays being produced.

Event: Snails & Ketchup (part of The Studios series by Esplanade)
Run: 22 & 23 July 2011
Venue: Esplanade Theatre Studio
Created & Performed by: Ramesh Meyyappan
Creative/Production team: Produced by Chloe Dear/Iron-Oxide; Directed by Josette Bushell-Mingo, Music by Tze

Inspired by Italo Calvino’s “The Baron in the Trees”, Snails & Ketchup is the darkly comic tale of a dysfunctional family and follows a son taking to the trees to live an arboreal existence, escaping his brutal home environment for the solace of the forest. It is told in the style of physical theatre, where the entire story was told entirely via body expression, with no spoken words. That, I guess, explains the very comprehensive synopsis given, which helped me follow through the story. It was a performance aimed at exploring family relationships, responsibilities and existence, though maybe extreme at points. As I read somewhere, it “reminds us that despite familial love being unconditional, it is sometimes impossible to co-exist with those we hold dear.”

The story tells of how a boy finds solace in snails when faced with an obsessive an indifferent father, who has no compassion; a mother who tries to do her duty and fixes everything with her sewing (and I mean everything); and a sardonic twin sister who cooks with the most perverse kind of ingredients, including the snails which the boys find solace in, and  half-cooked at that. Following an incident where his father forces him to eat the half-cooked snails his sister cooks, the boy escapes into the woods where he found his snail friends and the solace he needs, scaling the trees and living in them. Finally he can breathe. But the father comes in search of him, determined to bring him back to the family and in a struggle, tragedy happens, and the boy never returns home again.

Opening with the turning point of the protagonist’s in a convulsive moment (after the force-feeding), followed by a return to the past, Ramesh brings us through the story of father, mother, daughter and son (the protagonist), all by himself, and oh, as the snails too. How does one play 4 different characters and at the same time manage the aerial choreography, considering he needed to switch between roles? And without words/speech, just body expression. It was no mean feat as he does this skillfully with distinct mannerisms established in the beginning when he introduced the 4 characters accordingly. You could easily distinguish the characters, even when they appeared in the same scene and at no point were we lost on which character was on stage or how the story was going. In addition, Tze, with his scoring and live accompaniment, helped us differentiate by rhythm and pace, and also enhanced the mood and tones in the performance. It was a full hour of piano-playing on Tze’s part. As for the acrobatic rope works, he learnt it from scratch for this piece. Well-executed and almost natural, he recalls his instructor was almost hesitant to teach him as he was worried about how to communicate with Ramesh. There were “scares”, but it was obvious the training was a success. In any case, the storytelling was done astutely, even though I felt the story rather dark. There was a disturbing scene of the mother who had sewn up the children’s mouth at childbirth, probably because of post-natal depression, and it was later used against them as a threat when they were fighting (many of us didn’t realise this until it was told in the post-show dialogue with the help of an interpreter).

As a matter of fact, it didn’t occur to me that Ramesh was actually deaf until the end of the performance. I hadn’t known much about him (and somehow missed that detail in the programme), and had come for this performance because Tze, the composer, was a friend of mine. But that didn’t affect the understanding of the show at all. In fact, it was amazing how the music and actions of Ramesh were perfectly synced. Composer and actor communicated through signals, by tapping, and signs of the “feel” of the music like ‘floating’ and the like. The music (for those who relied on it) enhanced the show and the purpose was to help the audience get into the story faster, and at the same time set the pace. It worked. The live score was complementary.

And the way Ramesh interacts with the audience, he “feels” them, to engage them, even though he couldn’t hear their response. As explained in the post-show dialogue, the space (close & intimate space of the Theatre Studio) aided this.

In closing, as I had read the full synopsis before the show, I just followed the story through. Too bad I couldn’t give a perspective of not having known the details of the story, or else I would have been given to a more “twistful” feel of the show. And why “Ketchup”? I was told that I would need to read “Baron in the Trees” to find out.

(“Snails & Ketchup” is a Singapore-Scotland collaborative project commissioned for Unlimited as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad principally funded by the National Lottery through the Olympic Lottery Distributor. It is supported by Singapore International Foundation, Creative Scotland, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, the National Arts Council (Singapore) and Made In Scotland.)

Snails & Ketchup will next be staged in Edinburgh at New Town Theatre from 6-28 August.