Scribblings

Found pockets of time in between appointments to pen some lines to keep my brain juice churning...:

You came to perfect

my picture of love

You came to ease

my pain and hurt

You came to show me

what it means to love

You came amidst the chaos

in a world gone wrong

You came, descended 

in a world of woe

You came, and you showed me

what it means to love

You came, not too early

and never once too late

You came, to realise

the beauty and power in me

You came, to wipe 

each tear and my every fear

So come, let this heart

be Your home

Come, cleanse this heart

let it be only Yours

***

A silent night

punctured by

the cris

of an infant

so divine

The world hardly knew

who had arrived

The world hardly knew

He could bring

a life so new

A tear-stained noon

punctured body

by the blood

He knew

The world hardly knew

His blood shed

had paid our price

***

De-cluttering In Progress

Sounds like material for a performance:

1. Stop buying unnecessary things. This step was important for me as I was trying to get out of a mountain of debt (achieved, btw). Only buy the necessities, and always ask yourself: is this truly necessary? Stop the bleeding first.

2. Get rid of the obvious things. Stuff that’s getting in your way, that you rarely ever use. You can often fill up a few boxes immediately, put them in your car, and donate them to a thrift shop or to friends and family the next day.

3. Get rid of more obvious things. Now that you’ve cleared up some of the clutter, you can take a look around and start seeing other things you rarely use. Box these up as well.

4. Clear the clutter on your floors. If your floors are barely visible because you have clothes and boxes and different items all over the place, start clearing your floors.

5. Clear other flat surfaces. Shelves, table tops, counter tops. They don’t have to be completely clear, but should only have a few essential objects.

6. Start going into closets and drawers. One place at a time, start clearing out clutter.

7. Cut back another third. At this point, you should have simplified drastically, but you can revisit what you still own and see things you don’t really use that often.

8. Start letting go, emotionally. For emotional reasons, there will be things that you “just can’t part” with — clothes or shoes or books or mementoes or gifts, childhood items. This is difficult, but given time, you’ll learn that such attachments aren’t necessary.

9. Get rid of another third. At this point, you’re pretty minimalist, but you can cut back more.

10. Et cetera. The process will never end, until you actually give up everything. I’m not there yet.

http://mnmlist.com/minimalism-steps/

Salusuah by Play Den Productions, 20 Aug 09

The very first thing that struck me (and probably everyone else too) upon entering the performance space was the raised platform in the shape of a cross. It was pure white (which stood out from the darkness of the room beautifully), with a little square tub of water right at the heart of the cross. The first five minutes of the play felt like something Alvin Lim Eng Hui would inflict on the audience--total silence (punctured only by the creaking of chairs, and, yes, the latecomers), with a video projection of a man (solo performer Gani Karim) repeating various gestures that resembled poses out of Vogue, and at times, reminded one of praying.

Through a skillful combination of dance, narration, and singing/ chanting, Gani certainly brought the character to life. He was, after all, acting himself. The angst felt towards his father, the love between him and his grandma, the sense of isolation in school, and the pain and grief felt when his father was passing away were portray with intensity. Intensity in the dance movements--which started graceful and smooth and culminated in more vigorous swaying and stamping. Intensity in him singing the prayer that his grandma would sing for him each night. Intensity in him dancing with eyes shut (i think), on a narrow platform, towards the screen which projected his scribblings in a diary--first in reverse, with his narration also in reverse (and hence not making much sense--which was precisely the point, since he was supposed to be drunk/ tired), then flipped back in order. Coupled with techno/ trance music, that scene was memorable in bringing the audience into his state of mind--the state of drunken, nonsensical forgetfulness and aimlessness. And yet it seemed to make sense. Drunk people make sense, but of a different reality/ perception, I suppose.

Throughout the course of the performance, he took on both female and male personae, with the aid of a very versatile sarong that helped him portray his newly-adopted gender very convincingly. He had the gracefulness of a female dancer--staring at the shadows alone one would have easily believe he was a She. At times during the performance, especially with the performance being framed by the video projection, one wonders if sexual repression of the character came into question--which certainly has a link to the drift between the Soul/ body that the performance explores..

At the later part of the play, Gani slowly immersed himself in the tub of water in the middle of the cross--in an act of surrendering to the repression in his life. Just when one thought the play had ended, he emerged, resurrected, cleansed, and proceeded to fold the sarongs at the four corners of the cross, in an act that is domestic on the first level and also symbolic of the reconciliation at the cost of an imminent loss. What was really beautiful here was the lighting--the path he would take was lit up just before he made the move, and in the folding of the sarong, the checkered fabric of it was projected on the screen in monochrome--symbolic of the shroud that Muslims placed over the deceased. Ironically (and sadly), it was the father's death that eventually bridged the gap between them.


***
from the programme booklet:

Presented by Play Den Productions | Artistic Curator ::: Jeremiah Choy Producer ::: Alfred Tang
| Have you ever felt as if you don’t belong to your own body? Have you ever felt disconnected with your surroundings and the people around you, as if you don’t fit in or belong? Having been born into a family of mixed parentage, Gani was brought up in a predominantly Hokkien neighbourhood; speaking English at home; learning Mandarin as a 2nd language and later on Malay in secondary school. He attended a Methodist Mission School for seven years; being exposed to the Catholic faith from his father side and the Muslim faith from his mother’s side. Join Gani as he reconnects with himself and his seeks solace in the wise advices from his “Mak” (which means mother in Malay but a term he uses affectionately for his grandmother). Time slows down within Salusuah as Gani explores the very acts of daily ritual and routine to re-engage his body, mind and soul.

"I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning."

From Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer

Etiquette by Rotozaza (UK)

Wanted to start my virgin post in my performance review-dedicated blog with a bang.

But i couldn't find time after the show to blog, and now am simply too sleepy to do a full essay.

So here are the random thoughts, from the mad scribbling in my precious butterfly notebook:

Contrasting Dream-Home (by Spell #7, which I caught on Thurs 11 June with Brian, with Etiquette, by Rotozaza, a UK company, on Friday 12 June with Yahui)-- the sense of place played out very strongly in both, with the audience-performer's sense of time and place pretty much entwined with the narrative (non-linear, of course) that was being played out. Played out not so much by a clear actor (though in Dream-Home there was probably a slightly clearer sense of who the actual actor is--they were leading us, and the audience was an entourage guided from one location at Raffles Place MRT in front of Chevron House to various other spots and eventually, at a HDB rooftop at Hong Lim Market, Chinatown ) but also by the fact that we (the audience) were very much conscious that we were inevitably being watched by other passers-by.

In Dream-Home the audience wore the same earphones and carried a music player (which i tried disguising but to no avail) and in Etiquette, there was a clear 'play area', or stage--a table set aside at Dome in Marina Square just for the two performer-audience. We (yahui and I) were very much not only performing to ourselves, but also to the others in the cafe. Especially the table just beside us--the couple tried to continue their conversation without being distracted by us, but trust me, they were.



To be continued soon:

speech, speaking, acting, language

silence, communication, thoughts, blu tack

work, walking, automated/ programmed reactions

the body and the sense of place; its behaviour/ reactions

SPACE.

chalk on play-stage

Ibsen's Dollhouse

social actors, roles

prostitute and philosopher

tears. juice. murder.

script. scripted reactions?

instructions. stage directions.

characters. puppets. puppeteer? figurines.



Updated 27 June 09:

























In retrospect, the performance (Etiquette)was very much a first-person study of communication and space. I use 'first-person' because the audience-performer is actively involved in the process of discovery, and yes, 'discovery' is indeed the right word. And I say it with much delight because it was almost magical--the process of being virtually 'transported' to a cafe in Paris (when you're actually stuck in humid little Singapore), by following a set of instructions played through the headphones that told you what to say, how to sit, which angle to tilt your head, where you should look, whose hand to hold and which of the little figurines/ chalk/ pen to shift around and drawer to open. It was also very exciting, that I had instinctively reacted (physically and verbally) to the movements or speech mumbled by my dear partner even before I heard the instructions over the headphones--an indication that the writer of this 'text' must have a keen awareness of the human psyche. Or maybe, had simply tested this text out on many people to 'collect' the responses?












































Part of the fun came from following the audio instructions and placing the 'props' (the figurines/ chalk/ pen/ house) at specified positions on the black board (our 'stage'), and in a way puppeteering these 'props'. It almost felt like child's play. What is interesting is the fact that we were ourselves being puppeteered (i won't say 'manipulated') by The Voice that we heard over the headphones. During our discussion after the performance (or, OUR performance), Yahui and I realised that we heard two different voices--hers was that of a man (since her role was that of an aged philosopher) and mine, the sultry voice of a young woman (befitting my role of a, um, prostitute).

At some point in the performance, Ibsen's play A Doll's House was referred to. The prostitute role morphed into Nora, and the old man into Torvald--a telling parallel to the power dynamics in Doll's House. We were then instructed to roll a ball of blu-tack (if you've been wondering what on earth that was for) and to stick it on Torvald's head--a symbol of the unspoken words and thoughts, a symbol of their miscommunication--or lack of.



















There was also a moment when a murder took place--the woman killed the man near the house at the top of the hill, and a (morbidly) beautiful moment occurred when yahui took the dropper and released drops of red ink into a glass beside me, with a suicide note placed behind the glass--and somehow by the miracles of physics, from my angle i was able to make out the words, and had to do it very quickly before they were blocked by the swimming red ink....

We also loved the fact that the audio performance made us feel like real actors about to enter the stage, complete with stage directions, cues from the SM, musical accompaniment and applause.

There's so many things I love about this performance, and it's so hard to list them ALL down, because (if you would have realised by now) the flow was less than linear, and it was almost like following someone's thought process, whereby one thing led to another, and a hill imagined on your palm led to a house on the hill and A Doll's House, and when blood becomes tears and chalk lines on a black board marks out the route of planes over the globe... it's hard to track each thought, and each link, and to make sense of them individually--and I think that's precisely the point of the performance. Half an hour was way too short.

From the brochure:

"Etiquette is a half-hour experience for two people in a public space. There is no-one watching - other people in the cafe or bar are not aware of it. You wear headphones which tell you what to say to each other, or to use one of the objects positioned to the side. There is a kind of magic involved - for it to work you just need to listen and respond accordingly. Some say it's good to do this with someone you know, someone to share this with. Others say it works well with a stranger."

(The sanitiser, it turned out, was purely as a health precautionary measure--nothing to do with the play....)


** If you've been part of Etiquette, please do comment and share your thoughts--I think each person goes away with a slightly different experience of the performance, and I'll love to find out what yours was like...