In Part 2, Alvin Tan shares how dramaturgy is integrated into the theatre-making methodology of The Necessary Stage, citing a transnational collaborative project as an example. The panel then takes questions from the floor.
This panel was moderated by Lim How Ngean.
AT: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having me here. Thanks to Centre 42 and Esplanade. I’m covering these few points. Actually it’s basically how a theatre company came to see the importance of the role of the dramaturg. Because when we started in 1987, we were committed to doing local original works. And we’ve been doing that since then till today. And when we started, we were addressing the multicultural reality in Singapore. And most of our actors that came into rehearsals, you know, we would be inquiring into cultural practices and sensibilities and worldviews. We didn’t have Theatre Studies then, but we had—I majored in Literature and Sociology, and Haresh, the playwright, majored in English Language and Literature. Then later he specialised in Social Linguistics. And those were the things that actually went into our theatre-making. So in the journey, I just will cover TNS’ dramaturgical mechanism before the dramaturg appeared, and then the dramaturg as cultural mediator, then in interdisciplinary practice, and then later, collective dramaturgy.
So that’s Haresh, the Resident Playwright and myself [REFERRING TO SLIDE], and we’ve been working together for, like, 29 years. Yeah. So we’ve developed a kind of collaborative devising methodology. And basically [REFERRING TO SLIDE], this is the—we’ve done it in three phases, because when you do new work and developmental work, Singapore’s too small, you know. So you can’t—In other countries, you open in, like, you have a reading, and then you open at regional theatres, and it has the opportunity to tour, and the work matures. Whereas in Singapore, you can’t open in Jurong, and then open in Chai Chee. It doesn’t work. It’s all conflated, right? So once you open, it opens. Yeah. But you still need the rigor of, you know, of developing a work. So we developed this Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, because we usually have a preview before we open, and the preview, when we first started, was one week before we open. And the production people would make noise, actors would get upset when you change lines and things like that. So very inhumane to do that. And we felt—but we still felt we needed to make changes, right? When you discover a lot of things one week before you open. So you can’t make radical changes; you make cosmetic changes. And we weren’t happy with that. So what we did was to create this thing called Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, with two or three months in between the phases. And that kind of helped, because the ideas percolate. There’s time where you can afford to “get lost”. And you do other works and you find answers in other projects as well, which we gradually formalised it into an approach or a methodology.
So the first phase is all like fieldwork, interviews, and it’s mostly democratic. The playwright has directing ideas. The director has playwright—playwriting ideas. Actors also can suggest anything. Then Phase 2 is dramaturgical in the sense that we invite normally 40 to 60 people to come and watch and give feedback. So we have to make a distinction between personal responses as well as structural responses, you know, and constructive responses. And then we’ll see what are the things we will take in. Because a theatre piece is never complete unless you have the audience. We need—we feel that we need that very much to get feedback. So like for example, when we did a play, Fundamentally Happy, it’s on paedophilia in a Muslim family, we invited Muslim friends to come to watch and get feedback from them. We also invited the censors to come, so that they can see the community response to the work, and gauge from there whether the work is—because we need to apply for license, in that sense. So, yeah, then after a few months passed—Phase 2 is when Haresh would have written the play and we would stage it, sometimes without the script, sometimes with the script. And this also came about because once, we were processing a work and it was problematic. We had to bring it for a press conference for the Arts Festival, and it’s a five-minute piece. And we just made a decision and it went on. And when it went on, I realised what was the problem with the piece. So there is a kind of an idea of a temporary product, you know, in order to—temporary product that contributes to the process of theatre-making. So Phase 2 is all about that, this temporary product that you can dismantle after that and recompose.
Then you have the advantage of a few more months, and then Phase 3 is like three to six weeks, where you compose towards the opening night. Yeah. So that’s the least democratic phase. It goes back to the traditional hierarchical way of theatre-making.
So the first one I’ll like to talk about is Mobile, and cultural mediation was needed because it’s about mobility of Asians in Asia, and it involves four countries. And that time, I was still naive and romantic, and I wanted four playwrights from each country. Yeah. And so it was a headache for Haresh, and he was the master playwright, in the sense that he had to make the final decision to tighten the work and to deal with the egos, right? And then he had to sit down to talk to each of them, to develop the surtitles as well. But we learned a lot. It was quite a steep learning curve. And then we had two directors, one from Japan and myself. And we had two actors from each country. So we had a process where we spent some time in Thailand, and then some time in Japan. So in Thailand, we went for, you know, we went for fieldwork. And in Japan, we met the Filipinos that were living there. And then they came to Singapore and created a half-an-hour work, and it featured in our Fringe Festival. And then later on, we started work.
It’s a deep belief with us, because of my sociology background, that we need to know each other’s realities, and the artists need to immerse themselves and get educated before we could actually begin the collaboration. If not, then it’s from the playwright’s or the director’s imagination. And again, it’s not plural enough, and the perspectives and all that we have to be dealing with. So all the playwrights present, all the different sensibilities and different viewpoints came into their experience of the process.
But most important was this interpreter-translator, Nao Suzuki. She was involved—actually we knew her from a previous project, a project with Japan, with Southeast Asia, which was Ken was involved [in] as well. So she is a fantastic interpreter. While you are talking, halfway through a sentence, and she’s already translating. So here [REFERRING TO THE SLIDE], you can see she is translating the Thai woman from… Er, the Thai woman is translating into English, but the English is being recorded. And she translates that English to my co-director, the Japanese guy sitting next to her. He knows about 5 to 10% English. So we needed her. And along the way, I realised she was also functioning as a cultural mediator. Yeah. So she was more than a translator. She was giving a lot of cultural context and things like that, which was really very, very important.
And then came Mobile 2: Flat Cities, and this was when we realised—we were less naive. So I kept to just one playwright and myself, one director. Because we felt that that’s the people in power, right? But what happens with the collaborative thing is that the social relations of the creative team can be changed. So we had two translators—Ken and Nao. And Nao is stationed, located in Japan. And Ken, who has, like, eight years in KL, and nine years in Singapore, he’s got the whole relationship of Japan and Southeast Asia. So he is translating half or three-quarters of the script in Singapore, and Nao translates half or a quarter in Japan. And then when Haresh revises the play, the script was swapped. So the translators had the other half. And Ken was also the dramaturg. So co-translator as well as dramaturg to Haresh, and then later, when the process began, he was dramaturg with me in the rehearsal room. And there were many things to be mediated, because the Japanese were more familiar with the hierarchical way of going about things. So they actually asked me to be very clear in my vision before we create—before we rehearse a scene. But I don’t work that way. And they were very puzzled. Every time they asked me a question, I turn around to the dramaturg, to the playwright and to the production manager, because there was an assumption that the director should have all the answers. And there was one actor who’s on the—the one who’s wearing brown [REFERRING TO SLIDE]—and a young guy, he’s a director/actor. He was the one that was asking me to be clear in my articulation of the vision. And he had a brilliant idea for one scene. And it was really, really a good idea. And it very succinct and very economical. And I included his idea in it, and I said if I had a clear vision, your idea wouldn’t be in. And then he understood then how we wanted to work. And so these were the things that needed to be mediated.
And there was a line that I wanted to change. The father was sitting down saying the line to the son at the beginning of the play. By technical rehearsal, I wanted to change that because it was an important line, and I wanted the father to stand up, turn around and say the line in a relatively more confrontational way to the son. And the Japanese actors broke into a 15-minute discussion and I was wondering. For the English [speaking actors], we just change the tone, right? And then they say, “No, if I stand up and I turn around to say this line, the phrasing of the line have to change because it wouldn’t make sense, because the body turns round.” Yeah. So OK, that day, Ken was renewing his visa, so he wasn’t present. So they called him up, and we got four options of a line, and they chose one. And then Ken came the next day and said, “Yeah, it’s the right choice.”
And there was one scene where the Japanese character, the man married to an Indian woman living in Malaysia who’s an activist, and he tells her to be careful with her activism. And she confronts him and says, “You are asking me to do so because you are afraid of your visa, right?” So she’s just being, yeah, just being naughty. But the actor that was acting—the Japanese actor that was acting does not know what it is like to be vulnerable hanging up—you know, not having confirmation of the visa, because he’s a Japanese living in Japan. So Ken told me he doesn’t look like he understands that line. Yeah. So the dramaturg being present, the cultural mediator, helped me realise that as well, because I also see, right, when the Japanese is saying it with understanding or not. So that kind of very important and pivotal points in the intercultural space is where, you know, the dramaturg is the bridge.
And the other thing I wanted to bring up is that this piece was also intergenerational. So there were younger Singaporean actors and younger Japanese actors. But there was Doppo, who is the one playing the general in the middle [REFERRING TO SLIDE], Doppo is married to a Malaysian living in KL, and Ken—both Ken and Doppo are about 40. So there was a negotiation between the older practitioners and the younger ones, because the younger—This play Mobile 2 was dealing with the Japanese war and the present, past, future. And the Japanese actors, the younger ones, don’t know very much about—They know the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki [bombings], but they don’t know the other parts of World War II impacting on Southeast Asia. So that had to be negotiated and brought across to them through Ken the dramaturg as well as Doppo. And then the trust bridge was built, and only then, the young Japanese actors were able to come on board the project. But their ideas and their input, it was also taken on, but it had to be contested and negotiated. So that’s the other thing about the dramaturg also. They would actually be part of the process, and not only when the play was evolving, but also before that.
My next one is Gitanjali [I feel the earth move]. This is a different role again. This was more interdisciplinary because we had all these—we had classical Indian dance, contemporary dance, classical Indian singer, sonic artist, playwright and multimedia. So we had to negotiate with disciplines and differences of the disciplines in this work, which was touching on Tagore. And this, we invited Charlene Rajendran, who informally I call her “Kawan”. She was very good because it coincided with the Indonesian companion. So Kawan came on board, and she—as you would already know—is a great asker of questions. And her questions are very good because you know, as theatre-makers, you build your convictions, right, and your—whether it’s your politics of theatre or the aesthetics, you begin to build what you imagine and envision. And you get deep into it. And sometimes you go into the work and you achieve your blind spots. You don’t see other things—the potential of other things even. And it’s very good when someone is able to see that going on, and see that your pet area, and then what blind spots are there. You have an extra pair of eyes that—I mean, you can talk about how self-reflexive you are and all that. If you are humble enough, you know your self-reflexivity might not reach certain areas, and you really need an outside eye, because now you are dealing with different disciplines. You are dealing with different viewpoints. And which part of it is experimental, which part is a new relationship you want with the audience, which part you want it to be accessible, which part you want the audience’s relationship to be challenged. So all those things are what we put on the table. And Charlene would look out for them and the questions she would put on the table during rehearsals or even after the rehearsals. After rehearsals, Charlene, Haresh and myself would meet, or yeah, and then it’s a different set of questions. And then sometimes she would be asking questions of the cast members, facilitating more materials, more viewpoints that come up. So even also from disciplines, right? Because different people. And also the whole thing—because like, Sharda here is a physical actress, and she got introduced to how the dance people work. Because when the dance people work, you have to follow the choreographer’s visions, which for the physical theatre actress is a shock. It’s like, that’s an insult to my creative intelligence. It’s like, how do I just follow the choreographer? And the dancer would say, no, you have to get into the mind space of the choreographer. So it’s this kind—all these differences in disciplines has to be facilitated and discussed.
Charlene has a full-time day job and she can’t be there all the time. So there was a team of—a dramaturgical team. So they record notes and they are very good note-takers, because it’s not like all you record. They record very salient points that Charlene found helpful. And these are the things that she would read so that she could keep in touch with the process quite intimately.
OK, just digress a bit. While we were doing all these things, of course the whole idea of interdisciplinarity was being dramaturged as well outside our work. So there was a work that we revisited called untitled women, and it’s a doublebill. And one of the it was untitled cow. And I had invited Bani Haykal, who is a sonic artist, and Sharda Harrison, who is a physical theatre actress, to come to work with me on this. Yeah OK, I’m going to finish. So what was interesting is Bani is a sonic artist that creates his own instruments and creates his own stuff. And we put the text aside for Bani and Sharda to create a vocabulary. And then, after we got the vocabulary, then we brought the text back in. So it was a different kind of interdisciplinary. It was critiqued because Bani felt we weren’t radical enough in our exploration of interdisciplinary practice.
And now, we are reworking Gitanjali into Ghost Writer, and that new way, new politics of interdisciplinarity was brought into this process now—which caused a lot of problems, and we got a little lost because we wanted that kind of degree of interdisciplinarity. And Charlene came in to say that, yes, but a visual artist collective will do an interdisciplinary project different from a theatre company. In the end, it’s still a theatre company that is helming this project. So even though it’s interdisciplinary, we need to respect the fact that there is the playwright and all that, and it’s a theatre company that is doing it. So that helped us to get out of the rut, and now we continue the process.
The last one—just two minutes—is Manifesto, which Heng Leun and I co-directed. It just finished. And this one is two directors, intermedia artists, right? Multimedia artist and sonic artist. We don’t have a dramaturg, but there was a dramaturging process going on. We call it a collective dramaturgy, because Zihan—who is the multimedia artist—and Bani—who’s the sonic artist—and Heng Leun and myself, and there was dramaturging going on. And Haresh comes once in a while. After he wrote the text, he’s not in rehearsals. So when he drops by, he has a fresh eye although he wrote the script. So that kind of feedback was not in one dramaturg but in several people.
Basically, the conclusion is a dramaturg is—how do we dramaturg the process structure, not just the content of the work, and the environment with which or in which we play and create? And this new project that we are doing with HANCHU-YUEI, we have redefined the social relations of the creative team after spending one last week in a workshop. OK, thank you.
LHN: Thank you. Very rich, very dense, very complex knitting of the four kinds of threads of works—literally, their works coming together here. We did run a bit over, but no problem, there is a lot to do. So this part, we wanted to have some kind of discussion going. If we could probably limit it to the next 15 minutes? I’m going to take the executive decision to say we would run a little over, but I think it’s fine. It’s good to now have a kind of a cross-talk, yeah? And I think the four of you have always had a plan how this is going to happen… or loosely spoken about it.
CR: I know we didn’t plan this part, but I just want to jump in and say something about how sometimes there is outside dramaturgy without your intending it. And this is the timing of the last General Election in Singapore, which coincided almost too perfectly with It Won’t Be Too Long: The Lesson, because the first or second—the second weekend of It Won’t Be Too Long was the weekend of the General Elections. And when people went to vote in The Lesson, and the facilitator used the line as simple as, “It really matters how you vote, because it changes the way the world will be,” you could feel a shudder through the space. And sometimes that kind of coincidence makes you open to the dramaturgy of the space—and I don’t just mean the physical space but the space you are in, doing things coincidentally. And it made me think about how we often forget these “timelinesses” that can take place without our planning them. Whether it’s chance or random or destiny, depending on your worldview, they really affect the meaning of the work and what can happen with it.
KT: Hopping onto this. When we created Mobile 2, it was a time when the election came in Japan as well, I think, if I’m not mistaken. And we really talked a lot about the contemporary political situation in Japan in the course of our discussions. And I felt this was a very, very important part of the creative process because it was really a kind of anchor, you know, or anchoring this particular production, in that particular socio-political condition in this country as well as in Japan. So that kind of discussion really, you know, answered the question [of] why we do this production at this particular point of time, at this particular country. So this is quite important for the process, and it’s timely but yet it is a very important part of the dramaturgy.
HL: I just want to respond, especially that part about interaction. Because I do a lot of forum theatre, and in forum theatre, there’s the role of the joker. And I remember Augusto Boal told me one day that the role of the joker is not just to manage the interaction, but there is this word called “typical theatre”. Yeah, and I think he invented the word. But I think that in a way, when we are doing forum and we are doing interactive theatre, the facilitator is actually managing a dramaturgical process, actually with the audience at the same time. And that’s when dramaturgy and the dramaturg is in action at that moment. And I think that has provided a very rich and fertile ground for me to learn a lot about what dramaturgy is, in terms of, you know, when you want to make something make sense. Because we are trying to make sense of things. So contextual building becomes important. What is the context and how [does] it actually has impact and effect? Again, we go back to, I think, yesterday, when we were talking about—I talked about it being dialectical. And I think that it is so important in the process.
CR: OK, then another point I want to make, in relation to an aspect of Gitanjali [I feel the earth move], is that this notion of the new migrant Indian in Singapore of a particular location and class and space, in time and space, which has become, you know, one of the hot issues, in a way. And one of the performers, Raka, whom you saw earlier, is somebody who has been in Singapore now for quite a few years, and has become Singaporean. And so these varied discussions about what is Indian became very interesting, because there was her point of view, Ebi Shankara’s point of view, Padma Sagaram’s point of view, and to a certain extent, Haresh and my point of view. And suddenly it became a bit of a joke sometimes. So Yagnya, who’s in the—one of the dramaturgical team, because this notion of, OK, suddenly there are so many Indians in the room, OK, and this just does not often happen. But then what is this Indian thing on? And that discussion continues now with Ruby and Suki who are in Ghost Writer, because there is so much happening in the public space about what is Indian and what does Indian mean in relation to Singapore specifically, but also now more globally. This notion is becoming more potent because of a certain economic power and a certain kind of interest in the market of India. But also the marketing of India. Because the origins of this project—maybe Alvin, you want to say something about that—it was an attempt to deal with Tagore, and therefore operate within a framing of an Indian space. But then it changed, and things became more flexible, I would say, because of the TNS approach to kind of deconstructing it, rather than reinforcing it. But nonetheless, perceptions can vary. And that question still comes up because it’s a minority space, there is still a lot of tensions around, depictions of “Indian-ness” that emerge. And we were just having a conversation about this earlier this morning. So you know, it kind of percolates whether you like it or not. And what happened? Because the reference to Tagore invariably then generates a certain kind of assumption as well, which is sometimes then misleading.
AT: I find that, yeah, we bring things into the rehearsal room, and we are interacting and discussing these things. Any issue, you know—because we are always confronted. People are always asking, “So you think your play can transform society?” And I say, “No, I’m not so egoistic about it.” Because what I am today is because of five books, three plays, you know, two fantastic people I’ve met. It’s an accumulation. So someone plants a seed, someone waters the plant, someone, you know, prunes the shrub, and someone harvest the food. So it’s never one thing. And I find that what we discover, the richness we discover when we bring these things, especially when you are doing original work, and it’s intercultural or interdisciplinary, and there’s others involved—it’s more how that would inspire a change in the social relations of the creative team and the relationship between the creative team, the production team, and with the admin. Increasingly, our administrators are in our rehearsals, and you know, we wanted to make last minute changes—even when the play went on for Manifesto. There was some change that we wanted to make. And the stage manager said no, it would cause a lot of havoc to the production team. And we said, OK, we will hold it back till when we restage it. So I find that that change that happens among ourselves—the people that are collaborating—that’s where the immediate change can happen. Yeah, the way we work and the way we work to create a piece of work. And the stake—like I think what Heng Leun was talking about, talking to the stakeholders as well. So that I find that that is very immediately powerful, and whether that challenges and makes a difference in the audience’s perception. As I grow older, I find my value is more in the change to the immediate people that are collaborating.
LHN: I just want to quickly draw attention to two things. One is Manifesto, right? You talked about collective dramaturgy. It seems to be in a strange—not strange, but in a way, happening with quite a few of the other productions, right? And because of the capacity of the theatre-makers here especially in dealing with devised plays, the question would be: where are the nuanced differences between collective dramaturgy and the process of devising, where the artists, the playwrights, are involved in shaping, literally, the dramaturgy of the performance? Sorry, but just needed to… We have an intelligent panel, so…
CR: I don’t know. I just try and respond. I think this word “collective” is interesting because what’s happening is that it suggests a group of people doing it rather than one person doing it, OK? But it’s not unitary. It’s not collective in that sense, right? So in devising, I think, yes, a lot of dramaturgy is shared across everybody who is devising. That just happens and then you figure it out as you go along. Like yesterday, the notion of the steel rods in concrete, and so on and so forth. Or if you are in the kitchen, then what role do you play in the kitchen? But I think sometimes some of the participants in the collective are more interested in the dramaturgical questions than the others are, and that’s OK too. Some don’t really want to be bothered and, you know, be taken up with it. It doesn’t really interest them. And you can see that in the discussion. They are like, “No need already lah, stop now.” And you kind of feel, OK, fair enough, this discussion may not work for you, but it’s OK too. Because then other things they are doing may not work for somebody else. They are really getting excited about this one sound and this one movement, and the others are kind of going, “Yeah, but what does it mean?” And so I think that openness and looseness in this notion of a collective dramaturgy is important to bear in mind. I don’t think it then becomes solid.
LHN: So it’s not concretised.
CR: Yeah. So it’s still, you know, very much open and that would be—
LHN: —The idea of being in the ludic space.
CR: Yeah, yeah, very much so.
KHL: OK, I’m reminded of when we were doing Manifesto, I think at some point, the actors were like, “OK, enough. You all go and discuss. Enough of the talking. You all go and sort it out.” And then amongst of us, you know, in the initial stage, I find Bani very heavily involved. But at the last two weeks or last three weeks, then he started to just sit in his corner and work out with the sound.
LHN: Bani is just one of the performers and he’s also a sound designer—
KHL: —Sound designer over there. But Zihan was the multimedia artist. It’s very interesting because during that moment, a lot of—these are actually about visual composition and things like that. I think one thing about collaboration is that first, you must acknowledge your vulnerability and what you are not good at, what you don’t see. And I think when we were working with Zihan, he was really very good because when it was about the visual, the multimedia, he would always defer to us and ask us for what we see. So in that way, it created a kind of communication whereby, for example, Alvin and myself may be directing a scene. He would be sitting at the side, and he would be watching. And after that, he would be asking questions. And those were actually dramaturgical questions. And I think it was very fluid in that process. And so similarly when a visual, a multimedia thing is happening, and the actor is there, I would actually step out and want to critique about that. So I think that kind of, you know, fluidness helps a lot with the process. But of course, up to some point, the decision, it actually comes back to the directors—between the two of us.
LHN: Of course.
KT: In Mobile 2, even though I was there as a dramaturg, but actually what I did was probably a collaborative thing with the people, you know, involved in a collective dramaturgy. For example, Nao Suzuki, in the course of translation, actually critiqued a lot of things, and she was—yeah, I would call her a kind of co-dramaturg. You know? So even if you have a dramaturg, surely the dramaturg is not just—this is going back to the earlier discussion that the dramaturg is not the person in charge of doing dramaturgy. So even if you have a dramaturg, it’s a very collective thing for me, you know, the kind of whole dramaturging process.
KT: I think when we are co-directing, Heng Leun and myself, when I’m directing a scene, he’s actually looking and observing, and there are questions that come to his mind. And likewise the other way around. And then we surface the questions to each other. Yeah, it’s the same way as when Zihan—I think it’s just when questions are put forward, even when we are having a break at the pantry, yeah. And Bani also had this idea. He said, “I don’t want to use sound as a lubricant or use sound for transition.” You see? So suddenly, it’s from all these working. Because we have been working from project to project. He’s discovering how we are using sound in another project, and now he holds a philosophical stand and a conceptual stand in this new project. So even in Manifesto, when he created a device where he told the actors to speak and not say the last word of the line, and the actors need to adapt before they could improvise. And then we came up with a kind of language. And Heng Leun was interested in using that incomplete sentence as a vocabulary for the 1980s. We had four eras in Manifesto. 1980s was where there was a lot of surveillance and things in the environment and in the arts. So he wanted to depict 1980s using that language that was created by Bani, who is the sound artist. So that device was then handed to Haresh, who’s the playwright. A lot of people thought that was a device that came from the playwright. But actually no, it came from Bani, you know, and it was a decision made by Heng Leun, and then we inherited it. So that is dramaturging whilst we are creating the work, going into the creation of the work.
LHN: At this point, actually I would like to now open it up for questions from the floor. I think we have heard quite a bit. It’ll be nice to hear some response or some kind of questions. Do we have any? We have one hand up there, Marion, and then after that… is it Joe over there? Yes, Marion, please.
Q: OK, hi. A couple of thoughts. Given the fact that everything is so complex, meaning life as such, I’m just wondering whether we are making art-making more complex than necessary or needed. Because whether is a role—On the one hand, OK, it’s great that there is a new-ish role in the arts. So there’s a new job for another person to become involved in the arts. Whether paid or not paid, it’s a job and it’s a role, and that’s good, because you know, people get involved, then things… OK. So that’s the story. But whether the dramaturg is there or not, we admit that dramaturgy has been going on forever-ish, somehow or other, collective or through the lighting designer or whatever the collaborators are and so on and so forth. So if it has been—like, for example, many years ago, I saw a production here in Singapore by TheatreWorks, directed by Keng Sen. I think it was Spirits Play, I’m not sure. How many or who were in it—Yeah, I watched it and it was full of movement and choreography, and there was no choreographer when I looked at the programme. And I said, “Damn, Keng Sen has become a choreographer. I need to go become a director.” Because I’m a choreographer lah. So do you know, I was—and after that, I said to Keng Sen, “Damn you, because you now can make theatre without having a choreographer, so what do I do?” You know? So you know, whether there’s—yeah, we’re making things more complex than necessary. Which leads me to the actual question, which is: why now? You know how we say in Malaysia, we say in Singapore, “Why suddenly ah?” Why suddenly ah this dramaturgy? Why suddenly? And nowadays sometimes, we look at a work, and if it’s bad, we say, “Oh, they need a dramaturg.” Actually if the work is bad, the work is bad lah! You know, right? Maybe with a dramaturg, maybe also bad. The work is bad, the work is bad. But we always say, “Oh, should’ve got a dramaturg.” Like, really? The work is just bad, OK? And if—you see, now I’m getting so complex, I’m trying to be simple, but then no. If got dramaturg can, no dramaturg, collective dramaturg can, then how?
AT: No, it’s just making diverse options possible. I mean, I’m not even ranking it. And our dramaturg came from cultural mediation. It was a necessity for intercultural work.
Q: Yeah, cultural mediation is important, that I agree.
AT: Yeah. So it’s organic in our process that we needed [a dramaturg]. It’s not like we found it fashionable. Or like hey, we want to travel festivals, we need a dramaturg.
Q: I think it is becoming fashionable in the performance world.
AT: We have to be careful. We are taking a dramaturg not because it is fashionable, but because the work needs it.
KT: For me, what was important was, actually the role was already there, you know, The role was there. And I did it without calling myself dramaturg. So you know, once you give a name, of course the name is a curse. You will be cursed by naming it. But the thing is, you know, the role is still there, you know. It was there and I did it. And now I name it dramaturg. Yeah.
LHN: Quickly responding to that, why now? I think if I look back, I can give the simple answer and say, “Because I’m one and I’m looking for other people.” But the fact is, I do agree that there is pretty much quite a bit of organic growth and development, and yes, now there is maybe the right time to say, what is this thing we are dealing with? What is this concept? And perhaps there are specifically assigned roles for it. I’m trying not to use the word “dramaturg” as you already said that it is highly problematic. But the organic growth is such that it has developed from translator to cultural mediator, and after a while, because of the experiences that come with this translator, there is then a space to develop that scope of dramaturgy. As for collective dramaturgy, it’s interesting because Charlene and I come from this, or had an experience in this arts collective in Malaysia called Five Arts Centre—whose executive director has just posed the question—where I remember when we were doing or performing in certain productions, there would be these, what we call, “in-house previews”, where the board would come and sit and watch, and this board was as diverse, as intelligent, as creative, as talented as they are as directors, musicians, playwrights, right, and they gave very valuable critical feedback—as scared as we were, as we were really terrified when we had these previews. But the preview was usually about two to three weeks, or even sometimes a month before the actual performance. It facilitated a lot of criticality, and there was change—[TO ALVIN] it was like your second phase to a certain degree. And I’m reminded that we now give it a name, probably: “collective dramaturgy”.
AT: Actually when we were starting out a long time ago, there was, I think, my literature lecturer that was the one, he was doing drama, Max LeBlond. So he was the one that said to us, “Yeah, you know, internal criticism, constructive—internal constructive criticism is very important when you are doing a production.” Because you need to be as harsh as you can to yourselves and to the work, and it is a responsibility to your cast, before it goes out there and the reviewers get a hand on it. So it’s part of your responsibility to, you know, be as harsh as you can to the work that you are putting out there.
CR: I think the term is tricky, and we talked a bit about this yesterday. I just want to point out something. So now, Both Sides, Now is going into a new phase, which is trying to work on a three-year phase and a three-year proposal. We have an advisory team now. On the advisory team are doctors, social workers, a range of people from the field itself. They are called an advisory team because if we asked them to come and join a dramaturgical team, they will go, “No.” But actually what they are doing and the kinds of discussions we are having—which involves the artists and producers, and now people who are engaged with the everyday nitty-gritty of issues of aging, living and dying—is informing and going to inform the dramaturgy of this work hugely. And I think that is in one sense, yes, making it more informed and, yes, making it more complex, because it can get too simplistic. But knowing how much is always going to be the challenge.
LHN: Thank you. In the interest of time, I’m sorry, I’ll take one more question from George. Great.
Q: Thanks. Thanks for that panel. I really enjoyed the discussion. I was just wondering whether the panel has a conception of a crisis, of crisis. I mean, what might be the dramaturg’s role? You know, as Ken was saying, when drowning is a real possibility. When no matter where you choose to keep your chair, the ground beneath your feet are actually unstable. So does the dramaturg actually try and catalyze a crisis? Does a dramaturg resolve a crisis, or… ?
CR: Wah. I don’t have an example as dramatic as Ken’s, where I fell down and I was drowning. I think crisis is very much a part of the creative process, like—But a lot depends on what you decide to term and categorise as “crisis”. Is getting lost a crisis? For some people, yes. For me, no. Not when getting lost is part of the intent and part of the enjoyment, and part of the work that is involved in making this work happen. But more seriously, I think when there is tension that is not willing to let go and move on, then I think, for me, the question has become: how do we give this space to breathe? Rather than fear, how do I fix it now? And thankfully I’ve not been in processes or with groups of people where the decision has to be made now. You have to give me an answer now. You have to give me a solution. But OK, the willingness to say let’s just wait a bit, even if the bit is five minutes, and see what happens. Because crisis is useful as opportunity for things to happen. If there is a propensity and a willingness and a politic, I think, to allow for failure as well, for things to go really wrong, for things to fall apart a little bit, and to say at the end of it, “OK, so that part of it really didn’t work, but that’s OK.” Then the crisis is not going to kill you. It’s when the crisis won’t kill you.
AT: We created this platform called The Orange Playground, where we were going to explore different artists from different disciplines, you know, doing interdisciplinary work. It’s a kind of research and development arm, and there is no production at the end of it. It’s an open rehearsal. And we found that it’s very important because Singapore is becoming more and more product-oriented. So there’s less of these spaces, and there’s more commercial risk putting up a production. So when we did Gitanjali, and we were transitioning to reworking it, we felt there were so many disciplines involve and not enough time, even though we do have Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3. So we brought the process into The Orange Playground, and Haresh the playwright worked with the set designer in one Orange Playground edition, and in another edition, Haresh worked with the multimedia artist. So there were two dedicated plat[form]. They were about 10 sessions each. I couldn’t be involved because I was away. I was bringing a play to Brisbane and New York. So he explored with them a little bit more, and now it’s going back into the Ghost Writer process. And that came about because we were addressing the crisis, so to speak. But we had enough time and enough resources to see what we can do. Because when you have a crisis, there is some trauma in the process. And how do we, you know, address it and have a bit more time and space, as what Charlene said, to see how we can investigate a bit more. Because we underestimated the political relationship with the disciplines involved. We just, like, eh, all come together. So it always moves from idealistic, romantic innocence, you know, into something that, oh no, if you want to do this actually, there’s actually a lot of work that needs to go into it. And as long as we address it, crisis is good because it brings us more—it makes us more aware and more informed of our practice.
LHN: On that note, I’d like to thank Heng Leun, Alvin, Charlene and Ken, for giving us the time to share this particular session. Thank you. So thank you very much for staying, and I’m afraid—yeah, I’m so sorry about running late, but I think it was worth it. I was told that we were going to start at 2 for the next session but I would like to say that we could probably start by 2.15. I’ll push it back a bit. I think it should be alright. And then we’ll catch up because that session is a bit longer anyway, yeah? So, I’ve been told also that I’m afraid that the audience has to clear the space, so that we can do a bit of cleaning up and housekeeping. So again, to remind you, the next session will be at 2.15, and then it will wrap up as planned. Thank you very much.