First staged by the Practice Theatre Ensemble on 10 Aug 1988 at the Singapore Conference Hall, Mama Looking For Her Cat was Singapore's first multi-lingual play, and thus the first to reflect in form as well as substance the multi-cultural reality here.
Most immediately, Mama Looking For Her Cat depicts the breakdown in communication and estrangement between a Hokkien speaking mother and her children, who could only express their thoughts in English and Mandarin.
The play was created through Kuo's workshops with a multiracial ensemble which included T Sasitharan, the late William Teo, Verena Tay and Neo Swee Lin, a veritable who's who of today's theatre scene.
To demonstrate this language barrier and the resulting alienation, Kuo not only allowed his actors (and characters) to speak in non-Mandarin dialects, he also used Brechtian and Eastern ideas such as songs and cross talk, and Grotowski performance techniques.
While the language barrier dominates the first version of the play, it is but one barrier to communication in Kuo's Mama. It might even be seen as an extended metaphor for all barriers between sections of Singaporeans that result from 'pragmatic' policies designed to solve our pressing problems. The barriers are not just between people of course - the loss of a true 'mother tongue', for instance. distances us from our cultures. This understanding is important because this version of Mama does not emphasise language as the source of alienation. Rather it examines issues even deeper than not sharing a common language.
