In 1959, artist Chua Mia Tee painted a group of Chinese students learning Malay. Today, the painting is called 'National Language Class'. In their critically acclaimed play inspired by the painting, spell#7 revisit this vision of a future that never happened, and asks: how good is your national language?
Starting out as a language lesson with the audience, National Language Class stages multiple versions of Chua's iconic painting in a bid to get to grips with history, and resolve simmering tensions between teacher and pupil. As it develops into a power-play by turns humourous and menacing, tender and explosive, the performance asks: what is the relationship between who you are and the language you speak? And what does it mean to take a new language on - or give one away?
Interactive and inventive, National Language Class is an exercise in creative translation that suggests the past isn't what it used to be - and nor are we.
