Year in Review 2019

As 2019 draws to a close, we’re inviting the Singapore theatre community to come together to review our year in theatre. In this special edition of the Living Room, we will explore two topics which trended in this year’s slate of productions: sexual violence and decolonisation. A panel will kick off each session, followed by break-out groups so everyone can participate in the discussion.

An exhibition of the timeline Singapore Theatre in 2019, which documents the theatre productions in the calendar year, will be displayed in the Front Courtyard from 8 Dec.

Session Overview

For Theatre and Depictions of Sexual Violence, Nabilah convened a team consisting of applied theatre practitioner, counsellor, facilitator and educator Rosemary McGowan, theatre actress, director and educator Grace Kalaiselvi and participatory theatre creator Rei Poh. They were interested in the following questions:

• What are the responsibilities of theatre-makers in staging sexual violence, and how do these responsibilities square with their artistic impulses?
• Is theatre still a safe space?

Structure of Session

The session began with a panel discussion with Rosemary, Grace and Rei, moderated by Nabilah. The three panellists shared about their own practice dealing with themes of sexual violence and the attendant issues of audience care.

Nabilah had also sent out surveys to several theatre practitioners prior to the session. These practitioners made work that featured themes or depictions of sexual violence in all degrees, prompting Nabilah to include their voices, albeit anonymously, in the conversation.

After the panel discussion, Nabilah, together with theatre-practitioner Chong Gua Khee and visual and performance artist ila, facilitated three break-out group discussions.

Attendees were encouraged to take part in the group discussions to further the conversation on one of the three topics below:

• What are the responsibilities of theatre-makers in staging sexual violence?
• What does caring for the audience look like?
• Thresholds and agency for actors and audiences

Reflections from Facilitators

This segment is still pending.

Session Overview

For Theatre and Decolonisation, Felipe Cervera assembled a team comprising of Chong Gua Khee, Charlene Rajendran, and Noorlinah Mohamed to facilitate the session. The team was keen to interrogate decolonisation across productions which directly or indirectly responded to Singapore’s Bicentennial celebrations this year. They asked the following overarching questions:

• What are the aesthetic similarities and differences between all these productions?
• How have the aesthetics of decolonialising performance been explored this year? Did theatre-makers and audiences push the envelope enough?
• How are we educating ourselves as theatre-makers and audiences and what is the role of theatre in education?

Structure of Session

The session opened with a welcome message from Felipe Cervera, who explained the team’s approach to the theme of decolonisation, and the agenda for the evening. Thereafter, the four facilitators introduced their respective sub-topics of interest. They were:

• Migration and Labour, led by Felipe Cervera
• Titles and Lenses, led by Charlene Rajendran
• Languages and Histories, led by Noorlinah Mohamed
• Audience Responsibility and Engagement, led by Chong Gua Khee

Attendees were encouraged to take part in break-out discussions to further the conversation on one of the four sub-topics.

After 45 minutes in the break-out discussions, the attendees and facilitators regrouped to consolidate their findings. Representatives from each group reported their discussion points to the larger circle, with a key emphasis on the role of theatre in education.

Reflections from Facilitators

Migration and Labour
Facilitated and written by Felipe Cervera

The general framework of the session was to focus on the audience’s perspective. We felt that if we focused on the voices of the makers, we would be emphasizing things that were already on the table, as expressed in performance throughout the year. The question for us was more about the after performance — what next? Sure, we have this bunch of shows that dealt with postcolonial and decolonial topics and ideas, but beyond the context of the bicentennial, how can we think through these performances and reflect about theatre more directly? What can we learn about how theatre is made, and to what end, in Singapore?

The four break-out sessions were part of this audience-centered focus. We wanted to unpack the umbrella theme — theatre and decolonization — by addressing narrower foci of conversation.

In my case, the topic of migration and labour sprung from what I perceived to be a huge topic in my experience of doing Miss British, and by what I also think is an important issue in local theatre. That is, the ways in which certain kinds of migrants are represented in contrast to other kinds, and the ways in which the distribution of labour in local theatre is also implicated in the stratification of migration in and out of Singapore.

Titles and Lenses
Facilitated and written by Charlene Rajendran

The Titles and Lenses discussion considered how titles of productions can become a first point of contact with performance, and shape the way a performance is approached. But there is always the possibility of ‘mis-remembering’ the title and that creates another frame via which the work is apprehended. One example was someone who remembered Civilised by TNS as Un-Civilised because of a particular marketing approach. Group members talked about how a title might make sense much later in the process, in retrospect or after the fact, because the performance prods a reviewing of what it might mean.

The discussion also broached the question of the lenses we use to view productions and how these impact choices made about what to watch and expectations that ensue. An example of a Singaporean watching a performance in London called White Pearl, set in the Singapore context, in which Singlish was spoken with a British accent, suggested how it was disorienting and troubling to deal with a frame that felt ‘false’. Yet, within more familiar contexts, where the frames are less at odds with the performances, how do we ‘decolonise’ our habits and propensities to like or dislike, appreciate or denigrate?

Languages and Histories
Facilitated and written by Noorlinah Mohamed

The questions I proposed for my breakout group were: Is looking back at history a limitation in itself? Are we mythologising the colonial wound? What language(s) are we working with when unpacking colonialism and decolonialism and are they further cementing a colonial and/or imperial mindset and attitude?

The discussion was open-ended. It was not intended to resolve or offer definitive answers to the questions. Instead, the intention was to generate a conversation on the process of art-making, viewing and responding. Decolonial work in theatre has been going on for a while (Third Stage, ITI, staging of Singapore narratives). But what is significant in 2019 is the inclusion of less privileged tropes and narratives (for example Ayer Hitam; Tanah Ayer; Merdeka). The notion of ‘wound’ led to some useful discussion on ‘womb’ (how turning to history is less of an account of it rather an interrogative and generative source for other imaginings) as well as an invitation to move away from the metaphor of colonial history as a wound that require healing to seeing symptoms that require therapy. How do we erase colonial history when the very structure of modernity & knowledge is a product of Eurocentric colonisation? Personally, that Sunday was fruitful because the conversations gave us an opportunity to unpack our own way of thinking as artists, critics and audiences.

Audience Responsibility and Engagement
Facilitated and written by Chong Gua Khee

In thinking about colonial narratives, information is very often framed as ‘neutral knowledge’, with its origins and lenses obscured from public interrogation. Hence, for this session on theatre and decolonisation, I was interested in starting from subjectivities and feelings, and then unpacking the complexities within, rather than attempting a pretense of ‘objectivity’.

As a provocation to discuss audience engagement and responsibility in the decolonisation of theatre, I highlighted how I had heard many comments from audiences that they had to ‘work very hard’ in various productions this year. From this entry point, the breakout group shared about their own experiences as audiences this year, which led them to collectively agree that a lot of research had gone into the various productions this year, which was very much appreciated.

Nevertheless, many felt the way in which the extensive research was woven into the productions came across as very intellectual and academic, not unlike ‘history lessons’. This perceived positioning of theatre as expert in relation to the audience also caused them to feel distanced and powerless, overwhelmed with information rather than evoking any desire to make their own meanings from their experience or to engage further with the issues raised. A key question that subsequently emerged was whether productions and theatre-makers were/are inadvertently replicating colonial power relations between them and audiences. In thinking about decolonising efforts in theatre, perhaps a helpful question to continually reflect on is, “what power relationship is being set up between and amongst audiences and theatre-makers/theatre in this production?”

The Living Room is a programme by Centre 42 that welcomes chat and conversation. Through focused but casual dialogues and face-to-face exchanges, this programme encourages participants to re-examine trends, happenings, people (on & off-stage) and phenomena in Singapore theatre.