Museum Play

It took me quite a while after the show to decide if I like it or not.

Having had a chance to listen to the chat between my friends and the director Ali Zaidi, as well as the museum curator who brought in this show, I decided that I did like the performance of Journeys of Love and More Love by motiroti (UK) … as a museum piece.

Maybe it was because I have been watching many conventional theatre productions or film festival entries in the Gallery Theatre of National Museum, I found myself approaching this performance piece with no difference.

Story of a multi generation migration was unfolded through real life photos of Zaidi and family, accompanied by his narration. This was interluded with three plates of fusion food, recipe by Zaidi and prepared with a local chef.

The food was tasty and refreshing. The music, exotic. And Zaidi’s narration, soothing. The audience were polite, whether in passing the food around the table or responding to the story unfolded in front of us.

In other words, there was no dramatic climax or pacing in the performance. Even for the last story about the conversation Zaidi, a Muslim, had with a Hindu taxi driver on his way to Mumbai airport – one that started with a religious confrontation and ended with a hinted human utopia, was also narrated in an undramatic tone.

So in the end it did take me quite a while to realize that I had experienced a chapter of human migration, unearthed, installed and deliciously presented in a museum. I was not a theatre audience, but a museum patron.

That was some great entree for the museum.

In His Time. And Ours?

I am grateful to be living in a city where there is no shortage of food for thoughts. And I am referring to Singapore.

Between 02 to 13Mar 2011, National Museum of Singapore presented a series of movies by Edward Yang under the title: In His Time: the Films of Edward Yang.

Several of the screenings were sold out – A Brighter Summer, Yi Yi

I managed to catch In Our Time (光阴的故事, 1982), Taipei Story (青梅竹马, 1985), That Day, On the Beach (海滩的一天, 1983) and The Terrorizers (恐怖分子, 1986).

For these movies which were made more than 2 decades ago, the story telling were not dated at all … the only thing which reminds me of the time they were made was how young the casts appeared on screen – many of them moved on to be master artists of their own rights: Sylvia Chiang, Cai Qin, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Lee Li Chun, …

His language is both precise and incisive. With minimum or no words.

In Taipei Story, a couple had a fierce fight and had not seen each other for a few days, each went through a personal journey. She asked him to escort her back home when she realized a guy who she met in a wild party was waiting outside her home. When they entered her apartment, he was waiting for her to switch on the light but she did not. We saw them waiting in the dark in silence, as if contemplating how their standoff could be resolved. He decided to move towards the wall to switch on the light. We saw them briefly in the light but she quickly switched it off again, as if she would like things to go back to how they were before their fight without anyone noticing. Or maybe she felt it easier to say what she wanted to say in the dark. He switched it on again, insisting to be in the light. She pleaded for him to stay for the night. He said no, gently, explaining that he had gone through some turbulent personal journey since their fight and he needed clarity first instead of staying over and added more confusion to their relationship. He left.

In That Day, On the Beach, when the father was telling the son his decision to match make him instead of allowing him to marry his girlfriend, the movie switched to a long walk taken by the mother and the daughter on a windy day. They said nothing. They looked like a pair of ordinary well off mother and daughter from a blessed family. Her life would seem to fill with many possibilities from a passerby’s view. As they finally reach home, the camera followed their steps into the living room only to reveal a silent father sitting in still, the son kneeling on the floor besides some broken chinaware. The mother quietly went ahead to clean up the broken pieces. The daughter looked at them from the entrance and quietly moved away. I had a feeling that she knew storm was coming not just to her brother’s life, but hers as well.

And the two possible endings of The Terrorizers make me wonder, stepping into the protagonist’s shoes, which ending would I have chosen. Either one, there is no way out.

His work do not become irrelevant as time goes by. In fact, as I accumulate more life experience, I find even greater resonance in his images.

I ran into E after the screening of Taipei Story. We went for a chat over supper. She attended a talk earlier by Stanley Lai who shared the era under which Edward Yang (and many others in Taiwan during that time) made his movies.  While Taiwan has this generation who left behind these time tested images, why do we not have similar inheritance from our previous generation.

In another two decades’ time, I ponder, if the question will be asked again by the dwellers of this island.

Food for thoughts.