I first read H’s facebook wall post to urge facebook friends attending this performance. That was how I first learnt about it among many other shows running on the same weekend.
Then I read another friend’s facebook wall post to encourage facebook friends to attend this performance as the funding was withdrawn due to its inclusion of death penalty in the contents. That was the trigger for me to catch it.
Since the episode with Alan Shadrake‘s new book brought much (hopefully including the locals’) attention to a part of this nation building which many ordinary people are spared from having to think about it – the local media have long stopped publishing the news of execution, it has been rare to have detailed discourse on the choice of ending lives in exchange for perceived well beings of the society (argued for and against vigorously by the law enforcers and anti-death-penalty camp). Or so I expected/hoped to see by attending this show.
It turned out to be quite different from my expectation. It was more of a play about oppressed women, it seemed – many parts of the play were performed in Malay and the sur-title projection was rather dim causing me to make numerous guesses throughout the play.
A woman, Siti, who was a man, Rosmand. A girl who lost her identity once her younger brother was born – she had since been known as ‘Ah Girl’. A woman with Filipino accent discussing death sentence (Flor Contemplacion?). A woman named Hawwa, who was also mother of Siti/Rosmand, facing death sentence for killing her husband (and she did not regret it).
The young, energetic and comical casts made the seemingly improvised play largely enjoyable. Their muse on women’s roles via various fairy tales (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella) poked fun at the stereotyping definition of female beauty, which drew waves after waves of laughter from the audience (less from me as I was trying to catch up on the sur-titles). But when the play took on a serious tone, that was when it became problematic for me.
The play likened oppressions experienced by women to death sentences while interweaving segments on both subjects throughout the play. Yes, to me there were two different subjects each strong enough to warrant creation of a separate play on its own. F did not succeed in making me feel for the link between the two subjects and ended with me being distracted from each of them by the other.
Was it too big an attempt to bring two human conditions together? Was it because of the insufficient depth of performance? Was it because of the challenge to reach great depth as an improvised play? Was it because I am not an oppressed woman?
The incident of funding withdrawal (not the first and unlikely to be the last) makes me wonder if it was evident of the state of our society – the inability to discuss and argue openly our supposedly collective choice (e.g. the choice of not abolishing death penalty). I also wonder if the obviously anti-death-penalty statements throughout the play, which I found not more nor less convincing than the pro-death-penalty statements on internet forums I read, evidence of an insufficient thought process due to the state of our society.
Or is it a case of greater efforts needed by our artists?
