Dramabox presented forum theatre piece This Is Home?, on 14Aug, as part of this year’s Singapore Theatre Festival.
Unlike other forum theatre performances that Dramabox presented before – in which Dramabox work with professional cast to craft and present an anti-model for engaging public in the forum theatre process, the anti-models of This Is Home? were crafted and presented by the public who participated in a three-day workshop.
As the facilitators, Hui Ling and Kenneth explained that instead of choosing just one anti-model for the forum theatre process, the outcome of the workshop was so varied that they compel all of them to be presented.
Not only was this forum theatre performance interesting in the sense of inducing the public into the early step of the process, i.e. creating of anti-model via workshop, the composition of workshop participants are exciting too. While the aim of the workshop is to discourse on the meaning of Singapore as a home, the participants include both Singaporean and non-Singaporean residents. In other words, anyone who are interested to make Singapore, home.
Five pieces were presented:-
1. A group of Singapore undergraduates protested against tuition fee hike, resulting in one of them being expelled.
2. A Singapore worker tried to build bonding between his colleagues who migrated from India and China, to no avail.
3. A student migrated from PRC to Singapore, ran into multiple issues with school, landlord and unfriendly local parents.
4. A Belgian who came to Singapore due to economic difficulties back home. He managed to find a job but could not find a way to connect with the local colleagues socially.
5. A Singapore student tried to encourage his peers to sing national anthem during school assembly but was rejected and teased.
Judging from the response of the audience, it was a pity that there was only time to allow audience intervention on the last piece. The audience are as diverse as the participants who presented the 5 pieces, in terms of race, age and nationalities. So were their views. One mentioned that judging from the online forum, there seemed to be greater resentment against PRC and India immigrants while less on the westerner, among Singaporean. Another mentioned that she seemed to be more lucky compared to the anti-model she was watching, in meeting many warm hearted locals for the years she has been living in Singapore.
And then there were some responses simmering in the audience but not put forward for forum – while the piece on Belgian working in Singapore was being performed (with a Belgian on stage), I could hear a local young audience standing not far from me constantly hissing lowly: go home! go home!
For me, it was a precious occasion where people can freely exchange views on an increasingly hotly debated national agenda, that of foreign immigrants. A young Singaporean audience gave a line which summarize the evening for me. In responding to the last piece on getting young generation to sing national anthem, she pointed out that to her and her peers, singing national anthem or national day songs akin to more of a show than real feeling. The real question to ask, she said, is Where Is The Love?
I suspect that was the question on the mind of everyone present, Singaporean or not.
(Note: This blogger is an Associate Artist and Board Member of Dramabox)
