Photo by Dafne Louzioti © 2008 SYNOPSIS
“A heart is a piece of muscle, like any other in the human body. It is elastic, it can stretch, it can scar… It is sometimes also prone to doing stupid things.” A journey through the forbidden territories that belie our human love affairs, this solo performance combines movement choreography with documentary reports and personal stories through the eyes of a Singaporean woman.
RESEARCH STATEMENT
And Whose Heart is not a Hungry Fish? was first inspired by Singaporean writer Cyril Wong's latest poetry collection tilting our plates to catch the light, which explores the theme of love through a reinterpretation of the myth surrounding two Hindu male gods Shiva and Vishnu. This solo piece seeks to uncover the themes of human desire and forbidden love through a reinvestigation of the urban myths surrounding the SPG - Sarong Party Girl - a derogatory term used in Singapore to label local (and mainly Oriental) girls who date only foreign men, specifically Westerners (known locally as angmohs), for their money or imagined social status.
To what extent can I draw a trajectory from the particular to the universal in a dramatised examination of my own cultural identity as a Singaporean female? This research question has prompted me to structure a variety of storytelling angles through which the notion of the SPG can be re-examined, including dance movement choreography based on the evocative visual language of Cyril's poetry; voice-over reports on world headlines, evolutionary psychology factoids and animal mating behaviour; as well as personal anecdotes describing complicated courtships and love affairs.
Perhaps having been born and raised in a highly regulated society, I sometimes find myself overcome with self-consciousness or even a need to self-censor when creating a show that features semi-autobiographical stories. How can I, as a solo performer, be as honest as possible when sharing such sensitive social and political material with an audience? What techniques or approaches can I employ to shed my everyday persona while still maintaining a sincere and engaging personality onstage?
To what extent can I draw a trajectory from the particular to the universal in a dramatised examination of my own cultural identity as a Singaporean female? This research question has prompted me to structure a variety of storytelling angles through which the notion of the SPG can be re-examined, including dance movement choreography based on the evocative visual language of Cyril's poetry; voice-over reports on world headlines, evolutionary psychology factoids and animal mating behaviour; as well as personal anecdotes describing complicated courtships and love affairs.
Perhaps having been born and raised in a highly regulated society, I sometimes find myself overcome with self-consciousness or even a need to self-censor when creating a show that features semi-autobiographical stories. How can I, as a solo performer, be as honest as possible when sharing such sensitive social and political material with an audience? What techniques or approaches can I employ to shed my everyday persona while still maintaining a sincere and engaging personality onstage?
Attracted to the challenges of a solo show, I am also keen to explore ways in which I can effectively layer my physical presence throughout a performance with the strategic use of basic theatrical elements such as music, lights, one chair, one set of costume and my own body onstage. How can I engage audiences in my story with limited physical resources on hand throughout the creative process?
And Whose Heart is not a Hungry Fish? premiered on Wednesday 25 June 2008 and Friday 27 June 2008 at Studio 2, Goldsmiths College.
And Whose Heart is not a Hungry Fish? premiered on Wednesday 25 June 2008 and Friday 27 June 2008 at Studio 2, Goldsmiths College.
Video Courtesy of Zeljko Hrs 2008
TEXT EXCERPT
Who is the SPG?
She is the 18-year-old girl strangled to death by her father for befriending a foreign soldier. She is the middle-aged woman who burnt herself to death when the foreigner gave her human rights. She is the prostitute who left her country in search of foreign currency. She is the up-and-coming writer of post-colonial fiction because we should have a voice too damnit and she’s married to her angmoh husband because he understands. She is the student who flew overseas in search of higher education. She is the mother of too many mouths to feed begging tourists on the streets for spare change. She is the first concubine ever to refuse to bind her feet.
Who the hell does she think she is?
She’s still young. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s still her mother’s daughter. She’s still fresh from her first big love affair. She has an inkling of what it might take to raise a child with someone she loves. She’s belligerent about her right to wear small, short skirts, but also terrified by the power and danger something so ridiculously simple could invite. She wants to pop her gum in the face of middle-aged men. She wants to be free of her mother. She wants to do all the things people tell her she can’t do, like write books, be your own boss, have as many lovers as you want, find a cure for cancer, join the army, be President. While raising four babies at the same time. Sometimes she wishes she could hide under the safety of a chador. She wants to tell you she’s more than tits, ass and a pretty face, although she does go to the gym regularly to ensure that all her respective body parts are nice and tight. At the same time she wants to be ravished. She wants to be looked at like your favourite flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, only because you will love ice cream forever. If youth and a little beauty can be granted clemency for stupidity, then let her keep dreaming that she is powerful and immortal.
(with text contributed by Ruby Pan)
TEXT EXCERPT
Who is the SPG?
She is the 18-year-old girl strangled to death by her father for befriending a foreign soldier. She is the middle-aged woman who burnt herself to death when the foreigner gave her human rights. She is the prostitute who left her country in search of foreign currency. She is the up-and-coming writer of post-colonial fiction because we should have a voice too damnit and she’s married to her angmoh husband because he understands. She is the student who flew overseas in search of higher education. She is the mother of too many mouths to feed begging tourists on the streets for spare change. She is the first concubine ever to refuse to bind her feet.
Who the hell does she think she is?
She’s still young. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s still her mother’s daughter. She’s still fresh from her first big love affair. She has an inkling of what it might take to raise a child with someone she loves. She’s belligerent about her right to wear small, short skirts, but also terrified by the power and danger something so ridiculously simple could invite. She wants to pop her gum in the face of middle-aged men. She wants to be free of her mother. She wants to do all the things people tell her she can’t do, like write books, be your own boss, have as many lovers as you want, find a cure for cancer, join the army, be President. While raising four babies at the same time. Sometimes she wishes she could hide under the safety of a chador. She wants to tell you she’s more than tits, ass and a pretty face, although she does go to the gym regularly to ensure that all her respective body parts are nice and tight. At the same time she wants to be ravished. She wants to be looked at like your favourite flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, only because you will love ice cream forever. If youth and a little beauty can be granted clemency for stupidity, then let her keep dreaming that she is powerful and immortal.
(with text contributed by Ruby Pan)
REVIEW EXCERPT
"It is the successful universalisation of the particular - along with the formal qualities of careful compositional craftsmanship and a refined sense of performative presence - that prevents the piece becoming self-indulgent. It’s about her, and yet, in the end, it isn’t about her. It’s about any of us, and what it is for any of us to be who we are. And the ambivalent pride and fear the artist feels about her Singaporean nationality is mirrored by an ambivalence about the idea of identity itself. By the end of the piece, the weight of social expectations and heritage and hard-wired species behaviour seems inescapable: our identity is largely fixed by forces outside ourselves. We are bound always to return, like salmon, to the particularities of our birth. The artist’s life story is shown to be bound up with those of others everywhere - her birth date is linked with world events, and with Singapore’s own birthday. Yet right from the opening movement sequence, the work is a defiant assertion of individual autonomy and personal power. The very making and performing of the piece is such an assertion (and will become even more so when it is performed in Singapore), and in that sense it is an effective ritual of self-actualisation.
It is precisely the juxtaposition of this assertion of autonomy with the constraints that range against it that make the piece moving and powerful. We are left with an inspirational sense of hopeless courage, of implicit faith against all reason; and, in the end, with longing - the hunger of the fish. “What is a heart?” It is a symbol of individual identity, of a fixed core of a person’s body and being; but also of mortality, and of love, which is a reaching out beyond oneself. The piece suggests that if there is anything universally human, beyond the situated nature of identity in society and culture, it may be a deep longing, often hidden, for freedom, for universality itself."
Alex Crowe
fellow theatre artist
"It is the successful universalisation of the particular - along with the formal qualities of careful compositional craftsmanship and a refined sense of performative presence - that prevents the piece becoming self-indulgent. It’s about her, and yet, in the end, it isn’t about her. It’s about any of us, and what it is for any of us to be who we are. And the ambivalent pride and fear the artist feels about her Singaporean nationality is mirrored by an ambivalence about the idea of identity itself. By the end of the piece, the weight of social expectations and heritage and hard-wired species behaviour seems inescapable: our identity is largely fixed by forces outside ourselves. We are bound always to return, like salmon, to the particularities of our birth. The artist’s life story is shown to be bound up with those of others everywhere - her birth date is linked with world events, and with Singapore’s own birthday. Yet right from the opening movement sequence, the work is a defiant assertion of individual autonomy and personal power. The very making and performing of the piece is such an assertion (and will become even more so when it is performed in Singapore), and in that sense it is an effective ritual of self-actualisation.
It is precisely the juxtaposition of this assertion of autonomy with the constraints that range against it that make the piece moving and powerful. We are left with an inspirational sense of hopeless courage, of implicit faith against all reason; and, in the end, with longing - the hunger of the fish. “What is a heart?” It is a symbol of individual identity, of a fixed core of a person’s body and being; but also of mortality, and of love, which is a reaching out beyond oneself. The piece suggests that if there is anything universally human, beyond the situated nature of identity in society and culture, it may be a deep longing, often hidden, for freedom, for universality itself."
Alex Crowe
fellow theatre artist
MA Performance Making , Goldsmiths College
July 2008
July 2008
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