Almost Left Behind

Today, I watched the fruits of 9 months of my friends' labour - Almost Left Behind. There were many individual pieces and they were sited at different parts of the Substation. It was like a traveling circus and the audience were the nomads.

It was painfully ironic that the person who I set out to see perform, was the one person I didn't get to see perform. I was stuck at another piece, which I didn't know I couldn't leave halfway, and was only able to reach her piece when it ended. When I heard the others all raving at the performance, it hit me, how yet again, I've missed being personally part of something important for her. Still, I was really happy that her performance went so well.

These group of friends, from my theatre study years, were the friends who, at one point, physically embodied my heart and soul. One of you could be my head, the other could be my toes, or my right hand, or any limb you would like. It just felt that natural. I don't know when, but at some point, I felt that the umbilical cord had been cut off. Now, whenever I see them, I feel this great wave of affection, a great deal of respect and admiration, but never that sense of intimacy again. I was really glad to see all of them on stage, performing, being in their element. Everyone it seems, is most beautiful, when they are living out the truth of their lives.

To give credit to some of the most heartfelt theatre I've watched in years, I'll write some thoughts on the pieces I had the fortune to watch:



The picture above is a shot I took from Esther Ng's video titled "I love to go a-wandering (the shanty town)". I didn't get to catch the whole piece. I found the opening very moving - swashes of primary colours started filling the screen, like waves of coloured oceans, and I loved how naturally the swashes of colour seemed to form mini amoebas - the building blocks of everything we see in this world. You could start to see all kinds of creatures in the sea-green,yellow,red ocean, and then there was a sun, and then there were stars. Everything was wiped clean. And then there was a tree. For me, I thought about the genesis and creation and I loved how the simple images/shadows in the video allowed the mind such a great space to play and exercise their imagination on. A-wandering indeed.

After Esther's piece, I went into Ng Yuhui's Storeyhouse. You were passed a torchlight, and in, you went into this deeply cramped space with nothing but a great sense of curiosity. I found this piece very well-curated, how such a small space could be so carefully segmented, with heartbreaking moments at each spot. I love the thoughts scribbled on the walls, some at different heights, which reminded me of how in our youth, we would mark our height on the walls with pencil scribbles - and those scribbles at different places and heights, made me imagine that was how one mark the growth of love in a budding relationship. This piece had such great humor and wistful sadness... she called herself a hoarder, but more than anything, in this careful sensitive compartmentalisation of memories, relationships and love, I left with the impression that she had already freed herself.

The third piece I watched was Lynn Yang's The Audition. I think this piece was the most honest of the pieces I watched tonight. We don't know the role she was auditioning for, but we didn't really need to know, because I think, in the end - that's all our life stories, figuring out what role we are playing at this particular stage of our lives. This audition was not for something, this audition was a very honest (maybe even painfully) self-examination into our deepest desires. As the "director" kept asking for her "life story", as if demanding for her to re-write her life story, there and then, to create something more tragic, more exciting, more fit for the stage - to be larger than life, but most poignantly, most of our lives are made of stuff like these - the fact that we come from happy, "normal", backgrounds and in a loving household, does not make these lives any lesser than a life with a "real" story. I found the most beautiful moment was when she was detailing her fears/mental blocks and little coloured pixels started falling down as if her life was a beautiful chaotic game of Tetris.

The fourth piece I watched was Pamela Tham's Sole Searching. This piece I felt was the best of all the pieces I watched. It was intriguing conceptually and the interplay of the actor and the lights was just plain impressive. Still, this piece was brilliant because of Pamela's immense natural charisma. She reminded me of my own batch mate, Jiehui, a natural performer as well. There's a sense of primal instinct in their acting, which is so raw and powerful, that evokes all kinds of subconscious fears and desires. She had excellent pacing, use of space, and was very true to her character throughout in her treatment of the different shoes that represented different stages of her life. The way she tenderly caressed her childhood ballet shoes, the animalistic cowboy boots, the heels she hid away, the practical and sensible teacher shoes. As an actor, she needs further vocal work, but I think she has perfect instincts.

The fifth and last piece I watched was Andrea Ang and Anitha Pagolu's In Flight. This piece was structured beautifully. The two actors have excellent vocals and control of their body - the physicality in their interactions really brought out the internal strife/struggle within. I really enjoyed how the actors could play off each other's natural physical sense - one naturally cool and sophisticated and the other with such nervous energy. I thought it was still rough around the edges, but there were moments of such poetic beauty - I felt that it was the piece that best brought out the title of this overall festival, "Almost Left Behind".

The "finale" so to speak was called "The Departure". I got to see Xijie in her mime outfit, and was deeply regretful I couldn't see her piece despite trying to queue for it thrice. She gave me a flower at the end, and my heart skipped a beat. She's really someone that reminds me of living, breathing "magic realism".

I'll be looking forward to what the future holds for all these immensely talented individuals. Certainly, the audience won't be left behind.