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It is difficult to critique a production that concerns itself with a history
of war and trauma, particularly if its aim is to remind one never to
forget. Photographs from S-21 / The Glass Box is a piece of
theatre and dance that was inspired by real events that occurred during
the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.
The double bill began with The Glass Box, a solo classical
dance performance that explored the paradoxical relationship Cambodian
women have with their traditional culture. This performance was inspired
by the true story of a friend of the choreographer who was gunned down
in a street for having an affair with a powerful man. The dance was
not a re-enactment of the incident but rather a physical display of
the choreographer's emotional reaction to it.
Set on a minimal stage, the only thing to catch the eye was the dancer's
ornate costume, which moved and glittered with her. Her movements and
gestures were swift and graceful, but also so controlled that they rendered
the person beneath them almost invisible. Freedom and apprehension were
in conflict here. Trapped by the expectation of feminine virtue, the
dancer took small, sweeping steps but never a leap into the direction
she intended. Her torso spun and twisted as her feet shifted slightly
but purposefully, in celebration of the female form - but always, she
stopped short, as if under surveillance, and she retreated with every
step she took forward, her face bearing a constant expression of sorrow.
It was as if she had become a caged zoo animal for our entertainment.
We looked on not only as observers but as accomplices as she struggled
for freedom of expression.
However, the subtlety that was the performance's main point of
attraction was soon lost. The tension the piece had evoked fell into
repetitive patterns and failed to develop: there was little variation
and too heavy a reliance on the glass box metaphor as a means of substantiating
the dance.
In 1997, an exhibition bearing the same name Photographs from S-21
was featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Two photographs
of a man and a woman from that exhibition became the basis for a play
by Catherine Filloux. Their pictures were taken by the Khmer Rouge prior
to their executions at the infamous Tuol Sleng prison at Phnom Penh.
In this play, these two portraits come to life, encounter each other
and engage in an intimate dialogue about their individual sufferings.
Performed in Khmer with English subtitles, the translation may have
clouded some of the nuances the Khmer version contained. Still, historical
horror was recreated, to an extent, in a simple storytelling fashion
that left the more emotionally complex elements to the audience's
imagination.
But apart from the storytelling, the play's central conceit - the photographs'
coming to life - compelled us to consider the how the depiction of war
and disaster affects us. In her book, Regarding the Pain of Others,
Susan Sontag asked similar questions about whether the depiction of
cruelty could inspire dissent, foster violence or create apathy. The
unnamed female character in Photographs echoes this sentiment
when she looks at the audience, commenting on the number of people that
watch her from day to day. She remarks to Vuthy that their eyes come
in so many colours, like lights. The two characters talk about the other
photographs that the people move on to after looking at them. These
other photographs are harmless, reminiscent of happier moments: a horse,
a banana, a boy swimming, a girl dancing. Finally, the woman points
at us and asks the painful question, "These people, they are not the
Khmer Rouge, are they?" In that instant, we who are watching the watched
are made complicit. It is a powerful moment.
But this new sense of awareness quickly grows stale. The terse dialogue,
filled with long, contemplative pauses becomes tiresome; there is never
really a shift in tone; the frequent pauses make any emotional outburst
appear incongruous and unnecessary; and the relationship between the
characters feels contrived. Whatever strength was to be found in the
performance came from the words.
Two historical events, one more personal in origin and the other made
into a public exhibition, are recreated in this produciton to teach
us that their seeming distance in time and space do not wash our hands
clean. Our responsibility to them lies not merely in acknowledging their
existence; rather, our responsibility lies in remembering that history
can and will repeat itself. Moreover, they provoke us to question the
limits of our sympathy and the obligations of our conscience when confronted
with images of trauma.
But these questions did not come into my mind as a result of the performances;
they came into my mind simply from the concepts behind the two pieces
- and then the performances themselves merely played out the obvious.
The programme of this year's M1 Fringe Festival, of which this production
was a part, says, "Powerful Art dislodges us from stasis; it liberates
and delivers us." The performances failed to "dislodge" me.
But they did make me wonder: were they made more meaningful because
of their Khmer Rouge context? If this specific context had been removed
and replaced by a general one, would the production have been able to
sustain itself and still provoke? No: in this case, context and conception
took precedence over craft, and the performances were simply long and
drawn-out reiterations of an idea.
Karl Marx once said, "People may make their own history but they do
not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered,
given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." These stories of
suffering under the Khmer Rouge may have been resurrected in order to
remind us of how we made our history, but I left the theatre that night
no heavier for being reminded.
Guest reviewer Nizhen undertook the dizzying task of re-orienting
herself back in Singapore after living in New York for 6 years. Having
been a dilettante for most of her life, she has since buckled down and
is currently at Elle. Always restless, she has performed onstage,
worked as a doorman, taught poetry to female prisoners, read for the
blind and reorganised rolodexes for overly bohemian writers.
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"These stories of suffering under the Khmer Rouge may have been
resurrected in order to remind us of how we made our history, but I
left the theatre that night no heavier for being reminded."
Second Opinion
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