Theatre is
a game of space. Every actor, director and stage manager knows this,
but not all writers do. Witness the case of How Did the Cat Get
So Fat?, a work by new playwright Zizi Azah Bte Abdul Majid. The
script wowed critics when it premiered last year in the triplebill Mentah
3: Barisan Puteri Puteri, earning Zizi a nomination for best
playwright in the Life! Theatre Awards. But without good use
of dramatic space in its current incarnation, the production falls flat.
Zizi's script is compelling for several reasons. It's imaginative,
telling the story of the nine-year-old girl Fatimah on a whimsical,
mystical journey aboard a coin-operated lion nicknamed Mr Minismen.
It's political, being a commentary on a Singapore plagued by social
inequalities it refuses to acknowledge, and a materialism that threatens
to consume our cultural identity as we know it.
But most of all, it's fascinating as a game of voices. Whenever Mr
Minismen transports Fatimah to a new scene, she meets a new character,
usually a member of the unacknowledged underclasses of Singapore, often
based on actual people in the playwright's life - an abused Indonesian
maid, a tudong saleswoman whose husband is arrested by the ISD, an old
Chinese erhu-player who cleans toilets at the Esplanade. Zizi captures
the frustration of a repressed country in the voices of her characters,
telling their stories with a combination of charm, wisdom and resignation
- I'll especially remember the sardonic grumble of the Malay taxi driver,
lamenting how his academically overachieving daughter has dropped out
of engineering school to become a mere hawker.
Zizi's arranged her scenes to correspond with themes in the Singapore
pledge, including religion, race and progress. As a director, she's
illustrated her protagonist's voyage by means of a hopscotch grid -
actress Siti Khalijah Zainal actually draws this path on the floor during
the show's prologue, with a diagram of the squares and their corresponding
themes displayed on an overhead projection. Over the course of the play,
she moves from square to square as a person might move between rooms,
opening doors to discover new worlds.
According to fellow reviewer Kenneth, this hopscotch device worked
pretty well in the play's previous run - the Guinness Theatre was small
enough that Siti was able to maintain at all times a sense of intimacy
with her audience. The Esplanade Recital Studio, by contrast, combines
the sparseness of a black box with an expanse and audience capacity
comparable to any proscenium theatre. Confined to one hopscotch square
at a time, Siti became an awkwardly static figure, her subtle actions
lost in the breadth of the stage.
Siti's a gifted monologue actress, as is already evident to anyone
who's watched her one-woman performance of Rosnah
last year, where she ran the oral gamut from simulating an elderly grandmother's
voice to mimicking the expansive tones of an English boyfriend. But
without the freedom to physically explore the stage, her acting's handicapped,
sapped of dynamism - at brief junctures, her accents become inconsistent,
and the voices she portrays appear indistinct from one another. (Feel
free to contrast my opinions, though, with those of reviewer-editor
Matthew Lyon, who watched the play the following night and found her
acting "absolutely brilliant".)
Imprisoned by these boundaries, How Did the Cat Get So Fat?
emerges as a piquant but occasionally sluggish show, not quite the stuff
of drama that fires men's imaginations. Generally, it's difficult for
writers to direct their own work well - a second or even third party
is gifted with more objectivity and may deliver new interpretations
into a script that injects fresh vitality into a production. The directorial
shortcomings of this play may, of course, have been a mere accident
of logistics - Teater Ekamatra may have simply overlooked, in their
hurry, the need to adapt a previously successful work to a new space.
Regardless of my feelings about this play's direction, however, I'm
terribly pleased that it's been the occasion for Zizi's nomination for
Best Playwright in the Life! Theatre Awards. Hers is not a
perfect script, of course - it deserves tightening in spots, verges
on maudlin at times, and is exclusively composed of monologues and one-sided
dialogues, a structure common to many first-time playwrights.
But How Did the Cat Get So Fat? reveals a growing creative
voice that transcends its material, outstripping the play's apparent
classification as a realist documentary of the oppressed in Singapore.
I'll remember several of her surreal, allegorical sequences - the sociologist,
for example, struggling to balance the four pans of her weighing scale,
frustrated by the shifting contents but refusing to consider the suggestion
that "maybe the scale isn't equal". Likewise, I'm dazzled
by the vision of the penultimate square, a casino theme park celebrating
Mr Minismen and guarded by Stan the Stegosaurus, a "modern Malay"
working as an animal mascot actor, seducing Fatimah into playing the
slot machines for the first time.
The strength of Zizi's imagination does at times hurt the structure
of her play - Fatimah's intriguing dialogue with herself, spoken entirely
in the "F"-language, begins to drag after a few minutes, and
her surrealist video inserts of conversations between a giant disembodied
eye and ear ultimately comes off as pretentious. I'd say, however, that
these are good indicators for the development of a promising writer,
who needs the encouragement not just to create, but also to make mistakes
in her future theatrical experiments.
As for How Did the Cat Get So Fat?, I'd say it deserves better
direction - immediately. Readers of Inkpot who do student and
amateur productions should contact Teater Ekamatra to request performing
rights, and stage it anew - not just as a monologue but also as an ensemble
production; not just in minimalist style but with life-size papier-mâché
Mr Minismen; not just in Malay but in all languages; not just in its
current linear structure but radically fragmented, adapted according
to the tastes of your theatre group.
This is an odyssey of a play, with a narrative of pilgrimage comparable
to Alfian Sa'at's Asian
Boys Volume I and Kuo Pao Kun's The Day I Met the Prince.
It's a game of voices that's thick with potential, capable of being
interpreted in so many ways other than what the playwright has envisioned.
Take it forth into other spaces. Play another game.
First Impression
New playwright Zizi Azah Bte Abdul Majid shines in her
heartfelt portraits of members of the Singapore underclasses - the Malay
taxi driver rejected by the white-collar world, the tudong saleswoman,
the Chinese janitor - all acted competently by Siti Khalijah Zainal
in this one-woman show. Seen through the eyes of Fatimah, a nine-year-old
girl on a whimsical journey aboard a coin-operated lion, this poignant
series of vignettes describes a Singapore plagued by social inequalities
it refuses to acknowledge, and a materialism that threatens to consume
our cultural identity as we know it. However, the director's structuring
of the piece prevents Siti from fully exploring the broad space of the
Recital Studio for its dramatic potential, yielding an awkwardly static,
minimalist piece - one may also cast aspersions on the pretentious surrealist
video inserts, featuring dialogue between a giant disembodied eye and
ear. |
"How Did the Cat Get So Fat? reveals a growing creative voice that
transcends its material, outstripping the play's apparent classification
as a realist documentary of the oppressed."
Credits
Director / Playwright/ Lighting Deisgner: Zizi Azah
Bte Abdul Majid
Performer: Siti Khalijah Zainal
Soud Artist: Zulkifle Mahmod
Video Artist: Izmir Ickbal
Stage Manager: Jamal Mohamed
Videographer: Irfan Kasban
Surtitles: Hamizah Azmee
Production Assistant: Shan-Rievan
Previous Productions by Teater Ekamatra
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