ma:moment
We (Lekker, that is) just finished the set for
Ma:Moment, a site-specific play set in the Death Houses of Singapore's Chinatown. The Death Houses, which were demolished in the sixties as part of the island's urban renewal program, were a block of tenements where unmarried women--usually domestic workers and those without family networks--would move after their retirement. It was a kind of insurance, whereby these women could be guaranteed a proper burial.
The play, which is structured like Noh theatre (hence "Ma" and "Moment"), is the life stories of women as told by their ghosts, characters such as Precious Pig and Phantom Foetus. It's unsettling stuff--especially considering that we are currently in the midst of the Hungry Ghost festival, Singapore's most sombre and superstitious time of year. But the play tends toward the human rather than the spooky; the stories that the actors tell are actually poignant and funny.
The set is a "reconstruction" of the main alley that separated the Death Houses, where much of the life-drama took place. The play is performed in this space, which is sealed in a translucent scrim around the perimeter. As such, the set bears a vague resemblance to the paper houses that are burned during Hungry Ghost as offerings to the spirits of the departed.
The whole shebang is conceived as a public installation--it takes place in the middle of a heavily trafficked intersection, with cars and pedestrian traffic on all sides. And it's aggressive; you don't have to know much about Singapore to know that yelling "diu neige ma chao hai" ("fuck your mother's smelly cunt" in Cantonese) in the middle of a public venue, overlooked by HDB housing towers, is a strong statement. Ma runs through Sunday, 29th August.
* joshua, 8/25/2004 10:36:04 PM
