voiced and voiceless

i've just had two of the best theatrical experiences these past two days. i get the sense that i should be writing a lot more and reflecting in much greater depth about the two performances, but..i am tired.

watched Cargo Kuala Lumpur - Singapore by Kaegi (from Rimini Protokoll) and Karrenbauer on the 25th. the audience were seated as cargo in a converted truck and we were driven around by truck drivers in a journey that simulates the journey that cargo transporters make from KL to SG. our drivers brought us to the port area, customs, industrial places, large holding areas, all the while providing a commentary on what the drivers had to do, how much they earned, and the technical specifications of some of the cargo they were dealing with. in between the professional content, they also shared about their personal history.

i am unable to continue. at least, not in a coherent, polished flow. i remember words, pictures, the girl with the boxes and singing those songs. penjuru domitory. foreign workers. we have so many, so many foreign workers in singapore.

what, really, is the cargo? the large containers the drivers have to transport across long distances through the nights with heavy thoughts of financial stress and separated family members? we, the audience sitting in the converted truck, being transported around with no say about where we wanted to go or what we wanted to do? them, the people who have been shuttled around nations, changing between jobs, utilised by organisations for industrial and economic purposes?

they live on the same small island of less than 700 sqm with us. yet we know so little about them, and are so estranged from them.

social estrangements. yesterday's performance also addressed this so strongly. it was I, Malvolio by Tim Crouch. i thought of the Twelfth Night performance that i saw in Stratford some months ago. i remember the Malvolio from that performance very well. his smile was heart-breaking, and yesterday's performance brought back those memories of the person whose ostracisation caused me such pain.

crouch was marvellous. he managed to understand the spirit and symbol of malvolio. and more than that, he dragged out the great potential in the malvolio character for social commentary. for twelfth night is, indeed, a mad and violent play. it is a world of madness, where people allow their emotions to swing them into all sorts of irrational behaviour. it is a world where the funny man is laughed at, where people have no qualms tormenting others for the sake of their own amusement. how far would this society, this human race, go in the direction of violence for the sake of amusement? i am not optimistic about the answer.

i really liked his interpretation of how malvolio would exact his revenge also. how, indeed, can malvolio ever make anyone feel the anguish and brokenness and rage and stupidness that he felt? he made use of the theatrical contract very well, exploiting the parasitic relationship the audience has on the actor by simply leaving the audience perfomance-less so that the audience would have some sense of how it feels to thrown out of the dream world, to fumble around stupidly in the new consciousness, to berate themselves for having ever entered the theatre.

in limbo. to be left in limbo. to be left to think "why did i ever."


isn't that one of the most painful questions ever.


"them as have a voice must speak for them as have no voice". to all the malvolios and cargoes of the world, someone has been speaking, and will be speaking, for you.