Theatre: Family in detention

Gemuk Girls director Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage tells SUBHADRA DEVAN he was pleasantly surprised to see full houses for all nine shows.

In 1987, while Malaysia had Ops Lallang, Operation Spectrum was in action across the Causeway. A social worker for the Roman Catholic church, Vincent Cheng, was accused of masterminding a conspiracy that would throw out the ruling government and replace it with a Marxist State.

Most of the detainees were released in stages in 1988-89 after signing statutory declarations recanting accusations they had made earlier. Cheng was the last of the “Marxist conspirators” to be released.

This is the backdrop of The Necessary Stage play, Gemuk Girls, which opened to full houses for its 11-show run in Singapore recently.

Says its director Alvin Tan: “We (he and the playwright Haresh Sharma) interviewed some of the former detainees. They told us things like they were in solitary confinement all the time. The former detainees also had a reunion last year.”

Haresh had a chat with Said Zahari, another former detainee, on the phone and read his book. Former newspaper editor Said Zahari, who had been appointed leader of a Singapore opposition party, was arrested under Operation Coldstore in 1963 for alleged involvement in “communist” activities.

The 80-year-old holds the distinction of being the second longest-serving political detainee in Singapore (17 years) after Chia Thye Poh.

The Necessary Stage had organised an arts forum in 2006 as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival which saw two ex-detainees and a playwright speaking at the event called “Detention – Writing – Healing”.

The play, Gemuk Girls, is about a hippie mum and her idealistic daughter who’s keen to enter politics, played by Aidli “Alin” Mosbit and Siti Kahlijah, respectively.

The spanner in the works is the grandfather, a political detainee from the 1960s, played by Najib Soiman.

The politics of past and present collide. Can the family survive as they struggle to reconcile the past with the present?

The grandfather character, says Tan, is based on three or four of the former detainees, including Said Zahari.

Tan says that he himself had a brush with the law in 1994 for offering “forum theatre” which was seen as being Marxist. Forum theatre is interactive – the audience is shown a play in which the protagonist encounters an obstacle or oppression. The play stops and those on stage discuss the move with the audience through a mediator.

The play restarts, and a member of the audience can stop the action, take the place of the actor and try out his idea. It becomes an intellectual game, learning the tactics of the oppressor and that of the oppressed.

He says he has since devised The Necessary Stage’s own “new realism theatre”. For instance, Gemuk Girls started with discussion and improvisation, followed by a staging with script attended by thespians, first time and veteran theatre-goers and critics. Improvements were made to the script after securing feedback from this preview audience.

After the feedback, the play would be rehearsed with a script and staged.

He says new realism theatre is a cross between realism and postmodern theatre. Realism in theatre is an experiment to make theatre more useful to society. Postmodern theatre gets involved in the process of meaning-making with recurring disruptions in the audience’s cognitive process.

Says Tan: “I was pleasantly surprised to see full houses on all nine shows for Gemuk Girls. And it also had just an advisory — which meant anyone 16 years and below needed adult supervision — and not a rating (18 years and above only, please).”

He says there is a shared history between Malaysia and Singapore and the play offers a glance at the socio-cultural changes in society on the republic. These would resonate with the audience.

Gemuk Girls offers a chance to find out, analyse and explore how others feel about the issues in the shared history.

“The emotions, however,” he adds, “are universal.”

This is not the first time The Necessary Stage has performed its thought-provoking plays in Malaysia. Tan says he prefers to call it “theatre with a politic”.

You may have seen the recent Good People (which deals with marijuana use among the dying) which starred, among others from the region, Sukania Venugopal.

Off Centre, another The Necessary Stage play, brought the plight of those dealing with mental illness into the spotlight. It is now part of the Literature GCE “O” and “N” levels curriculum in the republic.

Things have changed for Singapore theatre, haven’t they?

“There are fewer restrictions because the government thinks we need to open up. I think it’s a sophisticated way of regulation,” says Tan.

He laughs, adding: “Anyway, a space for more freedom has opened up, and I’m dancing like mad.”



Gemuk Girls, presented by The Necessary Stage and the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre, runs at KLpac in Sentul from Dec 4-7. Times: 8.30pm with 3pm shows (Dec 6-7). Tickets: RM35/RM20. Call 03-4047900/03-2041400.