The TIGERS in us all

APART FROM CULTURE-specific festivals like Huayi: Chinese Festival of Arts and genre-specific ones like the da:ns festival as well as the frequent import of international works throughout the year, the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay also supports local theatre artists through The Studios series. This year’s edition, themed “Beautiful Beasts”, commenced last Friday with filmmaker and theatre director Ho Tzu Nyen’s “Ten Thousand Tigers”, and will continue through mid-July, offering a total of eight productions.
Designed by Andy Lim and Ho himself, Esplanade’s Theatre Studio was transformed into a set-up I’ve never seen before in a theatre. Resembling display cupboards with various sections like those in a library or museum, the performance space was vertical, rather than the usual horizontal. It was like watching a 3D movie except for the fact that our eyes were not glued to one big screen. Lim’s lighting design directed our attention to live human actors, TV screens and installations of, among others, bust statues, a reel tape player and shadow puppets or a combination of some of them. Also, as the performance was in Malay, Mandarin and Chinese, the English subtitles, on one of the three screens underneath these display shelves, also gave directions for our eyes and minds. The result was rather like walking into a library and picking up different books to read then putting together our own narrative.
Juxtaposing various narratives involving the presence of tigers in the Malay peninsula from before mankind through to today, Ho also made references to the figurative tigers, among them World War II Japanese general Yamashita and the Malayan Communist Party’s Lai Teck, who was known by different names and believed to have fled to Thailand, where his body was found in the Chao Phraya river. These references brought home the main message, albeit one repeated a few too many times, that we humans are more closely related to tigers than we thought.
While the work risked being a textual, aural and visual overload, Ho, and his team of designers, managed to masterfully control the tone and pace and give his audiences some moments to breathe, reflect and choose what to take away home. Yet in the midst of social, political and cultural messages, what was somewhat lost was his main environmental message on deforestation, though they were a few short anecdotes on the British colonisation of this region, or the land of tigers. Perhaps that’s because by the time those anecdotes arrived, we were more interested in those figurative tigers –or the tiger in us all.
A unique interdisplinary work with strong international appeal, “Ten Thousand Tigers” has been co-commissioned by, and thus will soon be seen at, Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, Carriageworks in Sydney and the Asian Arts Centre in Gwangju. I’m sure other theatres and arts centres will also come on board to bring these tigers to more shores.

NEXT IN THE SERIES
As part of Esplanade’s The Studios 2014, the Finger Players will restage “Rant and Rave”, their hit show from the Esplanade’s 10th anniversary celebration two years ago, adapted from critical reviews of Singapore theatre in the past few decades. It runs from May 1 to 4. For more details, visit www.TheStudios.com.sg.