Author: Richard Chua

人舞团－新加坡中生代舞者郭瑞文所创办－是新加坡舞蹈界的新生命。虽然目前只有六名全职舞者，舞团已呈献好几个优质作品，可是新加坡舞蹈界一股新势力。日前，该舞团在本地剧团必要剧场所举办的M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2009（译为M1新加坡艺穗节2009）里呈现了另一支以家庭作为主题的优良舞作，名为Within.Without。

In the talk-back session held at the end of the opening run of the second group of short plays – Brunch and Teacher’s Day – director Tan Kheng Hua outlined her motivation and vision in directing the four plays. The other two were Duet and Real Actors. She wanted the plays to show the subtleties in human emotions, to be performed in a less naturalistic fashion and to show less of theatrics on stage. No doubt, her heart is in the right place – embracing humanity.

A question bugged me throughout the performance of Catching Adam Cheng – a play written by playwright Jacke Chye about a journey a bunch old ladies make to catch their idol: Hong Kong singer-actor Adam Cheng – Is there a way to make the characters more believable on stage? The character I would believe in should be “the person”, in his/her full glory and dilapidation.

For me, watching First Light felt like homecoming. It is easy to fall into nostalgia and sing praises about the show – in fact, we should do that, for performances given by Lim Kay Siu, Neo Swee Lin, Janice Koh and Jalyn Han are simply remarkable- I am an informed audience, and also a friend/old colleague of director Nelson Chia. It is a struggle to keep this piece of writing objective. Writing it requires self-reflexivity, especially to keep nostalgia, romance and sentimentality from entering. In the course of doing so, I hope to juxtapose my personal experience in a wonderful theatrical encounter – Kuo Pao Kun’s Sunset Rise – with Nelson Chia’s contemporary version of it.