Tonight, the whole place erupted in thunderous applause at the end of Fear Of Writing.
I couldn’t bring myself to do so at first. And when I did, it hurt.
It was the most painful clapping I have ever done inside the confines of a theatre.
After all, how can you applaud a piece that looks you in the eye with such anger, frustration, disappointment and even desperation?
How do you go “Bravo!” when it whispers to you, “You have failed. We all have.” How do you clap at a piece’s accomplishment when that very accomplishment is a slap in the face?
From start to end, Tan Tarn How’s newest play in a decade is a scathing indictment against every member of the theatre community, whether it be the artist who creates or the audience who responds, as it analyses the very the act of writing itself and its limits, and more specifically, the idea of political plays in Singapore, within the larger context of art’s increasing commodification and the neutering of politics as entertainment fodder.
One is bombarded with a series of seemingly disparate elements tied together by pivotal scenes of a playwright talking to his daughter overseas, sharing his plans to finally write a play once more. There were Youtube videos, recorded interviews, philosophical musings, meta scenarios of a director egging on the playwright to just friggin’ finish the damn play.
A barrage of images, ideas, positions and counterpositions that gnaw and gnaw at you until doubt creeps up. And director Ong Keng Sen makes sure you don’t forget that – the set/stage offers no privileged vantage point, videos loom large, but there are also moments you cannot see the speaker. The four performers (Tan Kheng Hua, Janice Koh, Lok Meng Chue, Serene Chen) echo each other’s lines. Fear of Writing is all around you (and above you as it were, as “confetti” fall from the sky, a chilling image of propaganda leaflets dropped during wartime), happening simultaneously and repeatedly until you become disoriented.
A week before, I had watched the dramatised reading of Tan’s The First Emperor’s Last Days. Moved as I was and thinking, “Wow, they don’t write plays like they used to,” Fear of Writing is a totally different animal, with none of the allegorical bite of his late `90s work. No more hiding behind nudges and winks or acronyms like LKY or JBJ, says the playwright (of the play). He doesn’t want to write about CSJ. He wants to write about Chee Soon Juan. He doesn’t want to tango with his subject matter, he wants to wrestle with it.
There is much anger in this piece but also honesty and humility. And that, for me, is what makes this so effin’ powerful. It is not of the moment (anyone who watched Cooling Off Day – which I still very much like, just for the record – should watch this as a point of comparison) but is a product of a long period of gestation and filtration. It is bursting at the seams and seething, like, to appropriate an image mentioned in the play, a dam waiting to burst.
And when it does – it is one scary question that Fear Of Writing dares to ask.
What if what you do, political plays included, is futile? No, seriously, for all the talk about theatre’s power – and political theatre to be precise — to affect change, what if it doesn’t or can’t? What if it’s a dead end?
It’s the elephant in the room, I think, that local theatre, if it does bother to even go there, would rather not confront. Fear Of Writing does. And for a playwright (or any artist for that matter) to even pose the idea that what he or she does may not matter at all, to stare at the abyss and find only darkness, is the most humbling act of all.
Bravery doesn’t just deserve applause. It deserves emulation.
(Fear Of Writing is sold out this week. But you can still catch it from Sep 6-10 on Sep 7, but tickets selling fast. But they’re thinking of adding more shows. Stay tuned. Details here or here. )
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