Mad Forest's first review

18 years ago on this day, a group of young men in Timişoara carried a Romanian flag with a hole cut in it and sang "Deşteaptă-te, române!" (Wake Up, Romanian). Today, young & W!LD gets its first review for Mad Forest as we remember the Romanians who lived, loved and lost in the name of freedom.

The Straits Times
Life! (page 12)
Tuesday 18 December 2007

Rare and arresting time in a Mad Forest

By Hong Xinyi

UPRISING: The revolution is seen from the perspective of various characters. -- PHOTO: WILD RICE

theatre

MAD FOREST

young & Wild

The Republic Cultural Centre, Lab

Last Thursday

THE acting was uneven, the pacing lagged in the seemingly interminable final act and the cast's attempt at Romanian accents was, perhaps expectedly, an acquired taste.

But in the final count, one is inclined to overlook all these things, because there is so much that is rare and arresting about this production of British playwright Caryl Churchill's 1990 piece.

The first act introduces two families living under the rule of Romania's communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, on the brink of a mass uprising that would violently topple his brutal regime. The third act revolves around what happens to the families in the aftermath of the revolution.

The second act, titled December, is based on interviews conducted by Churchill in Romania. It breaks away from this narrative by enacting the revolution from the perspectives of myriad new characters.

What December does is re-create the visceral rhythms of a revolution like the movements of a symphony. The first stirrings of provocation build into the building murmurs of discontent. Then, everything seems to falter, before a wave of fearful fervour crests in a moment of purity - the end of a way of life as monumental figures are demolished.

Before the doubts and division set in among the population once again, there is this: The sense of a whole country waking up together, wounded and intensely alive like ravaged newborns.

Under the direction of Jonathan Lim, what the 13 performers accomplish in this section is nothing short of breathtaking. They move in a circle at first, with individuals stepping out to deliver their lines, the rest murmuring snatches of dialogue under their breaths. As gunshots and confusion set in, they scatter like a burst of fireworks, before coming together again in a moving tableau of song.

The entire thing mesmerises like a taut, fervent dance; the ensemble moves and breathes as one.

And for this spectacle alone, spending nearly three hours in this Mad Forest was completely worth it.

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More reviews:

Youth.sg
http://www.youth.sg/content/view/4036/51/

The Substation Magazine
http://www.substation.org/mag/review/once-upon-a-time-in-romania.html

The Flying Inkpot has also released a tentative first-impression review
http://www.inkpot.com/theatre/

Young & W!LD in ST Life!

The Straits Times
Life! (page 12)
Thursday 13 December 2007

Revolution at your fingertips

The Internet played an important role in this play about the Romanian Revolution

By Hong Xinyi, ARTS REPORTER

ACCENT ON ACCURACY: Besides learning to deliver their lines with Romanian accents, the cast of Mad Forest also role-played and did extensive research on the revolution. -- PHOTO: WILD RICE

EXPECT Romanian accents and revolutionary fervour in the young & Wild production of the 1990 play, Mad Forest.

Written by English playwright Caryl Churchill, it was inspired by, and staged shortly after, the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, in which the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu was violently overthrown. This month marks the 18th anniversary of the revolution.

Director Jonathan Lim, 32, explaining his decision to ask the cast of 13 Singaporeans to deliver the lines with Romanian accents, says: 'I didn't want the actors or the audience to have a sense of familiarity at all.

'The accent makes the actors think differently when they perform and helps the audience to travel with us to a different place.'

He adds jokingly: 'You have to be careful with the Romanian accent. Lay it on more than just a tinge and you can start to sound like Count Dracula.'

Lim, the associate artistic director of theatre group Wild Rice, runs the young & Wild branch of the group, which was set up to train up-and-coming local performers like the 13 actors performing in Mad Forest.

Their first showcase was held earlier this year - a production of the considerably more lighthearted romantic comedy, On North Diversion Road.

This time, Lim wanted to stretch the actors more by selecting a play that 'still had an ensemble-based energy, but something heavier, with more depth and bite'.

As part of the preparation process, the cast played role-playing games as secret police agents and the people trying to escape persecution. They also did extensive research on the revolution, trawling the Internet for things like photographic documentation of the events as well as Romanian folk songs.

'There is so much material available now because of the Internet. We know more now about the revolution than the people who actually lived through it. The whole revolution is at your fingertips, so we really exploited the advantages of being in 2007 to the maximum,' says Lim.

This is also a significant play for him as he first saw a TheatreWorks black box production of it as a junior college student in 1991. It featured now-established local actors like Lim Yu-Beng and Gerald Chew.

'It was such a tiny space, such powerful actors, and this mercilessly powerful text,' he recalls. 'I had never seen Singapore theatre like that, it was very refreshing.

'It made me feel that there was more to Singapore theatre, that it could have this social bent.'

Directing his own version of this memorable play has been an enterprise of creating a tight-knit ensemble of performers who feed off one another's energy.

In his black box version, for instance, all 13 actors will be on stage throughout the play, even when they have no lines.

'No one will be alone,' he says. 'I don't remember the details of the 1991 production. It had a certain energy and I have tried to keep that.'

hxinyi@sph.com.sg

Mad Forest plays at The Republic Cultural Centre's Lab (Republic Polytechnic, 9 Woodlands Avenue 9) till Sunday, 8pm with 2.30pm weekend matinees. Tickets from Gatecrash (www.gatecrash.com.sg, tel: 6222-5595).

Mad Forest opens today!

After exhausting days of bumping in and setting up, we're all set to open! We're so proud of our front-of-house display, which took great effort and ingenuity to put together. The end result is worth it!

Take a few minutes before the play begins and during the interval to glance through the chronological pictures of the revolution. Many of them are incredibly powerful.

Looks familiar? The images from the front-of-house display are the very same ones we had on our research wall at our 27A Kerbau Road rehearsal space and have been part of our rehearsal world for the past three months.

More pics from the fight choreography that Yu Beng helped us with. Eleanor was clearly having the time of her life atop Qianchou.

Meanwhile, Terence gets slapped around.

Personal thrill: I've specially ordered these pendants as first-night gifts. I doubt any of them will be reading this entry before our call time at 9am tomorrow...I mean, today...so this will be a nice surprise :) Isn't it so apt?

fighting in the forest

Last week I invited actor Lim Yu Beng to come and help us work on the complex and potentially dangerous brawling scene at the end of Act3. Yu Beng was in the 1991 Theatreworks cast of Mad Forest - he played Radu (and his presence at rehearsals stressed Terence the current Radu considerably...) Its been 16 years and Yu Beng's memories of that show were hazy at first, but as we got into the scene, bits and pieces came back to him, and he recalled especially how explosively violent the brawl was back then.

The aim I had was to create a brawl that balanced the sudden explosion of long-harboured enmity with the ongoing development of character relationships - it needed to kick ass while at the same time continuing to unravel the individual character journeys.

By the end of the session, we'd developed a whole new brawl - very different from the one Yu Beng remembers, and very unusual in its dramatic precision.


It'll take your breath away! Come and see!