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 |
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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.'
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).
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