Looming the Memory

Guiness Theatre, The Substation
7-8 January 2009

Part of the M1 Singapore Fringe festival

Who would’ve thought a handmade rug  could transport us to a rural village in Greece? Thomas Papathanassiou does just that. His astounding one man show, Looming the Memory, is a memoir that draws on the theme of identity, family, heritage, and home – things that are close to the hearts of people in immigrant countries such as Singapore.

The stage is bare but for a rug rolled on the floor. The play opens with childhood memories: an old woman at her loom, weaving strips of garment of a deceased relative – weaving the memories. As the play unfolds and the rug unrolls, snippets of memories are brought to life, one interwoven with the other.

Thomas Papathanassiou’s parents migrated from Greece to Australia, leaving all their relatives behind. Papathanassiou spent part of his childhood in Greece and he tries to explore his own  family history through stories told by relatives and neighbours during his visits to Greece many years later. He discovers untold grudges, connections, and stories through his conversations with people from his childhood.  It’s his  struggle to understand where he actually belongs, as with many migrant children who never feel they fully belong to one place.

Papathanassiou plays eighteen characters that makes up episodes of the story, including grandmothers, uncles, neighbors, himself and a chicken, very effectively – even when they are conversing between themselves. With just the slightest change in posture or expression we can easily identify the character he’s become. The transition between characters are done seamlessly, making it look almost effortless.

With his powerful emotions and effective story-telling, we are taken through a crowded market, rows of fig trees, an old school building, just as if we are walking with the characters themselves. We can feel the festivity of a dance, the blue skies and warm sun of a Greek summer, and the commotion of a village fire.

As we leave Greece, the rug is rolled up and the characters were flashed once again in rapid succession without Papathanassiou ever losing one bit of control or intensity. The phrase uttered at the end reverberates with me: it is a difficult thing to have your heart in two places. This journey of self-discovery asks us to question ourselves how family and culture has shaped us to who we are.

Looming the Memory is a very personal and intimate storytelling that grabs the audience’s attention right from the beginning and doesn’t let go until the end.

Thomas Papathanassiou trained in Curtin University (Theatre / Literature), WAAPA (Music Theatre), and VCA (Grad. Dip. in Animateuring – Performace Creation). He is an actor, writer, choreographer, dramaturge, and theatre-maker. Looming the Memory won Best Actor (2006 Perth Theatre Trust Equity Guild Awards) and Best Production (2007 Blue Room Theatre Awards)

The Vagina Monologues in Singapore

Went to watch Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues the other day at the National Library’s Drama Centre. Apparently it’s the inaugural production of the local theatre company Zebra Crossing. There was a Cantonese production of the same play a few weeks before, but for obvious reasons I didn’t catch it. Maybe it’s not obvious enough – I don’t speak Cantonese. The Vagina Monologue is an award winning play that consists of a few short monologues told by women on different aspects of the vagina or femininity including its physical appearance, love, sex, rape, etc.

I haven’t watched the original, so this is just my observations. This time the version departs from the original monologue, involving between 1 to 9 women for each ‘chapter’ of the play. Among them a woman who couldn’t say the word ‘Vagina’, a know-thy-vagina camp (led by a cartoonish French accented sergeant), a transsexual looking for acceptance, and a bunch of drunken housewives telling stories of abuse by their husbands.

I applaud their effort to localise many of the contents by including references to local heritage such as the inclusion of an Indian woman, Malay, Chinese, and Eurasian. Although I think some parts still seemed a little too American.  In emphasizing the local flavor they threw in some local phrases (Hokkien, Malay, Singlish, Tamil) that made it sound a little school-theatrelike to me. But they drew laughter from the audience nonetheless. It seems that local curses or exclamations is one of the best recipe to entertain Singaporean film-watchers and theatre-goers. There was even pole-dancer that showed off a bit of her skills. But left me with “What was that for?”. But some of the scenes are genuinely touching and funny and do work most of the time. Could do a little better on the costume for the ‘dominatrix’, tho. She looks more like a Panic at The Disco fan than a dominatrix.

I did cringe badly once during the show. There was a chapter where the actresses in school uniforms were acting as teenage girls who talked about their first period while running around the first few rows of audience and showering them with tampons and sanitary pads. Then one of them took a huge bottle of Vagisil (the production’s sponsor) and shrieked “I WANTED TO USE VAGISIL!” followed by some corporate advertising catchphrase, echoed by the other girls. Ugh.

Anyway, it was much entertaining and seventeen bucks well spent. (This cheapskate bought the cheapest available)