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 Ang
Tau Mui
Director's Message
Who? What? Where? When? Why? How do the people (real and
imagined) and events (big and small) of our lives add up? And how
does one come to terms with the person that one becomes? In
investigating Ang Tau Mui’s desires, penchants and obsessions (not
least, with death), we have had to confront the possibility of our
own.
I am thrilled that audiences in Singapore will once again be able to
experience a Leow Puay Tin play. She is an artist who confidently
experiments with chants, songs, interviews, improvisations and found
stories, often quoting from popular culture in her works. In her
inimitable and original style that springs from South East Asian
storytelling sensibility, she has somehow managed to capture a
rhythm that is primal, almost naïve, not unlike the childhood
rhymes.
 It
is a great pleasure to be working again with the multi-talented
Selena Tan, who represents the very best of an exciting new
generation of theatre practitioners in Singapore. I am impatient to
see her play her very special Ang Tau Mui for and with an audience,
and as only she knows how.
A fine and accomplished creative team has assembled to respond to
the written text. I expect the freedom and playful energy of the
collaboration will have a great impact on the show you are about to
see. Over the weeks of rehearsals, we have made day trips to
Malacca, taken over shopping centre toilets and visited temples.
Encouraged by Puay Tin’s writing style, we shall be developing and
weaving parallel “texts” of live and original music (Jason Ang on Er
Hu), video (Casey Lim), lighting design and performance into some
semblance of a structure. It is a strategy that aims to enrich the
performance and make the theatrical encounter more essential, more
reverberant, and yes, more entertaining.
I wake up each morning and turn on my mobile phone, collect my
e-mails, read the Straits Times, and check my Palm (Pilot). All this
is very fine. Until it dawns on me that I am running…on other
people’s treadmills.
- Ivan Heng
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