Skip to main content

Advertisement

Advertisement

S'pore Fringe Fest 2012! Cane! `Nuff said!

“love letter” explaining his actions; the critical hoohah got picked up and regurgitated by the national newspaper; someone wrote in saying it shouldn’t be allowed because “cutting pubic hair again” was “silly, weird and crude”; and a respected artist – who’s been actively blogging about the issue – came up with an awesome rebuttal. The thing is, no one actually knew what was going to happen. Later this week, Loo will be putting up the video documentation of the Singapore version of Cane online. In the meantime, here’s what I saw over at The Substation theatre tonight. And contrary to the performance's detractors, it was not just about doing Brother Cane all over again. 
The 1955 Baling Talks). Step by step, Cane was an act of peeling away (or at least revealing) the layers that had surrounded the tragically infamous 1993 piece. It began with the version of the Singapore media – photocopied news articles and commentaries were circulated and flashed on two video screens as Zihan read portions of these (see main pic). From The New Paper article that sparked the whole fiasco to the institutional backlash to commentaries both pro and anti. That the selection spanned more than a year (from January 1994 to July 1995) said something about just how much it occupied the national imagination. It’s followed by the “legal” account of Brother Cane. An “adaptation” from Ng’s trial affidavit courtesy of academic/artist (and longtime-Singapore performance art follower) Ray Langenbach – who flew in from Malaysia to read his original text.
also re-enacted by Loo) by getting art critic Lee Weng Choy to hit him with a ruler, fell flat. I was horrified that Ng’s proxy had seemingly treated the whole post-show discussion as joke when obviously it meant so much, not only to Loo, but the audience. By being the one unscripted, “authentic” part of this performance, it revealed the complexities of the project of re-enactment – but at what cost? When a more serious, sympathetic proxy – instead of sneering that we’ve lost an excellent artist – could have opened up to a more informed discussion about censorship, performance art (and forum theatre) and Brother Cane itself. There was another interesting point made by an artist after the show. Throughout Cane (and even before it), we had focused on that event in 1993. Much of the discussion has been about the trauma that had inadvertently affected performance art for a decade. But the very event that actually brought about Brother Cane, the anti-gay operation in Tanjong Rhu, hasn't actually been brought up. Said artist wanted to bring it up at the post-show dialogue. But given the bizarre turn of events to end such an enlightening, though-provoking night, he was unable to do so.  Let's continue our discussion of Cane and Brother Cane shall we? (UPDATE: Here's a link to some photos documenting the event. Courtesy of Samantha Tio, aka Mintio. And here's a link to the performance script.)

Read more of the latest in

Advertisement

Advertisement

Stay in the know. Anytime. Anywhere.

Subscribe to get daily news updates, insights and must reads delivered straight to your inbox.

By clicking subscribe, I agree for my personal data to be used to send me TODAY newsletters, promotional offers and for research and analysis.