The Continuum: Beyond the Killing Fields (review)

Abstract

THE CONTINUUM: BEYOND THE KILLING FIELDS. By Theatre-Works. Conceived and directed by Ong Keng Sen. International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut. June 30, 2001. The Continuum: Beyond the Killing Fields, a project produced by the Singapore company TheatreWorks and directed by Ong Keng Sen, had its world premiere at the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, Connecticut, in June 2001. The piece is a moving exploration of the ability of traditional art forms to speak to new realities. Continuum is part documentary and part experimental performance about Cambodia's recent past and the process of four Cambodians using their art to come to terms with that past today. Between one and two million Cambodians died from execution, torture, illness, or starvation during Pol Pot's three-and-a-half-year rule (1975-1979). The regime targeted performing artists in particular because of their association with the court, and only 10 percent of them survived. These few survivors have spent the last two decades piecing together the remnants of their performance traditions and passing them on to the next generation. The Continuum weaves together stories of life and death under Pol Pot as told by three classical dancers and one shadow puppeteer with excerpts from the classical Cambodian dance repertoire, dance training exercises, shadow puppetry, evocative music by Japanese musician and composer Yen Chang, and documentary video by Noorlinah Mohd. The performance features the extraordinary artistry of master dancer Em Theay, her daughter Thong Kim Ann, principal dancer for the Royal Government of Cambodia Kim Bun Thorn, and shadow puppeteer Mann Kosal. The piece centers on the performer and teacher Em Theay, who at age sixty-nine dances with the grace of a twenty-year-old and the pure joy of a child as she reprises the classical dances she performed in the palace as a young woman, as well as songs she sang for children at a children's community during the Pol Pot regime. These dances and songs punctuate the emotional stories she tells about her past-the death of two of her children and the loss of three hundred friends from the world of performance to the Cambodian genocide. Her gentle movements and lively spirit evoke the lost courtly world in which she grew up. Continuum opens with a video of Em Theay and her students performing a sampeah kru, a ritual honoring deities, spirits, and teachers that is often enacted by dancers before they undertake a new project or learn a new role. Em Theay insisted on having this ceremony before beginning her work on the piece, and the video introduces us to her in her home environment where she is a gentle, wise matriarch surrounded by devoted students. She seems to be ubiquitous: correcting dance postures, keeping time by clapping her hands, and preparing religious offerings. Her students rely on her as their link to a lost past, and she is a role model for them in her dancing, her adherence to traditional practices, and her love of dance. At the end of Continuum she tells the audience that, although she is retired, she continues to teach because she loves her culture and her art, which, she says, is the spirit of her nation. The video sequences project images of Cambodia today and teach about the art forms demonstrated in the production and the political past. They also interrelate effectively with the stage action. At one point, video images of a young Cambodian slaughtering and skinning a cow follow some of the onstage accounts of the performers' harsh experiences under Pol Pot. The audience inevitably links the flesh being torn apart on screen to Pol Pot's genocide. …