Reviewed by: Lift: Love is Flower thedir. by Jeff Chen Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco LIFT: LOVE IS FLOWER THE. Conception and direction by Jeff Chen in collaboration with Jean Ng, Loo Zihan, Noorlinah Mohamed, Nora Samosir, and Peter Sau. Additional texts by Robin Loon. TheatreWorks, Singapore. 17–2109 2013. When I arrived in Singapore in 2010, campaigns about kindness were posted over the island’s transport systems. The campaign was to prove to the world that Singapore society is a pleasant and a “happy” one. In 2012, a mobile telephone advertisement was flashed on television screens and movie houses with the slogan “Happy Everywhere,” criticizing the stereotype of Singapore society as being unhappy and apathetic. According to Oliver Chong, the assistant vice president of brand and marketing communications of the phone company, the advertisement was spurred because Singapore ranked as the most emotionless society in the world. Chong added that the campaign would proclaim to the world that as Singaporeans, “We can [each] be an ambassador of happiness to show the world the happy side of Singapore” (Jariel 2013). A similar project is the Happiness Revolution (THR), organized by Singaporean youths (undergraduate students of the Nanyang Technological University in 2012), with a working mantra: “Happy youths make for a healthier and more empowered society” (The Happiness Revolution n.d.). On 7 September 2013, TheatreWorks organized The Happiness Event, performed by eighty performers at the Supertree Grove of Gardens by the Bay. The performance-event presented thirteen short performances “Marking, reflecting and celebrating ‘happiness’ in many forms, ways and moments” [End Page 319](Noorlinah 2013). This performance was based on improvisations—mostly expressions in songs and dances inspired by performers’ discussions uploaded to a Facebook site created for the event. This performance-event was a “kind of teaser to a main event” (Martin 2013): LIFT: Love Is Flower The( LIFT), a performance conceived and directed by Jeff Chen on 17–21 September 2013. LIFTwas Jeff Chen’s return to the Singapore stage after ten years. My colleagues mentioned that my Singapore theatre experience would not be complete without a chance to see a performance conceptualized by Chen. My only prior knowledge of his works is based on reviews in which his productions were thematically scrutinized as radical, such as his adaptation of August Strindberg’s A Dream Playbilled as Asian Boys Volume 1(2000), considered a “milestone in the short history of Singapore gay theatre” (Koh 2000). Chen’s productions as the resident director of Singapore’s Necessary Stage are described as “risky, controversial, irreverent and difficult” (Martin 2013). A 2006 recipient of the Lee Foundation Study Grant and St. Edmund’s College Commonwealth Trust Grant to pursue doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge, Chen was Singapore theatre’s “enfant terrible” of the 1990s for his avant-garde directions. With support from the Lee Foundation, the Kuo Pao Kun Foundation, the National Arts Council of Singapore, and the Arts Fund, LIFT, in my view, participates in and deconstructs the happiness bandwagon of Singapore. The program indicates that LIFT“began with the concept of happiness which led to questions such as: What is happiness? Do you believe in the pursuit of happiness? Can happiness be pursued or found? Is it sustainable? Fleeting? Momentary? Short-lived?” These are questions posed by Jeff Chen and Noorlinah Mohamed in the LIFTprogram for TheatreWorks. Nevertheless, LIFT’s participation in the happiness advocacy of Singapore is, in my reading, a performance platform to deconstruct popular campaigns about happiness—from media ads where models give free hugs, sing while cooking in a hawker stall, or play the ukulele on a campus bus, signifying the happy side of the city-state. Chen and his collaborators are inviting their fellow Singaporeans to reflect on a more pressing issue: a search for “internal” happiness versus the artificial happiness provided by economic stability. The huge set by Wong Chee Wai invites audience members to visualize a corporate meeting room. A large isosceles trapezoid table with chairs is placed at the center, with a big window and door on the left side and cabinets and a door marked “Jury Room” on the right, implying a corporate law...
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Feb 13, 2017
Junjie Wu + 3
Open Access