By Primrose

As part of the Singapore Writers’ Festival, Apart is a performance rendered by five poets – Cyril Wong, Tania de Rozario, Pooja Nansi, Joshua Ip and Jollin Tan – where its component parts of poetry, drama and music collapse into one and give it a distinguishing allure. Part of this strong emotional appeal lies in the confessional nature of the poetry being performed, with frequent interjections of expletives jolting the audience in its unabashed revelation of deep desires and anxieties. The play revolves around the figure of Uncle Andrew who is a homosexual – aptly played by Cyril Wong – with an intricate web of desires and frustrations of other characters weaved around Andrew. The feelings of displacement and isolation that form the central consciousness of the play lead to estranged relationships and a break down in understanding between individuals.

The state of isolation of individuals – already encoded in the title Apart – is accentuated through the monologues rendered by the characters while standing in the same space, ironically dramatizing the ineffectiveness of speech in forging understanding. The disjointed nature of the utterances of the characters evokes the modernist mode of ‘stream of consciousness’ through the randomness of thoughts that arise. Furthermore, the viewpoint of the characters is also accentuated by the oneiric mood created by the stage lighting which singly illuminates Andrew and the other characters while the rest of the stage is casted in darkness. The directed trajectory of the audience’s gaze to the single figure who is speaking establishes a certain intimacy between the character and the audience, almost as if we are connecting with their emotions and their thoughts.

Furthermore, what was particularly delightful was the word play on the word ‘apart’ where multiple realizations of the words are explored – go apart, fall apart, take apart and falling into parts. Despite the differing meanings the word yields, it centers on the state of brokenness, whether in terms of an individual’s state or relationships. This is exemplified by Andrew’s niece, played by Jolin, who battles with eating disorder and shares an estranged relationship with her parents who evade tricky problems to assume the façade of normalcy. Though both Jollin and Andrew suffer from the burden of meeting societal expectations of what constitutes normal and beautiful, what constitutes as normal in the eyes of society is also being contested through the figure of Jeffery. Consumed by pragmatic issues of work and sustainability, the ironic voice which dishes out advice to his children is portrayed to be rather vacant and jaded. Hence, the play – by portraying the adherence to societal norms as unthinking conformity – challenges the idea of normalcy as well as societal perception of who needs to be fixed.

The state of brokenness also characterizes the theme of love that runs through the performance, manifested in the various forms of self-love and love between family members and romantic partners. The yearning for sexual and physical intimacy – whether it is Andrew’s yearning for hugs or Jollin’s dream of being sexually involved with her classmate – is indicative of the profound sense of estrangement between loved ones that is no longer reconcilable through speech, hence requiring physical intimacy to fill the void which hinders communication.

In the translation of poetry on paper into performance and play, words that will otherwise remain static on paper are injected with a new vibrancy, after being subjected to modulation and improvisation.The beauty of this process lies partly in the affective quality of such a performance where the residual sense of pain and loss lingers on in the viewer. The organized form of thoughts in the form of poetry and poetic language break against its restraints when it is being verbalized and given a new form of life. In the unrestrained expression of emotions by the characters/poets in the play, there is always a moment whereby the viewer finds himself asking whether it is the poet or the character in the player talking.