{"id":27777,"date":"2006-07-04T06:57:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-04T06:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27777"},"modified":"2024-03-14T13:35:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T05:35:59","slug":"artistic-intifada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/artikel\/2006\/07\/artistic-intifada\/","title":{"rendered":"Artistic Intifada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

The Wall: Breaking point<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representing the concrete wall being\nbuilt to fence off the West Bank from the rest of Israel are seven huge grey\nvertical panels on the stage at the Drama Centre, Singapore. These panels dwarf\nthe seven characters whose lives revolve around the towering slabs. But just\nwhen their misery reaches breaking point, everyone disappears. And as\nTchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” pours out onto the\nempty stage, these panels, which represent the conflict and the suffering,\nbegin to dance. It’s brilliantly funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good humour and plenty of sharp wit\nis what made the play by Ramallah-based company Al Kasaba Theatre and Cinematheque <\/strong>entitled, simply, The Wall<\/em>, one of the most compelling\nproductions to grace the Singapore Arts Festival 2006.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The imposing monoliths that form the\nonly backdrop represent the topic-du-jour in the ongoing drama of political\nfollies that have plagued the Palestinian and Israeli people alike. Perhaps\nparallels with the wall that Hitler built to fence in the Jewish ghetto is lost\non the Israeli government, but the impact of this structural monstrosity is not\nlost on the people whose lives are directly spliced by the imposing barrier\ninto as many pieces as life’s troubles take, as illustrated by Palestinian\ndirector George Ibrahim<\/strong> in his\nlatest satire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ibrahim, with his talented cast of\nseven actors, wages his artistic intifada on this surreal political development\nby weaving together a series of short, sharp witted tableaux around characters\nwho run the gamut of ordinary folk, amongst them a father with secret dreams of\na career in theatre, a self-taught teacher, a hardy entrepreneur with her own\ntailoring business, a stable hand tending to a winning horse, a young man\nexperiencing his first taste of love, an old man pining for his wife who has\nended up on the wrong side of the wall, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each character has his or her own\ncharm — and each endearingly played by the wonderful ensemble cast — but I\nfelt most deeply for the resilient woman who sees her tailoring business space\ngradually shrinking, from shop to stall to hand basket. “I always figure\nit out somehow,” she declares confidently even as the world collapses\naround her. It was painfully funny and cleverly told, and a powerful sense of\ntragedy descended like a final curtain when her “never-say-die”\nattitude and iron will is eventually crushed, suffocated by the wall.\n“Take the stall, I hate the stall!” she cries bitterly, and Ibrahim’s\nsardonic tragicomedy hit harder at the gut than a sniper bullet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wall<\/em> is\na wonderful tapestry of simple little sketches depicting the simple hopes and\naspirations of its characters who have little sense of what is going on about\nthem apart from their daily concerns — to spend time with a loved one, to eke\na living, to live a dream — brilliantly told through folk-like play, song and\ndance and classic soliloquy, its sabre-sharp satire subtly colouring the\ndeceptively modest material, sometimes rising to an uproarious pitch of\nabsurdity as in the Little Red Riding Hood skit (Red is a young Palestinian girl\nwho dodges the Big Bad Wolf, i.e. Israeli Solider, in attempt to visit her\ngrandmother) then nose-diving into the sublime: a father who is killed in\ncrossfire finds dilemma even in death — a sort of “nak hidup pun susah,\nnak mati pun susah,” that brilliantly ushers in the climactic recital of\nHamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” by his corpse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was expecting a lot of\nbreast-beating about the topic but The\nWall<\/em> turned out to be filled with human dignity, and cried out for the same\nfor its victims. And around the main theme Ibrahim also found time to question\nthe role of women in Palestinian society, and pose the question that every\naspiring suicide bomber should contemplate — is death really preferable to\nlife?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeruselam Dreaming: Wounded soul<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clambering over the wall to the\nother side of the great divide, the Singapore Arts Festival cleverly brought in\nthe other side of the story, where a deeply spiritual people also long for the\nvery same things in life — love and a connection with God — told through the\nbizarre vocal antics of the stunning and wonderfully weird Victoria Hanna<\/strong> and her concept work Jerusalem Dreaming<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s the sort of perspective that we\nMalaysians badly need — but will sadly never get. Perhaps it’s too\ninconvenient to have to think of the people east of the wall as people, as\nhuman beings, rather than “the oppressor”, the mask of the bogeyman\npurposefully ensuring a common demon at whom to cast stones, rather than\nindividuals of flesh and blood who love, desire, yearn, hope and feel. After\nall, it is far more difficult to hate a real person, one who loves music, like\nwe do, one who plays cricket, like we do… One has to be carefully taught, and\nthen systematically shielded from reality, to be able to perpetuate an\nirrational hatred of a community with whom we have never had any contact, and\nwhom our passports explicitly ensure we never will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching Victoria Hanna was\ncertainly a liberating experience for me, and I would recommend it to every\nMalaysian before they spit at her national flag. First of all it was the\nlanguage, which bears some textural similarity to Arabic, the latter sensual,\nthe former more rhythmic. Then it was the music, which seemed to flow forth\nnaturally from the depths of the wounded soul. And Hanna’s sense of humour, her\nwit, and above all, her reverence for her religion tempered by a total artistic\nfreedom and liberty with the traditional scriptural material, which was most\nenlightening of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hanna, more a vocal artist\n(acrobat?) than a “normal” singer, challenged audiences in ways they\nhad never expected, at least nothing that the programme nor her opening songs,\nvery austere spiritual compositions based on ancient Hebrew texts, let on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once everyone was comfortably lulled\nby the haunting beauty of her tangerine voice and the soulful Jewish mellismas\nof her accompanist Nori Jacoby on the viola, Hanna began cranking the gear up\non her performance. When she delivered a reverent ode on a prayer that thanked\nGod for a smooth time at the loo, the audience could smell trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hanna unleashed the full power and\nfury of her art, discarding her chaste shawl along the way to reveal herself as\na provocative artist rather than the nice daughter of a Rabbi seen at the\nstart, her voice rising from shy whispers to rap to howling screams as she\ninterpreted various verses from the sensual scripture of Solomon’s Song of\nSongs in most stunning and imaginative ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time she reached\n“Apples,” sung as she precariously downed an entire basket of the\nfruit bite by crunchy bite, defying table manners by singing with her mouth\nfull and not offering her guest any, her impudence amplified by the live-mixed\nvideo that played on the backdrop, there was no turning back. Was the apple\nchewing symbolic or simply rhythmic? Yahweh only knows. Even while looking\nserious and reverential, Hanna treats scripture as material for her wild\nartistry, and leaves interpretation to the audience, who was obviously not sure\nwhether to laugh or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hanna’ Jerusalem Dreaming<\/em> was an unforgettable performance of stunning\naural and visual art, completed by the brilliant harmonics of the all-girl\nIsraeli Contemporary String Quartet, the honeyed voice of Palestinian oud\nplayer Sameer Makhoul that could make one fall in love, the mournful fiddle by\ncomposer Nori Jacoby that echoed centuries of his people’s longings, and even a\nGerman and a Mongolian throat singer thrown in for good measure (the throat\nsingers were novel but was a little too much).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end Jerusalem Dreaming<\/em> showed that on the other side of the great\nconcrete barrier people spoke the same inner language and possessed the same\nsense of humour about human failings. Now if only we could do away with the\npoliticians…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CH Loh is a Malaysian in Singapore. He just quit his day job to become a freelance writer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 04.07.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall: Breaking point Representing the concrete wall being built to fence off the West Bank from the rest of Israel are seven huge grey vertical panels on the stage at the Drama Centre, Singapore. These panels dwarf the seven characters whose lives revolve around the towering slabs. But just when their misery reaches breaking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7778,7764,7780,7774,7762],"tags":[4269,4271,4270,4276,4273,40,4274,4277,509,4275,736,4268,46,4272],"writer":[7831],"class_list":["post-27777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-perayaan","category-muzik","category-seni-persembahan","category-ulasan","category-teater","tag-al-kasaba-theatre-and-cinematheque","tag-drama-centre","tag-george-ibrahim","tag-israel","tag-israeli-contemporary-string-quartet","tag-music","tag-nori-jacoby","tag-palestine","tag-performance-art","tag-sameer-makhoul","tag-satire","tag-singapore-arts-festival","tag-theatre","tag-victoria-hanna","writer-ch-loh-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27777"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38885,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27777\/revisions\/38885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27777"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}