Another Country

It was my very first time to watch this kind of stage performance. I was very excited when Dr. Carmen and Miss E said that we would be watching “Another Country” as our tutorial. It was also my very first time there at Damansara Performing Art Centre, it is indeed a beautifully-designed building.

At first, I thought "Another Country" would be a single narrative stage performance but surprisingly, the performance was about Singapore and Malaysia which were separated into two parts, namely Sayang Singapura and Tikam-tikam: Malaysia. The interesting part was the Malaysian actors would be acting in Singapore scenario while the Singaporean actors would be acting in Malaysia scenario.

There were three scenes impressed me somehow. Firstly, in “Sayang Singapura” , I like “The English Language Teacher’s Secret” scene which was written by Catherine Lim. It was entertaining, watching all the actors wearing school uniforms and they really acted like high school students, they were playful and busy gossiping. Moreover, I find it funny that their English language teacher acted by Anne James kept making examples by using the name of Dr. C to show that she was in love with Dr. C. This story actually reflected on most of the highly-educated Singapore women not having married because they were financially independent, which is quite common in Singapore.

Next, like most of us, I like “Mama Looking for Her Cat” scene which was written by Kuo Pao Lun. It made me realise that difference in languages does not cause a barrier to good communication among people, with body languages and gestures added on, of course. Boundary of languages does not stop us from helping each other. However, the true story behind this scene was actually to reflect that majority of the Singaporean children do not know their dialects but only English and Mandarin while the older generation could mostly speak in their mother tongue. The truth actually shocked me because what I thought was quite different from this as I mentioned above.

In “Tikam-tikam: Malaysia”, I like Leow Puay Tin’s “Ang Tau Mui”. All of us could see the satisfaction she showed on her face when she “ate” the pork. There was one of her lines impressed me, "eat pork also die, don't eat pork I also will die, of course I will choose to eat pork and die happily la". It reminded us to live happily all the time, do things we want to do and not to regret at a later stage for not doing them.

Furthermore, I was surprised about their memorising skill, they showed it perfectly in Tikam-tikam: Malaysia part as the flow of the performance was decided by the audiences. In addition, their facial expression and their powerful voice completed the whole performance. I even saw one of the actresses, Janice Koh made the sound effect herself for the other actress’s performance, and it was a good one. One thing that was out of my expectation was the decoration of the stage as there were not many props being used. But still, I did enjoy the show, hoping more to come.