The Boy Who Asked Too Many Questions Charles asks Ms Tan, his biology teacher one too many questions. She thinks he is trying to be difficult. He thinks she is very harsh. Charles finds himself gagged and bound; and asked to stand outside the classroom. He does not know why.
"The Boy Who Asked Too Many Questions" is a short satiric film of a student’s encounter with the school system and the unexpected collisions that happen when one side cannot understand the other. It premiered at the Singapore International Film Festival 2000 held at the Goethe Institute. It was subsequently webcast on IFILM, Video Google and YOUtube. It continues to be downloaded and seen by audiences in all corners of the world, every day.
Three Children, an emotionally compelling and intellectually satisfying short play by the Malaysian author Leow Puay Tin, is, I find, very difficult to describe. That's because it's an uncommonly abstract work; it's a ride through the jungle of memory: a string of stories yet not a story itself, but rather a meditation on the idea of home and our attraction to it as an ideal and an actual place: it's not about anything but instead and always about something. Indeed, it begins, "There once was a something...a something, like a temple on a hill, a well of sweet water—where is it now?" And it ends, "Ride, ride, ride...On my horse, my faith. Ride, ride, ride. Riding among trees. Ride, ride, ride..."
In between, we spend an hour with the three title characters—a young man and two young women—who are brother and sisters, or not; who are children, or not; traveling (in the outermost layer of the complicated structure of the play) toward the place where they grew up, where one of them was given away while still a baby, where all have not been for a very long time; traveling (in the successive inner layers of this most onion-like play) through the stories and legends and fairy tales and old wives' tales they absorbed when they were growing up, and through the injustices and heartaches and unabated feelings of not belonging, of being outside, of being somehow "wrong" and "apart" that they've accreted now that they're grown.
The play takes place in Asia (specifically in Malaysia, with flashbacks to China), but what it says is resonant regardless of where you're from.
At the same time, the experience of it—for this is a play that you can't just passively watch; this is a complex work that pulls you in as participant—is undeniably alien to those used to Western theatre.
It's performed by three remarkably versatile actors, Charlotta Mohlin, Tijuana Ricks, and Rob Lok, who utilize movement, gesture, and voice to evoke many different characters and locations; under the precise, thoughtful direction of Alec Tok, they take us to all the places the play goes to, most of which are literal but many of which are metaphorical (i.e., inside human hearts). I love that this cast is multi-ethnic, thus pointing up the underlying universality of the play's themes and easing us, via familiar guides speaking unaccented English, into the world of this Chinese Opera-styled work of theatre.
There's also a narrator (uncredited in the program; is it Tok himself?) who infuses himself in the proceedings only very occasionally; and a drummer, Yuan Peng Cheng, who provides vivid ambient background on a variety of percussive devices.
There's practically no scenery at all—just a chair and a tiny stepstool—but there's lots of light (design by Mahayana Landowne), here picking out actors in tiny circles as they inhabit ever-new personalities telling us and each other their remembered stories, there flooding the playing area as those remembered tales begin to assume epic proportions, as tales will from time to time.
What are the stories about? A family torn asunder for money; another family torn asunder by lust; another family torn asunder by obsessive gambling. Compromises, manipulations, exchanges. Trying to find the right size shoes. They float by like half-remembered dreams, sometimes as little skits or playlets, sometimes just in fragments that must be pulled together.
Three Children is playful, funny at times, sad in places; it can be profoundly wise and it is, as theatre must be, fleeting and ephemeral. It's a beautiful and engaging way to pass an evening, especially in the blissfully informal surroundings (upstairs at Bennigan's restaurant) where its producers, the Unofficial New York Yale Cabaret, have housed it. UNYYC is a brand new company and, if this is indicative of what we can expect of them, one to keep both eyes on.
And playwright Leow Puay Tin, who has created this most wise, delicate, and poetic play, is an artist I hope we will see more of in the future as well.
Wu Wencong in performance for "Three Children" at The Black Box, Shanghai Theatre Academy.
Yang Wenqi in a scene from "Three Children".
Hou Zhongping in a scene from "Three Children".
"Three Children" performers, Yang Wenqi, Wu Wencong and Hou Zhongping.
"Three Children" performers Hou Zhongping, Wu Wencong and Yang Wenqi rehearsing at the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
Director Alec Tok (standing, far right) watching rehearsal with students of the Shanghai Theatre Academy.
The NYC Cast of "Three Children" arrived in Hong Kong on 2, 3 & 4 November 2006. Photo above shows (left to right) Ryan King, Jennifer Lim & Daphne Raines at Times Square, NYC.
The NYC Cast of "Three Children" arrived in Hong Kong on 2, 3 & 4 November 2006. Photo above shows (foreground) Jennifer Lim, Ryan King & Daphne Raines (background) in a scene from "Three Children"'s run at the Hong Kong Fringe Club.
Percussionist Heidi Lok adding drama and colour to the run of "Three Children" at the Hong Kong Fringe Club.
Daphne Gaines and Jennifer Lim performing "Three Children" at the Korean International School.
Ryan King, in a scene from "Three Children" at the Korean International School.
"Three Children" performers, Jennifer Lim, Ryan King (foreground) and Daphne Gaines (background) rehearsing a scene at Players Theatre, NYC.
