11 October 1999
The EDGE: Arts
The Peranakan's rise & fall
by Mohan Ambikaipaker


Ivan Heng, one of Singapore's most accomplished young theatre practitioners, is in Kuala Lumpur, where he is acting in Dramalab's production of the classic Stella Kon monologue Emily of Emerald Hill. In doing so, he is reviving the tradition of having men play female roles in theatre.

Heng is a product of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, as well as the Yale Drama School, and a law graduate from the National University of Singapore. He has been at the helm of the flourishing of Singapore's theatre arts in the last decade. He has also broken into the Hollywood film world and has acted in supporting roles in films like The Fifth Element.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: Why Emily? Why is there so much interest in the play and how did the project between you and Krishen Jit (the director of Emily of Emerald Hill) come about?

Ivan Heng: This play makes me think about who I was and where I am coming from because two of my grandmothers are Peranakan. But you know how Singapore is like, we have had our Peranakan-ness beaten out of us. In Singapore, you are not supposed to be Chinese, Indian, Malay you are Singaporean. And I think this is what has happened to the Peranakans.

All this was going on in my mind. I also happened to be coming to Kuala Lumpur often and meeting up with Krishen. It has been 10 years since we last worked together in the production of David Henry Hang's M Butterfly, another play where a male actor plays a female character. I asked him if he had been interested in directing me again, this time in Emily of Emerald Hill and he said yes. He was very enthusiastic about it.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: What has the rehearsal process been like?

Ivan Heng: To tell you the truth, before I came to the rehearsal, I didn't want to start. I was really scared, you know, that fear before the first word ever comes out. We had been to Melaka for research purposes to take in the atmosphere, the lights and smells of the Peranakan heritage. There is much that is olfactory and sensory here. I even got to put my hands on the old-time ice-cream maker that is in the Peranakan museum there. There is a scene in Emily of Emerald Hill where Emily gives instructions on how to use such an item. I had also been conducting some interviews with Peranakan families in Singapore.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: What are some of the big issues in this play?

Ivan Heng: The play has a certain weight to it. Who is this person Emily of Emerald Hill, a Peranakan woman? What was the Peranakan culture like? What is it that we want to convey about this culture?

The Peranakans were an aspirational people, who acted like the leaders of the pack, especially in the 1950s during their glory days. The play could be a museum piece, but that was not what we wanted to do. We wanted it to be alive, to take it  out of the museum. We wanted to create a kind of dramatic talk with the cultural or what Krishen calls the anthropological aspects of the play. Audiences usually sit down and passively consume it. We didn't want that. We are in theatre, not in film or television, and we have a definite kind of relationship
with the audience. You must do theatre for theatre. You must not do film. If you do film in theatre then theatre will die.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: But what do you do with the kind of anxiety that is felt in the play that the Peranakan culture is in fact in its death throes and about to be lost forever?

Ivan Heng: Who were these Peranakans? How come they were going to ballroom dancing classes and learning English and French and classical Malay? The play is about the rise and fall of these people.

How come all the big Peranakan fortunes were lost? They were interested in property you see, a big mistake. They were looking at the past, buying property and racehorses.

In the play, there is Emily's climb to the top and then her whole dispossession. But there is a fighting spirit, of not giving up until the last breath.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: If you see the play as a historical allegory to the passages of Peranakan culture, then how do you explain the way the Peranakans came about, and how they were so invested in creating a distinctive and unique identity that was found only in this region?

Ivan Heng: The way the Peranakans emerged as a culture is organic. You are a Chinese man who came to the Straits world but who didn't have Chinese wives. You married a Malay woman but spoke English. When the British overlords opened up this area, you worked hard and accumulated masses of wealth. Then you were also chosen to sit in the
colonial Legislative Assemblies because you could speak English and you had wealth; it was the possession of the language of power of the time.

Then because you have amassed so much wealth and you are holding on to fortune, your sons do not have to work. And they gamble it all away. So where are the entrepreneurs today? Where are the people who are thinking like you? They are now working for other people and not holding on to their private kingdoms.

The matriarchs of the family always ran the household and used to hold on to the purse strings. Men in a sense were kept and emasculated. You see this in the character of Emily's son, Richard. There is a whole decay that sets in.

These men were big, strong and beautiful. They dressed well and were wellgroomed and schooled. Their heydays were in the 1930s and then in the 1940s there was the war. Many of them were also involved in anti-Japanese activities, because they were Chinese and they were already involved with the British.

During some of my interviews, I discovered that during Sook Ching (the ethnic purges conducted by the Japanese army during World War 11 in Malaya), almost every Peranakan family lost someone. I mean they lost the uncles, the sons, the brothers who were taken away.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: What is your own personal entry point to the play?

Ivan Heng: How do you know if someone is Peranakan today? From the way they speak. But I don't speak like them yet I do remember how my grandmothers spoke. By the food they eat. For me, Peranakan food is now a New Year ritual or event when I go to my mother's house. And by whether or not you identify yourself as Peranakan; I haven't for many years, but then it has been hard for Peranakans to stand out and say they are Peranakan because of the whole Singaporean identity issue.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: Is there a parallel in Malaysia? There is still a strong sense of ethnic identity here and most people see the Peranakans as Chinese and not as a valid hybrid culture.

Ivan Heng: Well sure. You have three main categories: Chinese, Indian, and Malay. So what can you choose? Chinese.

My personal entry point to the play is the sambal belacan and black taufu that my father had to have everyday, and him speaking Malay to the servants. I mean Emily is a Chinese woman who cooks babi keluak.

And also in watching the old Peranakan plays. They were an educated community. But we are also trying to go beyond the community in this production. To suggest things about the Peranakans that is universal in its implications. We want to celebrate and that is why you will see Emily getting up and dancing. You can't save this culture by putting it into a museum glass case.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: But what is the conclusion of the play and the story of the Peranakans?

Ivan Heng: We did the final scene recently and it is where Emily fades away into a dream. Krishen and I said no. Krishen told me to fight. "Get angry!"

We never make her wallow. And there is no redemption of her character in the end, where she becomes revealed as nice.

Stella Kon has already written it with the words and we trust the playwright. But we also asked ourselves the question of why couldn't the director and actor give another layer, to add another dimension. Everyone who has a grandfather will get angry when they see this production. I think this is harder to do but braver. I think the
rewards will be greater.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: So is this a form of resurrection of culture and character?

Ivan Heng: We cannot resurrect it as it was. It has to change with time, or else it dies. The number of theatrical styles we used in the production, for example, stand-up comedy, Stanislavski realism, song
and dance, vaudeville and even some commedia del arte, is theatre for the MTV generation.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: How has it been for you as an actor to take on a woman's role again?

Ivan Heng: The wonderful thing about Emily is that she is all woman. The actor has to get in touch. I suspect that she is exactly like Kon's description of her in the first line of the play: "Age cannot wither her and custom kill her infinite variety." It is a line from Shakespeare about Cleopatra.

I am not afraid to get in touch. I find it interesting to make those leaps to be able to play my mother and sister. I just grow my nails and wear heels and I trust the playwright. I try to be as fit as I can and as rested so I can get into it.

Mohan Ambikaipaker: Do you think, though, that it may be difficult for a man to fully play a woman as there may be gender politics involved?

Ivan Heng: I think all plays are about love. That is a minor point I think to what we are trying to achieve in the play, which is to touch, provoke, challenge, scandalise, and tickle, and there is no need to be politically correct.

What do you mean by the politics. What do you think is difficult?

Mohan Ambikaipaker: Well, is your Emily a male imagining of a woman? You have said that in one big respect, you are trusting the playwright's word and that is a guide.

Ivan Heng: It is a man's imagining of a woman. And my imagination is vivid! She is here.
 

Go to the Dramalab website archive of Emily of Emerald Hill.