6 January 2000
Straits Times Interactive (Singapore): Life!
Emily antics for HK fest
by Arti Mulchand

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KEBAYA MAN

Ivan Heng will reprise the role to test international audience with Peranakan traditions at the Hongkong City Festival. And he hopes to go global

EMILY is taking her Emerald Hill antics to Hongkong.

Actor Ivan Heng will be reprising the role at the Hongkong City Festival.

The play will run from Jan 20 - 26 at the festival, which is the month-long precursor to the Hongkong Arts Festival.

Heng first donned Peranakan beaded slippers as the steely matriarch of Stella Kon's award-winning play last year at Kuala Lumpur's Actors Studio Theatre.

It was the first time a man took the part and Malaysian critics noted that he was "in his element".

Co-directed by Malaysian Kishen Jit, the production is being staged by Heng's new theatre company, Wild Rice, and supported by a touring grant from the National Arts Council.

Heng told Life!: "Hongkong is our way of testing out the material for an international audience, who may not know the traditions of the Peranakan and where Emily comes from."

Nonetheless, the actor believes that the play will appeal to a Hongkong audience.

"There are many, many issues in Emily that exist on a universal level -- the idea of sexual and gender politics, the idea of love and the many forms in which it actually manifests itself, and the idea of inter-cultural negotiation that takes place within a person."

While it draws strongly from the vibrant Baba culture, Peranakan matriarch Emily takes on a spectrum of roles -- abandoned child, bewildered bride, confident society hostess, manipulative shrew and grieving mother -- as the script runs its course.

This is the second time Heng is performing a monologue in Hongkong.

He took his semi-autobiographical monologue Journey West there in 1995. And he also staged two plays, Hotdogs And Eternal Triangles and An Occasional Orchid, there in 1997.

But what he is really looking forward to, he says, is bringing the play home.

Corset-and-kebaya donning Heng -- who recently called "being a woman ... a bit of an eating disorder" -- will bring his pet project to Singapore in April. But he has big plans for Emily after that.

"The whole idea of Emily as a project is a process that began some time in April last year, and Hongkong is just part of that process. We're making improvements every part of the way."

And there is a long way to go, because he is hoping to stage the play in several cities in Europe, as well as North and South America later this year. "That's what it's about, the idea of being 'glocal', which means to say that we take the local and make it global, That has always been my agenda."

And it is also the agenda of Wild Rice, which Heng says will be committed to producing international touring productions of Singaporean and South-east Asian plays.

"Rice is a staple, and I think that's what the arts should be. Its an intrinsic part of life, not something that we should look at after our stomachs are full."

IVAN: On Emily and beyond

• HONGKONG is our way of testing out the material for an international audience, who may not know the traditions of the Peranakan and where Emily comes from.

• He hopes to stage the play in several cities in Europe, as well as North and South America later this year. The idea of being "glocal", which means to say that we take the local and make it global.

• He is looking forward to bringing the play home. 

Copyright © 1999 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved