Air

by Zulfadli Rashid
Drama Box

The Esplanade: The Studios
Singtel Waterfront Theatre, Singapore

The Esplanade Studios enters the second year of its three-year exploration of the theme of land with this restaging of Air by Drama Box, formerly presented as part of a double bill in 2019. Written by Zulfadli Rashid and co-directed by Adib Kosnan and Kok Heng Leun, it's a searing piece of verbatim theatre that excavates the hidden stories behind the Orang Seletar, a displaced indigenous coastal community in Singapore which has now relocated to the southern coast of Johor. 

Based on hundreds of hours of interviews and structured around a research field trip made by the team to the Orang Seletar villages earlier this year, we gain an insight into a community who have been all but effaced from the national consciousness. Their traditional seafaring way of life has had to bow down to the pressures of industrialisation and encroaching development with no compensation being offered to them for the loss of their homes. Indeed, it is a painful irony that this work itself is being staged in the Singtel Waterfront Theatre, a development built on reclaimed land.  

The four performers (Dalifah Shahril, Rizman Putra, Saiful Amri and Suhaili Safari) inhabit a series of characters from different age groups with earnestness, depicting their various occupations and daily routines and strong belief in 'ilmu', a word that goes far beyond its usual Malay translation as knowledge and reflects a series of customs, traditions and deep spirituality that is passed down from one generation to the next. There is both bitterness in the way these people have been displaced from the waters that once sustained them but quiet resilience and warmth in how they take things in their stride and generously welcome outsiders into their homes. 

Audience members sit on both sides of Mohd Fared Jainal's whitewashed, boat-like set that is slowly wrapped around with fishing nets, an image that not only underscores the coastal environs but a community marooned in a sea of uncertainty. The surtitling work by multimedia artist Jevon Chandra may prove a little confusing at first but has a poetic resonance of its own, words and phrases lingering on the screen and bleeding into the other text. It's a reminder of the voices that get lost in our relentless march to progress and whose narratives end up getting championed. 

There's so much more that can be said about this vital, generous and moving production and the post-show dialogue in particular is a real eye-opener into the inequalities that continue to exist in our society. One would only hope that a show like this sparks a genuine conversation and leads to a more nuanced understanding of displacement.

The Crystalwords score: 3.5/5