Getting to Know You

by Edward Eng
Gangguan! Theatre
Goodman Arts Centre Black Box, Singapore

So much of theatre depends on the relationship between actor and audience: sharing a common space, getting comfortable with one another and surrendering to a live experience that can never be replicated. In Getting to Know You, presented by young theatre collective Gangguan! Theatre, playwright Edward Eng pushes the boundaries even further. There are no rehearsals. Two actors are presented with a script moments before they go onstage. They only see their individual lines and discover the characters they play in real time along with the audience. Each performance features a different pair of actors. 

It's an ambitious theatrical experiment and even if the concept is interesting, it falters in its execution. In order for a show like this to work, one needs both a compelling script and a pair of actors who are able to embrace anything that is thrown at them. Eng, unfortunately, gives us a rather tired piece featuring two thirty-something former lovers, Alex and Eri, who reconnect in a nightclub on New Year's Eve after years apart. On a stage littered with balloons, confetti and tinsel, they jest and banter, trading tales of past relationships and present struggles into the small hours of the night. 

At the closing performance I attended, actors Vanessa Toh and Izzul Irfan do their utmost to breathe life into these characters - a free-spirited podcaster who has spent several years abroad and a civil servant-turned-baker who has traded a conventional career to pursue his passions. They are tentative at first, pausing respectfully and getting acquainted with the rhythm of the text before slowly surrendering to the demands of the script. Yet, the chemistry between the pair never quite takes flight.

There is an artificiality to the whole enterprise that one simply cannot shake off. Eng and co-director Tan Hui Er's attempts to involve the audience feel forced. Every now and then, the lights dim and an audience member seated in a corner is tasked with playing narrator, dutifully reading out lines of chunky exposition that are meant to add to the backstory. Elsewhere, specific audience members are told to hand props such as a cigarette or Polaroid camera to the actors. These moments, while occasionally comical, end up disrupting the flow of the actors who themselves are trying to negotiate the demands of a script neither has seen before. 

Getting to Know You wants to tell a meaningful story about the fragility of modern relationships while simultaneously turning the act of performance itself into an experiment. The problem is that these two ambitions never quite reconcile themselves. As audience members, we become acutely aware of two actors struggling to conjure up a story, and never quite end up buying into the story itself. I found myself reflecting on Nassim Soleimanpour's White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, where an actor encounters a sealed script for the first time and negotiates it together with the audience. While a lot depends on the individual actor, there is an element of trust and respect for the audience in that play that simply does not exist here. Seeing the two actors peer at their scripts and wait for the next cue, I could not shake off the sense that I was watching a school drama rehearsal. 

There is much to admire in a young company willing to take this kind of risk and I am aware that my experience may be different from those who watched the production on other days. Yet, the fact remains that this form of experimental theatre is a tall ask for the audience. It might appeal to a theatre crowd keen for something unusual but is unlikely to float the boat for new audiences. In getting to know each other through the contours of a play, the actor and audience should not end up getting lost. 

The Crystalwords score: 2/5