{"id":2806,"date":"2019-08-11T05:56:26","date_gmt":"2019-08-10T21:56:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wr\/wr\/?p=2806"},"modified":"2019-12-18T17:42:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T09:42:24","slug":"listen-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/listen-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Listen Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tell us about your character you play in Supervision<\/em>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I play Jenny, who is part of the Sandwich Generation<\/a>. She has to look after an elderly, sickly parent and also care for her young children. That means she\u2019s constantly balancing her roles as a daughter and a mother, even as she\u2019s expected to be an economically productive member of society in an urban city that has an extremely high cost of living. That\u2019s a lot of emotional stress for one person to carry. In many ways, she\u2019s a walking time bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What resonates with you the most about Supervision?<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

For me, the most powerful thing about this play is that you have three different human conditions in the same room \u2013 each representing issues in society that we need to talk about more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have Jenny, the working mother juggling her duties as a daughter. I think a whole other play can be written about women like Jenny, who are trapped by the cultural norms and expectations of a patriarchal society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there\u2019s Yanti, an Indonesian helper who is employed to help take some of the burden off Jenny. Supervision<\/em> exposes the realities and emotional vulnerabilities of being a stranger working in someone else\u2019s home. It\u2019s one of the first plays to look at the migrant worker situation not through a political lens, but through an emotional, very human point of view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, you have Teck, who is facing growing difficulties in caring for himself. That\u2019s a very real and urgent issue in Singapore today, because we are an ageing society. The idea of living and growing old with dignity is something that, as a society, we haven\u2019t come to grips with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Janice laying down the law as Jenny<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Much of the drama in Supervision<\/em> comes from Jenny\u2019s decision to install hidden video cameras in her father\u2019s flat. Can you talk about how issues of privacy and surveillance feature in this play?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When we first approached the play, we all thought it was about those issues \u2013 what is it like to live with CCTV cameras everywhere, tracking your every move? But, as we kept working on it, we found the themes of surveillance and privacy fading more into the background. Because we discovered that the cameras were actually a symptom of deeper underlying problems \u2013 a lack of trust in a society that\u2019s now so dependent on inviting foreign domestic workers into our homes to help us with caregiving duties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show opened at last year’s Singapore Theatre Festival. Were you involved in developing the script?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Yes! We had a very strong initial draft from our playwright, Thomas Lim, which touched on the pertinent themes of the play. What we did in the rehearsal room was to anchor the characters in an emotional reality. We kept drilling down and asking questions that would help humanise our characters and keep them from being one-dimensional or stereotypical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m so glad Thomas was always really open to making changes, while resisting them when he felt he needed to. He really embraced our \u2018whys\u2019! He and our director, Glen Goei, were always open to adapting, changing and doing what was necessary to make the play better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Janice with Umi Kalthum Ismail, who plays Yanti. Together with Patrick Teoh, they\u2019re the first performers to grace the stage at The Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What has it been like for you to revisit this role in WILD RICE’s brand-new Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre? <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

In technical terms, it\u2019s been really interesting to perform this play on WILD RICE\u2019s new thrust stage. When we did the show in LASALLE College of the Arts last year, it almost felt like we were in a film. We were miked up, with audiences surrounding us on all sides, so we could internalise our performances a lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time around, the staging has affected the way we project our performances, both vocally and energetically. We have to reach the audiences in the balcony now, while still maintaining the play\u2019s naturalism. In that sense, it engages people even more \u2013 we invite audiences in a much more open way into the universe of the characters. It\u2019s a completely different experience as a performer and, I think, as an audience member too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With your fellow cast members, you’re making history in Supervision<\/em> – it’s the first play to be staged at WILD RICE @ Funan. What has that experience been like? <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Our opening night was something I have never experienced in my entire life as a performer, and I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever experience it again. There\u2019s always an adrenaline rush when you open a show. But to open a theatre and show on the same night \u2013 everything was at 200%! My hair was standing at every single moment because there was a sense of expectation and anticipation and energy from everyone in the room: from the cast and crew to those in the lighting box and the audience. The feedback we received from the audience was so powerful. I think this space really encapsulates the idea of how theatre brings a community together. For 90 minutes, the performers and audiences were bound together in a ball of energy, and it was an amazing<\/em> feeling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last but not least – what has theatre taught you? <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Working in theatre has taught me to listen. As an actor on stage, listening to our fellow cast members is our first job. We can only respond appropriately if we are constantly listening to the tone, to the text, to the body language of the person who\u2019s giving us the line before ours. When I perform, I\u2019m constantly reminded that listening is such a simple act \u2013 but one that we do quite poorly. I don\u2019t think we listen to one another\u2019s points of view enough. I\u2019ve done some inter-cultural work with artists who don\u2019t speak English. In these instances, we take a lot a lot of time to listen \u2013 through interpreters, through body language, through tonalities \u2013 and deeply understand one another without being patronising or condescending. And these experiences of listening and learning have enriched me a lot as a person. Even if I don\u2019t always do it well, I know it\u2019s a skill I want to continue to develop.
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Janice Koh opens up about Supervision and surveillance, performing in WILD RICE @ Funan for the first time, and what theatre has taught her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[45,74,75,29,61,76],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}