Student Directed: Reflection (10%)

___________________________
Meg Wee Siow Mun
Theatre 4C
Director
The Chair (A Peranakan Tapestry) by Desmond Sim

1. Text, Context and Ideas Presented in the Play

A Singaporean born and bred, Desmond Sim is a local artist who,
apart from being a playwright, is also a poet, a short-story writer
and a painter. After winning both first and second prize in the
NUS/Shell Short Play Competition in 1990 for Red man, green man
and Story teller, Sim went on to write plays on a larger scale. Apart
from The Chair (A Peranakan Tapestry), he has also written other
plays like Drunken Prawns. Teochew Porridge and Autumn
Tomyum.
The Chair (A Peranakan Tapestry) follows the Lim family and
generation-by-generation, tells the unique stories each family
member has. The play consists of ten characters, spanning from Mr
Lim Ah Choon, the head of the family who had sailed to Nanyang
from China in 1826, to his great great grandson Dr. Aaron Lim in the
early 2000s.
Desmond Sim wrote this play for the Singapore Peranakan
Association and because of his roots as a Peranakan, he feels
strongly for some of the issues raised in The Chair (A Peranakan
Tapestry). When writing this play, he had drawn heavy inspiration
from objects that were passed down to him from his Peranakan
ancestors, like the chair the namesake of the play for example,
and from stories he heard as a child from his grandmother.
This play is set to span across several significant time periods.
Modern Singapore was founded and developing from 1820s
onwards, which is the time Lim Ah Choon, Mrs Lim Ah Choon, Guan
Hoe, Mrs Lim Guan How and Swee Lian were set in. Ah Choon had
left for Singapore in the late 1820s for better job opportunities,
something that was extremely common among the Chinese
immigrants, and ended up staying there even though it was

something he never really wanted. This also tied in with the theme
of

belonging,

one

that is

prevalent

amongst all

characters

throughout the piece. Home signified different things for Mr Lim Ah

Choon and his wife. She had left everything in order to lead a life
with him, and so to her, home was where he was. For him, however,
his heart was rooted in China.
Guan Hoe, Mr and Mrs. Lim Ah Choons son, was coined the
Godfather of the Singapore River. Through this, we can see how
the social status had completely flipped, and that Guan Hoe now
had the higher end of the stick, as compared to his father. This was
partially why he was able to have the freedom of having a second
wife, even without getting a divorce from his first, showing how
society was like back in the 1880s.
The story of Guan Hoes son, Jonathan, and his wife Evelyn
strongly ties in with the theme of religion. The Lims have always
been a very religious family when it came to Buddhism, and when
Jonathan marries a woman who is not only not a traditional
Peranakan bride, but also a Christian; the family bonds weaken and
threaten to break apart. This shows us how religion had bonded the
family as one, and how Evelyn was and outsider, and would never
truly belong. By going against his parents wishes and marrying
Evelyn, we can also see how tradition has slowly diluted generationby-generation. To Jonathan, traditional Peranakan beliefs no longer
mattered. As long as he had a charming, talented wife, everything
would be okay.
However, we are able to see how desperately his future
generations, Jonathan Jr. and Dr. Aaron Lim, are trying to hold on to
their culture, very unlike Jonathan and Evelyn, through the way they
question their identity and try to build their culture and heritage

back

to

the

state

it

originally

was.

2. My Artistic Responses and Explorations

At the beginning of this process, I had trouble choosing between
The Chair and The Durian Man and His Daughters another one
of Desmond Sims plays. Logistically, The Durian Man and His
Daughters was a more ideal piece to do due to the fact that we had
the right amount of actors for the characters present in the piece.
However, I felt that The Chair (A Peranakan Tapestry) was more
intriguing, presented more opportunities for the actors in terms of
character development, and was a piece that would be able to push
the actors out of their comfort zone, albeit being significantly harder
to do.
There are a total of ten characters in the piece, all of which have
very different and unique characteristics, and I only had four actors
to work with. This meant that each actor had to take on at least two
characters each, and Nigel, the only male actor, had to take on four
roles. This in itself was already a challenge, and that meant that
characterization and personalization would play a vital part in the
audience differentiating each character the actor plays.
Due to the fact that the general structure of the piece consisted
of monologues and duologues, I got inspiration for the piece to be
staged like how W!ld Rice staged Another Country in June 2015.
Another Country was a compilation of iconic local and Malaysian
works that best represented the countrys history and culture. The
Singaporean pieces performed by the Malaysian actors, was
staged in a chronological order. It had started off with the actors
retelling the classic tale of Sang Nila Utamah, and as the play
progressed, retold scripts about many different past and present day
issues that Singaporeans face. The pieces were performed back to

back, and were only differentiated by the projection of the title and
the year the story they were currently retelling was from. Between
every story, they had held the moment before breaking it and
moving on to the next story, and this really resonated with me,
especially so after seeing how similar the general structure of The
Chair was to Another Country.
Photo showing Another Country by W!ld Rice
Each character has

emotionally

charged
moments they face,
and this was something all of my actors struggled with. Given the
time cap on this project and the ratio of actor-character, we did not
have the liberty of going as in depth in character exploration as
some of the other groups did. Therefore, I decided to use
personalization exercises to bring out the emotions each character
feels. There is a scene in which the character of Lim Ah Choon begs
Mrs Lim Ah Choon not to report him for stealing the chair, and my
actor, who was playing Ah Choon, Nigel, could not immerse himself
into the character enough to show the desperation the character
feels in the piece. Thus, I got them to engage in an exercise where
Nigel had to pass his phone and wallet to Sarah, the actor playing
Mrs Lim Ah Choon, and beg to get it back from her. We realized after
a while, however, that this simply did not work, so instead of his

phone and wallet, I made Nigel write down a secret on a piece of

paper, and beg for Sarah not to open and read it. I also played to
the fact that Nigel has a very loyal personality, and made him write
down his best friends secret instead, so in that case, he really had
to put down his pride and beg Sarah not to read it, since it wasnt
his secret to tell. This exercise ended up being extremely effective,
and we did not have a problem with this scene after that.
My actors also mentioned that they had trouble relating to the
emotions their characters were feeling in the piece, so I had them
do another personalization exercise, one I had learnt at NIDA
(National Institute of Dramatic Arts) when I went for the Arts
Excellence Programme in Sydney in March 2016. I had the actors
write down their biggest insecurities on a piece of paper so as to
make them feel extremely vulnerable, and then followed it up by
write down memories whereby they had felt fear, despair and
jealousy. I then made them physicalize these emotions but creating
short 4-7 second movements for each memory to show to each
other. I had intended for them to use their own memories to evoke
the same emotions their characters were feeling.
Physicalizing of characters was also a major problem due to
the fact that I wasnt able to see much of a physical difference when
my actors switched between characters. When I watched Recalling
Mother, staged by Checkpoint Theatre on the 24 th of May, it was
fascinating to see how Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed were
able to contort and shape their bodies and change the tone and
quality of their voices to suit whatever character they were playing
at that moment. One moment that especially stood out to me was
when Wong did an entire monologue as her aged mother at a coffee
shop. The monologue was done in Cantonese, and even though I
personally, am only able to understand snippets of the dialect, I was
somehow able to comprehend exactly what was going on at any

given time in the monologue. After watching the piece, I began to

question the physicality of my actors more and more? Even though I
was well aware that Wong and Mohamed and trained professionals
in the theatre industry, I asked myself whether I would be able to
understand and see the change in the characters my actors were
playing had I not been able to understand English, and was unable
to confidently say yes.

(from left) Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed in the 2016

restaging of Recalling Mother
So in an attempt to make character change more distinct, I had
my actors partake in an activity
to

walk

around

the

space

as

where they had

different

people. I started off making them

physicalize

people

they

see

in school, like their classmates,

everyday
and then

changed things up by making them

visualize

being in different environments

and

different situations to

see how ones body

reacts to the change. I also made them do an exercise to let them

see how having a higher or lower status changes how one carries
themselves. My actors often forgot that each character had a very
different backstory, and even though they might be related,
everything about them is extremely different and this affects how
each character carries himself. This, in particular, applied to Nigel,
because he has his two back-to-back roles he has to switch between
at the beginning of the play, one of them being a laborer while the
other a rich businessman. It was only after I carried out this exercise
with my cast did he think about the difference between how his two
characters might have carried themselves.

3. My Directorial Intention
The Chair drew heavy inspiration from Desmond Sims
Peranakan heritage, and this remained a very important factor when
I started directing the piece. I wanted to retain some sort of timeless
factor to it, and show how each and every character has a place in
the Lim family tree.

Our set consisted of

three flats,

with
three

grids at
bottom

the
of each flat, and a hook
positioned above it. I had intended

for it to aid the audience in differentiating between the multiple

character changes, and for the actors to have that space in the grid
where they could drop, or enter their character smoothly. We also
chose to have certain characters enter the space some time before
they start saying their line.

For instance, I made the choice for

Shannon to come in to do her monologue while the previous scene

was still ongoing. We had received feedback from the audience in
the previous showings that they felt extremely disconnected to
Shannons character, and did not see how she fit in with the rest of
the family. By allowing her to come in and observe while the
previous Japanese Occupation was still ongoing, the audience was

able to understand and connect her to the rest of the play when she
starts off her lines with When you live through a war, you never
forget. I had also made the decision of changing Jonathan Jr.s role
into a females, for logistic purposes. We had too many male
characters, and only one male actor, and Shannon had displayed
the willingness and spirit Jonathan Jr. was supposed to have when
we were doing the script read, which is why I had casted her into the
role.
I also made the decision of having the actors only wear a single
costume piece that they felt resonated with them as a character,
and have the rest of the props placed in the grid. I liked the idea of
having props and costumes as the central focus of the piece, but I
feared that my actors would rely too much on them, and end up
hiding behind these props and costumes. I received feedback after
the performances that some audience members felt that the actors
struggled to carry the weight of the props and costumes, both
literally and metaphorically, so I felt that this was something I could
have explored deeper during the creative process.
Overall, the creative process of this piece was quite challenging.
From the start, I had a general idea of what I wanted the piece to be,
and I had a lot of ideas I wanted to try out with the cast. However,
looking back, I realized that a lot of what I wanted originally did not
end up getting translated on stage. I could have, and should have,
worked more on characterization and I knew this even before
receiving

feedback

from

audience

members

after

the

show

regarding the fact that they were unable to differentiate between

the different characters each actor was playing. However, I feel that
I also put in my best effort into this and as a director, aided my cast
with this as much as possible. I had tried many different methods to
help them cement each characteristic and gesture their individual

character had, but what I wanted to see was never fully translated
onto stage for the audience to see.
As a first time director, this experience pushed me a lot as a
theatre maker, and made me realize that every actor is different and
have different styles that I, as a director, have to work with. I have
truly learnt a lot from this student-directed project, and it has
allowed me to hone my communication skills and made me see
theatre from a different perspective.

4. Bibliography
Desmond

Sim.

Desmond

Sim.

Web.

31

Mar.

2016

NUS Arts Festival 2015 | About the Artist. NUS Arts Festival 2015 |
About the Artist. Web. 31 Mar. 2016.

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