One Metre Square: Voices from Sungei Road opened at W!ld Rice's Singapore Theatre Festival yesterday. Co-created by 三木 San Mu and Zelda Ng, the testimonial piece curates the fate of the Sungei Road Hawking Zone from a variety of the stakeholders - the hawkers themselves; the parliamentary members; members of civil society; and even tourists!
Do not be fooled. One Metre Square is far from an amicable exposé documenting what Sungei Road was. As much as it was curatorial, it was a stinging commentary, a reaction to the handling of the entire issue. Actors flung cue-cards of the establishment's official statements into the wind after delivering them - presumably a mirror to how the voices of Sungei Road, in the form of 20 letters from the Association for the Recycling of Second Hand Goods, were treated. The divide between the government and the people painfully clear when embodied by the disgruntled hawkers, threatening to make their voices heard when the next election comes.
Alongside the seemingly tone-deaf speeches that highlighted the plight Sungei Road and its hawkers, were also equally impassioned pleas from civil society who have laboriously researched and documented Sungei Road. How many Singaporeans actually visit Sungei Road? Does Sungei Road not have value if majority of Singaporeans do not patronise it? How much of its evolving, organic nature (seen in their enthused Bangladeshi patrons) have we stamped out? How much heritage have we lost?
Yet, One Metre Square was careful not to preach. Hence, one of its most poignant moments that mourned the loss of Sungei Road was an epic-near-mythical tale shared about why $10 notes from 1940 and 1941 are coloured differently. While we celebrated the entrepreneurial Pai Kia's move to online flea-market-esque app, Carousell, we also hear of Uncle Ang's failing business at his new lot in a pasar malam (night market), pondering for a whole day if he could afford to splurge on a cup of tea.
A good majority of the hawkers' testimonials were presented in Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese. While English surtitles were available, they were hard to read from the stalls due to the lights and its height. As a sorry product of Singapore's Bilingual policy and Speak Mandarin Campaigns, who is only fluent in English, the entire experience was rather trying. However, if anything, this represented the gargantuan effort put in by the creators of the piece to re-present the voices of Sungei Road that I, the younger generation of Singapore, would never have been able to access on my own.
One Metre Square: Voices of Sungei Road is the heartfelt testimonial of a group of forgotten people of Singapore. A testament to everything Singaporean we overlook in this day and age of a rapidly (re)developing Singapore: tenacious, bold, zealous. It is the love letter to Singapore we sorely needed. Thank you.
Do not be fooled. One Metre Square is far from an amicable exposé documenting what Sungei Road was. As much as it was curatorial, it was a stinging commentary, a reaction to the handling of the entire issue. Actors flung cue-cards of the establishment's official statements into the wind after delivering them - presumably a mirror to how the voices of Sungei Road, in the form of 20 letters from the Association for the Recycling of Second Hand Goods, were treated. The divide between the government and the people painfully clear when embodied by the disgruntled hawkers, threatening to make their voices heard when the next election comes.
Alongside the seemingly tone-deaf speeches that highlighted the plight Sungei Road and its hawkers, were also equally impassioned pleas from civil society who have laboriously researched and documented Sungei Road. How many Singaporeans actually visit Sungei Road? Does Sungei Road not have value if majority of Singaporeans do not patronise it? How much of its evolving, organic nature (seen in their enthused Bangladeshi patrons) have we stamped out? How much heritage have we lost?
Yet, One Metre Square was careful not to preach. Hence, one of its most poignant moments that mourned the loss of Sungei Road was an epic-near-mythical tale shared about why $10 notes from 1940 and 1941 are coloured differently. While we celebrated the entrepreneurial Pai Kia's move to online flea-market-esque app, Carousell, we also hear of Uncle Ang's failing business at his new lot in a pasar malam (night market), pondering for a whole day if he could afford to splurge on a cup of tea.
A good majority of the hawkers' testimonials were presented in Mandarin, Hokkien and Cantonese. While English surtitles were available, they were hard to read from the stalls due to the lights and its height. As a sorry product of Singapore's Bilingual policy and Speak Mandarin Campaigns, who is only fluent in English, the entire experience was rather trying. However, if anything, this represented the gargantuan effort put in by the creators of the piece to re-present the voices of Sungei Road that I, the younger generation of Singapore, would never have been able to access on my own.
One Metre Square: Voices of Sungei Road is the heartfelt testimonial of a group of forgotten people of Singapore. A testament to everything Singaporean we overlook in this day and age of a rapidly (re)developing Singapore: tenacious, bold, zealous. It is the love letter to Singapore we sorely needed. Thank you.