Singapore Management University Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Research Collection School of Social Sciences School of Social Sciences 1-2003 Kuo Pao Kun: The pirS it of the Eagle Margaret CHAN Singapore Management University, [email protected] DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10267160302718 Follow this and additional works at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Citation CHAN, Margaret.(2003). Kuo Pao Kun: The pS irit of the Eagle. Contemporary Theatre, 3(3), 26-36. Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/182 This Journal Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Social Sciences at Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Research Collection School of Social Sciences by an authorized administrator of Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University. For more information, please email [email protected]. Published in Contemporary Theatre Review, 2003 January, Volume 3, Issue 3, Pages 26-36 http://doi.org/10.1080/10267160302718Contemporary Theatre Review ISSN: 1048-6801 (Print) 1477-2264 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gctr20 Kuo Pao Kun: The Spirit of the Eagle Margaret Chan To cite this article: Margaret Chan (2003) Kuo Pao Kun: The Spirit of the Eagle, Contemporary Theatre Review, 13:3, 26-36, DOI: 10.1080/10267160302718 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10267160302718 Published online: 17 Sep 2010. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 64 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=gctr20 Download by: [Singapore Management University] Date: 06 July 2017, At: 22:37 04 gCTR 13-3 Chan (JB/D) Page 26 Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:30 PM Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 13(3), 2003, 26–36 Kuo Pao Kun: The Spirit of the Eagle Margaret Chan PROLOGUE 1. Kuo Pao Kun, The Kuo Pao Kun (1939–2002) was the doyen of Singapore theatre and is Evening Climb in considered by many as the most important figure in the nation’s cultural Images at the Margins: A Collection of Kuo history. Among the many honours Kuo received are the Cultural Medal- Pao Kun’s Plays lion, Singapore’s highest award for artistic achievement and the Cheva- (Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Times Books lier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Kuo was above all a humanist, International, 2000), whose lifework was dedicated to the Singaporean community. pp. 330–370. Premiere I am humbled by the fact that in a dedication in a book gift to me, performance at the Victoria Theatre, Kuo had written of his good fortune in having me as a friend and a Singapore, 1992. creative partner. Among other projects, I collaborated with Kuo in the 2. Kuo Pao Kun, No 1992 production of The Evening Climb,1 and was directed by him in a Parking on Odd Days, 2 in The Coffin is too Big charity performance of No Parking on Odd Days. The last time I spoke for the Hole . and to Kuo, with a view to our working together, was in October 2001. By other plays, (Singapore that time, Kuo was already very ill with cancer, the disease that finally and Kuala Lumpur: Times Books took his life on 10 September 2002. International, 1990), Kuo asked me to perform The Eagle and the Cat,3 a play that he wrote pp. 47–70. This Thing Bursting Out, or the in 1990. He said it was his most important play, which paradoxically, Irresistible Rise of the was the only one among his scripts that had not been performed.4 Arts in Singapore, Practice Performing I rushed out to get a copy of the script, then telephoned Kuo Arts Centre fund-raiser, requesting a meeting. He spoke of the reality that I had tried to deny. at Jubilee Hall, He was too sick to receive me, but he promised to call when he got better. Singapore, 1994. That call never came. 3. Kuo Pao Kun, The Eagle and the Cat, in Images at the Margins: An hour before the audience arrives, Cindy Sim is at the theatre A Collection of Kuo preparing for her performance. This is not the usual make-up call. Cindy Pao Kun’s Plays (Singapore and Kuala is at the foyer where she begins to walk up and down the short flight of Lumpur: Times Books steps leading to the auditorium. She keeps up this obsessive stair International, 2000), pp. 222–243. prowling while the crowd gathers, heedless of the people milling about 4. In fact Eagle and the her, deaf to the noise in the lobby, blind to the curious and often Cat, in Chinese, discomfited stares her activity elicits. Contemporary Theatre Review ISSN 1026-7166 print/ISSN 1477-2264 online © 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/1048680032000087111 04 gCTR 13-3 Chan (JB/D) Page 27 Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:30 PM 27 premiered on 15 This is Cindy’s chosen method to break into the hidden secrets of her September 1990, but as self. The play 0zero015 does not feature characters, the members of the an item in a programme of short plays that was cast; Cindy, Lut Ali, Zai Kuning and Jalyn Han stage themselves. Theirs put up to mark the is an Artaudian exhibition of their tortured souls upon their bodies of opening of the Substation (a theatre flesh. The play is an invitation to the audience to enter, ‘past bedroom space). The English and bathroom taboos into the excruciating privacy of their lives’.6 version was performed 0zero01 was inspired by the story of the salmon. Its struggle to live, in May 1997, but T. Sasitharan who took its death after it has spawned new life. For 0zero01, director Kuo Pao the role had come in Kun asked his actors to strip themselves of their social skins and be only eight days before the staging as a exposed as primordial beings. replacement for the In order to get his actors to shed their personas and then to get them original actor who had taken ill. Mr Sasitharan to the point when they would willingly bare their innermost selves to worked with script in public scrutiny, Kuo Pao Kun, had taken his cast through a number of hand. The limitations of demanding exercises. For example, to wrench his actors from their this performance (although it won good dependence on creature comforts, their need for company and their reviews), and the fact reliance on the safety of a social system, Kuo brought them to a that the play’s premiere was a part of festivities, secondary forest bordering a sand quarry. In the deep of the night, just might have been the before midnight, the actors were asked to spread out. Each entered the point that Kuo was forest to spend the night alone through to eight in the morning. making. Eagle . has never been produced for A tropical forest is dense and dark. It is not only the vegetation that critical appraisal, as a engulfs a person entering into its midst. The sounds of the teeming insect stand-alone. and animal life create an aura of frightening possibilities. Within this 5. Kuo Pao Kun, 0zero01, in Images at the elemental environment, away from all other humans, each actor had to Margins: A Collection stay awake without any comforts such as mats or torchlight. From of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays midnight to daylight, they were on their own to dare fears of snakes and (Singapore and Kuala Lumpur: Times Books other forest creatures as well as the imagined presence of forest vampires. International, 2000), Two things about the theatre of Kuo Pao Kun are learnt from this pp. 316–324. telling of the preparations for 0zero01. First, we note that Kuo produc- 6. Hannah Pandian, ‘Full Marks for Zero’, Straits tions characteristically staged the self. The audience’s view might be Times, Art Forum (9 through a distorting dramatic prism, but the human truths of the December 1991), p. 1. performance, like souls sacrificed at the altar of theatre, lay ready to be picked upon, and probed. During his lifetime, Kuo worked with three types of plays. Many of Kuo’s works were devised in collaboration with actors. These productions staged the actor’s self in the actor’s own story. Other Kuo Pao Kun plays were frankly autobiographical. Kuo also produced a selection of established Western and Chinese plays, but these projects were always contextualised within the Singaporean experience, so that the imported works took on the sense of real life stories of the Singapore people. Second, we learn that as a director, Kuo made stren- uous demands upon his actors. Upon himself, Kuo exacted an unflinching dedication to his art. The two aspects of the art of Kuo Pao Kun; his humanist theatre and his rigorous demands of artistic commitment, are inseparably inter- twined. Kuo’s life experiences shaped his theatre, and his plays are mirrors to his personal aspirations. Thus to understand the artistic philosophy of Kuo Pao Kun the theatre director and producer, we have to study his biography. In order to learn about the life of Kuo the man, we can look into the plays he wrote. A privileged insight from the playwright leads me to propose that Kuo Pao Kun’s The Eagle and the Cat is autobiographical. 04 gCTR 13-3 Chan (JB/D) Page 28 Thursday, June 26, 2003 2:30 PM 28 What then of Kuo the artist, does his play Eagle .