Written in response to an invitation from Ong Keng Sen (b. 1963- Singapore), the Artistic Director of TheatreWorks (now known as T:Works), and performed for the first time under Ong’s direction at “THE CUTTING EDGE [no, not the arts festival…]” (29 February–30 March 1996), Family is a play by Leow Puay Tin that consists of 26 scenes with (by her own admission) “too much material for a conventional 90-minute or even 120-minute performance.”[i] It follows the life of a woman named Tan Neo, simply referred to as Mrs. Yang in the script. Each scene narrates a chapter of the life of Mrs. Yang and her family members, from her marriage and migration to Singapore in early poverty to her final days surrounded by multiple generations of offspring and financial affluence. Key points in Mrs. Yang’s family life, from her poverty and widowing, religious choice, inter-ethnic marriage, and education, interlaced with societal expectations for Chinese women, are addressed in the script. In Leow’s explicit notation, prospective directors were invited to curate their choice of scenes and the scene order for their productions, thereby sharing “the burden of authorship with the writer.”[ii]

Three productions of Family dominate current scholarship. They are the debut production directed by Ong with TheatreWorks (29 February – 16 March 1996, 38 Amoy Street, Singapore) and two productions by Five Arts Centre under the co-direction of Krishen Jit (b. 1939-d. 2005 Malaysia) and Wong Hoy Cheong (b. 1960- Malaysia). Jit & Wong first presented Family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (8-22 April 1998, 211 Jalan Tun Razak) and a year later in Berlin, Germany (13-14 August 1999, Festival Der Geister, Kunsthaus Tacheles). All three iterations in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Berlin used the same script written by Leow, but her script was only the starting point, an abbreviated score, from which the directors took inspiration. Both Ong and Jit & Wong included additional scripting in their productions. Directors inspired by Family were equal artists orchestrating elaborate delegated performances. The script, while written according to the conventions of drama, was open ended.

These were not the only productions of Family. In Singapore, the script continues to make its rounds in both commercial and non-commercial settings. It has been consistently staged by a plethora of companies over the past few decades. In 2015 and 2016, Asian Women Performing Arts Collective (AWPAC) brought the play to Japan. It has also been the topic of at least two productions in Australia. The first, directed by Lowanna Dunn, was presented by first year BA (Drama) students at Queensland University of Technology, Academy of Art in 1998. The second, directed by Clare Grant, was presented by the 2002 THST2135 Production Exercise 1 class in University of New South Wales (UNSW). Dunn had also introduced Family to second year Drama students at LaSalle SIA College of the Arts, Singapore, in 1996. These were not just the only known Australian productions, but the first three known productions of Family, following those by TheatreWorks and Five Arts Centre. That they were student productions indicated Dunn and Grant’s immediate recognition of the play’s potential to encourage and nurture the artistic imagination of the contemporary theatre practitioner.  The open-ended form allowed their students to experiment as never before.

NINE WIDOWS

(Time - Late 1950s)

MRS YANG: Don’t be afraid of me. Tell me the truth. Is it my fault?

TIJA SOH: That's what people say.

MRS YANG: What do they say?

TUA SOH: They say you were born in the year of the tiger.

MRS YANG: So they are saying I have killed my sons? But I wasn’t born a tiger. I was born an ox. I have been working since I could walk. But do you all blame me?

BEE LIAN: My husband’s death has nothing to do with you. He died because of his rubber trees.

MRS YANG: So, you have all become like me. Widows. Life as a widow is very bitter. especially when you are still young and have children to look after. What do you all want to do? Do you wish to remarry? Should I ask the matchmaker to come to our house?

LI SOH: Oh, you are cruel! You know I am no longer young! I am already past 30. I have given my youth to this family. Have I become useless now that my husband is dead?

MRS YANG: No, no, no. I want all of you to be free! Many years ago, I asked your Tua Soh not to remarry, to follow me, but now I dare not ask all of you to do the same.

LI SOH: I have four sons and two daughters, and their surname is Yew. I am their mother.

SAH SOH: You think we are weaker than Tua Soh?

MRS YANG: Ask her how she spends her days and nights.

TUA SOH: There is no need to say anything. They already know for themselves.

BEE LIAN: What should we do, Ah Bu?

MRS YANG: I don't know.

BEE LIAN: How come you don't know? You know everything, you always know everything.

MRS YANG: Don’t cry, Bee Lian. If you start, they will follow you. Then the children will start crying, and our house will again be filled with tears like the past three days. Did you see the sky when the sun was setting?

BEE LIAN: It was dark and heavy. I felt cold.

MRS YANG: Dark and heavy, and the wind was blowing from the north, carrying water from the sea. In China, this same north wind would bring rain and ice. In China, on such a night, snow might even fall. And when you woke up the next morning, the world had changed. no colour but white, no sound but silence. The snow had covered everything. But here. it's too hot for snow and ice. It will rain tonight while we sleep.

BEE LIAN: My heart is painful, I can’t breathe.

MRS YANG: Look at me, Bee Lian. Here I am, old, without a son to bury me. Not even a son-in-law. But am I crying?

SAH SOH: You sit there and talk as if you are made of iron. Do you have a heart?

MRS YANG: You lost your husband, and you blame me. You cry and blame me, and I cannot stop you. All my sons are dead. I don’t know where my heart is now.

TUA SOH: The children are tired and hungry. We should take care of them first.

SI SOH: Don't tell us what to do! I know in your heart you are glad we are now widows like you.

TUA SOH: My heart is not as black as your mouth. I have been with this family 20 years. Don't you think I grieve too?

MRS YANG: No need to quarreI now. At least she can still think at a time like this. Listen to her. Bathe the children, feed them and send them to sleep. We grown-ups can talk later.

TUA SOH: We have done everything we could for those who died, we too must rest now. Tomorrow, we will think of what to do.

MRS YANG: Yes. yes. Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will pray and ask Kuan Yin to help us. Tomorrow. Do as I say. Cry later, my women, my children, cry later. Don't cry now. Go, go, do as I say. Oh, it will rain tonight ...

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Playwright's note:

Although Family comprises too much material for a conventional 90-minute or even 120-minute performance, I have decided not to prune it myself. Instead it is left as a rambling epic of sorts that covers nearly a century of a family's history. 

Arbitrarily, I have used time to organise the material. So, it now appears in the form of a loose chronological and non-dramatic meta-narrative. 

The choice of time was an arbitrary one, because other organising factors would have served better dramatically - for example, thematic development. 

But I wanted a neutral structure inasmuch as one could be found under the circumstances - one which leaves the text open to be used in various ways by other people. For this reason. the title was changed from Mrs Yang to Family. 

I hope this bulky narrative, which contains several stories within it, will serve as a starting point. The material is meant to be used as building blocks or modules. The modules can be selected and arranged in different ways to accommodate different contexts, viewpoints and treatments.  

Thus it is left to the director to determine a structure for presentation. This structure can be narrative and/or performative. In effect, the director is asked to decide: 

(i) what and how much of the text to use, 

(ii) in what order to present it, and, 

(iii) the means of presentation. 

Where selection of text is concerned, the director can use the entire script or drop material which does not fit into his/her scheme of things. Text from one module can be extracted and spliced into other modules. There is the possibility of making short plays through grouping certain modules. Other kinds of material, textual and non-textual, can also be introduced to comment on or contextualise the chosen text, or as performative parallels to the text. Examples of supplementary material include media reports, audio-visuals, movement, sounds, conceptual and performance art, etc. 

However, there should be no rewriting. Words cannot be changed in any way. This means that text which has been selected should be used as written. 

Also, the origins or sources of any supplementary textual material must be clearly credited and made known to the audience and the public in general (as in the programme notes. pre-show announcements, publicity material , etc.) This will allow the respective parties to be held responsible for their own input of text. 

My request to directors who are interested to use material from Family and who have particular viewpoints to advance, is this: check whether those viewpoints are already present in the text. If this is criterion is met, then go ahead with the project. By all means, bring in other types of material to strengthen or expand these viewpoints or to contextualise them. But don’t rewrite. This is the only condition I am imposing as a measure or gesture of protection for my writing, besides asking for supplementary material to be credited. 

The order of presentation is determined by the director who chooses a sequencing that best suits the selected material and means of presentation. The order can be fixed or pre-determined prior performance, or left indeterminate. In the latter case, chance determines the sequencing and gives rise to a completely random order of presentation for each performance, for example by conducting a lucky dip. 

I did not write Family with the express intention of giving others the liberty and responsibility to play with the text. It happened by chance, starting with a phone-call from Ong Keng Sen two years ago. He was interested in contemporising the classic of the Yang women warriors to explore the role of women in Singapore, and asked if I would write it. Having just done A Modern Woman (Called Ang Tau Mui), a monologue, I was curious whether I could now write about a whole clan of women. So I said yes to Keng Sen. 

However, not having had the experience of living in Singapore for any length of time, I felt it wiser to use the legend as a basis to study the workings of a successful women-dominated family/clan founded in modern times by a widowed kueh-seller, Mrs Yang. 

Although set in Singapore, the location is not crucial, and the family could just as well have been Malaysian. (Keng Sen added material which gave his production a Singaporean context.) 

When the time came for structuring and revising the material, I saw that Family could speak in more ways than I could devise or imagine, but only if it were left open and unfinished. 

That is, let the director be free (or freer) on matters of interpretation and treatment that are so often the bones of contention between writers and directors. Let the director “finish” the work and in so doing, share some of the burden of authorship with the writer. 

This decision did not come easily. Because, in effect, I would have to consciously surrender my own authorship without knowing what consequences this would have for the text and myself as the writer. 

Also, l did not know how much of the material could be left out before it stopped being, in essence, the text I had written. 

On the other hand, there were the possibilities of freedom or relief from following customary theatre practices: freedom from conventional dictates of form and treatment of subject matter, freedom from the traditional and entrapping roles played by writers, directors and the creative team in general. 

Back and forth I went over the matter and finally decided I could never know without trying it out. Better to go ahead and hope for the best. If the results prove disastrous, this experiment needn't be repeated. 

The first production of Family (under the title The Yang Family) was directed by Ong Keng Sen for Theatre Works in March 1996, using a random order. Performative in concept and execution, it used most of the text and additional material to explore gender issues and the make-up of the Singaporean psyche. 

With my heart in my mouth, I went for a performance and came away feeling elated and free, and very moved that Keng Sen had treated the text with extraordinary care and sensitivity to the writer's anxieties. The text was still recognisably mine, but it had found new voices and meanings. 

This was a good start to the experiment. But to know a fuller extent of its consequences, I will have to wait for other productions. 

Leow Puay Tin 
May 1996, KL

Each director prompted their students to relate to Family in their stage design or the injection of parallel texts, as Ong and Jit & Wong had. In UNSW, an on-site kitchen was established. Actors literally cooked, presumably enveloping their performance space with savoury smells of home, and then served their audiences a small meal during the intermission. Where Grant adapted the indoor theatre space, Kaylene Tan challenged her students with a different kind of stage. Her 2013 production with the graduating Theatre Studies class of National University of Singapore (NUS) was presented in and around two shophouses on Niven Road, central Singapore. In one room, an elaborate photo wall was constructed using photographs of the company’s real families. As a student production attended almost exclusively by the company’s friends and family, the effect was to cast the entire audience as part of the play. In this room, they enacted ‘Taking Stock,’ a scene set in the present, where the cast addressed the audience as the geriatric Mrs. Yang’s extended family. Whether it was through visual, olfactory, or textual means, each production completed Leow’s script with their place and their time.

This brief review of the play’s production history has been reproduced with Leow’s playwright’s note, her invitation to prospective directors. Recognising that “Family could speak in more ways than [she] could devise or imagine … only if it were left open and unfinished,” Leow allowed the play to find “new voices and meanings” under different directorial intents. [iii] She acknowledged that surrendering her “own authorship without knowing what consequences [it] would have” was a risk, but did not let it stop her.[iv] This was not common for plays in mid-1990s, especially in the Southeast Asian region. Leow’s invitation expressed her generosity as a playwright and her sensitive collaboration with artists through the page. Clear, concise, and straightforward ground rules were provided to prospective directors, written with warmth and consideration of their artistic agency. These instructions were the starting point for any production of Family; in the Kuala Lumpur production, Jit & Wong had included parallel texts by local writers Amir Muhammad, Brianna Shay, Bernice Chauly, Kam Raslan, Mohan Ambikaipaker and Charlene Rajendran.[v] Visitors even encountered “Leow Puay Tin” herself, played by an actress reading lines from Leow’s 1996 published statement. Snapshots from the 1998 commercial production in this article reflect a potential theatrical interpretation for this script.

Regardless of decade, geography, or theatrical convention, all directors mentioned here have responded, presented, and reflected the changing definitions of family. A key provocation in Leow’s script was the elasticity of what family was, and who could be part of the family. Whether it was through pride of place on the photo wall, the communal sharing of food or shared fortunes made on a lucky wheel, the different companies seemed to agree that family was a conscious and durational choice. Leow comes the closest to spelling this out in scene 7 of 26, titled “Nine Widows.”[vi]  Mrs. Yang’s first son, Nam Yew, had passed away a few years ago, as a victim of war bombing. Nam Yew’s widow, Tua Soh (Hokkien: Oldest daughter-in-law), chose to stay with the matriarch.[vii] “Nine Widows” is set after Mrs. Yang’s remaining six sons and only son-in-law Ong Ah Lau, Bee Lian’s husband, died from a variety of work-related accidents in the jungles of Sabah and a rice shop in Singapore. Unexpectedly widowed at a young age and set adrift in a patriarchal world without a single man in the family, the nine women discuss their futures. They express resentment at Tua Soh, whose fate as a widow they are now sharing. While not related by blood, they pledge their commitment to each other, creating a family of their own.

Chloe Ho

Author’s note:

Excerpts from Family and the corresponding playwright’s note has been reproduced with permission from Leow Puay Tin.  

[i] Puay Tin Leow, “Family: Playwright’s note,” in Playful Phoenix: Women Write for the Singapore Stage, ed. Woon Ping Chin (Singapore: TheatreWorks, 1996), 159–269 (162). 

[ii] Leow, 165.

[iii] Leow, 165-166.

[iv] Leow, 165.

[v] Rajendran Charlene, “Staging Difference in Modern Multicultural Malaysia : The Politics of Krishen Jit’s Theatre” (PhD thesis, Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, 2012), 144–53, https://doi.org/10.32657/10356/50634.

[vi] Scene 7, “Nine Widows,” 200-203.

[vii] Scene 5, “Two Widows,” 191-195.

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