Moving Forward: Letting the Community Change the Work
Last month, four key things happened:
1. I attended the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (see previous blog entry)
2. Ali (an actor and collaborator on the barber project) and Kamal met for the first time
3. Held a Focus Group Discussion with four male madrasah graduates
4. Caught up with my mentors
Meeting the project's narrators during Ramadhan made our interactions especially meaningful. The conversations naturally gravitated toward themes of religiosity and faith, fitting perfectly with this holy month. When Kamal and Ali first met, it confirmed my instincts—they shared striking similarities despite their age difference. Ali serves not just as a collaborator but as my community insider with Kamal. As someone from the narrators' community, he helps bridge cultural and contextual gaps between the artist and participants. Though Kamal and I share the identity of being Malay Muslim men, Ali's understanding of Kamal's perspectives runs deeper than mine. I noticed an immediate change in Kamal's demeanor, he became more open and candid, and our previously disjointed conversations gained a natural flow. This shift could be attributed to our strengthened rapport after multiple meetings, the more relaxed dynamic of group conversations, or most likely, Kamal's comfort in Ali's presence as someone who deeply understands his background. This session with Kamal and Ali sparked new ideas for the project's direction, which I'll discuss later.
For the madrasah project, we held a focus group discussion with four male madrasah students and alumni aged 19–26. Three were graduates, while one was completing his final year. We explored their experiences as madrasah students, community expectations, myths, and the topic of national service. While I can't share specific details yet, the focus group format successfully created an open dialogue. The participants benefited from sharing experiences, discussing different perspectives, and validating their shared experiences. Like the session with Kamal, the focus group felt like a casual conversation among friends, the participants even took the lead in the discussion. Though the presence of a voice recorder was always felt, moments of shared laughter helped lower barriers. My main challenge was guiding the conversation toward personal stories rather than opinions, as stories work better for theatre while opinions can become too didactic—advice I received from my mentor. While I still have much to learn about their community, this session laid important groundwork. The participants expressed appreciation for the chance to share their experiences and dispel myths about madrasah students, emphasizing that they are diverse individuals who share much in common with other Singaporeans.
Recalibrating What This Journey Could Look Like
In thinking about my strategy moving forward, I'm considering how to respond to my experience with the narrators over the past six months and my current creative exploration. I must keep in mind the limitations of time and capacity. I'm exploring ways to simplify and amplify my creative explorations while engaging my narrators in a meaningful artistic process.
In consulting with my mentor Jamie, she reminds me that I have to accept that the community might change the project. This means being reflexive and responding to the experience of being with the narrators, how they respond to the process, and what different possibilities of "presentation" exist. When speaking about Kamal, I noted how he is a natural facilitator in his work as a musician and barber, holding space for others to release or express themselves.
I initially saw this as a verbatim theatre experience... but as I spend more time with the project, the less exciting this prospect becomes for me. Yet, I stuck with this and told Jamie that I wanted to create a verbatim play from my interviews with Kamal. Jamie asked, "Do you think an actor can replicate the authenticity of the experience you've had with Kamal?" She was getting me to think about how else my relationship with Kamal could be translated into performance, or more specifically, into an audience experience. What does it mean to recreate the intimacy of being in the barber chair? Or the experience of speaking to him? Instead of recreating him as a "character on stage," we could recreate how he makes people feel—his essence as a person, perhaps the hospitality or intimacy he provides to those who sit in his chair or listen to his performance. Another possibility could be focusing on Ali's encounter with Kamal. If Ali is going to be the performer, it would be more authentic to see Kamal through Ali's eyes... or perhaps the work could be created by Ali and Kamal together, with me as an artist facilitator. These ideas, thrown around during my consultation with Jamie, sparked new interest in this project. How else can we translate authenticity into performance, and what does a practice of letting others lead look like? These provocations extend to the Madrasah project as well.
