Consumed in Singapore: The Intercultural Spectacle of Lear

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Consume •

The lntercultural Spectacle of Lear

CENTRE FOR A DVANCED STUDIES N ,\T I ONAL UNIVERSITY

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Rustom Bharucha

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Ill The Intercultural Spectacle of Lear

Rustom Bharucha is an independent writer, director, and cultural critic based in Calcutta. Trained as a dramaturge at the Yale School of Drama, he has written extensively on the politics of interculturalism and emergent cultural practices in the larger contexts of communalism and globalization. His books include Theatre and the World, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, and the forthcoming The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an Age of Globalization.

Rustom Bharucha

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Contents

Introduction

4

Beyond Multiculturalism

8

Spectacle in Singapore

16

Modalities of Production

19

The Role of 'Asia'

23

Essentializing Intercultural Dramaturgy

27

Intercultural Aesthetics

31

The Disappearance of Text

34

The Politics of Patricide

38

Consuming the Other

43

References

48

Acknowledgements

51

Introduction

There are at least two provocations in selecting Singapore as the site for my intercultural investigations in this essay. The first relates to the tension between the 'global' and the 'intercultural', the former being associated with the economic hegemony of global capitalism and its cultural ancillaries in the world market, the latter being a more fuzzy term for semi-autonomous, voluntarist cultural exchanges between and across individuals and groups from different parts of the world. I had argued in an earlier essay (Bharucha 1999) that while intercultural practice is unavoidably subsumed within the inequities of the global economy, this does not mean that it has to submit to the cultural demands of the market. In other words, I was calling attention to an oppositional component within interculturalism that cannot be separated from a larger critique of capital. It should come as no surprise that such a pristine formulation should be challenged by the minuscule city-state of Singapore whose very survival, if not phenomenal economic 'success', has been facilitated by its embrace of global capital at the very outset of its formation as a nation. The critical task, therefore, of discriminating the 'intercultural' from the 'global' within the 'First World' context of Singapore is obviously harder to sustain than in the 'Third World' context of other non-western nations, which continue to be on the margins of the global economy, if they are recognized at all.

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However, this does not mean that the tension between the 'intercultural' and the 'global' should be dissolved in the Singaporean context through a conflation of categories. Such conflations are ubiquitous in the political context of Singapore, where it becomes almost impossible to distinguish, for example, the control of the state and the government from the dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP). The sociologist Chua Beng-Huat would take the politics of conflation even further by emphasizing the collapse of 'state/society', which not only 'legitimizes an interventionist state, but also enables the guardians of the state to slip easily into authoritarianism' (Chua 1995:191). Without elaborating on the political expediency of such slippages, I would simply submit at the start of this essay that the conflation of the 'global' and the 'intercultural' in the domains of art and cultural practice in Singapore is not free of its own political closures. It is for this very reason that it becomes necessary to uphold a contrapuntal relationship between these terms if only to retain a critical vigilance of those enterprises in which the intercultural is subsumed in a global agenda. The second provocation that is implicit in the selection of Singapore as a site for intercultural investigation concerns the assumptions of liberal democracy that invariably underlie the articulation of almost any form of interculturalism. In the context of the 'unapologetically anti-liberal' policies of the PAP government (Chua 1995: 185), one is compelled to emphasize that interculturalism is mediated - and indeed, made possible - through subjectivities and consensualities that are not necessarily determined by the strictures of communities, nations, or states. The state, I would submit, has to recognize its own limits in determining what is 'cultural', and for that matter, what is

'political'. Just as it cannot presume to be the sole arbiter in these matters, it cannot claim any authorship in the writing and the making of the narrative on interculturalism, even though its agencies can facilitate (or impede) the process of its production. It is at this critical level of the state's intervention in the autonomy of cultural practice that Singapore poses specific provocations in the negotiation of the intercultural (see Sasitharan 1994, Kuttan 1996, Krishnan 1996, Lee 1996, Devan 1997, Langenbach 1996, 1998, for an extensive analysis of the censorship of the performing arts in Singapore). In the course of this essay, I will be elaborating in some detail on how the state in Singapore has authored (and implemented) the undeniably vexed narratives of multiracialism and multiculturalism, against which interculturalism can be offered as a tentative alternative. I say 'tentative· because the practice of interculturalism in Singapore is as yet emergent, and fraught with its own traps and self-deceptions. Through my analysis of an ambitious intercultural production of Lear, produced by the Japan Foundation Asia Center, and directed by Ong Keng Sen of TheatreWorks, I hope to tease out some troubling questions that cut across the domains of intercultural practice and multiracial/multicultural politics. To what extent, for instance, is it viable or productive to speak of 'Asian' models of interculturalism? Do such experiments counter the Eurocentrist models of interculturalism, or do they succumb to a 'reverse orientalism', or more invisibly, to a form of 'self-orientalism' ffan 1997 :270)? Does the inscription of 'Asia' in cultural practice unconsciously echo the advocacy of 'Asian values' by ASEAN politicians? While this question is not directly addressed in my essay, it can be extrapolated from the politics of inter-Asian cultural dynamics in the production of Lear, where South Asia is entirely excluded in favour of cultural traditions from South-East Asia and the Far East. Within these cultural zones as well, the problem of hierarchy is embedded in the fundamental premises of the mise en scene, as will become clear in the discussion of the production.

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Another question that is suggested rather than directly confronted in the essay concerns the extent to which interculturalism circumvents the investigation of the 'local' through a refusal (or diffidence) to engage with cultural and class differences at home. Can there be a politically engaged intercultural practice? Or will its recent experiments in contemporary Asian theatre merely enhance the global prospects of cultural tourism, masquerading a specious concern for other cultures that, in actuality, masks the boredom of an excessively mechanized metropolitan existence? These are questions that I would like to engage with not just polemically but, I hope, with some critical empathy. I may not as yet be an insider to the interstices of the cultural scene in Singapore, but I am not entirely a foreigner as well. In fact, I choose to speak in this interstitial space, drawing some encouragement from Chua BengHuat's candid acknowledgement that 'outsiders don't seem to have a problem reading Singapore, it is the ones who live here who have problems reading this place' (quoted in Lee 1998:78). Moreover, the outsider has the privilege not to speak 'elliptically' (Devan 1993a), which would seem to be almost de rigueur in voicing one's critique of the state as a Singaporean citizen. Inevitably, I am reminded of the '0B' or 'out-of-bounds' markers that have been internalized at almost every level of public life and culture by its citizens. I cannot claim to be entirely free of these phantasmatic markers, whose self-censoring devices lurk in the unexpected comers and shifts of almost any discourse on the cultural politics of Singapore. Within the confines of this essay, however, I realize that in tempering my habitual bluntness without surrendering uncritically to the evasions of euphemism, I need not lose my voice.

Beyond Multiculturalism

Before we get to an analysis of the intercultural Lear, it is necessary to provide some background on the multiracial/multicultural interventions of the Singapore state that have stimulated a specific discourse within (and against) which interculturalism needs to be positioned. The underlying premise here is that Ong Keng Sen 's perspective on interculturalism cannot be separated from the context of multiculturalism that he has imbibed as a citizen of Singapore. While he may not entirely subscribe to the official discourse, he has unavoidably been shaped by it. This is not a simple matter that can be readily explained by a theory of cultural determinism; rather, Ong's position is somewhat complex insofar as it combines 'a reaction to and reproduction of the ideological state mechanisms that pervade Singapore society' (Lee 1999b). In this regard, it would be useful to begin the discussion by invoking two seminal concepts provided by Ong's acknowledged mentor in the theatre, Kuo Pao Kun - the 'cultural orphan' (1993) and the quest for an 'Open Culture' (1998). Not only are these vital contributions to the cultural discourse of Singapore, they offer significant points of reference against which Ong's points of departure in his intercultural enterprise can be determined. The concept of the 'cultural orphan' relates to Kuo's almost canonical conviction that the culture of immigration which has shaped the

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modalities of Singapore society from its origins is marked by fragmentation and a certain 'lack' of wholeness, authenticity, and vibrancy. All that Singaporeans can claim are 'bits and pieces' of the larger cultures from where their ancestors had migrated - China, India, Malaya. With half-knowledge or no knowledge of these cultures, the descendants of these migrants can be described as 'orphans', who are alienated from any real links to their cultural traditions. In no aspect of life is this predicament of the 'cultural orphan' more obvious than in the loss of language: 'We call ourselves "multicultural", but actually none of the cultures that we have inherited are whole. It's a bit embarrassing. Similarly we call ourselves 'multilingual'; actually we only have some vocabulary that we can do business with, but when you go deeper, you have no language' (Kuo 1993 :26). It would be necessary at this point to inflect how this 'loss' actually gets perceived by a younger generation of theatre workers, who could more appropriately qualify for the category of 'cultural orphans' than Kuo himself. Alvin Tan, the Artistic Director of The Necessary Stage, is one such person who is up-front about his absence of authenticity: As a Straits-born Chinese who identifies more with the Malay aspects of my Peranakan heritage, I cannot speak Chinese. In fact, I often have strong reactions against some aspects of Chinese culture, i.e. the arrogance and middle kingdom self-sufficiency syndrome. Is it enough that I am not monocultural and I have access to another cultural system? I can speak, read, and understand some Malay. The values I grew up with, the stories and myths I identify with spring from a mesh of Chinese and Malay culture ...

English-educated, part Malay, part Chinese - the average Singaporean profile can be more fragmented than the merlion. Does the voice of the 'cultural orphan' qualify for Singapore theatre? We were, are, and will remain in a conflictual state. (Tan 1997:268)

In a sharper critical register, where Kuo's paternal authority as a cultural commentator is clearly implicated in Tan's critique, we are alerted to the fact that, 'The anxiety of a "cultural orphan" consciousness prompts us, all too quickly, to disclose that we are culturally bankrupt' (ibid: 270). In a somewhat more ironic perspective, Ong Keng Sen tends to valorize the advantages of being a 'cultural orphan' within the illusions of the Singapore 'success story' - more specifically his own story. Descendant of a Chinese immigrant family, Ong invariably traces his roots back to his grandfather who worked as a rickshawpuller in pre-War Singapore. This startling fact in the context of Ong's elitist English-medium education, upper-middle-class background, and global cosmopolitanism, has been subjected to selfreflexive scrutiny in one of his few productions that deals explicitly with the contradictions of class and race, Workshorse Afloat. This is not the place to elaborate on Ong's self-conscious quest for 'Chineseness' through a spate of highly successful productions, in which the marginalization of his mother-tongue has been compensated by a critical need to contact the Other in himself. Suffice it to say that the state of being a 'cultural orphan' has not been viewed by him (or, for that matter by his contemporaries like Alvin Tan) as an aesthetic limitation or a psychological hang-up; if anything, it has become the stimulus for seeking a more hybrid cultural identity and practice. As for the loss of language, it has triggered the flexibility of switching between languages, even imperfectly spoken ones, resulting in a celebration of Singlish among other multicultural argots. Without undermining these somewhat overstated gains of what could be described as postmodern yuppiedom, Kuo Pao Kun himself has moved beyond his early articulation of the 'cultural orphan' towards a more utopian reading of 'Open Culture: To his credit, he is neither a purist nor a nativist. For all his reverence for the cultural traditions of the past, he remains an experimentor. Instead of advocating any kind of mandatory 'return to one's roots', Kuo affirms that the only viable strategy for the 'cultural orphan' is to 'transcend' his/her

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existing predicament, drawing both on the fragments of an inherited ethnic culture, in addition to 'looking beyond, to all the cultures and civilizations in the world' (Kuo t 995: 28). Significantly, this 'Open Culture' is specifically posited against the multiracial/multicultural policy of the Singapore state. Originally designed to 'manage race relations', Kuo believes that this policy has reached a dead-end in so far as it has succeeded in 'keep[ing] the different communities peacefully apart', rather than drawing them together in any kind of meaningful interaction (Kuo t 998 :53). The critique of multiracialism (and its concomitant principle of multiculturalism) has been more theoretically analyzed in the writings of Chua Beng-Huat, among other sociologists, historians, and political theorists (Siddique 1989, Purushotam 1989). Chua rightly emphasizes that 'race' (which is 'officially defined by patriarchal descent', culturalized through language, and identified by a hereditary religion) is 'held in abeyance politically by an explicit recognition that Singapore is a multiracial society', where 'racial tolerance is safeguarded by the law' (Chua 1995: 106). This is similar to the almost 'Archimedean' upholding of secularism by the Indian state (Bilgrami t 994), which assumes that by virtue of the prolixity of cultural, religious, and linguistic diversities in the country, the state has no other option but to be intrinsically secular. Predictably, it inhabits an allegedly 'neutral' space - indeed, this is the very term that is used to legitimize the Singapore state as it 'sets itself above the discursively constituted "races" and their respective cultures' (Chua 1998: t 93). One could justifiably argue that the state in Singapore has been far more effective, if not rigorously consistent, in retaining its 'neutrality', unlike the increasingly dominant Hinduization of the Indian state. This 'neutrality' has consciously worked against any attempt to Sinicize the state not least because, as Chua puts it in forthright terms, 'to eliminate racial differences is to eliminate one of the mechanisms of the government's instrument of social control' (ibid: 191-192). If the Singapore state can claim not to be Sinicized, it cannot be denied that it has 'Confucianized' itself, as Chua has put it, following the failure of the government to popularize Confucian Ethics as one of the mandatory courses on Religious Education that was introduced in secondary schools in 1982. By t 988-89, when it was discovered

that the study of Religious Education could be 'intensifying religious fervour and religious differences among students' (Chua 1995:28), Confucianism was conveniently dropped from the curriculum, but it became linked to the political ideology of communitarianism as upheld by the PAP government (ibid:35). Through an overkill of state intervention including mother-tongue education and the institution of community organizations aimed at helping out different ethnic groups - MENDAKI for the Malays, SINDA for the Indians, CDAC for the Chinese - an almost caricatural form of abbreviated multiculturalism has emerged in Singapore with the counterproductive catch-phrase CMIO (Chinese, Malays, Indians, and Others) typifying - and, in the process, further trivializing - the regimentation of communal harmony in Singapore today. This is a familiar narrative that Kuo punctures with a sharp intervention: the de-linking of 'language' and 'race' - categories which are conflated in official multiracial/multicultural policy. Calling attention to the dearth of 'cross-community' cultural initiatives, which are at one level conditioned by the absence of 'indepth education programmes in school or society to make the communities understand each other's customs and practices', Kuo attempts to articulate an alternative agenda for 'Open Culture' (1998) in Singapore. If multiculturalism has given 'cultural orphans' (Le.Singaporeans) an 'orphanage', this can at best be regarded as a 'temporary shelter: In Kuo's new proposal, Singaporeans are exhorted to 'leave the orphange to start creating a new cultural parentage for themselves. History has proved that there is no way they could reconnect back to their former parent cultures per se. However, having lost their own - cut loose and therefore set free - they have thus become natural heirs to all the cultures of the world' (ibid:61). While the underlying impulse of this statement seems at once legitimate and refreshingly unsentimental, there is a presumption at some level in assuming that the 'cultures of the world' are available for ready absorption. A 'quantum leap' is obviously being made here that clashes somewhat drastically with the almost total absence of any significant preparation on the part of Singapore's citizens to make such a leap, if they wish to do so in the first place. In language that is curiously bureaucratic, and therefore quite antithetical to Kuo's creativity, we find him advocating a 'qualitative upgrading of the nation's cultural resource pool'; in addition, 'every student' should 'internalize an overview of the cultures of the world'

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(emphases in original, ibid:57). Surely, this is a tall order by any standard, which compels one to question some missing links in Kuo's otherwise persuasive logic. Kuo claims that 'when a de-culturalized people become thirsty for culture, they are less discriminative of where the resources come from than of the inspirational value the new culture evokes' (ibid:39). At one level, this is a plausible conjecture, but can one assume this 'thirst' for culture quite so easily? And surely, there has to be some more accountability, a little more dialogic thinking in assuming that what is inspirational for one culture is necessarily so for another. An 'Open Culture', I would hope, is not just available for the enhancement of one's own subjectivity and for one's immediate society; it also involves a recognition of, and respect for the context of the cultures from which one is borrowing. Openness has to work on democratic, and not just on culturalist grounds. There is yet another problem with Kuo's formulation when he speaks of the erstwhile orphans becoming the 'natural heirs to all the cultures of the world.' This assumption of 'naturalness' is at odds with the more pertinent task of 'creating a new cultural parentage'. Instead of concentrating on the dynamics of creation, which is the area of his expertise, Kuo feels obliged to envision a new genealogy for Singapore culture itself. Once again, the illusion of this task, which is more of a conceptual burden, rests on assumptions of organicity, so that it is assumed that 'other cultures are naturally rewarding for the body, mind, emotion, and spirit'; and more problematically, that it is the 'natural trait of creative humankind' to draw energy from new resources. This is not to undermine the good faith underlying Kuo's utopian assumption that 'Open Culture begets Open Futures', but to confront the actual task of working through closed cultures and predetermined futures. Indeed, this would seem to be the paradoxical condition of globalization, where a superficial access to the cultures of the world has also resulted in an everproliferating sameness of cultures, punctured by growing sectarianism and intolerance. If there is an idealism, however, that drives the insufficiently worked out components in Kuo's affirmation of 'Open Culture', it has to be related to his summary rejection of the banalities and closures of official multiculturalism. In this regard, the intercultural vision of Ong Keng Sen can be viewed as the very apotheosis of an 'Open

Culture' in so far as it has embraced the 'cultures of the world: But this, I would argue, is a superficial, if not quantitative perspective on the very idea of 'openness', which demands a negotiation not only of individual free will or of creativity per se, but of their relationship to existing systems of capital and governance. In contrast to the ·good society' underlying Kuo's affirmation of an 'Open Culture', which is driven by a profoundly humanist faith in the incomplete project of modernity, Ong's more emphatically subjective and arguably postmodern vision of interculturalism is far less mediated by any particular vision of a 'good society' as such. For him, an 'openness· to other cultures is less a moral imperative than a creative opportunity to engage and play with the cultures of the world, whose forms, techniques, and artefacts are available for his creative use. It is precisely this availability that enables Ong to make the 'quantum' leap between the allegedly impoverished state of the 'cultural orphan' into global cosmopolitanism. Such is the intensity of the desire to interact with other cultures that Ong would agree, I think, with Kuo's candid statement that the origins of borrowed cultures are far less significant to 'de-culturized' peoples than their 'inspirational value: In short, it is not what cultures are in their pristine states that matter, but what can be done to them through particular processes of intercultural investigation that is of primary concern ; the contexts of cultures are incidental to their transformative possibilities in other locations and narratives. If the vast sweep of Kuo's utopian vision of an 'Open Culture' transcends its particular resonances in theatrical practice, the priorities of Ong's intercultural affinities are clearly centered in the world of performance itself. These affinities, as I will elaborate in the following section, are inseparable from a certain capitulation to notions of spectacle, both at an aesthetic level and in relation to corporate and global influences. While Kuo's advocacy of 'Open Culture' builds its legitimacy through a scrupulous elision of any critique of capital - at no point does Kuo question the democratic viability of Singapore's economic system in the creation of an open culture; if anything, it is the unacknowledged asset for widening one's horizons of the world - the inscription of capital in Ong's high-profile, big-budget intercultural spectacles like Lear almost flaunts its ambition and capacity to compete with the best in the world.

Indeed, it would be a truism to state that Ong's interculturalism has been facilitated by the positioning and bargaining power of Singapore within the larger global economy. Such is the symbiotic link between his cultural practice and the economy that one could argue that the 'spectacle' of L~ar cannot be separated from what Guy Debord has theorized as 'the society of the spectacle' - a construction to which Singapore conforms with an almost uncanny verisimilitude. The reality, therefore, that needs to be squarely confronted in any analysis of Ong's interculturalism is its profoundly Singaporean character. While disdaining the official multicultural imperative to 'Make Singapore Our Best Home', Ong's practice of interculturalism has enlarged the concept of 'home' to incorporate the cultures of the world within the spectacle of the state.

Spectacle in Singapore

The spectator feels at home nowhere, because the spectacle is everywhere.

Guy Debord (1995: 23)

Keeping in mind the motif of the spectacle, I will now jump-cut this narrative directly to the lobby of the Kallang Theatre where Lear received its Singaporean premiere in January 1999. This lobby is the site that prefigures the production and also serves as an extension of it. Featuring a lavish banquet that exemplifies the diversity of cuisines available in the 'food capital of the world', it accommodates a glittering cast of characters who represent the creme de la creme of Singaporean society. This is a space where it is important to be seen. Image and appearance matter. Social chatter prevails over dialogue. In this consummate display of elegant consumption - the food is the very source of the spectacle - the 'signs of the dominant organization of production· (as Debord would put it) are reinforced by the advertising and public relations agencies of the corporations hosting the banquet (and the production). Almost like a pastiche of itself, the world of the commodity endorsed in the lobby is reiterated in a voice-over in the auditorium acknowledging the sponsors of the production. On cue follows the opening image of the production, in which beams of light shoot out like lasers through cracks in the monumental wooden platforms of the set. A gong reverberates. Almost magically, an 'aesthetic

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experience' presents itself, following the 'culinary theatre' of the lobby. But strangely, the spectre of the spectacle prevails, as the silent mechanisms of the mise en scene are absorbed in the highdecibel levels of the chatter in the intermission, which in tum is matched by the live-wire intensity and technical wizardry of the second half of the production. Clearly, this spectacle is not just a 'collection of images', it relates more precisely to 'a social relationship between people that is mediated by images' (ibid: 12) not just 'artistic' images, the ones that are imagined to be free of the contamination of the world. Indeed, in what remains Debord's most succinct aphorism, the spectacle that ultimately prevails long after the show is over is nothing less than 'capital accumulated to the point when it become image' (ibid:24). In the immediate aftermath of the opening night of Lear in Singapore, there was a confirmation of this seemingly abstruse reflection on capital that was voiced by none other than the most prestigious representative of the Singapore state, the Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, in the lobby of the Kallang Theatre itself. With eminent sophistication and a brevity that clearly revealed the 'soul of wit', this Chief Guest of Honour was candid not only in his appreciation of Singapore's association with the celebrity of Lear, he was particularly appreciative of the considerable financial support that the production had received from Japan - more specifically, the Japan Foundation Asia Center. In short, Singapore could claim an intercultural spectacle for which its investment was almost negligible. Whether he was aware of it or not, the esteemed Prime Minister surrounded by an impressive entourage of his colleagues, was making a case for corporate interculturalism facilitated through transnational capital.

It could be argued, of course, that the transnational financial investment of the production was more rhetorical than real. Indeed, Lear could not have materialized without the unstinted and sustained support of the Japan Foundation Asia Center, which has nurtured the production from its inception in July 1996 through the tour of the production in Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, and Australia in January-February 1999, to its more recent exposures in Europe. Tellingly, the impetus of the funding in the first phase of the production was emphatically conditioned by national rather than transnational criteria - the money was given exclusively for performances in Japan (Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka). This intercultural Lear was clearly 'Made in Japan '. It was assumed, however, that other Asian countries represented by the different actors in the production would take on the financial responsibility for sponsoring the individual tours of the production. Significantly, this did not happen because no national government (as represented by its cultural agencies) was prepared to sponsor what did not 'belong' to them. The Singapore Arts Festival felt that apart from being too expensive the production was not 'Singaporean· per se; likewise, the Indonesian cultural authorities, considerably more financially constrained, did not feel that it was sufficiently 'Indonesian'. In effect, the production remained in cold storage for almost two years before it was revived in January-February 1999 for an extensive tour with local sponsors and government agencies covering the costs of the production in each centre. Tellingly, the most extravagant investment here involved the purchase of a vast supply of wood for the construction of Justin Hill's massive, yet spartan set (a multidimensional abstraction of the kelong, or fishing-hut, rendered through an intricate vista of wooden ramps and raked platforms). It was cheaper to construct-and junkthis set in each city rather than to transport it by air from one location to another. While local theatre practitioners (and ecologists) may be justifiably piqued by the sheer waste of this seeming 'economy', the point that needs to be emphasized here is that the spectacle of Lear cannot be separated from some of the fundamental premises of the global economy that sustain the society of the spectacle in Singapore and elsewhere.

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Modalities of Production

Within the emergent experiments on inter-Asian collaboration, Lear exemplifies a model of global cultural enterprise. For a start, the $ 1. 5 million budget of the production (which is a modest estimate of its primary costs) represents a totally different scale of financial investment from most theatre productions, not just at local and national levels, but at intercultural levels as well. Clearly, this budget can compete with the big stakes of 'masterpieces' directed by Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine. lntercultural production in Asia is not cheap. At the levels of the production process and division of labour as well, Lear conforms to the new norms of the market economy. Tellingly, while the basic 'idea' of the entire enterprise was initiated by Ong, the actual production was made possible through independent inputs from different geographical locations (the lighting and costume designers, Shin Inokuchi and Koji Hamai, are based in Tokyo; the Australian expatriate set designer Justin Hill, is located in Singapore; and the composers Mark Chan and Rahayu Supanggah live in Singapore and Indonesia respectively). What needs to be emphasized here is that these individuals do not constitute a 'company' as such in the sense that the Theatre du Soleil, the Centre for International Theatre Research, and Odin Teatret are intercultural companies. The multinational production staff of the Lear project could best be described as 'experts' in their respective fields, who assembled their particular skills for a particular assignment, not unlike the actors drawn from different parts of Asia representing different performance traditions (Noh, Chinese opera, silat, contemporary

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theatre). Not unlike commodities in the global market whose production is no longer centralized in any one location, Lear's production process has been implemented through a highly sophisticated division of labour coordinated by jet-set overnight conferences, e-mail consultations, and electronic banking. Inevitably, within this global mode of production, the question of ownership has been a tricky matter to resolve. While the production itself as an entity cannot be disidentified from the territorial hold of its chief investor the Japan Foundation Asia Center, this essentially technical fact has been somewhat complicated in the actual realization of the production, which is inseparable from the 'vision' of the director. 'Vision', of course, can be seen as another commodity in the global cultural market, just as 'genius' is now awarded by corporations and foundations. Nonetheless, 'vision' and 'genius' still retain their somewhat residual personal attributes and associations with 'originality', which is why they inevitably challenge the technocracy of management and the legal norms of ownership. An even more tricky component to negotiate has been the copyright of the multilingual text of Lear which was originally written in Japanese by Rio Kishida, and then translated into Mandarin, Bahasa Indonesia, and of course, English, which is almost entirely absented in the actual production but which served as the link-language for the entire production process. While Kishida's 'authorship' of the text cannot be questioned to my mind, it has undeniably been mediated by multiple languages and performative inputs from the director and actors. These diverse contributions to the making of the performance text raise the issue of acknowledgement. They also compel one to question the extent to which an assemblage of multiple cultural and lingual inputs actually displaces the centralized notion of the playwright. Indeed, can there be a playwright in the conventional sense of the word for intercultural practice? Related to this question is the important inscription of translation in the process of investigating, shaping, and interpreting an intercultural text. At one level, it could be argued that Ong has made a conscious attempt to break the monolingual mode of Peter Brook's intercultural practice as exemplified in The Mahabharata where a multinational cast was made to speak either English or French in two versions of the production - languages which were clearly thrust on some of the non-western actors. Ong's alternative was to ensure that

the actors spoke only in the languages corresponding to their respective performance traditions and geographical locations (Mandarin, contemporary and Noh-derived Japanese, Bahasa Indonesia, Thai). In this sense, he was playing with the provocative premise that no one spectator could understand all the languages used in the production. What he did not problematize, however, was the homogenizing and reductive use of the computerized subtitles, which were projected in one language-the national language of the respective performance forums. Inevitably, in Singapore, this had to be English-the very language that Ong has self-consciously attempted to distance himself from in his mise en scme. The overall effect, for me at least, was somewhat counterproductive, in so far as the signification of English overpowered the echo-chamber of the 'other' languages vocalized on stage. While it was possible for at least some of the bilingual spectators to tune into the specificities of at least one of the nonwestern languages spoken on stage, the overall hermeneutics of the production was regulated through English. It goes without saying that the task of coordinating the multiple inputs of the production at the levels of language, location, modes of expertise, and different states of technology necessitated a masterminding of the entire operation. This was undertaken with formidable efficiency by Yuki Hata of the Japan Foundation Asia Center, who was at once the producer of Lear and the official representative of her organization. Such was the professionalism of the production machinery that even when Lear was revived in Hong Kong after an absence of two years, in which time almost no one in the cast and crew had communicated with each other, it was possible to 'reinvent' the production with two new cast members and an altered script in exactly ten days. This sounds like an intercultural nightmare to me. However, the sheer confidence and glitch-free technicality of the production in its revival did not reveal (as I can testify from the Singapore run) any suggestion of a nightmare. The production 'worked' like a supercomputer. This display of efficiency, which was in reality made possible through a ten-day nightmare (as Ong Keng Sen has revealed to me), can be open to different readings. At one level, it testifies to the kind of 'product' that Asian theatre is capable of delivering. We (in Asia) no longer need to tum to the West for our models of professionalism;

the Broadway musical can be reproduced with even greater virtuosity in Tokyo and aspiring 'Renaissance' city-states like Singapore. Moreover - and this is no mean achievement - we no longer need to offer our traditional cultures as 'raw material' for intercultural spectacles produced in the West. We are capable of producing these spectacles for ourselves and for the global market. So there is reason to celebrate. At a less euphoric level, one is compelled to acknowledge that the ethos of super-efficiency is not so much an artistic quality as it is the sine qua non of the agencies of spectacle controlled by the state. I am reminded in this context of a devastating comment made by the cultural critic Janadas Devan while articulating the inevitability indeed, the non-negotiability - of success in the Singaporean context. 'The problem,' as Devan put it, 'is not whether we will have a successful Singapore Arts Centre. The problem is that you're going to have a successful Arts Centre' (Devan 1993b: 146). This statement could apply to the unquestionable 'success' of Lear itself. The point is that it had no other choice but to be 'successful'.

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The Role of 'Asia'

I would now like to focus on the 'Asian' affirmation and cultural affinities of the production. While I will have more to say later in this essay about the actual construction of 'Asia' through performance, I call attention here at a broader conceptual level to the emergent role of inter-Asian cultural dynamics in negotiating the EuroAmerican hegemony of intercultural practice. While Ong's particular brand of cultural diplomacy has been subject to critique by those Asian theatre workers committed to a more local and communitarian theatre practice, it is worth inflecting within the larger possibilities of reconceptualizing the role of Asia in the world of intercultural performance. A particularly harsh, though veiled, critique of Ong's 'productoriented' intercultural theatre work has been raised by Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage in Singapore, who castigates Ong's extravagant use of traditional Asian forms as another form of cultural tourism, a re-appropriation of the Eurocentric models of interculturalism, which has led to the creation of an exotic hybrid mix of Asian cultures indeed, a 'Frankenstein of Instant Asia' fran 1997:269-270). While this critique reveals an obvious polemic, it calls attention to the cosmetic and reductive risks of appropriating traditional Asian forms within Asia itself. Appropriately, it points out the hazards of working too fast on several forms at the same time, which leaves the rash interculturalist open to the charge of decontextualizing other cultures - a criticism that has been raised against western intercultural experimentors in their use of non-western forms and techniques.

A more specific problem has to do with Ong's 'facilitation' (to use Tan's word) of the exchange of forms across Asia. Is this not yet another extension of the CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Other) formula of Singaporean multiracialism? The art critic Lee Weng Choy has added mischievously that by drawing on actors from China, Japan, Indonesia, and Thailand in his production of Lear, Ong could be adding yet another acronym - CJIT - to the cultural vocabulary of 'pastiche multiculturalism' (Lee 1999a:3). Certainly, Ong cannot be faulted for not eliciting such sharp and spirited criticism through his numerous interventions. To his credit, he has not been afraid to be 'politically incorrect' in countering the rigid and occasionally self-righteous norms of an 'alternative' cultural practice. Indeed, even if we do accept the reductionism of the 'Instant Asia· model of interculturalism attributed to Ong, is there no role for Asian intervention in the mainstream of intercultural production? In my book Theatre and the World (1993), I had probably overstated my case on cultural colonialism in which Asia is reduced to a repository of raw materials for the cultural products of the West. However, I would still affirm that with all the politically correct rhetoric circulating in performance studies departments relating to the appropriation of non-western cultural resources, the basic ground rules have not changed. The inequities of intercultural 'exchange' have not disappeared with the alleged end of the Cold War; they may even have deepened with the globalizing of cultural practice (Bharucha 2000). While it could be argued that the control of cultural capital in the shaping of inter-Asian collaboration is dominated by Japan and the richer ASEAN nations, thereby risking a new form of neocolonization in intercultural practice, a more inflected view would suggest that inter-Asian collaboration needs to be strongly supported with the necessary critical vigilance. At a personal level, I would not deny the exhilaration and joy that I have received in working with Asian actors from different Asian countries in Asia itself. Why should we - and I consciously inscribe 'we', fully aware of the considerable economic and social differences that differentiate us as 'Asians' - why should we only meet each other in other parts of the world (a festival in Europe, or a conference in the United States)? Why should Asian theatre workers not interact with each other through mediations in Asia itself?

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I choose my words carefully: I am aware that no interaction is possible without mediations, and mediations (wherever they may be located) are inevitably reinforced by agendas of power, control, and a possible suppression of other mediations. In other words, I am not saying that because we (as Asians) work in Asia that 'the Orient' is not likely to surface in unexpected ways, or that 'the West' which we have internalized, will not continue to inflect (or deflect) our search for new languages in theatre. I am not trying to reduce Asian interculturality into some kind of self-authenticating innocence. I am simply saying that it has a right to exist like any other form of social and cultural interaction. Hopefully, in asserting itself as a cultural choice, it will not become exclusionary by closing its doors to western practitioners. However, after having been excluded and marginalized in numerous western frameworks of interculturalism, there is no reason to my mind why theatre practitioners in· Asia should be overly sensitive about prioritizing their 'Asian' preferences of work and exchange. In the inter-Asian context of Lear, I would acknowledge that while its 'Asianness' can be justifiably questioned for the specific ways in which Asian traditional forms and metaphors have been inscribed in the dramaturgy, the project itself cannot be criticized with any legitimacy in its attempt to work exclusively with Asian actors across the spectrum of cultural boundaries and forms in Asia itself. The reality is that such experiments are very rare. Not only do they work against the perfunctory official cultural exchanges between Asian nations where actors are relentlessly straitjacketed within specific national traditions, inter-Asian projects like Lear actually enlarge the spectatorship of intercultural theatre beyond the established European forums and the international festival circuit. In this regard, it is worth keeping in mind that Lear was first seen in at least four Asian countries, countering the more dominant Asiainspired intercultural practice where the work is produced in Asia and then shown almost exclusively abroad. For example, the Kathakali uar ( 1989), conceived by Australian playwright/director David McRuvie and French actor-dancer Annette Leday, which was performed almost entirely by local Kathakali artists affiliated to the Kerala Kalamandalam, was produced thirty times abroad and exactly twice in Kerala itself and at no other location in India (Zarrilli 1992). In contrast, a conscious attempt has been made by the producers of

Lear to reverse the dominant circuits of intercultural exchange. The fact that the production has also been performed in Australia and Europe is gratifying, but such endorsements do not legitimize the raison d'etre of the production, which has consciously prioritized the dissemination of inter-Asian work in Asia itself.

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Essentializing Intercultural Dramaturgy

Before we begin to analyze Lear's intercultural dramaturgy, it would be useful to ask a more fundamental question: Why Lear? Here one should note the priority give to Shakespeare's 'universality' by the Japan Foundation Asia Center, which convinced its cultural officers of his appropriateness for intercultural adaptation. For Ong, however, the issue was not so much the Bard's unquestionable universality, but rather, his 'neutrality', in the sense that no theatre culture from Asia could 'claim' Shakespeare on their own grounds. Doing Shakespeare in Asia, as Ong argues, is quite a different matter from doing the Ramayana, not only because any inter-Asian Ramayana is bound to be compared (almost by default) to Brook's Mahabharata, but because the Ramayana as a text is deeply contested. 'I would never do the Ramayana with an intercultural cast from South-East Asia; as Ong emphasizes, 'because everyone would be fighting over which and whose Ramayana it is. For me, it is important that the play to be selected for intercultural work should be outside all of the participating cultures, so that the Indonesians cannot say, "Why a Japanese play?", and the Chinese cannot complain, "Why an Indonesian play"?' Shakespeare, in a sense, is 'neutral' territory, and therefore, 'OK: What is perhaps not 'OK' is the fact that Shakespeare is almost entirely absented from Rio Kishida 's text, which at best pays

deference to his 'universality' by holding on to the barest story-line of the original play. Thus, the entire cast of King Lrar is almost reduced to the personifications of a Morality play, notably the psychomachia of good and evil forces. Lear becomes the Old Man; Goneril and Regan are collapsed into the malevolent figure of the Older Daughter, who assumes the Oedipal role by killing her father; Cordelia remains the problematically silent (and intrinsically good) Younger Daughter; Gloucester and Kent are divested of all their disguises and reduced to the Loyal Attendant; Edmund becomes a lascivious Retainer. Kishida 's one inspired intervention is the introduction of Lear's wife, the Absent Mother, who is unfortunately marginalized by the spectacle of the production, as I will describe later. The other additional characters include the Mother's Shadow, who is surrounded by a chorus of Earth-Mother figures (probably the most unconvincing characters in the production), along with the more dominant (male) Shadows that follow, stalk, and cluster like serpents around the Older Daughter in their personifications as Ambition, Unpredictability, and Vanity. As played by Ong's most trusted and experienced actors in TheatreWorks, the Shadows exemplify his directorial predilection for dissolving characters into kinetic principles. At once erotic and slippery, these three figures mediate the monolithic traditional characters of the Old Man and the Older Daughter on the one hand, and the contemporary presence of the Fool, who is transformed into a funky, cross-gendered Japanese tourist, who takes polaroid shots of the Old Man (and the audience) with a flash camera. The reduction of the characters into abstractions, essences, and archetypes is further enhanced by their explicit identification with specific forms and traditions of acting. Here Ong cannot escape the charge of cultural essentialism, in his forthright identification of Noh theatre, for instance, with the age and dignity embodied in the figure of Lrar. Likewise, the 'extroverted passion' of Chinese opera is used to capture the Older Daughter's flamboyance and 'bitchy camp', just as the rough idiom of the Indonesian martial art of silat is linked to the musculature of the Retainer and his henchmen, while the lyrical and sinuous movements of Thai dance evoke the androgynous figure of Cordelia. At every level, there are assumptions being made not only of the innate qualities of specific forms but of their correspondences to the essential qualities of the characters themselves.

Ong's uninflected directorial choices compel one to question why a particular set of signs extracted from a specific performance tradition should be selected over other traditions to project specific emotional states. Hypothetically, for example, if the Old Man had been played by a silat martial artist from Indonesia, the performance would surely have registered something very different, but silat in Ong's interpretation is specifically equated with the 'lower' characters of Lear. There is no way by which such a choice can avoid being viewed in a larger hierarchy of forms, with the East Asian forms (Noh and Chinese opera) being given precedence over South-East Asian performance traditions. At one level, this might seem like an overly literalist criticism, even though it is impossible not to contextualize forms within the larger semantics of any production. While Ong claims that he consciously chose Sumatran martial forms over their Javanese counterparts for the representation of the Retainer and his bodyguards because the former tend to be marginalized and are 'perceived to be somewhat coarse', I would argue that this good intention can be entirely misread, if it is read at all, in the actual execution of silat in the production, which is reduced to functional virtuosity. In this context, it is worth quoting Lee Weng Choy who has expressed his discomfort with the equation of forms and the class and social positions embodied by particular characters in Lear: Are we supposed to read or to ignore that the King is Japanese and that the usurper of the throne [i.e. the Older Daughter] is Chinese? Or that the Indonesian soldiers, the Southeast Asians, are subservient to the Northern Asians (who happen in reality to be more dominant politically and economically)? If we are to move beyond seeing cultural form as representative of national history - which may be the intent - then I think it is fair to be given a reason to do so - if not expressed in the director's message in the brochure for the play, then somehow in the play itself. (Lee 1999 :3)

While this is a pertinent critique, it needs to be complicated further through Ong's frequent riposte to his critics that he is not interested in giving reasons for how he shapes a particular text or cultural history. At one level, this is a liberal argument ('let the audience decide the meaning for themselves'), but it is also a somewhat shifty way of not owning up entirely to the responsibility of rendering choices in the multivalent language of theatre. On an earlier

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occasion, Lee Weng Choy had pointed out how Ong's almost indulgent self-reflexivity (more pronounced in productions like Worbhorst" Afloat and Dt"sct"ndants of tht" Eunuch Admiral) and his 'constant assertion of the absence of the master narrative becomes, ironically, the master narrative' (Lee 1998:222). There is some truth in this critical response to a postmodern directorial stance, where a seemingly multidimensional perspective on a particular text is assumed to de-center the authority of the director.

Intercultural Aesthetics

In Lear, the director is very much in control of the mise en scene, though he is more of an intercultural negotiator and a cultural diplomat than an authoritarian genius figure. To give due credit to Ong's heightened aesthetics as a director, it is necessary to push Lee's criticism into a somewhat more theatrically inflected, performative context, where it doesn't matter at a certain level whether the actor playing Lear is Japanese or using the Noh idiom in an iconoclastic individual way. What matters instead is the resonance of a performance, wherein the transmission of signs between the actor and the spectator is negotiated and transformed at very personal, imaginative, and perhaps unconscious levels. If we had to deny ourselves this dimension of experience in theatre, we would be minimizing our theoretical difficulties, but we would also be simplifying our own critique. Therefore, to add yet another dimension to the problematic of representation in intercultural theatre, and also to acknowledge my deep appreciation of at least one unforgettable moment in the production, I would call attention to the scene where the Old Man is alone, listening to the waves of the sea, sitting absolutely still, rather like a cormorant on a rock. This is possibly one of the very few moments in the production where there is time to explore the fathomless depths of inner space. The actor Naohiki Umewaka displays the quintessential 'no emotion' of Noh, which has been immortalized in Zeami's insight 'What [the actor] does not do is of

interest' (Senu to1'oro ga omoshiro1'i) (Komparu 1983:73). Slowly, he draws what seems to be a dagger from within the stiff folds of his gold robe, and then, suddenly, in a split-second of transformed energy, he opens a fan. This is not a traditional Japanese fan, but a steel one that provides a certain edge to the aura of deep, brooding elegance that is held by the still figure of the Old Man. Transforming the energy yet again, he waves the fan with a slight undulating motion of the hands, and almost magically, we can see the water trickling from his fingers. It is a profoundly graceful and transcendent moment suggesting the Old Man's inner resilience and refusal to be de-throned. It could be argued, of course, that what I am responding to is the least intercultural moment in the production in so far as the actor is represented in a state of resplendent solitude, where he is free to extrapolate from his discipline and years of internalized experience as a Noh performer. This is different in effect from other scenes where he has to hold his stillness, and yet cut through what I have no other option but to describe as the sentimental spiel of the contemporary Troubador, who sobs his platitudinous lyrics of 'walking in the moonlight alone' in an excruciating pastiche of Singaporean blues and pop. At such junctures, the Noh energy is surely tested, but Umewaka survives the triteness of contemporary juxtaposition by rotating his body in a still centre of continuous energy. It is precisely his resistance to 'porosity' (Ong's catch-word for intercultural encounter) that produces the distanced immediacy of his performance. In an even more climactic scene, the Old Man, holding a cluster of white gauze representing Cordelia's dead body, runs downstage as if he intends to throw the body into the sea. Striking a freeze, Umewaka has to amplify his histrionic energy to match the thunderous soundtrack of drums and electronic keyboard synthesizer. Reminiscent of a new-wave pop opera, this sequence is, perhaps, Ong's most audacious attempt to popularize intercultural performance. The theatricality is so assertive in its technological expertise that the audience has no other choice but to be stunned by its bravura. And yet, this bravura is also a short-cut in so far as it reduces the Noh actor to an exotic oddity from an intercultural, high-tech version of the Phantom of the Opera. One is not arguing here on purist grounds - indeed, I believe that multimedia interventions can contribute provocatively to the re-framing of

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traditional forms. The point, however, is that these interventions need to be followed through within the conceptual thrust of an intercultural experiment, or else, they can be reduced to mere effects. If we have to experience virtuosity in a more immediate sense, however, it is to be found in the Old Man's devastating 'death-fall' after he has been savagely stabbed by his daughter. Like a falling pine tree, Umewaka drops his body forwards with a blind trust that one so rarely gets to see in the mannered technicism of intercultural theatre. The power of this performance lies precisely, as I have suggested earlier, in the actor's tenacious hold on to the innermost secrets of his tradition, whose juxtaposition with a heterogeneity of foreign elements oddly serves to heighten its inner focus and energy.

The Disappearance of Text

I would now like to tum to Kishida's text, which could be one of the unacknowledged casualties of Lear unacknowledged, because its spare economy has not merely been overwhelmed by the scenic grandeur of the production, its raison d'etre has also been undermined. This is unfortunate because the collaboration between Ong and Kishida has been marvellously sustained, involving close dialogue and mutual consultation at every step of the production. And yet, in the valorization of the visual in Lears spectacle, the disappearance of the text in the mise en scene has resulted in yet another kind of evasion. It is not just Shakespeare who is absented in the production, but Kishida herself. Taking off from Ong's perceptive point of departure that the production should begin 'after the storm', Kishida was drawn almost instinctively to the phantasmal qualities of Noh drama (Komparu 1983 :77-78), where the ghosts of the past in disguised forms reveal their identities to a passing traveller and then disappear, only to reappear in the forms they had in real life. Kishida simplifies the intricacies of this phantasmal dramaturgy by creating a prologue in which a Troubadour sings about the voices of the dead, while the spectres of the Old Man, the Older Daughter, and the Younger Daughter emerge from the shadows. For Kishida, the prologue was clearly linked to the first component in the tripartite structure of Jo-Ha -Kyu, which is an 'ordering principle' according to Kunio Komparu, that can be traced not only in the dramatic structure of plays but in the rhythmic sequence of a

particu]ar performance. As Komparu expJicates the 'contradiction' that unifies these three elements: 'Jo means beginning ... and thus is a spatia] element. Ha means break or ruin ... and thus is a disordering element. Kyu means fast ... [I]t refers to speed and thus is a temporaJ element' (Komparu 1983:25). In the combination of these elements, Jo-Ha-Kyu 'unifies the contradiction of the essentially opposing concepts of space and time, binding them with a breaking element' (ibid).

In Lear, the Ha element in the dramatic structure is introduced with the boisterous entrance of the Fool, who disrupts the dream-Jike prologue by fast-forwarding the action into a fictiona] present. This is, perhaps, the least convincing part of the production in so far as Ong neutraJizes or faiJs to sufficiently inflect the very specific references in the text to the ruptures of the rea] world - the Old Man's ignorance of poverty, the Foo]'s awareness of a wor]d that has gone mad, and the working-class Retainer's reso]ution to become a king who knows starvation. AH these detaiJs are simp]y overwhe]med in a spate of visua] effects, particular]y in the second half of the production, which is driven by a rhythmic momentum embodied in the Kyu part of the Jo-Ha-Kyu structure. Here, in a breakneck roller-coaster series of at ]east four distinctive killings, the audience has no other choice but to be gripped by the Grand Guignol of the action. The Loyal Attendant's blinding, for instance, is visually accentuated by the Retainer's blowing of water into the air from his mouth, which is repeated three times, and then cut abrupt]y by a sudden flash of red ribbons dangling in the hands of the Retainer's henchmen. The Younger Daughter's murder is even more elaborate as it evokes the humiliation of Draupadi in the court

of the Pandavas. In this scene, the top-knot of the daughter's headgear, which is tied up like an elaborate bandana, is unravelled in a long plait that trails against the floor. This plait becomes a rope with which she is dragged on the floor by the Retainer and eventually raped, with the Retainer holding the end of the plait against his crotch to suggest the final death-blow. In creating such sensational visuals, eerily interspersed with the Three Shadows holding mirrors whose reflections cut into the audience like laserbeams, Ong displays an undeniable flair for visual effects rather than any telling comment on the 'reflexivity' of the mise en scene, as he might like to imagine. Thus, in what could have been an impossibly messy scene where the Older Daughter plunges a dagger into the Old Man, a red silk backcloth snaps Kabuki-like, the light picking up the ripples of its downward cascade of movement. One is struck by the director's chutzpah in negotiating the clash of two performative traditionsNoh and Chinese opera. As Ong revealed his master diplomacy to me in candid terms: 'Noh actors are most austere in their most charged moments. The Chinese opera actors, on the other hand, believe that they can only kill with the full power of their art form. So, to negotiate these different conventions of dying, I opted for the following: "Kill passionately [Chinese opera], die minimally [Noh drama]." Thereby, both performers have their moments and share the same space.' Getting beyond issues of diplomacy, however, one is compelled to question how Ong's directorial legerdemain circumvents the basic intervention of Kishida's text in foregrounding the role of the Absent Mother. Where is she in the larger histrionics of this production? At one level, it is nothing short of an inspiration to have Naohiki Umewaka play both the Old Man and the Absent Mother, with the latter emerging with an almost hermaphroditic serenity from beneath the mask of the Old Man. However, one is surprised that with Ong's penchant for visuals that he does not linger in this particular case on the ambivalence of male and female personae within the same body onstage. Indeed, one wonders why this amalgam of the Old Man/ Absent Mother is not introduced in the very opening beats of the production. Also, given the almost sacrosanct role of the mask in Noh performance (of which Ong is keenly aware), why is the unmasking of the Old Man allowed to pass as if it were nothing beyond another theatrical effect?

Indeed, this unmasking is nothing short of a reversal of the ritualistic process by which the Noh actor enters the being of another self within the confines of the 'mirror room' backstage. To remove this mask onstage, therefore, is to challenge the very ritualistic foundations of the Noh actor's presence. Unfortunately, this unprecedented action is not given due respect either in iconographic or ritualistic terms, so that if the moment of reconciliation between the Old Man and the Mother fails to resonate, it is because the audience has never been made to feel that they are part of a single

existence. If I have dwelt at length on the visuals of the production, it is not merely to provide some description of the mise en scene but to remind the reader that Ong's surrender to spectacle in Lear is unequivocal. Instead of problematizing the two primary principles of his intercultural aesthetics - 'juxtaposition' and 'rupture' - he illustrates them relentlessly, building one image after another. This spectacle is a victim of time in its metronomic precision and carefully calculated speed. It is almost as if the production is running a race with itself. It refuses to rest till it gets to the end. Consistently mercurial, and therefore predictable, its impact also results in an impasse, which bears some resemblance to what Guy Debord has described as the spectacle's 'essential character' - 'a negation of life that has invented a visual form for itself (Debord 1995: 14).

The Politics of Patricide

lmbricated within the trappings of spectacle, the primary ideological component of the production concerns the politics of patricide, as represented in the killing of the Old Man by the Older Daughter. In his numerous press releases, Ong has reiterated that in Lear he has found a paradigmatic text in which the authoritarian, patriarchal figures of Asia can be questioned, and in the process, substituted by a younger generation of Asians who kill their fathers only to become like them. In the final moments of the play, the Older Daughter remains alone, seemingly oblivious to the spectres of the Earth Mother and the Absent Mother who hover around her and then disappear. The Older Daughter is left intoning a question that has the aura of an incomplete litany: 'Who is behind me?' (' Shenshou zhi ren shi shei?'). While this can be read as an open question - indeed, a direct confrontation of the audience - there are other readings of this question that need to be considered: Is the daughter ready to receive the beneficence of the Mother(s) which is offered as a gift? Or is she doomed to be isolated in her continued rejection of their care? Has the cycle of karma been disrupted by the killing of the father, or has it been perpetuated? Can a 'new Asia' rise phoenix-like from the ashes of older regimes, or will the spectres of Lee Kuan Yew, among other political father-figures, continue to reign in different manifestations? In other words - and this would seem to be the director's statement - can we ever free ourselves from the cultural,

historical, and political baggage of the past? Or in killing our fathers, do we simply become like them, perpetuating our own selfdestruction? Whether or not this interpretation registers in the production, it is necessary to juxtapose its point of view in relation to a much more complex alternative to the killing of the father that had been put forward by Kishida herself in her first draft of the play. In a provocative intervention that matches the ingenuity of her choice to inscribe the presence of the Absent Mother, Kishida had suggested that this spectral maternal figure could kill the Older Daughter as an act of redemption for her patricide. Cast within a Buddhist framework of thought, this choice was simply too extreme for Ong, who felt that yet another death could only be read as an overkill of authorial intervention, if not a problematic equation of patriarchy with matriarchy (first the daughter kills the father, and then the mother kills the daughter). Unable to cope with the actual intricacies of Kishida's position, Ong rejected it outright as 'a very male thing, and she shouldn't do it.' I am, of course, being a little mischievous here, but the ironies of a male director telling his female playwright that a woman should not kill another woman onstage, cannot be lost on any attentive reader. The real question is: Who is this 'woman'? Can either the Absent Mother played by a Noh actor, or the Older Daughter played by a female impersonator from Chinese opera, be regarded as 'women'? This dimension in the politics of representation is sadly absent in both Ong's direction and Kishida's text, both of which play into the stylized conventions of female impersonation in traditional Asian

theatre without any adequate conceptualization of its re-signification in what is assumedly a contemporary allegory on the state of power in contemporary Asia. Once again the possibilities of critique have been subsumed within the seduction of performance - in this particular case, the spectacle of men 'becoming' women. Peggy Phelan (1993) has been one of the most articulate readers of the patriarchal unconscious animating cross-gendered performance, which, in her view, succeeds in conveying a 'fetishized female image' for the gratification of male spectators. For Phelan, these female roles are 'surface representations, whose appeal exists precisely as surface'; they are portraits 'not of femaleness per se, but of the social/political imaginations which they serve and express'; they generate a 'fantasy of exchange between men about women', playing on 'homoerotic desire between men for men/boys' and the 'inequitable power relationship between the spectator and the performer' (Phelan 1993: 157-158).

At an epistemological level, one could ask: What are the implications of separating 'seeing' from 'reading', as Phelan does, especially when one is not trained or prepared to read what one sees? Or is 'what' one sees totally incidental to 'how' one sees? What is the responsibility of reading what one chooses not to see, for example, those contextdetermined signs and conventions embedded in the vocabulary of alien performances? These are some of the questions that are undeniably provoked on watching the almost bland, totally unproblematized representation of 'women· from different Asian traditions in Lear. Perhaps, the most problematic representation is that of the Older Daughter, played by the virtuosic Jiang Qihu, who, significantly, has never played a woman's role before. Arguably, it is unfair to seize this point, particularly in the absence of my own exposure to Chinese opera, but if I was unmoved by the overt technicality of this performance, I would venture to say that at no point did Jiang register 'femininity' except in obvious details - the falsetto singing voice (which, very tellingly, could not be sustained from night to night), the coquettish malice, and above all, the swinging golden tassles attached to his ornate headgear, which seemed to vibrate of their own accord. At a physical level, I was not convinced even by the 'conventionality' of his performance that we were in the presence of a 'woman', in distinct contrast to Peeramon Chomdhavat's

intensely personalized vulnerability as the Younger Daughter, which was unmistakably androgynous in effect. With Jiang Qihu, we were in the presence of a man who happened to be dressed as a woman, but who refused to surrender his 'maleness' at any point in the play to the inner fissures of the role. Needless to say, I would acknowledge that this is just one response to the performance, which could clash with other assumptions and readings of his 'femininity: I would also acknowledge being somewhat conditioned in my critique by my own fairly extensive exposure to female impersonation in Indian performance traditions. I cannot enter this field here in its cross-cultural subtleties, but let me acknowledge that the excitement generated by seeing a great Odissi performer like Guru Kelucharan Mahapatra play Radha, for instance, lies precisely in the ambiguity of sexual energies that are stimulated by the construction of 'femininity' on the stage. Whether one defines the performative being in terms of 'male' or 'female', or anywhere in between, the response to the performance is integrally related to the indeterminacy of who one is in relation to what one is seeing: / am not sure where '/' stand in relation to him/her. While acknowledging that there are different contexts of female impersonation across Asian performance traditions, I would nonetheless uphold the axiomatic relationship between the indeterminacy of the performer's 'feminine' identity and the erotics of receptivity itself. It is precisely this indeterminancy that is missing in the relatively clear-cut, if not perfunctory renditions of female impersonation in Lear. However, what is downright objectionable in the production is not so much the lack of attention given to the politics (and erotics) of female impersonation, but the very perceptible directorial indifference to the representation of the 'real' women onstage, notably the Earth Mothers and the Mother's Shadow. It almost seems as if these characters have walked in from another production, and are subsequently treated like extras. Costumed awkwardly in what look like coarse and crushed makeshift gowns, with no particular line or fall or shape, and even more amateurishly disfigured through the use of black wigs, the Earth Mothers resort to discordant, splenetic movements with flailing hand gestures which do not merely look unconvincing; what is worse is that it seems as if no one had cared to engage with what they were doing onstage. Inevitably, they are overshadowed by the feminized

men onstage. Needless to say, this is one of the oldest traps in the history of female impersonation, where the men playing women invariably come out looking better than the women themselves. Since there are no other actresses in Ltar (apart from Hairi Katagiri playing the very self-consciously cross-gendered Fool), one has no other option but to question: What is the role of women in this production? Indeed, do women matter at all in this reading of Ltar? Or are they merely surrogates for the director's persona, who would like to kill his father through the guise of a ·woman', but who is not fully prepared to allow that 'woman· to be adequately represented in her own right? The charge of misogyny, it seems to me, cannot be raised against Shakespeare in this production, because Shakespeare as such does not exist beyond his story-line. It is Ong as director who has to assume responsibility for the ways in which women are marginalized in his production, even as they are metaphorized as icons of a future Asia. Finally, we have to return to the unquestionable bleakness of Ong's statement that 'we kill our fathers only to become like them: Why does this world-view have to be mediated through the fictional body of a 'woman'? And to what extent can the Older Daughter bear the 'Asian' burden of this statement? These are questions that take us beyond the problematic of gender to the larger crisis of political intervention - a crisis to which Ong's practice of interculturalism can be read as a surrender rather than a critical response to the spectacle of the state.

Consuming the Other

Beyond the limits of the production, we need to question whether the inexorability of 'children becoming like their fathers' does not altogether close the possibilities of change. Defending his seeming pessimism, Ong has attempted to clarify his position: 'The resolution is not achieved by killing the father. The resolution has to go deeper. I don't have a solution for it. It's more a statement of our current situation. You have the Tiananmen Square happening, the student uprising in Indonesia, and the Anwar situation in Malaysia. We always begin a new era with hope but it invariably degenerates into something else. And so, I think we need to find a new type of uprising.' While appreciating the honesty of this statement, one is nonetheless compelled to question why this 'new type of uprising' is so singularly absent in most of Ong's productions. One does not expect 'solutions' as such from any reflective director, even though Ong·s resistance to 'solutions' in his very tentative articulation of politics is curiously at odds with the confidence of his immaculate stagecraft, where the overall effect is that of a perfectly resolved set of mechanisms. Also absent in Ong's imaginary is any clearly defined sense of opposition or engagement with ongoing struggles. Even when dealing with the trials of cultural and racial identity in Singapore as in Workhorse A.float, we find him consciously circumventing any direct relationship with the Other, even as he claims the right to represent their erased histories.

Ultimately, Ong would seem to accept that there is no other choice available but to 'consume the Other: The disturbing finality of this position would seem to constrain not just Ong's aesthetics but his very real commitment to broadening and deepening the framework of interculturalism. If, ultimately, we cannot avoid becoming like our fathers whom we have the luxury to kill, or we cannot stop ourselves from 'consuming the Other' even with the best of intentions, then where does that leave us as intercultural seekers and, hopefully, as responsible citizens of the world? At one level, the 'consumption of the Other' can be regarded as a selfcritique, but it is also, very implicitly, self-congratulatory, in so far as it legitimizes the absence of any real respect for the Other, who can never be regarded on equal terms, but who is - ultimately - fit only to be consumed. This is a cynical position to my mind that can do nothing to transform the existing inequities of cultural exchange, both within the borders of the state and beyond. Perhaps, the closest that Ong has ever come to confronting the closure of this position is to be found in his highly self-reflexive, documentary drama Workshorst Afloat, which is worth addressing in the conclusion to this essay, if only to suggest concrete ways by which Ong's intercultural impasse can be circumvented through an intracultural strategy. In Workhorse Afloat, the Other is clearly marked as the working-class immigrant labourer. Unfortunately, there is a diffusionist strategy at work in this narrative, in so far as Ong seems to conflate - or at least, to equate - the early migrancy of labourers from mainland China to Singapore (of which his grandfather is a representative as a rickshaw-puller), and the more recent employment of foreign labourers from Bangladesh, the Philippines, and India (primarily Tamil workers from Tamilnadu). The basic problem in this narrative is the insufficiently inflected slippage between these two very distinct historical moments - one that bas ultimately succeeded in establishing the Singapore success story, whereby the former migrants are now educated and prosperous citizens; and the other where the question of citizenship does not arise, because these new migrants are employed on short-term contracts, whose negotiability is severely restricted through a basic absence of human rights.

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It is no secret that the Singapore 'economic miracle' has been sustained by cheap labour from other countries, 'whose assimilation is tightly controlled, even as they are crucial to the daily functioning of the nation-state' (Cheah 1998:318). Within the larger social demarcations of Singapore society, there are hierarchies imposed on the labourers as well, who are differentiated - and divided according to their country of origin, race, and skills. Ghettoized in barrack-like quarters, the labourers live in abject living conditions that do not seem to represent an appreciably 'better' life than the poverty they have left back home. Even if they earn more money, they are invariably undercut by their contractors and can tum to no legal aid centre or union for help. What is dehumanizing is the polite indifference to which the workers are subjected on a daily basis; there is a total disengagement from their cultures (if they are assumed to have one) outside of the work-environment. Expected to behave like 'good' guest workers, they are almost infantalized into collective submission. Indeed, this othering of the foreign labour force in Singapore is so complete that the workers are rendered almost invisible. They are there, and not there. Strategically, they are allowed one 'free' day in the week, which amounts to a couple of hours on Sunday in the late afternoon and evening, when it would seem as if the entire labour force has congregated on Serangoon Road to socialize and be together. Never in my life - and I make this comment as a resident of Calcutta who is used to crowds and the close proximity of people - have I seen such an homogenized mass of people, who are marked for all their seeming differences by the same class, job, and condition. I cannot elaborate on the dynamics of this cultural massification - Sunday evening on Serangoon Road - but I feel obliged to inscribe it on the borders of my essay as one of the most saddening experiences of my life. As you jostle through the crowds, picking up snatches of conversation in Tamil, Bangla, Sylheti - common talk about family and prospects of going home, bargains in shopping centres, also quarrels and bitter recriminations and regrets - you see men (there are almost no women in sight) talking their lives out in a state of chaos and cacophony. For once, the sterile image of Singapore is completely shattered. One is left confronting the most profound isolation of the foreign workers that has yet to be addressed adequately in the multicultural discourse of Singapore.

To the credit of Ong and his colleagues at TheatreWorks, they have tried to respond to this predicament of the workers, but on their own terms. Unfortunately, the trap of self-reflexivity is so intense that under the pretext of examining the Other, the director and actors ultimately land up talking about themselves. Thus, what comes through in Workhorse Afloat is not so much the dehumanization of foreign labour but, once again, a coming to terms with the hybrid cultural identities of contemporary (Chinese) Singaporeans, who no longer need the 'authenticity' of the mainland as a point of reference. Most emphatically, these upholders of hybridity are not 'cultural orphans', but can they honestly claim to practise an 'open culture'? In order to activize an 'Open Culture' on the lines of Kuo Pao Kun's formulation, as addressed earlier in this essay, it is necessary to acknowledge that the 'cultures of the world' are not just located elsewhere; they are also to be found on the streets of Singapore itself and in the unacknowledged ghettos of the labour force. To recognize these cultures in their states of fragmentation, displacement, and vulnerability could be the first real step in developing a critical openness to the cultures of the world. lntraculturality - the relationships across ethnic communities within the boundaries of a specific cultural geography - is necessary not only to counter the sterile divisions of official multiculturalism; it is also needed to counterpoint the global cosmopolitanism of intercultural practice which can so easily degenerate into a form of atomized alienation. In a moving revelation, Ong once acknowledged to me: 'How much of myself do I have to lose in order to belong to this intercultural circuit? How much do I compromise?' Perhaps, the answer lies not in holding on to any illusory 'truth' buried in one's own subjectivity, but in questioning relentlessly the shaping of this 'truth' in relation to the representations of the Other. Here it seems to me that Ong has no other option but to subject his surrender to the spectacle, at both aesthetic and political levels, to a new critical scrutiny. It is not enough in this regard to focus periodically on the process of investigating different Asian performance traditions, as Ong has been doing so in his organization of inter-Asian workshops coordinated under the rubric of The Flying Circus Project. If the insights gained from these workshops are ultimately going to feed more spectacles, their purpose is lost.

What would be more pertinent for Ong would be to relate his surrender to the spectacle with a larger politics of assimilation by which the search for cultural alternatives in the direction of a more 'open' society is entirely subsumed within the dictates of global capitalism. New dialogic structures of cultural practice are needed by which the mechanisms of the spectacle can be ruptured through new modes of investigating cultural difference in which the disparities, disjunctions, and injustices of the global economy can be duly acknowledged ·- and confronted. Without a critique of this economy to which the society of the spectacle in our times is inextricably linked, Ong runs the risk not merely of consuming the Other, but of being consumed himself within the mechanisms of his own intercultural spectacle.

References Bharucha, Rustom, 1993. Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture, New York and London: Routledge. ---, Spring 1999. 'lnterculturalism and its discriminations: Shifting the agendas of the national, the multicultural, and the global,' Third Te.rt, 46. ---, 2000. The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an Age of Globalization. London: The Athlone Press. Bilgrami, Akeel. 'Two concepts of secularism: reason, modernity and Archimedean ideal,' Economic and Political Weekly, 9 July 1994. Cheah, Pheng, 1998. 'Given culture: Rethinking cosmopolitical freedom in transnationalism', Cosmopolitics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chua, Beng-Huat, 1995. Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore, London and New York: Routledge. ---, 1998. 'Culture, multiracialism and national identity in Singapore', Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge. Devan, Janadas, 1993a. 'Is art necessary?', Art vs. Art: Conflict ft Convergence. The Substation Conference, Singapore. ---, 1993b 'Forum: Art vs. Art-Are there choices?', Art vs. Art: Conflict ft Convergence, The Substation Conference, Singapore. ---, 1997. 'Notes on proscriptions and manners', 9 Lives: JO Years of Singapore Theatre, ed. Sanjay Krishnan. Singapore: First Printers. Debord, Guy, 1995. The Society of the Spectacle. New York : Zone Books. Komparu, Kunio, 1983. The Noh Theater: Principles and Perspectives, New York, Tokyo, Kyoto: Weatherhill/Tankosha. Krishnan, Sanjay, 1996. 'Waiting for theatre', Looking at Culture. Singapore: Chung Printing. Kuo, Pao Kun, 1993. 'Commentary', Art vs. Art: Conflict and Convergence, The Substation Conference, Singapore.

48

---. 1998. 'Contemplating an open culture: Transcending multiracialism', Re-Engineering Success, ed. Arun Mazhiznan.Singapore. Kuttan, Sharaad, 1996. 'The limits of liberalization', Looking at Culture. Singapore: Chung Printing. Langenbach, Ray, 1998. Atropia, presentation at the Contemporary

Art Forum, Art Gallery of New South Wales, manuscript. ---, 1996. 'Leigong Da Doufu: Looking back at "Brother Cane"', Looking at Culture. Singapore: Chung Printing. Lee, Weng Choy, 1997. 'Imaginary fronts: The Necessary Stage and the problems of representation', 9 Lives: JO Years of Singapore Theatre, ed. Sanjay Krishnan. Singapore: First Printers. ---, February 1999a. Correspondence with Rustom Bharucha. ---, December, 1999b. 'Comments on Lear', e-mail correspondence. ---, 1996. 'Chronology of a controversy', Looking at Culture. Singapore: Chung Printing. --- 1998 'Time landscape and desire in Singapore', Singapore: Views on the Urban Landscape, ed. Lucas Jodogne. Belgium: Pandora. Phelan, Peggy, 1993. 'Criss-crossing cultures', Crossing the Stage: Controversise on Cross-Dressing. London and New York: Routledge. Purushotam, Nirmala, 1989. 'Language and linguistic politics', Management of Success: The Moulding of Modern Singapore, ed. Sandhu and Wheatley, Singapore: ISEAS Sasitharan, T. 'Do not proscribe political art', The Straits Times, 8 February 1994. Siddique, Sharon, 1989. 'Singaporean identity', Management of Success:The Moulding of Modern Singapore, ed. Sandhu and Wheatley. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Tan, Alvin 1997 'A necessary practice', 9 Lives: JO Years of Singapore

Theatre, ed. Sanjay Krishnan. Singapore: First Printers.

Zarrilli, Phillip B, 1992. 'For whom is the King a King? : Issues of intercultural production, perception, and reception in a Kathaltali King Lear, Critical Theory and Performance, ed. J.G.Reinelt and J .R.Roach. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge the hospitality and tremendous support that I have received from Ong Keng Sen and his colleagues at TheatreWorks, who invited me to participate in the Flying Circus Project, thereby facilitating my research on inter-Asian theatrical collaboration and interaction. The possibility of seeing Lear in Singapore was implemented by an international touring grant from the National Arts Council. On the intricacies of the Singapore cultural scene, I have learned much from intense discussions with T. Sasitharan and Lee Weng Choy, who have provided valuable comments on my essay. C.J. Wee Wan-ling, Ray Langenbach, Alvin Tan, Haresh Sharma, among many other cultural workers, have also contributed to my understanding of Singapore's inner dynamics and contradictions. My deepest insights into the cultural politics of Singapore have been derived from the 'local knowledge' of Kuo Pao Kun and Chua Beng-Huat - critical insiders with an extraordinary capacity to combine critique with the art of living. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the many animated conversations that I have shared with Singapore's cab drivers, whose capacities to analyze the 'spectacle of society' at ground levels have greatly inspired the writing of this essay. Countering the aura of boredom and regimentation that tends to be associated with Singapore, their enlightened chatter has alerted me to the unprecedented voices and energies underlying the site of my research.

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