Who’s There?
Co-Directed by Sim Yan Ying “YY” & Alvin Tan
Devised with The Transit Ensemble
August 2020 on Zoom as part of New Ohio Theatre’s Ice Factory Festival
A Black American influencer accuses a Malaysian bureaucrat of condoning blackface. A Singaporean-Indian teacher launches an Instagram feud calling out racial inequality at home, post-George Floyd. A privileged Singaporean-Chinese activist meets a compassionate White Saviour, and an ethnically ambiguous political YouTuber takes a DNA test for the first time.
A cross-cultural encounter involving artists based in Singapore, Malaysia, and the United States, Who’s There? uses Zoom as a new medium to explore the unstable ground between us and “the other”. In this pandemic contact zone, lines along race, class and gender bleed into one another, questioning the assumptions we hold of ourselves and the world around us. What sort of tensions, anxieties and possibilities emerge, and how can we work to reimagine a New Normal?
Collaborators
Created by The Transit Ensemble
டிரான்சிட் என்சொம்பல்
ذا ترنست أنسمبل
摆渡组合
Co-directors: Sim Yan Ying "YY" & Alvin Tan
Performers: Camille Thomas, Ghafir Akbar, Neil Redfield, Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai ரெபெகா சங்கீதா டொரை, Sean Devare, & Sim Yan Ying “YY”
Dramaturgs: Cheng Nien Yuan & J.Ed Araiza
Multimedia Designer: Jevon Chandra
Sound Designer: Jay Ong
Publicity Designer: Sean Devare
Stage Manager: Manuela Romero
Stage Management Intern: Priyanka Kedia
Marketing & Multimedia Intern: Ryan Henry
Photos by Sim Yan Ying “YY”
Press
”With Who’s There?, The Transit Ensemble has set a new standard for digital theatrical productions, not only effectively utilising the suite of options available to the medium, but also using them to amplify its core message of how tricky it is to talk about race. […] This is a feat few companies can claim to have matched during this stage of the pandemic, and well worth watching for its provocative nature and uncomfortable truths it seeks to force us into confronting.”
— Bakchormeeboy
“Of all the plays I’ve seen in the last couple of months, it’s something that truly captures the zeitgeist of how we are thinking about the political issues that are playing out. And the number of these themes that was embedded in the narrative was just really quite remarkable. It was impossible to watch it and not feel a true sense of implication and being brought into all the issues at the moment. […] A perfect example of Zoom being used as a fantastic medium to stage a full-fledged theatrical production. I think it’s probably the best Zoom production I’ve seen.”
— Naeem Kapadia, Arts Equator
”[Who’s There?] was the show for me this year, that really gave me hope that this isn’t just a year that we need to consign to the bin, remove from the annals of history, because it really spoke to me about the possibility of artists to deal with what’s in front of them with the tools that they have. […] It came out really fast, really nimble, incredibly intelligent, well thought through.”
— Matt Lyon, Arts Equator
“Combining realistic scenes with beautiful abstract devised work, “Who’s There?” captures something truly remarkable. Using all that the virtual medium will offer, they tell a story that spans continents, seeks to unite, and leaves you asking some very important questions.”
— Max Berry, OnStage Blog
”Who's there? is an urgent and timely piece of theatre that seeks to interrogate the existing power structures within our society and critically examine who exactly is the 'other'. It forces us to confront our own prejudices and work together to create a better world for all.”
Interviews & Features
“Having grown up in Singapore and then living in the United States for the last five years, I have been craving an international collaboration with artists from both countries, to explore our differing value systems and cultural sensibilities. This pandemic and the halting of live theatre, while terrifying, was an almost perfect excuse to jumpstart this project. I was driven by the excitement of virtual creation as a way of bringing together people across geographically distant communities during a time of isolation and grief.
[…] As the world becomes increasingly polarized and conversations seem harder and harder to have, I hope that Who's There? will offer a new way of having these challenging discourses particularly with people who share seemingly opposing points of view or who grew up with a radically different set of experiences from us.”
— Interview with Hollywood Soapbox
“The first thing the team readily embraced was that virtual theatre is not a replacement of live theatre, but rather an art form in and of itself. While we approached the work with our theatrical sensibilities, we also brought in cinematographic ideas, design explorations, technological quirks and more. Rather than lamenting what we lose by not currently having live theatre, we shared an intense curiosity about the digital form and the new possibilities that it affords us.”
— Interview with Broadway World
“In the quarantine period and re-opening, there is so much reflection going on, as we’re defamiliarized from a normalcy we’re used to. It allows us to reimagine a different world when we come back, and what kind of environment would support more equitable race relations. And at the end of it all, you ask yourself: who’s there? Or rather, who will be there in this new normal, or who becomes the privilege or the oppressed. There’s a lot of food for thought, for structures to be dismantled and re-imagined, and quite simply, it takes a long time.”
— Co-Director Alvin Tan, Interview with Bakchormeeboy
”The purpose of theatre heightens during Covidian times. It’s the physical gathering of a community that cannot be replaced by Zoom performances. Yet how theatre inspires Zoom performances make us use Zoom as a platform for international intercultural collaborations, in a way that the usual form of theatre-making would find challenging to afford due to the costs involved; these can only happen when there are special commissions.”
Process
“Who’s There?, sustained by a labyrinth of 27 chat groups, ranging from FB Messenger to iMessage, WhatsApp and email, spawned numerous teams to keep communication channels open. Operating across five time zones, on a rotation of sacrifices, we help each other stay awake, present and ready to process work together.
Detailed preparation was designed to keep Zoom fatigue at bay. What could be done offline was, making online time immensely precious, even more so than the venue rental cost factored in ‘live’ theatre rehearsals.
In the Zoom room, we send actors to breakout rooms: one pair improvises a brief and records it, a sound designer records a performer singing whilst another records her spoken word, and yet another is video recorded by the multimedia artist so the footage can be worked on after rehearsal. Then the co-directors watch the recordings, harvest fragments and migrate them to a preliminary draft for editing, compression and dramaturgical analysis. A core comprising 2 co-directors, one multimedia and one sound designer and 2 dramaturgs have organically formed this artistic clearing house.
The performers access the 77-page draft in the Google Drive and comment, edit, and change syntax to suit their characters. Then the dramaturgs have another round of compression and hand it over to the directors for a final read of the scenes before they are locked down.
Co-director YY and I hang out after rehearsals in the same Zoom room. Performers, multimedia and sound designers visit to chill or discuss potential gems from improvisations. Otherwise, we are engaged in an uninterrupted flow of artistic and production processes. In the Zoom room, we share screen, call up files from Google Drive, and share recorded rehearsal moments or research materials, enjoying hours of conceptual exploration. These intensive cross-disciplinary conversations cover artistic and technological concerns with efficient immediacy.”
— Co-Director Alvin Tan, Feature by National University of Singapore’s Centre for the Arts
Other Publications:
”The digital turn in Southeast Asian theatre: new routes through a global pandemic” - Sheela Jane Menon
“Rehearsing Karen” - Cheng Nien Yuan