I kickstart my Studios Season with Home Boxes by Paper Monkey Theatre Ltd. This play coalesces dance, music, drama and puppetry, 6 actors take on multiple roles to tell three tales of love; parents’ love, children’s love, romantic love. Pat loves her father, but she loves acting more. Renee loves her overachievement and hates her nose. Edith loves a man who can’t articulate and return her love. Throughout the show peppered with familiar Chinese dialects and familiar parental love, the audience cried and laughed and cried, including me.
On a deeper level this play explores issues I’ve long kept buried and undiscussed. Issues of obligations and responsibility, of holding back and letting go, of guilt and anger, of love and hate. It’s interesting at this juncture to mention that no sacrifice can be measured. I can’t compare at any level how much my sacrifice is worth next to yours. What I deem to be me giving up the world to make you happy may just be taken for granted. More often than not, it’s deviation from sacrifice (i.e. not sacrificing) that is the marked choice. We can’t go round telling people, particularly parents, that we want to be happy because that alone presupposes an intention to not give up (the fight). But I digress.
This play is a Pandora’s Box forcing us to face issues we do not wish exist. Scary in a way, but at the same time that fear reminds us all we are but humans with emotions and dreams. The play ends with a post-existentialist note to remind us that perhaps no love is too late. Is it an ending I’m happy with? Perhaps, for the time being.
On a lighter note, even though the run for this play is over, The Studio Season is still going on strong till May. Do check out the other performances at the The Studios Season Official Website. Support local xperimental work from new theatre groups! (If you skip one expensive angmoh musical, you can go for many shows in the season.)
all the best with the project =)