Finding A Voice

Just a bit more about yesterday's play, Off Centre. The two excellent leads were the original performers of those key roles back in 1993. Apart from the fact that they've aged amazingly well to still look entirely convincing as the relatively youthful Vinod and Saloma, I think their familiarity with the characters goes a long way to explaining the remarkable inwardness of their performances, the sense they exuded of losing themselves utterly in the two characters.

And the struggles faced by the original production team as a result of the withdrawal of support by the sponsoring ministry, something Haresh Sharma addressed when he came to our school to speak last year, seem to have fuelled a powerful sense of complete belief in what the performers were doing all those years ago, and how that still lives today. Alvin Tan, the director, outlines what took place in 1993 in a quietly determined 'Message' in the programme for the show as it is being played in 2019, and I found it genuinely inspirational to read it. I'm sure it took considerable courage and determination to get Off Centre on stage at all and seeing it established as 'canonical' serves as powerful vindication of what its creators were doing.

I can't help but wonder what the various figures of authority who stood so firmly in its way now think of their attempts to deny a voice to a necessary work.