Puppet Origin Stories looks back, with anger, love and grief, at Cairnhill Arts Centre’s rich history

Puppet Origin Stories @ One-Two-Six: Only Puppets In The Building

The Finger Players
One-Two-Six Cairnhill Arts Centre
Oct 29, 8pm

Audiences have faithfully trudged up the hill to One-Two-Six Cairnhill Road for four editions of The Finger Players’ (TFP) Puppet Origin Stories. This will be the last staging of the series, and it is a pity.

The indie production, lovingly produced on a budget within the tight confines of Cairnhill Arts Centre, has been a surprisingly fruitful incubator of unexpected partnerships and stories. 

With every edition since its conception by former TFP co-artistic directors and now core team members Myra Loke and Ellison Tan Yuyang, the series has expanded the possibilities of puppetry with story triptychs that venture into every topic, from parental estrangement and LGBTQ issues to fashion standards and motherhood. 

The latest edition boasts the most coherent triple bill to date, thanks to the guest artists and the venue serving as the common thread tying all the stories together. TFP has invited two arts groups which were the first to occupy the premises to produce pieces for this show. 

The Necessary Stage’s (TNS) Haresh Sharma has written a snarky playlet, A Necessary String, predicated on a pair of puppets that have set up a puppets-only company.

The story references TNS’ history as a theatre group championing marginal voices, as well as a darker period of Singapore’s theatre history when theatre practitioners were detained without trial.

Sharma and TNS founder Alvin Tan came under suspicion from the authorities in 1994, after they attended a workshop run by renowned Marxist theatre practitioner Augusto Boal. 

Sharma turns the puppets and puppetry into a clever allegory about the uneasy relationship between artists and the state.

The dialogue is littered with clever inside jokes for theatre veterans, evident from the loud chortles from some members of the audience on opening night. But underlying the humour are anger, nostalgia and grief for a rocky, but indubitably productive, period of Singapore’s theatre history. 

This prickly porcupine of a tale is a contrast to the gentler, more cuddly reminiscences of Penunggu (Guardian). Teater Kami’s vignette, scripted by Moli Mohter, is anchored by the ever-reliable Rafaat Hamzah as the mischievous, rambly pakcik of a spirit guardian.

As the oldest resident of the famously spooky Cairnhill building, the Penunggu has seen people come and go, and Rafaat narrates the story with gossipy gusto and a touch of resigned regret. 

The piece is chock-a-block with sly anecdotes about theatre folks’ lives at Cairnhill, full of thwarted love affairs and the camaraderie generated by long rehearsals.

There are winning character miniatures. Teater Kami’s pioneering founder Atin Amat is embodied in a cow puppet, which manages to convey both her tenacity and quiet industriousness at the sometimes thankless chores of running a theatre company. 

A stage manager lothario is played by puppet Jackson, togged out in a slick party hat and complete with a swaggering walk, courtesy of puppeteers Fadhil Daud and Hairo Cromo. 

One wishes the script would have delved deeper into the challenges faced by Teater Kami, but the script only passingly references the criticisms by the Malay community of the company and its brave actresses. 

The strongest piece of the evening turned out to be the more abstract work penned by Liz Sergeant Tan, daughter of the late Christina Sergeant, founder of Mime Unlimited. 

Powered by an expansive script and the chameleonic nature of puppetry when practised by talented puppeteers, Cat And The Faceless Maiden was a fable that worked on different levels. 

The story is ostensibly about a cat turning briefly into a human and encountering a faceless artist/creator. 

The character of the Maiden is a marvel of puppeteering skill. With just an oval tin to suggest a face, a sari for a body and assorted filmy scarves, puppeteers Darren Guo and Periyachi Roshini convey the gamut of emotions, from joy to pain to grief. 

As the dialogue between Cat and the Maiden unfolds, what begins as a conversation about birds becomes a meditation on creation, on artistic endeavour, on identity. 

The audience also has a rare opportunity to get right up close to the puppeteers as the work is staged in one of the smaller classrooms in the building.

It is a testament to the storytelling skills of writer, puppeteers and director Oliver Chong that even though one can see the mechanics of the entire piece, one is still drawn into the conspiratorial magic of theatre-making. 

This kind of experimental theatre-making is increasingly rare in Singapore, where alternative spaces have folded.

There is then a distinct sense of lamentation as this trilogy of tales, looking back at the challenges of independent practitioners, foreshadows more challenges even as it seems to document how far the scene has come.

Puppet Origin Stories will be missed when this run ends.