Theatre

PIVOT

Edward Choy and Jo Tan

Zoom, Thursday (Feb 4)

If there is one thing people in beleaguered sectors must have heard ad nauseam during the Covid-19 pandemic, it is being told to "pivot". But pivot to what?

That is the question that married actors Edward Choy and Jo Tan plumb in this rocky but charming Zoom experiment, in which they play fictionalised versions of themselves.

Their characters, Edmund Chay and Joanne Loi, are out of work, short on funds and a little stir-crazy from being cooped up together in their flat during the circuit breaker.

To make ends meet, they are taking SkillsFuture courses they hate and grabbing at whatever projects which come their way, however artistically questionable, from shooting parody music videos in their bathroom to selling feminine body wash on a Facebook live stream.

As a concept, Pivot is reminiscent of the BBC Zoom-based miniseries Staged, in which David Tennant and Michael Sheen play themselves as actors on furlough during lockdown.

It also evokes The Pitch, the short film that dramatised the struggles of theatre companies Pangdemonium, Singapore Repertory Theatre and Wild Rice last year.

Pivot, however, is performed live and entirely home-made - no slick production quality here. Choy and Tan move between cameras set up around their flat; their director Chong Tze Chien, it is later revealed, is sitting outside monitoring the live stream.

The play, at least on opening night, is beset by technical glitches - lagging video, inconsistent volumes and, at one point, the audio cutting out altogether. But given that there are just five people involved in this production - very phase two - one is inclined to be forgiving.

The script is flagrantly meta-theatrical - or meta-digital. Choy reprimands Tan for talking about private matters in front of their webcam. "You downloaded TraceTogether," Tan shoots back. "Why are you afraid of somebody watching now?"

What starts out as a hammy comedy about the woes of pandemic living takes an intensely personal, even painful turn, as fractures in the marriage start to show.

When one is offered a job opportunity, the other harbours resentment. They are one another's worst critics. In one hard-to-watch scene, Ed ruthlessly dismantles Jo's multi-camera play about a drag king - a clear reference to Tan's King, which she performed in July last year to acclaim.

They are, after all, actors - their entire identities are premised on the work they do, on their being seen. And with the theatre scene in the doldrums, who is there to see them?

As with The Pitch and Staged, voyeuristic audiences will be left wondering how much of what they have watched is real life and how much fiction - though one suspects it is the ambiguity that makes the play compelling, that illusion of intimacy.

For a lot of couples, thespians or no, this one may hit a little too close to home. But roughshod though it is, it has captured the zeitgeist of these unusual times.

Book it / PIVOT

WHERE: Zoom

WHEN: Friday (Feb 5) to Sunday, 8pm

ADMISSION: $8.88 via PayPal

INFO: Pivot's Facebook page