A SIGNIFICANT historical moment in Malaysia took centrestage in an arts festival in Europe, and received a warm response, plus full houses.
Says Mark Teh, one of the main proponents in the country of documentary theatre in the Five Arts Centre: "I was very pleasantly surprised by the quality of attention during our show as there is quite a lot of Malaysian context the audience has to navigate, besides subtitles in Flemish and French, and English (when there are scenes spoken in Malay)."
Called A Notional History, the performance looks at how history is constantly being written and rewritten. The particular moment it hinges on is the publishing of a new, official history textbook on 20th century Malaysian history, following the 2018 general election where the Barisan Nasional government fell after 61 years in power.
"There is a kind of wordplay in the title between the 'national' and the 'notional' (the speculative, or hypothetical). A notional history, rather than a national history.
"In our documentary performance, a journalist (Rahmah Pauzi), a performer (Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri) and an activist (Fahmi Reza) excavate Malaysian school textbooks, inherited memories from their families, as well as video interviews of exiled revolutionaries.
"In the process, they uncover erasures, exclusions and questions around the Malayan Emergency, and they also speculate on the possible histories for 'another' Malaysia. It's a performance with stories and perspectives that intersect the personal, the national, and the notional," says Teh, who works with not just actors by people from disciplines outside of theatre.
"Yes, we had a really good reception in Brussels – on the first and last night there were three curtain calls, which the performers found a little confusing because they are not used to it, Rahmah and Fahmi are not trained performers. Obviously, there was also interest in the strategy of working with non-actors."
A Notional History is part of a series of works known as the Emergency Projects, which examines that era in our history.
There is no connection to Hang Tuah, says Teh charmingly, knowing that I had wrongly misinterpreted the press release.
"However, some of the team behind A Notional History (Faiq, myself, Syamsul Azhar and Wong Tay Sy) also made a video essay earlier this year, Fragments of Tuah. In this video, we investigate and speculate on the figure of Hang Tuah, the legendary warrior who may or may not have existed in the 15th century, during the maritime Melaka Sultanate." The video, produced by Tokyo-based performing arts producer Precog, will be screened during the run of A Notional History (June 25, 11am).
"We thought it would be interesting for the audience to encounter both works in the same space. Though they are presented in different media and each focuses on different aspects of Malaysia's history, both share some overlapping questions on the need for criticality, generosity, and imagination in confronting history."
For A Notional History, Teh and his team looked into the different versions of the history textbooks produced across three generations in Malaysia – the edits, inclusions, exclusions between them.
"We also studied the 40-hours of raw footage from the unfinished documentary Revolusi '48 – which contains interviews with 11 people who went into the jungle in 1948 (the year the Malayan Emergency began) as young women and men to fight the British. These are voices that would never be included into any official history textbook because they are mostly exiled Malayan Communists.
"The performers also share their own perspectives and tell stories of how they learnt history, how their lives may have been impacted or intersected with the history textbooks.
"Rahmah Pauzi, for example, shares her perspective on war and exile from a journalistic angle, based on her personal experience covering the after-effects of the Euromaidan uprising in Ukraine in 2016 -- and how this might help us to think about the wounds from the Malayan Emergency. It's ironic and very sad that Ukraine is in the news again today because of the ongoing war, but this aspect was already in our show back in 2019.
"Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri shares his father's stories related to the Malayan Emergency, while Fahmi Reza forensically looks at how the textbooks have been constructed.
"Through this way, these 'social actors' (two out of three are not performers) remind us how we are shaped by history, and in turn, are able to shape history, and indeed the present and future."
After the KL run, the performance will be staged at the George Town Festival from July 17-18, 2022.
Five Arts Centre is now at 9th Floor, GMBB, Unit GM-9-15, 2, Jalan Robertson, Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur
A Notional History will be staged there from June 23-26 at 8.30pm (June 25-26 at 3.00pm as well), with tickets priced at RM50 and RM25.
Visit www.cloudtix.com for details and tickets.