Review: pass•ages, conceptualised & directed by Sim Yan Ying “YY” and written by Jean Tay (or “struggling”)
It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.
You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman but also always be looking out for other people.
You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood.
But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.
You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.
I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.
I was worried that inserting the entirety of this speech here would unnecessarily lengthen this probably already-lengthy opinion piece that I am now writing — and is currently about 2 weeks overdue — by my own standards anyway.
But if you, dear reader, cannot even get through reading a significant, landmark speech about the struggles and indeed impossibility of being a Woman in today’s culture and society, how then can you even imagine what it takes to live as a Woman today?
The paradoxical power and struggle contained within the female identity is something I have long felt very strongly about — and I have promised never to stop advocating for — especially for respect of the eponymous Woman in society. This is not to say I believe the female deserves more respect than any other identity in society — I believe in respecting all humans across the board.
But because the female identity and person has endured and suffered so much over the long course of human history — it then necessitates the need for so much more advocacy about both the power that a female holds and the respect that she deserves.
pass•ages and its choice to focus specifically on the evolution of ageing is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship which displays this exact paradox contained within the female identity — the power that the Woman holds in growing older, yet at the same time contains the struggle that every sentient being faces when it ages — the waning of power in some aspects, but yet perhaps also not in others.
The difference? If a female chooses to reveal these struggles, there are a thousand different possibilities that could play out.
Will she be perceived as more vulnerable, and therefore more authentic, and therefore more respected?
Or will revealing this vulnerability work against her, and reflect her as “weak” to the rest of society?
Or worse — will revelations of this/these struggle(s) be manipulated and used against her?
Because already — women everywhere are already at a disadvantage due to the inherent patriarchal structure in which we live. Will then her perceived “weakness” be used as a playing card to further crystallise this oppression against her?
I bolded some portions of Gloria’s speech from Barbie above — portions that I felt were especially relevant to the aspect of ageing in contemplating the identity of the female. I hope they help you dwell and reflect upon what it means for a Woman to age — and indeed for those around her who love her, care for her, work for her, work against her, and coexist in time and space around her.
“Once you stop breathing, it’s game over.” (Nirmala Seshadri as Shivani)
pass•ages opened in the most unusual of ways — yet, in a way that was somewhat calming and perhaps, paradoxically, natural to me as well. It began with Nirmala Seshadri’s character, Shivani, leading us in a mindfulness exercise.
Being someone who has had to (perhaps not by choice) explore the virtues of “mindfulness”, “sitting in stillness”, and all other such similar “zen”-sounding words that wellness-related professionals continue to brainwash us with, I was familiar with the slow, mediated rhythm of Shivani leading us through this exercise. It felt more like a pre-show exercise, than the beginning of a show, to be honest, and I found myself settling easily into the rhythm of Shivani’s leading, perhaps also due to my familiarity with the concept of mindfulness. And I found myself thinking, how nice. Perhaps every show should begin with this.
But Shivani’s opening of the show created an intriguing parallel to her character’s journey that we are later made privy to — contradictory to her physical exercise of asking the audience, both imagined and present, to slow down, we begin to see later on, that Shivani instead performs, and indeed inhabits, a persona of struggle — something common to all the characters later on — that comes across perhaps the most tangibly and in the most raw ways, through her Bharatanatyam forms.
Shivani asks us to slow down — yet in her interactions with her doctor, with herself, with her artform, she instead constantly speeds up. Perhaps the flurry and dervish-like speed of her movement speak to the same flurry of emotions she feels underneath, beneath the veneer of zen-ness that she presents to her clients. What is it that she feels, deep within her heart?
Perhaps denial — denying the fact that, as much as she wants to bring her magnum opus to light, a validation of her life’s hard work and training, the ironic reality is her body is telling her to stop. Not even just to rest — but to stop.
Or perhaps pain — visceral, unending pain. The pain of an artist — a human, a woman — who knows that the odds are stacked against her — have been, in fact, since the dawn of society itself — and that both to add her voice to many other voices fighting against the constant rushing tides of society telling her you cannot, and to shore up the bulwark of voices that protect and champion against the fragility and purported weakness of the female voice and body — she must do this. Yet as much as she knows she has to, reality, in the form of her very physical form in itself, is telling her she cannot.
Even in Shivani’s presentation to an invisible boardroom of grant-approvers, despite her constant, calming tone in response to their protests and questioning of her ability to stage her upcoming work, her persistent and constant act of struggling is made that much more visible. Her struggle, though unique and personal to her, also reflects a much larger struggle common to all women in her position — the need for women, especially one who has the label of “ageing” or “aged” placed upon her, to self-advocate for her own voice; she is forced by society’s petulance and inherent bias to speak out for herself in a constantly Sisyphean and labourious process to justify both her and her work’s continued existence.
“I feel very strongly about this work — The Ageing Dancer.”
If Shivani’s struggle to receive the respect and deference she deserves as a professional and mature dancer is illustrated in the juxtaposition of her calm, measured tone of voice against the rapidity and urgency of her Bharatanatyam footwork, then the struggle of Ogy, the aspiring mother, to bear a child is reflected simply (yet picturesquely) in both design projections and the stories that both told to her and by her.
The story of Ogy, much like a Matryoshka doll, contains more stories — stories that attempt to colour her, stories that dictate what she must do, stories that, on the surface, seem to be just what they are: stories. But as with every message that humans send — whether through our voice or our body — stories always contain more stories. And we never simply tell stories for their own sake — rather, stories themselves usually hide deeper meanings, intentions, and purposes. One of my favourite lines from the book The Alchemyst by Michael Scott is a line from the character the immortal alchemist Nicholas Flamel:
“At the heart of every legend there is a grain of truth.”
Ogy’s sister, Kak Liza, tells her one story: that she must try for a child, that she must keep trying (despite her numerous “setbacks”), that if she is already trying, then what can she as a sister do to help. The story that is told here is plain and simple: keep trying, because eventually, it will work out. Or is it?
And indeed, Ogy seems to internalise this story — at great personal and emotional cost to herself, it seems. The struggle of the female persona and body is seen to be so terribly visceral here in the act of trying to fulfil what is most commonly associated with the female identity: reproduction and the production of progeny.
Indubitably, Ogy’s constant struggle to conceive isn’t simply attempting to live up to her loved ones’ expectations of her — she clearly indeed deeply desires a child as well. But the constant narrative told to her by Kak Liza, even in the form of persistent and “supportive” encouragement, evocatively adds to the already-stressful story that Ogy seems to constantly tell herself — that she must do more, that there must be something she is doing wrong. Or worse, that there is something wrong with her — hence the reason for her not being able to conceive.
This same purported complicity of the Woman in her inability to conceive is mirrored in the legend of Kusu Island that Ogy narrates — albeit via voiceover — to the audience. It speaks of how women would, in the past, make trips to Kusu Island as part of a belief that they would be blessed with a conception upon returning from the sea trip. However, along with the legend of how to obtain this blessing comes a warning: should the woman see anything on the route departing from Kusu Island, if she called attention to it, she would not receive the blessing. The story goes that a certain woman who made this journey, on the way back, had her attention called to a lotus floating behind their boat. And, in the moment, forgetting the warnings of the legend, she spoke aloud her observation — and was punished.
The audience is told of the story of Kusu via deep oceanic blue projections upon the screens which serves as the backdrop for the story’s action, as well as through Ogy’s haunting voiceover in Malay, paired with her visceral facial and bodily reactions to the story. Her struggle is made beautiful , through scenic, lighting, and design elements— in a macabre sense, the same way in which we would perhaps admire the precision with which an assasin kills their target.
But perhaps the concept of struggle needs to be made beautiful — and not simply a skin-deep beauty either. For sometimes, the world only begins to feel awe — and sometimes, fear — when they witness what they do not understand. And that’s when they begin to pay attention.
Because how could the painful, torturous, and heart-rending ordeal of struggling to live, and to live up to the expectations of those who matter and those who don’t be beautiful in any way at all?
I saw the most of myself in young Millie, who was presented as barely a youth, struggling with the unquenchable and ruthless fact that life had handed her: that she would die at eighteen.
If Shivani and Ogy’s struggles reflected the power of age and ageing to debilitate, and to cripple, then Millie’s inner conflict — represented mostly through addressing the audience — reflects the power of age to kill, even when it completely stops. Because, in the case of young Millie’s life, her journey in ageing is brought to an abrupt halt — by imminent death.
In each scene that Millie appears, her process of grieving is immaculately directed by YY and portrayed by Shanice Stanislaus. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — we see it all, but not in order, of course. Genevieve Peck’s apt projections come to the fore again here, where, in Millie’s stage of bargaining, she attempts to reason with herself (and the audience) that perhaps eating less of the food she enjoys would buy her more time on this Earth. Projections of the various foods which Millie is partial to flash across the screens — though comically displayed, they seem to symbolise Millie’s reduction of her cancer to simple, unhealthy forms of sustenance, without which perhaps the cancer would no longer have a hold upon her. I also deeply appreciated how the accompanying projections helped us visualise Millie’s (thought) process of bargaining — with herself, the world, the cancer, and the audience around her.
On an unrelated note, Millie also became my favourite character simply for liking Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Chainsaw Man, and Olivia Rodrigo (praise be to her name). I think I would have liked Millie — enough that if she were my friend, I would visit her at the hospital every day — until the last day — and write her new D&D adventures to play each day of her remaining time, discuss how she felt about the progression of Chainsaw Man’s plot, and how, if she does indeed gain the extra year or so of time by abstaining from fried chicken and kimchi fries, we would get tickets to Olivia’s next tour together.
“I remember thinking to myself, after hearing Millie mentioned fried chicken and kimchi fries: oh, now I want fried chicken and kimchi fries.
Why has wanting food during a show become a recurring theme for every show I watch?
Oh wait… I didn’t have lunch…”
For me, the journey, not the ending, of pass•ages’ protagonists spoke the most to me. It spoke of how hard it was, not just to be a Woman, but to be human, amidst the deluge of the inexorable march of our greatest enemy — Time.
Time kills — but many would also say, “time heals.”
I don’t agree.
I think that the one saving grace of time marching onwards is that — as much as ability wanes and the human body slows, despite its — our — constant efforts to fight against it — time also births new life.
For with the pass•age of time comes change. And with change comes new life.
Each dance sequence choreographed between each scene within pass•ages reminds us of this, as well as the cave-like set design of the stage and the surrounding crag-like material covering the backdrop and ground of the Esplanade Theatre. While the flowing, repetitive movements of the characters, intricately choreographed by Dapheney Chen, reminded me of a child being born and emerging from the womb, it was the set design that resembled a cave which also reminded me of a womb — thus the motif of birth, rebirth, and new life that constantly pervaded my mind even as the story of Shivani, Ching, Ogy, and Millie played out before us.
I think such beautiful works of art which uplift the stories of both beautiful, and powerful, human bodies — especially that of the female identity and body — should always be witnessed by everybody. And good stories like pass•ages that marry the logic and illogic of pain and its accompanying struggle are few and far between.
So if today, I could wish upon a falling star, in a parallel universe somewhere, sitting on the shore of a beach, perhaps with Millie in tow, eating fried chicken and kimchi fries, I would wish that every woman I know knows — that she is respected, and she is loved.
“Pain isn’t something you have to fight, it’s your body telling you that something is not right.” (Dr Chee)
Blending humour and heartache, pass·ages brought us on a journey through the evolving landscape of ageing, as we witness four women navigating distinct passages through life.
We meet the elderly Ching, who struggles to reclaim her personhood and dignity in the face of dementia; Shivani, a mature dancer determined to stake her claim to the stage; Ogy, a woman in a desperate race against her biological clock; and teenage Millie, who is coping with the five stages of grief in her own peculiar way.
Inspired by contributions from performers Dana Lam, Nirmala Seshadri, Suhaili Safari and Shanice Stanislaus, this interdisciplinary production boldly confronted the complex realities and anxieties of growing old(er) as a woman. pass·ages invites us to re-examine our relationship with ageing, and asks: how do we truly embrace the inevitable?
pass·ages was the second-year production directed by Sim Yan Ying “YY” as part of The Esplanade Co Ltd’s TRIP programme, which aims to provide early-career directors with the opportunity to direct their own productions and showcase their work at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Written by Jean Tay, conceptualised by Sim Yan Ying “YY” and choreographed by Dapheny Chen, pass·ages ran from 12–14 April 2024 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio.
For more information, refer to the programme booklet here.
