___ can change
Friday, January 15th, 2010Going to a Necessary Stage (TNS) performance always leaves me confused and thinking. This play was no exception.
I caught it last night, wondering about what to expect since I’d heard about the “singles / homosexuals / maxist can change” parts, I’d told myeslf to go with an open mind and just see what comes along.
When it started with “singles”, I was rather bored with the pro-government approach to singlehood. I’d already been living through it with our daily media bombardment, not to mention in our daily lives from those around us. So when the question and answer session came (as part of the “singles” performance), I was too bored to even think of a question to ask. That was not to say I was not surprised. I was surprised that something like that could come out from TNS.
When “homosexuals” came on, I was ready to just see it like “singles” - more government bells, whistles, logos and trumpets. But as it droned on, I started to see a pattern; that wait, I was changing. I wanted to challenge what was being played on stage. I now had questions for the question and answer session in “singles”, will they have another session for “homosexuals”? No, they didn’t. darn.
Then came “marxists”, which was not really a play, but just a slide show of what’s happened to TNS in its early years being labelled as Marxists just because they attended a theatre workshop that was marxsists. The media and government came around, actually, not the mis-labelled marxists. For me, this part didn’t quite gel with the first 2 parts, though.
QUESTIONS. Why was it that those who don’t change still got to enjoy the perks? The aunt in “singles’ got what she wanted - a family life created by her niece. The mom, in “homosexuals” got what she want when her son got married. TNS got what they want, by staying as who they are (not marxsists, of course, but rather passionate practioners)?
Was this a play about power? Was this a play about how people become what others see of them? Was this about how change has to be balanced by unchange? The ideals of society has remained unchanged, yet people have to make choices of the changes they need in order to conform into this unchanging ideals.
Was this play created to explore how people would like to think or behave when put in a situation where everything is just status quo?
THOUGHTS. As a pro-government play, it had gone on to show what it would be like if arts were all just straight and morally correct and expected. Maybe it should have been a ’snow white with 7 CMIO skates on ice for Channel 5″; more shine, more glitz, more publically entertaining, since it was not meant to “upset the non-thinking majority”. Oh wait, that wouldn’t be TNS, then.
Personally, I’ve always thought change was inevitable. The idea of women only staying indoors have long been overturned due to economics. Even the idea that only women cam give birth is now being developed on, due to the idea of equality (and maybe economics. Hmmm.). But the thing that urks me most is when people assume that ‘moral standing’ is, as it always should be, that ’social responsibility’ is, as it always has been, that being different is not as it always has been. To have change is something that I quite look forward to in my daily life. It is often in the change that new interesting things can evolve, and it is through the un-changing that one can find solice and comfort. To have this play remind me that change in the sea of ‘un-changed’ is as important as un-changed in the sea of ‘changed’.
Bravo, guys!
