"THE question is, where did an eight year old girl learn a word like ‘disillusion’?” asks Sarah Shahrum as Miss Lim, the headmistress of a school at which Scrabble is a deadly game in Ridzwan Othman’s Angsa.

Where indeed do eight year old girls learn words that convey an emotion well understood by the youth of this country? The pressures and prejudices of the world outside the comfort and safety of Mummy and Daddy’s nest is not something we tortured souls expect children to comprehend, let alone label.

Nor do we expect it to be depicted on the stage successfully without bombarding the audience with truisms and formulaic, predictable storylines.

Its the year of the unexpected, it seems.

Last week, Rather Peculiar Theatre presented Race, a quartet of short plays written by Kimmy Kiew, Shanon Shah, Ridzwan Othman, and D’boy, all concerning one particular all-encompassing word: you guessed it, ‘race’.

Four playwrights sat down (well, three, because Kimmy Kiew’s piece was devised) and wrote about the word ‘race’. What did they come up with?  Four tales of (sometimes) epic proportions, which were split up between directors Kimmy Kiew and Soefira Jaafar.

Beginning, as some people (ahem, government, ahem) would like everything to begin, with the national anthem, the race was on with Kimmy Kiew’s One in a Billion. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in this 15 minutes of rumble tumble fun. Four very different people, with very different backgrounds compete in a marching competition for the ultimate prize, a billion bucks. There is no nobler cause.  The play shows that people have their own reasons and dreams, but ambition has one ultimate staple in common -- money.

When the race is cancelled thanks to the red tape of the corporate world, and the competitors are marched away for participating in an illegal gathering, the audience’s sides are already aching from the fun of it all. One in a Billion's attempts to make audience members ask themselves what they’re doing in the ‘race’. And so it does.

Kimmy's idea for One in a Billion came after coming across young men in army suits in Korea, which reminded her of the philosophy of a marching team – discipline, obedience, following absolute order and command. The image of the marching team captain struck her as metaphor of our government.

The subtlety of political satire is often sacrificed in favour of over-eager attempts at humour using tired stereotypes and cheap laughs. Luckily for One in a Billion, the jokes were cutting, the laughs were many, and the humour well executed. Finally.

Next!

Shanon Shah’s Once You Pop, You Just Can’t Stop! -- also directed by Kimmy -- gives us a glimpse into the lives of two housewives who happen to be next-door neighbours, who are forced to deal with the other's perceived racial differences.

The play begins with Shanthini Venugopal as Mrs. Nathan chopping her vegetables and wondering aloud to her son, Ramesh, the peculiarities of the Malay race. She questions how it could be possible for Malays to be opposed to the ISA, and yet reject her mutton dishes. Meanwhile, in the house next door, Nor Hazlin Nor Salam’s Farah giggles at the bizarre practices of her strange neighbour, and plots the demise of their beloved dog, Pringles.

The play hits close to home, portraying the more delicate forms of prejudice to be had in our multi-racial society. While holding court with neighbours one does not have anything in common with is an art many have watched their mothers and fathers practice over the years, loosing ones deep-seated discrimination is a feat yet to be achieved by most. Mrs. Nathan and Farah display the prejudices that few are proud to admit to, and yet nearly all are guilty of. They both have an ingrained dislike for one another, thanks to each others’ perceived ‘alien’ cultures -- hilariously denoted by Mrs. Nathan’s son Ramesh’s antics with his toy light sabre.

Although towards the end both women acknowledge that they each are making an effort to get along (in the form of food -- the language of friendship, as opposed to money), "real" change is brought about in an unlikely way. Thanks to Farah’s white lie when the dog catchers came by the neighbourhood, Pringles is removed from the equation and sent to the pound. It’s amazing how much easier it is to get along with neighbours once the haram elements are out of the picture, isn't it?

Shanon’s story is likeable not because of any emotional climax or moral overtones, rather because it examines that part of human nature that just won’t allow humans to abandon prejudice, and causes them to dislike anything that deviates from what they consider the norm.   It illustrates, in a humorous manner, that rather than accept difference, we try to remove elements which do not fit our world-view. While the all important "racial harmony" is achieved, the price, denying the other their rights -- in this case to have a pet dog -- is perhaps too high. We wonder about the future of this new neighbourliness, based as it is on dishonesty. Will it survive Pringles 2?

Ridzwan Othman’s Angsa, directed by Soefira Jafaar, examines a different side of racial tension. Chris and Aishah, a married couple, meet with the headmistress of a primary school to pick up their deceased daughters school things, and discuss the manner of her death. Hampered by the fact that for the most part you couldn’t hear a lot of the actors’ dialogue, and the fact that the energy seemed to slide into negative value, the audience eventually discovers that the girl was somehow killed in a fight after a seemingly innocent scrabble game in school. One of the eight year old players had played the word ‘angsa’, following which someone put a ‘B’ in front of it to form ‘bangsa’, followed by someone putting a ‘T’ at the end of it, creating ‘bangsat’.

Chris attacks Miss Lim, the head mistress for the lack of an investigation  and disciplinary action against the teacher, alluding to his daughters mixed racial background as being the cause of the attack. Miss Lim fires back, asking him how his daughter learned the word ‘disillusion’, a word she had used in one of her assignments. She declares that ‘disillusion’ is not a word that most eight year olds know, so she must have been taught the word by someone, and that someone would most likely be her racially paranoid father.

While Once You Pop, You Just Can’t Stop shows us how racial prejudice factors into our daily lives, Angsa shows us where the ‘pop’ actually happens. In fact, Angsa serves as a dark b-side to Shanons play. The end of the play has Miss Lim walking up to Chris and asking if they should “Start again?”, and then taking the scene back to the beginning. Chris, Aishah, and Miss Lim can’t stop either. Angsa explores how racism begets racism, creating a self-perpetuating logic that  locks people into an almost infinite cycle of prejudice.

Although in the end of Pop the two neighbours are able to be nice to each other, the fact that Farah didn’t attempt to stop the dog catchers from taking Pringles away means that they will most likely never truly be friends, and will carry around their prejudices forever, in a never ending cycle. In Angsa, the play ends in a continuous loop, starting back from the beginning and playing forever like a broken record.

The last play, D’boy’s Up & Down, Satu Mini Muzikal, directed by Soefira, takes a drastic leap over the social observation and irony of the preceding two plays back to the romp and gambol of One in a Billion. Mahat, Lo, San, and An are four students in detention, who get to use the time to play the ultimate game of Snakes & Ladders when their teacher (30 seconds of hilarity from Shanthini Venugopal) is called away because of a monkey in her car.

Portraying teenage self-indulgence in the form of musical numbers not only had the audience in stitches, but also gave rise to a shape in theatre that is not often explored within our arts scene --  modern musical theatre of the comic kind. The four students fight among themselves to win the game, and in so doing, attain the highest position of power in the group.

When Mahat thinks he has won the game, and bursts into song (“Aku kuasa!”), An sneakily rolls the dice again, and trumps him, much to the delight of Lo and Sam, who prefer An, their friend, to Mahat the bully. However, An turns on them, shouting his victory, and claiming prizes from the losers (among them Sam’s glasses, and a pack of sanitary pads from Lo).

The story is an allegory of you-know-what, in the same sense as George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but instead of a dictator pig we get a singing stoner. Up & Down deals with the issue of race in a subtle, indirect way -- not once mentioning racial differences, or in fact labelling any of the students. Instead, the story played with power, and how it corrupts he, or she, which comes to the fore first. And of course, this is completely relevant to race (as it is to class, gender and other forms of difference) since most wars are fought over nothing more than one group trying to gain more power over another.

Race succeeded because it managed to bring together four diverse plays, and a dynamic cast of young and old, to present a production that for once is politically aware without being sententious, or employing those horrible clichés that have made their appearance in recent productions. In all, it was a relevant production, in an irreverent sort of way. Thumbs up!

~

Yasmin Zetti Martin writes for Kakiseni.

Race ran at Pentas 2, KLPac, Sentul Park, Jalan Strachan (off Jalan Ipoh), Kuala Lumpur, from Wed 23 – Sun 27 Apr 2008 (Wed-Sat: 8.30pm; Sat & Sun: 3pm).