PUBLISHED April 6th, 2015 02:00 pm | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 03:16 pm
Checkpoint Theatre kicks off its 2015 season with Normal, a powerful new play from Faith Ng, directed by Claire Wong, Checkpoint’s Artistic Director.
Those familiar with Singapore’s pressure cooker education system will know that the words ‘Normal Stream’ are feared by parents who have children preparing for the PSLE exams (Primary School Leaving Examination) in Primary Six. The PSLE determines whether children enter the Express, Normal (Academic) or Normal (Technical) stream, and whether they go to ‘good’ schools or not. Unfortunately, the elitism in the school system means there’s a huge stigma attached to students in the Normal stream.
Left: Faith Ng, Right: Claire Wong
The Story
Secondary 5 Normal Academic students Ashley and Daphne struggle to manage self-imposed standards, society’s demands, and parental expectations. These childhood friends turn to each other to figure out who they are and where they are going. The arrival of new teacher Sarah Hew becomes a beacon of hope – but will she be able to find a way to help them?
An Associate Artist with Checkpoint Theatre, playwright Faith Ng’s earlier plays wo(men) and For Better or For Worse have both been nominated for Best Original Script in the Life! Theatre Awards. In Normal, Faith draws from her own experience as a student in an all-girls school in the Normal (Academic) system. The play lays bare the complex tensions boiling beneath even the most ‘normal’ of schools in this honest and thought-provoking account of students who have fallen through the cracks.
Led by Oon Shu An, Noorlinah Mohamed, Zee Wong and featuring fifth-year SOTA students Claire Chung and Audrey Teong in their professional debut, the cast also includes an ensemble chorus of 10 actors.
We caught up with Director Claire Wong to get her insights on Normal:
Why did Checkpoint Theatre decide on ‘Normal’?
Normal is an important play. It looks at the issue of streaming in our education system – a system that every school-going child, and their parents, is subject to in Singapore. The plays asks us to look at school life through the eyes of students who struggle to stay on the ‘right’ side of the score sheet and survive the burden of being labeled ‘special’, ‘express’, or ‘normal’.
The central characters in the play are people not often seen on stage, but whose voices need to be heard. Checkpoint Theatre has been nurturing the writing and development of Normal for a few years and we are proud to stage this strong and powerful original work for Singapore audiences.
This is the third play by Faith Ng that you’re directing. What do you like about her plays?
Faith challenges herself to write something new each time. Her plays are never formulaic. Her characters are complex and interesting. Faith manages to give us a new perspective about both the complexities and simplicity of life. Her writing resonates and touches something deep inside of us, in ways that cannot be immediately or easily articulated.
What are the biggest challenges for you, as the director of this production, and what are the challenges for the cast of ‘Normal’?
There is the usual challenge of meticulously creating characters and relationships that are nuanced and convincing. Furthermore, I’ve chosen to cast, in addition to the 7 speaking characters written in the play, an ensemble of 10 actors.
Together, my cast and I have created a physical and vocal performance vocabulary that’s inspired by the script and also drawn from our own memories of school life. Our challenge is to thoughtfully and sensitively weave these elements, along with the script, and create a rich and intricate landscape and soundscape that support and deepen the characters and their stories.
What’s in the pipeline for Checkpoint Theatre this year?
Checkpoint Theatre is about making local original Singapore work for the stage. With every production that we nurture, develop and produce, we are celebrating Singapore and the people who live here. That’s very much the spirit of SG50. We are looking at revisiting our plays ‘Recalling Mother’, which is about mothers and daughters, and ‘The Good, the Bad and the Sholay’, a coming-of-age story. We’re planning to publish an anthology of plays by our Associate Artist Joel Tan and showcase several new plays in development as well.
Normal is running at the Drama Centre Black Box, National Library, from 9 to 19 April 2015. For more information and tickets, please see SISTIC or Checkpoint Theatre’s website.