PUBLISHED March 15th, 2016 04:14 pm | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 03:04 pm
One mother is Cantonese-speaking and impetuous; the other speaks Malay and is quietly stubborn. Both are smart, sharp, and strong women and wonderful cooks. And they’re the mothers of long-time friends and fellow theatre artists, Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed.
First staged in 2006 and revisited in 2009, Recalling Mother is an on-going conversation that has evolved along with Claire’s and Noorlinah’s relationship with their respective mothers over the years. As they and their mothers grow older, the bond between parent and child has changed. The caretaker has become the dependant. What happens when the body begins to age? What does love mean to a mind that is beginning to fade? And so, the conversations continue.
Co-founder, Joint Artistic Director and Producer of Checkpoint Theatre, Claire Wong is trained both in Asian and Western performing arts. She directs and acts for the stage and the camera. Currently the lead practitioner and consultant for the National Arts Council spear-headed Teaching Through the Arts Programme, Noorlinah Mohamed is an established and award-winning theatre actress and arts educator.
City Nomads caught up with these two key members of the production to find out more:
How did you come up with the concept of Recalling Mother?
Noorlinah Mohamed (NM): It all began with the conversations I had with Claire about my mother. We’d ask each other “How’s your mum?”, and then the stories – mostly about incidents of frustrations or impatience – would come out. But while telling them, I’d realise how funny the situations were. They ended up being funny tales or bittersweet ones that reveal adulthood negotiations, the transference of status from ‘child’ daughter to ‘adult-married-off’ daughter.
What happens when the status changes? What happens when your mother still considers you her child, but now you have to assume the role of the adult, at times bordering on mothering your own mother? Through these exchanges, we realised that both our mothers are not educated. My mother only had one month of schooling before financial woes made my grandmother pull the girls out of school and only send the boys. She became the cook of the family and housekeeper and became quite good at it. Claire and I became fascinated by our mothers’ crafty negotiations of the literate world. The world is made for people who can read and write. How do illiterate mothers cope and raise their children?
In 2006, we were invited to participate in the Magdalena Project and we took the opportunity to try our ideas out. We presented our first version of Recalling Mother then.
Claire Wong (CW): In the course of our friendship and sharing stories about our families, we realised there were many similarities between our mothers and that she and I both had complicated relationships with our mothers. We decided to explore these areas of our lives through our art as theatre-makers (inasmuch as a songwriter would write a song or a novelist would write a book).
The friendship and trust that we shared both as artists and as people were important factors in creating a safe space for us to explore this personal material. And as artists, we would be both rigorous and demanding of the process of making and presenting the work.
Has each staging of this play been a voyage of discovery for you? And your mothers?
NM: For me, each re-creation deepens my understanding of my mother. We had a strong connection when I was a child, which got lost somewhere in my childhood and for most of my adulthood. In the last 10 years, I’m making an attempt to re-connect. Each time I remember my mother’s stories or conversations that we’ve had, heard, or witnessed, I come closer to understanding who she is and her life as a person, the woman who has devoted her life to be my mother. She becomes more than just my mother but this 91-year-old woman who for the most part of her life has been struggling silently with being alienated from the literate world.
CW: We’ve each ‘researched’ our mums and in the course of that we’ve discovered things we never knew before. We’ve been prompted to have conversations we may not have had. The mother I have in my head has become more complex, more contradictory, more fascinating. And it’s really because I have changed, and because I’m interested in knowing her as a person in her own right – not just as the person playing the role of my mum and fulfilling her role as a parent. I think I’ve learnt how to love my mum better. I’ve learnt to admire her more. I’ve learnt to listen to her better. I’ve learnt to talk to her better.
What will be different about the 2016 version of Recalling Mother?
NM: 2016 version marks the 10th year of this work. We entered this project with the intention of reviewing the materials we had collated thus far – meaning the work we did in 2006, 2009 and 2015 – and the direction in which we wish to tell the older stories/memories which have not been shared before. I hope the audience who watched it in 2009 will return to watch it again as the 2016 production is significantly different from that in 2009. It’s like visiting familiar friends, they are updated on what has happened to Cik Wong and Cik Bee Bee.
CW: What has driven the process and resulted in a new work each time is that Noorlinah and I are both interested in asking: what is the story today? How has the narrative changed? And as a result of that question, we have completely taken apart the script each time, written new material, thrown out sections and reorganised scenes.
Perhaps we may compare the work to fine wine – as it ages, it gains other tones and nuances. It was thoroughly enjoyable as a younger wine and is still familiar but over time, it becomes something quite different and there are other shades and notes; gifts of the maturing process.
Performed in English with some Cantonese and Malay at the Esplanade Theatre Studio, Recalling Mother will run 24 to 27 March 2016. For more information and tickets, please see Checkpoint Theatre’s website or SISTIC.
Images: Joel Tan, Calibre Pictures