Tribes by Pangdemonium: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

PUBLISHED May 12th, 2015 02:16 pm | UPDATED July 25th, 2024 03:08 pm

Pangdemonium returns in May 2015 with Tribes, the second production in its ‘Transformation Trilogy’ season. Written by British playwright Nina Raine, the play is a humorous yet heartbreaking story about love, family, and communicating with the ones you love.

The Plot

Billy (newcomer Thomas Pang), who happens to be the sole deaf member of his dysfunctional and eccentric family, is constantly drowned out by the voices of:

Dad (Adrian Pang) – first class academic, world class idiot;

Mum (Susan Tordoff) – a mystery novelist who is clueless about the mystery of her own family;

Sis (Frances Lee) – an up-and-coming ‘opera singer’ in a downtown pub; and

Big Brother (Gavin Yap) – a speech expert who hears voices in his head.

As Billy struggles in communicating with his family, everything changes when he falls in love with Sylvia (Ethel Yap), who is rapidly losing her hearing. His world is turned inside out, and he finally wants to be heard.

The Role of The Hearing Disabled Community

The Gala Night performance on 23 May will be accompanied by sign language interpretation. The folks at Pangdemonium have been working closely with members of the deaf community on this production to gain a deeper understanding and insight into their lives. Some of the cast members have also been learning sign language for the last couple of months to prepare for their roles.

After its world premiere in 2010 at London’s Royal Court Theatre and its North American off Broadway debut at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012, Tribes won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. In a 2010 interview, Nina Raine explained that the inspiration of the play was a documentary about an expecting deaf couple who hoped their child would be deaf too. She said that it occurred to her that a family was a tribe, whose members wanted to pass on values, beliefs and language to their children. She began to see that there were “tribes everywhere,” in groups including individual families and religious communities, with their own rituals and hierarchies that are hard to understand by “outsiders.”

We asked Director, Tracie Pang, to share her insights on ‘Tribes’:

Pangdemonium’s 2015 season is called “The Transformation Trilogy”.  How does Tribes fit into the theme of transformation?
For Billy, learning sign language gives him a new lease of life – it transforms him from the quiet youngest son who happens to be deaf, into an independent free thinker with a job, a girlfriend, a new life! The change in him is enormous and it has a knock on effect for his family who have always tried to protect him.

Have you seen Tribes on stage? What do you think of the play?
I haven’t seen any previous performances of this play, but I love the script. It’s so well written and well researched; the family dynamics are great fun to work with, and it has so much humour and so much heart. I loved it from the first read and I think our audience will too.

Tracie Pang and Adrian Pang

What is going to be your greatest challenge when it comes to directing this play?
We want to do right by the deaf community, we want to tell a story that honestly relates to them. My cast members have been taking sign language lessons for almost two months now and have been working very hard, but I also want to tell a story about how we all need to look a little deeper to truly communicate with people, to make more of an effort and to tell a story about family love.

We meet the cast members and hear what they have to say about their roles:

Adrian Pang (Dad)
Christopher, the patriarch of this eccentric, dysfunctional family, is an obnoxious, pretentious, prejudiced, intellectual snob – so he is going to be tremendous fun to play! As a father, Christopher seems to be the one largely responsible for how his children have grown up with so many issues. He seems to favour his deaf son, at the expense of his other son and daughter, whom he has no patience for, and in fact can’t wait for them to move out.

Christopher says things that are outrageously politically incorrect and downright offensive, but he simply does not care – and I actually know someone just like that! In fact, there are several real-life persons I know who have certain of Christopher’s traits, and whom i’ve been observing and drawing inspiration from. But underneath all his bluster and bullshit, he does love his family. And that’s what ‘Tribes’ is about – love.

Susan Tordoff (Mom)
My character, Beth, is married to Christopher and they have three children – Daniel, Ruth, and Billy – in their  twenties. Her life has revolved around her family members, who are all pretty demanding. All the kids went to university and for various reasons are all living back at home. Her husband constantly complains about the situation, and a lot of her time is spent keeping the peace. She is currently writing her first novel. Christopher is also a writer and drives her crazy with his ‘advice’.

Preparing for the role was fascinating. I looked for facts while reading the script, then focused on what she says about herself and others, then what they say about her. Constantly searching for clues which the writer has left, casual remarks can really make a huge difference to a character. Rehearsals bring in another dimension as the characters on the page are made flesh by the actors playing those roles, and the dynamics between them make the whole thing more real and immediate.

Gavin Yap and Frances Lee

Gavin Yap (Big Brother)
Daniel is the oldest child in this family of crazies. He’s very much an enigma to me – but in a good way, a very fascinating way. He tends to see his family as the reason for his unhappiness yet at the same time, I think he knows that he’s unable of breaking away from them. He has this twisted, gentle affection for Billy, his younger brother, because he knows he’s probably the only person in his life who actually still needs him, but all that changes when Billy meets Sylvia. He’s like a tragic clown who thinks he’s a dark prince. But a funny dark prince. Are you confused yet?

Frances Lee (Sis)
I play Ruth, Billy and Dan’s sister. She is a strong-willed firecracker of a girl, an aspiring opera singer who feels like a big fish in a very, very small pond. Preparing for the role is quite an experience. She comes from a highly educated, dysfunctional family. I believe that your family brings out your truest self – however beautiful or ugly you can be. Because I am an only child, I’ve always found sibling dynamics very intriguing. I’ve had to observe my friends very closely and what their relationships are like with their siblings, which has been very colourful, to say the least. I’m really excited to bring Ruth to life!

Thomas Pang (Billy)
Billy is in his early 20’s, and a fresh graduate from college. He wants to be a film director; he is also deaf but born into a hearing family. I took sign language classes, am watching a lot of youtube videos, reading etc. But my favourite part is probably the sound deprivation. My sign language teacher gave me these cool noise cancelling earplugs that simulates a mild hearing disorder, and I just commute with those in.
 It’s remarkably peaceful and I highly recommend it to anyone, not only as a way to experience what the deaf might, but also as a new way to experience the city without its incessant frenzy of traffic and construction.

Thomas Pang and Ethel Yap

Sign language is so much fun. It’s essentially learning a language we’re all capable of, or that we have used at one point in our lives. It’s face-palm easy sometimes, and there are moments I think it’s so much clearer and more straightforward than English. The way you tell stories in sign language is so much more engaging – anyone can get involved, but it’s hard ’cause I’ve got short stumpy digits so I’ve gotta stretch them to the limit.

On a more serious note, my challenges playing Billy simply boil down to trying to imagine what the absence of sound is like. And as far as representation and politics go, the deaf community is as complex and rich as any community. So my experience has not been with trying to understand a ‘disability’ so much as studying a culture. I feel like I’m in a cool gang now.

Ethel Yap (Sylvia)
Sylvia is a witty, vibrant and out-going girl who falls in love with Billy and is introduced to his family mid-way through the play. She’s in for a big surprise as there’s just one way to describe his fast-talking, over-achieving family: absolutely crazy! Sylvia is a hearing child of two deaf parents, so she’s been raised in a proud deaf community and is very familiar with deaf culture.

However, because she herself is hearing, she straddles the two worlds of sound and silence and it causes some tension within her as she seeks to grasp her own identity. To further complicate things, Sylvia is in the process of gradually losing her hearing (due to genetic reasons), so the audience gets to see Sylvia struggling with coming to terms with identifying herself as a fully deaf person. We’ve had to pay very careful attention to learn how to speak that way so that we can be convincing in our portrayal as profoundly deaf and gradually-going deaf people, respectively.

Tribes will be running 22 May to 7 June 2015 at the Drama Centre Theatre. For tickets and information, please see SISTIC or Pangdemonium’s website.

All Images: Pangdemonium