Mosaics at the Margins
Review of Ng Yi-Sheng’s Black Water, Pink Sands (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2020)
By Genevieve Hartman
Black Water, Pink Sands by Ng Yi-Sheng is a collection of two hybrid plays: “Ayer Hitam: A Black History of Singapore” and “Desert Blooms: the Dawn of Queer Singapore Theatre,” with an introductory afterword by the playwright. Both plays (which are more accurately described as combinations of history lecture, performance, and personal narrative) bring magnifying glasses to marginalized groups in Singapore. Spotlighting Black and Queer histories, these activist works are a launching point for further exploration of the rich diversity of Singapore.
“Ayer hitam” is Malay for “black water,” thus the book title, and it gives a nod to the overarching history being told—enslaved Black African people taken across the water, ending up in Singapore. The play is largely a one-woman show, featuring the actor Sharon Frese, with additional appearances from Ng Yi-Sheng. “Ayer Hitam” is first and foremost a history lesson, and it takes its time in telling this history. Beginning with a Yoruba creation myth, the play then explains the long history of trade between the Asian and African continents, of the movement of both goods and enslaved peoples and of the explosion of the Triangular Trade, pausing in Jamaica to note the birth of Sir Stamford Raffles, so-called founder of Singapore, before making its way back around the world to the island of Singapore to discuss its colonization by the British and the influences of Black people and culture on Singapore.
This wide-angle lens does a few things. First, it provides the audience with a global context for the more finely focused history of Black folks in Singapore. It also takes some time to explore the relationship between Asian and African peoples, separate from their relationships to Europe, emphasizing the long-standing trade routes, racist descriptions of Black slaves in East Asia, the shared horrors of enslavement, before fleshing out the inextricable link between the enslavement of African peoples and the colonization of Singapore (and many parts of Asia). Shedding light on his decision to include these many strands into the play’s narrative, Ng says in “Disinheritage: An Introductory Afterword” that ”every history is also a mythology and a mosaic, a constellation of monsters created by joining up distant lights in the sky.” This all rings true; “Ayer Hitam” contains a myth and a mosaic of different countries and cultures. By jumping back and forth in time and place, it dispels any illusion that history can be confined to any single continent. The expansiveness of the play’s vision is something to behold.
However, the weight of exposition is notable. “Ayer Hitam” does not shy away from telling more than showing—Sharon Frese is talking most of the time, and most of the talking is a historical monologue. In the live performance, numerous images cited in the play’s text are projected to emphasize the speaker’s points, but without the benefit of the images, there are moments when the narrative gets bogged down. And yet, despite its expository nature, “Ayer Hitam” does pull off its narrative well. There is detail, and there is surprise in where Ng chooses to take us, so the audience is seldom bored, but also seldom lost.
From exploitation and colonialism, the play goes on to highlight the accomplishments of Black musicians, Black athletes, Black soldiers, and Black political leaders, in global periods such as the Jazz Age, the World Wars, and the Cold War. The treatment is sensitive, remembering and upholding the people whose talents and abilities thrilled and delighted, who lived and died for Singapore to become free of its colonial rule, to become the place of art and culture that it is. But in every one of these spheres, the insidious stain of racism lurks. By the end of the play, the history of racism is addressed head-on, and the play takes a meta-turn. Sharon asks, “Can I speak frankly for a moment?” and begins to tell her personal story: her privilege due to her British passport, and still, her struggles to get Singaporean papers, her conflicted feelings about whether Singapore can be her home if it won’t let her stay. And she addresses the precariousness of her involvement in an activist play that questions and challenges the dominant cultural narratives (ICA stands for Immigration and Checkpoints Authority):
So, ICA, if you’re watching, please. I didn’t write this.
(points to Yi-Sheng)
Blame him. It’s Yi-Sheng’s fault.
He put words into my mouth. Take away his passport.
I’m sorry, Yi-Sheng. I want to say “we”. I really do.
But I don’t really have a voice here.
And if you won’t let me be part of this nation,
then I cannot afford to take any of your blame.
It’s a strange moment, to confront the fact that Ng, a Chinese Singaporean and so a member of the country’s racial majority, is the writer of this play about the Black history of Singapore. He is writing a “character” in a play who is a person in real life, who is seemingly telling her own story, but is actually reciting the lines of a play. Ng’s work is certainly commendable, creating a clear and engaging recounting of this important, dynamic, and marginalized history, but I wonder about the implications of this play being written by someone who is not Black, someone who will never, despite best efforts, understand the experiences of Black Singaporeans. Although I am neither Black nor Singaporean, I feel a tension between the work of activism this play does and the ways in which it necessarily falls short because of the playwright’s status outside the Black Singaporean community. The breaking of the fourth wall, where Sharon seems to take control of the play is, I think, Ng’s attempt to mitigate this tension. Without this crucial moment, the play would move into murkier waters.
It is important to note here that Ng sees and addresses these concerns in his introductory afterword in Black Water, Pink Sands. Of “Ayer Hitam,” he says, “This work, initially conceived out of mere curiosity, out of a desire to appear in a festival we loved, has turned out to be intensely politically relevant, beyond all our expectations. Yet at the same, there’s a sense of unease I have in association with this work.” Ng goes on to describe his worry that his play might detract from other artists’ voices being heard. Further, Ng decided to release this play into the creative commons, to be, in his own words, “free for people to distribute, use and remix as they see fit” (with attribution to/permission from the author). These steps speak highly of Ng; this level of self-awareness and sensitivity denotes the author’s clear desire to add to a vital conversation without taking away from the important works that Black Singaporeans are themselves engaging in.
The second piece of this collection, “Desert Blooms,” has a much narrower focus: queer Singaporean theatre, and the activism required to make space for LGBTIA+ characters and themes in local theater. In the voices of recent forebears and the plays they wrote, “Desert Blooms” presents a story of struggle: the ostracization of queer people in wider society as well as in theater spaces. The performance, a four-person show, grapples with what it means to be queer in Singapore, and what it takes to critique a government that is painfully slow in accepting and championing the stories of LGBTQIA+ Singaporeans. It is also, plain and simple, a celebration of the body of queer works that was published and performed in the ‘80s and ‘90s in Singapore.
“Desert Blooms” features the voices of Russell Heng, Michael Chiang, Otto Fong, Eleanor Wong, Haresh Sharma, Chay Yew and numerous other playwrights, directors, and actors, and is interspersed with the voices of local news writers, who critique the plays and comment on important world events—notably, the AIDS crisis, which led to heavy censorship of queer writing and queer lives.
Ng chooses to begin his play at Bugis Street in the 1980s, a street famous for the trans women who lived and worked there. This is an important place to begin for several reasons. It inspired the first gay play in Singapore. Russell Heng’s play “Lest the Demons Get to Me” is about the struggles of his trans friend who worked in Bugis Street. Additionally, the government shut down Bugis Street, a foreshadowing of the later struggles that queer playwrights would face in trying to have their work staged (unedited).
Alongside the voices of playwrights and directors, Ng includes excerpts from the plays themselves, highlighting key moments that speak to the characters’ queerness and to the then-current political and social climate. For example, in an excerpt from “Lest the Demons Get to Me,” Ng quotes the main character KC on the phone with her sister: “‘Tell Mother I am no longer her only son. The surgeon changed that last week… Yes, of course I know there are funeral rites which should be performed by a son. But I am no longer a son, dammit! That’s what I have been trying to explain to you all this while!’” Even without seeing the whole play, the audience is quickly and efficiently introduced to the character’s struggles. In this way, “Desert Blooms” is able to cover a lot of territory in a performance lasting only an hour and fifteen minutes.
This play showcases Ng in his element, writing about something deeply and personally felt. He acts as narrator and as a “character” in his own work, a similar but larger role than he played in “Ayer Hitam.” The difference between the two plays is that “Desert Blooms” features Ng’s own community, his own history. Whereas “Ayer Hitam” has to traverse several layers of difference between the author and the community he is writing about, “Desert Blooms” flows naturally, moving dynamically between plays and people to celebrate a period of immense growth in Singapore’s theater community. Ng himself is seamlessly introduced as a playwright alongside the other writers he quotes, and he unequivocally belongs there.
The two histories told here are ones of displacement, of rejection by wider society and the reclamation of space that has been too long denied. The ultimate power of both these plays is in the move to bring personal stories into the larger landscape of these important histories. Plays that focus on the Black history of Singapore and the history of the Queer Singapore theater would stand alone as compelling and powerful works, but “Ayer Hitam” and “Desert Blooms” have the added pull of staging not just the past, but also its living representatives and inheritors. Both plays are a form of breathing, feeling documentation of injustice, survival, and even triumph.
Something that activists and social media managers (like me) are always trying to present is a clear call to action. In Black Water, Pink Sands, the call to action is not explicit but it is very clear. By celebrating the marginalized histories of Black folks and Queer theater-makers in Singapore—bringing the people in question right onto the stage—Ng forces his audience to confront the unfortunate truth. These documentary plays are not just about past problems; they present current issues surrounding discrimination and censorship that require immediate attention, issues that that must be met with action. Picking up this collection is just the start.
Genevieve Hartman is a Korean American poet based in upstate New York. She is the Director of Development & Publicity for BOA Editions and reads poetry for VIDA Review. Her poems and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Brushfire, Stone Canoe, Meniscus Journal, EcoTheo, and others. Find her reading, doing calligraphy, or buying another plant, and follow her on Instagram at @gena_hartman.
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