Actors' tribute to the late Kuo Pao Kun

THE legacy of late drama doyen Kuo Pao Kun looms large in Q: Protagonists At The Edge. The new play by Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI), a theatre school founded in 2000 by Kuo and T Sasitharan, begins with three actors standing around in a rehearsal space, waiting for their director to arrive.

In true Godot style, the director - whom they allude to as Kuo - never appears. So the three actors (Chang Ting Wei, Al-Matin Yatim and Yazid Jalil), all graduates of ITI, spend their time rehearsing and recreating scenes from three important plays - Kuo's own The Silly Little Girl And The Funny Old Tree and The Eagle And The Cat, and Lim Jen Erh's Three which was originally a Hokkien opera.

The actors begin with lines from the plays, only to divert from them and invent their own lines. They perform scenes in various languages and employ a range of theatre styles and literary devices, including Chinese opera and Malay pantun (rhyming verse). The three actors, all exposed in their ITI training to traditional Asian theatre practices and contemporary forms, get to show off their wealth of skills.

Q: Protagonists At The Edge is a metatheatrical work that has been devised by veteran Mandarin theatre practitioner Ang Gey Pin. Ang, 48, was once a student of Kuo and played the silly little girl in 1987's debut production of The Silly Little Girl And The Funny Old Tree, one of the most important plays of all time.

Ang says: "I wanted to create a work that looks back at Singapore theatre's past and have a conversation with it. I wanted to create a bridge for the actors and audiences to connect them with the theatre scene that existed some 25 years ago."

With Q, she has crafted an unexpected tribute to the late master by incorporating his written text, ideas and teaching principles. Kuo once famously referred to Singaporeans as "cultural orphans" because of their lack of belonging to any major culture. Here in this empty rehearsal room - a spatial equivalent of "a clean slate" - one watches in fascination as actors try to concoct a kind of rojak culture that blends various traditions and narratives.

Ultimately though, riddled with self-doubt, the actors end these attempts with questions about the nature of theatre, and whether what they do will carry any meaning for the audience and the public. It's both humorous and unsettling to watch, because it alludes so slyly to Singapore's own search for a cultural identity, which may or may not yield authentic results. Ang adds: "I hope the play can make us stop and rethink where we are going, and re-examine our assumptions and perspectives."

Q: Protagonists At The Edge plays at the Esplanade Rehearsal Studio from May 27 to 30 at 7.30pm. Tickets at S$25 from Sistic