by Claire Chan Wai Shan
Last evening, I had the privilege to attend a panelist discussion on Emily of Emerald Hill held at the NUS Baba House. As soon as I set foot upon Neil Road, I knew my senses were in for a treat. Delicately structured and well-maintained, Peranakan elements of the three-storied Baba House shone through its exterior down to every last detail of the interior. As Stella Kon so aptly phrased it, being within the premises made reciting excerpts off the play “coming to life”. The topic of this session was on the representation of the central and only character, Emily as a representation of the 21st Century Asian woman. For those who haven’t watched or read the play, Emily of Emerald Hill is a one-woman play set in the 1960s about the life of nonya Emily Gan, as she grows from a young bride to Peranakan matriarch, and her patriarchal struggles within the domesticities of the household.
A graceful creature illuminated by a single lamp, with jazz music playing unobtrusively in the background, Stella Kon was introduced and outlined to do readings of pre-selected passages (it was a fan-girl moment) chosen by each panelist for review. For starters, the first passage chosen by Deborah Tan – a Secondary Three SCGS student – was the pivotal moment of the play. It features Emily on the cusp of despair as she is left alone with her interior thoughts after witnessing the destruction of the family at her own hands. Though Deborah added to the diversity (and age-range) of the panel, her contribution did not strike me as particularly interesting. This would probably be attributed to the limited experiences she have had thus far as a teenager. Her personal take on Emily living a hypothetically modern life seemed more than anything, of a textbook answer.
The next panelist, however, was my personal favorite of the night. She is none other than Kelly Reedy. Kelly brought across her points (using the same passage as Deborah) through the multi-media images she has created. Also Kelly chose the same passage as Deborah, Kon recited it again. She portrayed Emily in a stronger, when-life-gives-you-lemons-make-lemonade light by adopting a rebellious tone in reading. This helped me gain a different perspective of Emily. I was also in admiration of how Kelly makes use of the aesthetic (visual art) to convey meaning in this play. Her twelve artworks weave in the Chinese method of paper cutting onto Malay batik print paper. Showcased in Kon’s limited edition publication of Emily, the combination of art traditions hold testimony to the multi-racial and multi-ethnic social fabric of Singapore today. This intertextuality of art mediums also reminds me of Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarization where he states that “the purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known”. For example, the abstraction in one particular print titled ‘Mata Hari’ or translated ‘Eye of the Son/Sun’ consists of a paper cut of the sun, a boy, and a riding horse in a single image. The sun is a pun on the word son, of whom she pins all her hopes and aspirations on. Similarly, the sun is a symbol of life and (figuratively) the center of the universe, just as Richard is central to her world. As he falls to his death from a horse, Emily’s downfall begins. Without having art to stretch our sensibilities of ‘perceiving’, the world would be a much duller place.
Tan Dan Feng rounded off on a rather conclusive note by choosing to comment on the play’s ending. He posited questions on Emily’s modernity based on her qualities, leading the Q&A session into an extended debate on how exactly to define traits of the modern. Huddled together in the dimly lit main hall, we came to a general consensus as an intimate session (of less than thirty) that it would ultimately be dependent on which generation one decides to frame her in, in order to make a stand.
Based on the other questions raised within the audience, it would also be true to say that many readers, including myself, would choose to analyze the character of Emily within the plot circumference of the typical Peranakan familial melodrama. To cast a wider overview, I would also contemplate the societal expectations and responsibilities restricting the Peranakan matriarch living in the twentieth century. I found it intriguing that Kon posed the possibility of looking at Emily as a postmodern text. Emily then, can be seen as a symbol of dilemma for all Peranakan women of the time – constantly negotiating on the modern-traditional continuum as she straddles between the two generations above and below her.
It was a delightful night filled with thought provokers contributed by both the panelists and attendees. I will leave you one by the witty Stella Kon – “A woman who seeks equality in men lacks ambition”.