"Where do you prefer to conduct the interview? Inside or outside?" Koey Foo (top, centre) asked me. I was momentarily distracted by this gesture of politesse from the absorbing features of this young strapping actor. The slut that I am, mental synapses were triggered into a fury of neural associations creating a montage of sun-lit Abercrombie models horsing around in the playden of my head, each wearing the trade-mark mega-watt smile on his face.
"Emmm... I'm fine with either position, I mean, place."
"By the way, do you smoke?" Foo asked me as we made our exit, together with Phin Wong (top, right), from the rehearsal room. "I'm quitting." Haven't had a fag in months and the compulsion is dying. "It's bad for my complexion," I added, as if to remind myself of something I had no intention of remembering. Wong and Foo proceeded to take their puffs, while I watched, eager to get them talking about the play they are currently involved in: Checkpoint Theatre's A Language of Their Own. As I realised, it wasn't difficult for both actors were in possession of such gregarious temperance they were simply radiant with enthusiasm - I had to check myself once again, in order to pack the boys that had resurfaced in my imagination back into the nadir of half-buried memories.
"We have been practising really hard for the past month," Wong said, interjecting a swirl of smoke, "rehearsing almost everyday, rearranging our schedules to fit the rehearsal schedules, staying till eleven everytime. And absolutely no regret."
Prior to the interview, director Casey Lim had the actors enact, serving as a preview of sorts, three snippets from the up-coming production. They were really good. Absorbing. Wong and Foo took on the roles of Ming and Oscar respectively, the lovers of the play. And neither could be more different from their individual personality.
"Playing Oscar is certainly a challenge, and one that I'm looking forward to," said Foo, "to prepare for the role, I did my own research on HIV and AIDS, read up on the relevant information and studies and all that. Also, I had the opportunity to talk to this friend who is HIV positive, and we had many conversations together. Through his help I was able to gain a deeper insight into the lives of people, and not just gay people at that, who are HIV positive. I learned a lot from the sessions we had together, which were certainly life affirming. Through this play I truly hope I am able to portray to the audience the full complexity of my character's, not just personality, but his humanity as well. When my friends heard that I am to tackle the role of Oscar, they were quite excited about it. Because they know my personality and the personality of Oscar are worlds apart - they don't exactly see me as the inexpressive type."
Theatregoers might remember Wong's last queer role as the younger half of a May-December gay couple from one of the vignettes in Asian Boys Vol. 2.
"Ming can't be more different a role from that which I took on in Alfian's play. For a start, the experience of getting into the psyche of a new character is always something new for me, for any actor. Alfian's play had a lot to say in terms of the social politics that he was negotiating at that time, and what he wanted to express, somehow had to involve the characters being - for want of a better word - confined within the limits of stereotypes and the accompanying rhetorics used to project a stance. But that is not to say, as an actor, the challenges of that particular role was diminished. In fact, it provided a framework for me to work on and flesh it all out. That was the challenge."
"The way I see it, A Language of Their Own involves a kind of premise in which gay people are not overtly positioned as the 'Othered' minority in society that tries to exert their presence. No feather boas, rainbow flag or marches down Orchard road this time. But that is not to say issues of sexual discrimination do not make themselves heard in the course of the play. They are not its foregrounded concerns. If there is a statement that this play is making, it has to be a kind of reminder, to gay people I might add, that we are not some monolithic collective of beings which a popular mainstream imagination has made us out to be. When we speak about gay people, it is important to remind ourselves that in truth we are speaking about and for gay doctors, gay teachers, gay parents, gay children, so on and so forth - there is no such thing as an archetypal gay identity. It is interesting that such issues concerning the extend of fallacy that informs the mainstreamed construction of a singular gay identity is inflected through the character's conflicts with their own Chinese-ness, they being Chinese-Americans."
"If a friend should introduce me as his 'gay friend,' I would wallop him on the head," Wong candidly added, "because as an individual, one is so much more than just his sexuality! But so far they have been really nice people."
So are Foo and Wong, the two darlings. It is seldom one leaves an interview feeling edified and with the sense of having learnt something meaningful. The wonderful actors of A Language of Their Own have touched me with their candor and intelligence, and as such I am compelled to believe that this up-coming production by Checkpoint Theatre will be an equally satisfying experience. With or without Abercrombie. Oh shush!
Written by US-based Singaporean Chay Yew, A Language of Their Own (RA18) which won the George and Elisabeth Marton Playwriting Award and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) Media Award for Best Play will be staged in Singapore for the first time Mar 30 to Apr 9 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio.
Date: 30 Mar to 9 April 2006
Time: 8pm (Tuesdays to Sundays), 3pm (Saturdays & Sundays)
Venue: Esplanade Theatre Studio
Tickets @ $33 (excludes $2 SISTIC fee)
Available from all SISTIC outlets
SISTIC hotline: 6348 5555 or book online at www.sistic.com.sg.