On 14 December 2024, we launched a new publication - Tikam-Tikam: Chance encounters with performance texts written & curated by Leow Puay Tin. Performance maker, researcher and Five Arts member Mark Teh served as producer for this project. Below is the text of his speech at the launch.
Hello everyone, welcome to the launch of Tikam-Tikam: Chance encounters with performance texts written & curated by Leow Puay Tin.
My name is Mark Teh, I’m a member of Five Arts Centre, the producer and publisher of this beautiful, playful publication. I’m here to say some nice things about Leow Puay Tin and her work. That's a trigger warning for Puay Tin, because we all know how much she hates being the centre of attention and being made a fuss over. Puay Tin, please try not to wince too much through these next few moments.
I’ve never quoted myself in public before, but for the purposes of selling this beautiful publication, please indulge me. This is from the Foreword. Which I wrote. From which I'll quote :)
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There are certain works of art you encounter in your lifetime that expand and extend your perceptions of the world. These are the important ones – the ones that stay with you.
When I was 19 years old, I was present at a rather unusual happening at the old Five Arts studio in Taman Tun Dr. Ismail. Leow Puay Tin would be performing – to an audience of four people, myself included. Apparently, she wanted to test something she had been working on.
Sitting on the floor, close to and across from us, she shuffles a set of big cards with texts on them, inviting us to take turns picking a card. Over the next 30 to 40 minutes, she proceeds to read and perform the selected cards. There’s a card about karma and chaos theory. Shuffle shuffle. A card about women and wisdom. Shuffle shuffle. Another about the Japanese Occupation and Sybil Kathigasu. Shuffle shuffle. Yet another, about family and choppy Nanyang seas. Shuffle shuffle.
The texts conjure a multitude of stories and themes that stretches the limits of my imagination. I am transfixed. What is this strange thing she is doing? Reading, selecting, performing, shuffling, and occasionally singing – Hokkien songs! Wah, like that also can ah? Puay Tin called this strange, wonderful way of storytelling, tikam-tikam.
This encounter with Leow Puay Tin’s The Dakini Reading Project in 2000 was formative and transformative for me. For a young student of literature and sociology, it provided clues on the possibilities of collaging, constellating and frictioning together different texts, voices, and experiences to tell a larger story. For a novice theatre practitioner, it hinted at forms and formats for structuring performance – how to work with time, narrative, non-linearity, chance, repetition, randomness, sequentiality [and I would add now - consequentiality]. For the audience, the dramaturgy generated by Puay Tin’s tikam-tikam experimentations heightened the pleasures of play, participation, and pattern recognition in performance.
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So why is Five Arts publishing this unusual publication?
It’s very simple: Puay Tin is a damn good writer. There is of course a context and history to this. Puay Tin and Five Arts Centre go back a very long way. In the year that Five Arts was founded – 1984 – we premiered Stella Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill, with Puay Tin originating the role in a production directed by Chin San Sooi, a co-founder of the collective. But a year before, Puay Tin had already collaborated with several people who would go on to form Five Arts later. The production was Tikam-Tikam: And Her Grandmother Said, directed by Krishen Jit. Marion D'Cruz, and Dr Anis Md Nor - who is in the house today - were in the gamelan ensemble for the performance. The ensemble was led by Dr. Patricia Matsuky, who is also in the house. Otais, and old ties.
It should come as no surprise that Puay Tin is the most performed playwright in Five Arts Centre’s 40-year production history.
The way I see it – there are at least three different bodies of work in Leow Puay Tin’s multiverse.
Her major plays of the 1980s and 90s – Three Children, (A Modern Woman Called) Ang Tau Mui, and Family – have been staged across Southeast Asia, Australia, Germany, Japan, and the USA. I went through the list of directors who have directed, adapted or translated these plays over the years so I could name drop them today - they range from Chin San Sooi, Krishen Jit, Ong Keng Sen, Janet Pillai, Wong Hoy Cheong, Lok Meng Chue, Ivan Heng and Chee Sek Thim, to Loh Kok Man, Ho Shih Pin, Woon Fook Sen, Marina Tan, Amelia Tan, Alec Tok, Kaylene Tan, Adeeb Fazah, Hiroko Takai, and more.
Then there’s a second, more recent body of works. In recent years, Puay Tin has been particularly prolific – writing six plays in as many years – presenting them as full productions or staged readings with a younger generation of theatre makers: Fasyali Fadzly, Tung Jit Yang, Taha Long, Yee Heng Yeh, Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri, Syamsul Azhar, and Sankar Venkateswaran from India.
It’s clear that her work continues to provide a resource, a balm, and much inspiration for different generations of theatre makers in Malaysia and the region. Because her work is generative, iterative, deep, and profound. Directors naturally are drawn to these qualities. For me – I’ve never directed Puay Tin’s plays – as a collaborator, colleague and friend, what I find consistent across all of her work as an artist and educator, are two key ideas – cuo kang, and cuo lang. In Hokkien, cuo kang refers to work, labour, getting on with it, finding meaning in working. Cuo lang refers to being human and being humane – in a world that is difficult, complex and not always just. You will find these two ideas embedded in and across all her works.
They can be found in these special works which are now collected in Tikam-Tikam: Chance encounters with
performance texts written & curated by Leow Puay Tin. This publication – basically an unbound book
– brings together 6 works from her innovative tikam-tikam method of combining storytelling with chance and
randomness. The idea for this project has been brewing since 2017 – it took so long because we wanted to find
the right format to encapsulate the playful, chance-y concept of tikam-tikam, but yet still find a way for
people to enjoy it as beautiful literature. We wanted to do an unusual book – one that allows lovers of
Malaysian writing to read, play, and perform a collection of delightful stories together. It’s a book. It’s
a game. It’s perform-able literature.
In it, you will find six performance texts:
- Malaysia@Random, an eclectic collection of writings on Malaysia excerpted from diverse writers & voices;
- Mortal Man: Two Monologues, where a writer remembers a conversation with a famous theatre director from 20 years ago;
- Merdeka! reflections by three public intellectuals - Mavis Puthucheary, Azmi Sharom and Tricia Yeoh;
- the legendary Krishen Jit’s Director’s Notes for the actor and the audience;
- The Attempted Canning of an Octopus, where a professor grills artists in a creative workshop;
- and the poignant portrait of a Woman Ice-Seller in the 1960s.
To help us launch the publication and to demonstrate how tikam-tikam works, we’re very pleased to have a group of players today who will read two of these sets. Of course, we couldn’t resist inviting Anne James – the most casted actor in Five Arts’ history – to read Woman Ice Seller, by the most performed playwright in our history. Then we have a ragtag bunch that includes Ali Alasri, Yiky Chew, Fahad Iman, Sharifah Aryana and Julien Chen who will read from Malaysia@Random. They all also happen to have been students of Puay Tin's and Anne’s nine to 12 years ago!
Last thing for me to do – some big big big thank yous:
Jun Kit – our brilliant,
sensitive, patient, genius designer & illustrator. He’s responsible for the look & feel & weight
of this beautiful publication. Everyone who knows Puay Tin knows she is a compulsive editor & reviser of
her own texts – editing even after publication or the opening night of her plays. In Jun Kit, we found the
perfect collaborator for this publication – there is a shared sensibility between the two of them, I think
perhaps because both had training in the newspaper world. Thank you so much, Jun Kit.
Some shout-outs
to:
- Andrew Filmer who helped so much with the proofreading;
- Amir Muhammad for sharing his experience as we navigated the publishing journey;
- All the the writers and contributors to Malaysia@Random and Tikam-Tikam: Merdeka! - I see that Jason Tan, Prof Philip Koh (representing Tunku Sofiah Jewa), Azmi Sharom, and Dr. Anis are in the house;
- Wong Tay Sy, who helped us create the display outside of Puay Tin's past tikam-tikam projects over the years;
- Everyone in the Mortal Man team – a special shout-out to our good friend Ken Takiguchi, an old friend of many here, who took on the role of dramaturg for this project. We also want to thank our friends at The Japan Foundation Kuala Lumpur for supporting Mortal Man.
- And of course, our sponsors who have generously supported our projects – Yayasan Sime Darby, Creador Foundation and Luminate.
We are very proud to publish Tikam-Tikam: Chance encounters with performance texts written & curated by Leow Puay Tin. This publication makes available to a wider reading - and performing - public some of the most conceptual and fun aspects of this singular playwright’s incredible body of work.
Ladies and gentlemen, Leow Puay Tin!
Photos: Liishvaar, Mark Choo