“People like me are everywhere – but nobody really sees us. We look ordinary. We fit in. Just another married woman paying for her barang-barang at the supermarket check-out counter.”
In this new play by Leow Puay Tin, we encounter a woman who shares with us episodes, experiences, and stories from her work as a beautician. She takes us for a peek behind the scenes of the beauty world – waxing lyrically (and literally) about laser hair removals, facials, full-body massages, and weight loss regimes. Along the way, the woman also reveals other aspects of her life – her interest in fengshui and fortune telling; her attitudes toward money; and her attempts to get a divorce during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This fascinating sociological portrait of an ‘ordinary’ woman in her 50s was first performed as a rehearsed reading by an ensemble of three young women in their early 20s.
Background
Leow Puay Tin – one of Southeast Asia's most original playwrights –
has written several new plays between 2019 and 2022. Five Arts Centre has been supporting their
development by producing rehearsed readings and performances of the plays.
This is part of a strategy by the playwright to spend time on performance making with a younger generation of actors and directors – to cultivate a less hierarchical and more collaborative approach to performance making – and to find a more sustainable alternative in developing new performance texts.
Photos by Meshalini Muniandy