Mark's Direction of Hungry

I thought about Hungry as a very flexible piece in terms of direction with, as what Priscilla mentioned, its many themes and possible directorial approaches. The playwright, I feel, approached the problems he saw in society today in a very wholesale and rounded approach. There would always be one character there that everyone can relate to, even with Mug.

Because it is so flexible, I do somewhat disagree with Priscilla's viewpoint of a realistic set. Whatever the play stated about the toilet bowls, may not be. Sarah may not be eating shit, Mug may not really have been a Sri Vijayan God, Death may not be dressed up as say... the grim reaper. We should not be cooped in by the demands of the text because this script, was not the manuscript. It may have been a transcript of the original performance. Whatever is in here may have been the directorial vision of the original director. If we were to make it relatable to our audience (say the general theatre public) we need to make them realize that "Hey! I've been here before! I've felt like this before!. Simply, it need not be a bio lab or a canteen.

If I'm not mistaken we are exploring how people only realize how good something is after it is gone. Just to remind myself before I go off track. =P


Cat, Lost and Found:
One interesting part about "Cat" was how the characters were very exaggerated. Be it overly dramatic, overly shy, overly er... Neanderthal-ish, and this does reflect their own character in the play and what it brought to the play. Hungry's script is very short for 6 characters to be properly fleshed out and shown on stage. This exaggeration of characteristics does allow us to let the audience immediately know what our character is without even saying a word. Note, I don't just mean characteristics, but the emotion behind the words as well. Perhaps, instead of distressed and desperate, Sarah could speak in monotone to represent her monotonous lifestyle and search for answers she could never find. Gwak could be overly emotional and melodramatic to display her hunger for recognition and perhaps even attention.

Another thing I liked about Cat was how the set changed to be a bus, cinema, cliff, boat... The flexibility of the set solved many logistical issues but also allowed us to think that, in Cat, we are all looking for something. That's what we all share, and that is why, no matter where we are, we will always be looking. The blankness of the set in Cat also meant that there was no definition to the set piece. A chair could easily become a cliff face or a piece of a boat. Once again, no matter where we are, no matter what we are looking for, we are all searching. That's why it's blank! It's all the same. At least that was one aspect of it. Perhaps like what the others have said, the use of a recurrent object to create different things could easily represent the similarity in each character's "hunger". We are all hungry for something.


Destinies of Flowers:
Before I start, I'm going to say that I tend to be more sensitive to sets after doing a lot of set design the past month or so.

One word that came to mind when I think of Destinies was Death. I don't know if it was an intended effect from the director but now that I think of it, it felt like death, and the chaos in death. You may still be alive but it felt... deathly. =P Actually, the destiny of flowers is for them to wilt anyway... hmmmm... that came like a bolt of lightning. Anyway, the set did portray death quite well. The spikes, the sharp edges, and that thing that flower was standing on looked like a coffin I think. What we are looking at with Hungry is much more peaceful I think. Not so much bulimia or hanging but more of the post death thing. I had recently visited a chinese crematorium in Bukit Timah and I do have a few images we could use. To emphasize death, and perhaps how it has happened to everyone, we could use the image of rows and rows of these little marble tablets with people's name and picture on them. They represent each person who has passed away, almost like a long list of dead people. One interesting thing though was when my grandmother was telling me about those with no name but an orange piece of paper on them with the word "shou" on it, it was people who have yet to die. My Grandma pointed out her slot. Like preparing to die while you're still alive. Or is it acceptance?


Misc:

At the same place I saw a huge black obelisk that paid homage to the nameless dead in Singapore. The immigrants who have no one left to accept them. I think the image of something huge, like a huge epitaph, gives a very strong sense of monumental er... greatness. Something huge happened. It also gives the play a large focus and a nucleus around which the electrons can revolve around and energy can be concentrated. Perhaps we could use this idea to focus our energy in the play and perhaps play around with its symbolism. A bit dry here but put it out so that we could work on it perhaps.

When we use puppets, we not only need to think about why we are using them but also the medium in which puppetry exists in. Using a puppet to play a character, especially if it is a marionette and if there is live acting, gives the sense of being controlled by something out there. Some entity is manifesting it. That is if you want to look at the form. Another way we can use puppetry in this piece is to perhaps allow our actors to really look back on what they had done. This is especially so for Mui Choo when she looks back at her drowning. It is no longer in her control but she is still watching it. The stories of "Adam and Eve" could also be represented in the form of puppetry as it is a story that does not really happen in real life. Once again, the characters are watching it. Perhaps even baby and death could be the puppeteers and control their story, signifying how only death and the truly innocent can treasure life and take control of it. (off the top of my head)

I think we need a think thank session to really ask ourselves what we FEEL about the play and not keep analyzing it. This is so that we can bounce off more ideas for set design. Where have we seen these events happening in the world today? Regret etc. Are there Icons we could use? Well known Icons and Logos even that could help us.
Perhaps we could use a clock somewhere to show the relativity of time. Perhaps our set could be based around clocks. Some move forward, some backward. Some are forced backward by the characters to signify their regret whereas some are moved forward to signify frustration in how slow it moves. We could have characters on clocks and characters wearing clocks.

Remember I said earlier about how what is in the text may not actually be physically what it is. What I thought the original set designer was going for was to show how shitty life could be and his focus was Sarah's line about us being shit making machines. However, that is not our focus. Why are we using toilets? How does it help us bring out what we want the audience to get? We want to show regret and maybe hunger for what we once had or for what we want to have. So... yea I don't quite agree with the toilet. Just a vote and no hard feelings I hope.