SIFA 2017 :: 'Becoming Graphic'

Had to attend Sonny Liew and Edith Podesta's 'Becoming Graphic'. This performance is commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), and Sonny Liew created a brand new graphic series for it titled 'Black Oyster'. Through these drawings for 'The Green Bolt' fleshed out with spoken words, inter-woven with the stories of fairly real characters who're afraid of losing their beauty, growing older, we look at the larger sobering societal issues of aging, dementia and mortality.

So as the audience, we saw the entire set up of Sonny Liew's workstation and watched him silently sketch throughout the 90-minute performance. He did talk, towards the end- one line. Those sketches were projected out on big screen panels which formed the backdrop. At the other side of the room, we saw the crew for the podcast for lights, sound and whatever else.

Actress/host of the podcast Koh Wan Ching took us through the story of her mother's dementia, and then weaved back into other segments of her own life. Then there were the snippets of Sonny Liew's life, his parents and grandfather, and finally his new middle-aged full of neuroses dude named Henry in 'Black Oyster'. Henry looks after his ailing mother; his alter ego is superhero 'The Green Bolt'.

It's a creative set-up in taking something two-dimensional to become three-dimensional. Although I felt that they were trying to do too much in too limited a time-frame. I honestly rather read the graphic panels and the bonus sheet of illustrations in my hand than to absorb all that was happening on stage.