COVID-19 and the Intercultural at ITI

What does intercultural actor training mean in the time of COVID-19? An actor training in these absurd times would often face absurd situations: navigating the impossible line between speech and singing (because one is permitted and the other not), for instance, or having to do tumbling, jumping, push-ups and headstands with a damp and sweaty mask covering their nose and mouth. Sometimes, the absurd would extend into the unthinkable, such as when students had to cope with the loss of their loved ones from a distance.

The absurd, and even the unthinkable, notwithstanding, theatre goes on and so does training. In some ways, training during a pandemic produces certain conditions which lend themselves, particularly towards intercultural practice. Specifically, the fundamental intercultural performance paradigms of flexibility, translation, and distance truly came to the fore at a time when the pandemic was in its peak in Singapore through most of 2021. How did COVID-19 catalyse the process of integrating these ideas into ITI’s pedagogy, both purposefully and inadvertently?

Paradigm 1 – Flexibility

Flexibility is a desirable trait for any actor but is especially essential for the intercultural actor who, in her learning of different traditional forms and techniques, knows how to adapt these techniques into various contexts. Physical, bodily flexibility aside, the actor/performance-maker needs to be able to adapt, not just to different forms and genres of performance, but also to the idea and practice of change onstage, offstage and in the rehearsal room. The COVID-19 situation provided scenarios which, while challenging, catalysed the development of this disposition at ITI much more than a pre-pandemic era would allow.

The Final Year Performance of RevoLOOtion in April-May 2021, for example, encapsulated this idea of creative flexibility within constraints. Both the fact that it was a piece of interactive theatre (a first for ITI), and the fact that it was a piece of interactive theatre in the pandemic, taught the Year 3s a great deal about what it means to adapt. For one, they had to prepare for the ‘foruming’ segment of forum theatre, improvising in their second (or third) language. The experience of dealing with different kinds of audiences was also invaluable, not only across different nights but across different venues. For another, the students also gained first-hand experience in coming up with different creative solutions in response to the constantly evolving safe management measures – using body doubles and stretching their gestures to simulate touch, connecting with the audience despite the rules against intermingling. This spirit of innovation continued during the Year 3s’ Final Year Individual Performances. One student turned a COVID-19 regulation (“no singing”) into a point of critique of the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, tonelessly yelling out the power ballad “The Greatest Love of All”.

Paradigm 2 - Translation

The introduction of Wayang Wong to the ITI students in 2021 was also serendipitous in this regard as the form arguably embodies a sense of elasticity and flexibility more than any other traditional form taught at ITI. Both the master teacher, Ibu Puji, and the students adapted to online learning quickly and effectively, revolutionising the transmission of embodied tradition in the Zoom age. This was done through a process of translation in more ways than one.

Translation, generally speaking, is part and parcel of intercultural actor training. This process goes beyond that of language, although that is certainly a necessity when one works with faculty and students from all around the world. As Anuradha Kapur points out, “Translation makes mobile performance grammars and repurposes them for different needs and contexts. The body bears these changing grammars.” This is the heart of the training at ITI, where students are actively taught to translate what they’ve learned from the traditional forms to contemporary theatre and performance through the Post-Modular Labs (PML), the FYIPs and the FYPs.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided many additional opportunities for translation to occur. Most significant is the translation of Ibu Puji’s voice and movements from the flat Zoom screen to the physical studio space and the student’s bodies, and vice versa for the Ibu. The students, the teacher, and other ITI staff adapted in various ways: the Ibu going extra close to the camera to demonstrate her unfocused eyes as she ‘opened’ her mandala; Ibu inviting guest performers with her to demonstrate with a partner on-screen; ITI staff marking out the parts of the studio that were within the frame of the fisheye lens with tape, and so on.

Indeed, in order for such a transmission to occur, it required the full commitment of all parties involved, especially the support staff and faculty who had to do a lot of translation of their own. This included basic linguistic translation, but more importantly, it involved a translation of their own embodied knowledge – of ballet, of Malay dance, of Balinese dance, of movement training – to the grammar of Wayang Wong, in order to help communicate and demonstrate to the students what the Ibu wanted. It was not uncommon to see the translator Vivi Augustina using her own body, rather than her words, to translate Ibu’s instructions. The quality of the end-of-term presentation spoke to the success of this process despite the challenges. That is not to say that the translations were perfect – no translation is – but when faced with the necessity to do so, the students and staff embodied the spirit of Wayang Wong: they improvised.

Paradigm 3 - Distance

“We live in a world today where everything is distanced. Even before COVID-19, even before the pandemic, our world was marked by distance,” said ITI Director Sasi during the opening speech at an event "The Remembering Resource (II)" by Grain Performance and Research Lab in 2021. Distance, figuratively and literally speaking, is as much the precondition for translation as it is for remembering. It is only because of the physical distance between Ibu Puji that the translation between media needed to occur for Wayang Wong. And, during one week of intercultural exchange, the students simultaneously discovered just how close and how far apart they were from one another even as they were all in the same room.

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the ITI cohort resumed sessions of ‘intercultural exchange’, whereby students and core faculty members translated and made recognisable for one another their own unique traditions, stories, and identities. In 2021 this was a five-day affair. By the time the first day ended, it became clear how different everybody was from each other. One particular geography exercise designed by acting faculty Koh Wan Ching imagined the Creative Box of the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre – where training was held at the time while renovations were ongoing on campus – as a giant world map. Participants had to stand where they had come from, and the constellation that formed gave all a sense of the differences between them. Some grew up around concrete, some on the mountains, and some right next to the ocean. 

Over the past two years, we have all become experts at measuring the distances between us: one, two, three metres parsed out in elbows, arms, empty audience seats. We have become even more familiar with the distance across oceans and continents now that home or loved ones are no longer a quick and easy plane ride away. Borders have become even less porous, countries more siloed. It seemed a small miracle, then, that this exchange was happening despite all this. These sessions encapsulated one important aspect about intercultural practice at ITI: acknowledging the distances and differences between one another is a vital first step that takes courage, openness and effort.