i am trying to say something true (2018)

12 April 2018 – 15 April 2018 @ Theatre Studio, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay

Synopsis

There is no new way to write about loss. At the heart of it the same old clichés live and breathe and repeat themselves: I miss him / I wake up thinking I’d still see her face / I miss his voice / that was her favourite shirt / I want to remember the smell of his hair – but this person is no longer there. They are no longer there.

So instead this is a story about distance: the spaces between people and places, the gaps between past and present; and about living in the gulf between what we know and what we feel.

Playwright: Michelle Tan
Director: T. Sasitharan
Performer: Ellison Tan Yuyang

(Source: Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay YouTube)


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i am trying to say something true (2018), Review
True, But Not Clear The premise: Risa (played by Ellison Tan), a troubled young civil servant who has lost her job, recounts her story over a series of visits to a therapist. We learn about her complex love-hate relationship with her grandmother and parents, her struggles in coming to terms with being religious and lesbian, and the beauty and sadness of her first relationship. The story itself had the potential to be moving. But because the subject matter has by now become a bit of a clichéd trop
Jocelyn Chng
Reviewed: 12 April 2018