This all-female group will use performance-based poetry to be the teachers you wish you had

Spoken word performances aren't mainstream in S'pore yet, but the scene had grown over the past two years.

Kirsten Han| September 27, 12:03 PM

One by one, or all together, the women said their piece. Loud. Strong. Unapologetic.

A collective – Raksha Mahtani, Stephanie Dogfoot, Sage Lee, Germaine Y., Illi Syaznie, Marylyn Tan, Vanessa Victoria and Ad Maulod – examined what it means to be navigating life as queer women in world laden with so many expectations, assumptions and prejudices. Mass Hysteria Relapsed performed twice that day, a part of August’s LGBTQ IndigNation festival.

“People, who aren't women, who come for the show are made to feel very uncomfortable, and I like that,” said Vanessa Victoria.

“Earlier today one of the guys who was in the audience texted and said, ‘I’m starting to feel very uncomfortable right now. I’m the only straight guy in the audience and that’s weird.’ And it’s like, ‘Hah! Now you know!’”

Vanessa_Victoria

Vanessa Victoria

It’s this immediacy and fluidity that makes spoken word such a good medium to tackle controversial or oft-neglected subjects. There’s still a sort of separation between audience and performer, but the Fourth Wall, if it’s even there at all, is blurred to such an extent that it becomes almost impossible to remove oneself from the experience. The directness of spoken word makes it difficult to escape from the message.

“I lecture about gender and sexuality. And sometimes I need to go through ten pages of a paper presentation to make a point that most of us make in the first line,” said Ad Maulod.

“I think the biggest draw is that a lot of it is very personal. It’s like dramatised storytelling, which is very identifiable,” said Vanessa. “Even as someone who may not exactly know much about the topic that you are telling the audience about,just by listening to you they will be able to at least pick up the feelings that you have and might be able to at least understand some of it.”

The rise of spoken word performances in Singapore

Spoken word and spoken word performances aren't exactly mainstream in Singapore yet, but Vanessa Victoria and Stephanie Dogfoot say that they’ve seen the scene grow over the past two years. They co-host SPEAK, one of several spoken word events in Singapore, which features a jumbled line-up of people reading out their poetry in a casual, welcoming atmosphere at Canvas in Upper Circular Road.

Stephanie Dogfoot

Stephanie Dogfoot

I attended SPEAK on one of the rare times it’s hosted on a Saturday afternoon rather than a weekday night. There’s a range of work on offer: poems that make you think, poems that make you confused, poems that make you melancholy and poems that make you laugh.

And then there are the Sekaliwags, a (in their own words) “shouty women quintet”. Except there’s only four of them that day.

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Tunnels (seen in the video above and also performed at SPEAK that day) is a great example of the Sekaliwags poetry; a critique on a current social issue partnered with a rapid-fire passionate delivery, unison for emphasis.

“We like to talk about issues that we don't think get talked about in every day life. Oppression, race, feminism, national identity, identity in general, awkwardness, everyday resistance, struggle, possibility of change, and, just to make us sound less like snobs, parodies of popular white hippie songs,” wrote the Sekaliwags in an email to Mothership. “Oh wait. That makes us sound worse.”

The group was formed last year, when organisers of arts festival Lit Up decided to get women active in the spoken word scene together. They decided they liked writing and performing together, and kept doing so even after 2013’s Lit Up.

There’s more behind their work, too – they aren't just performing for the sake of it, but drawing attention to issues and pushing for change. “In a way I see it as a little bit like activist journalism: activism through storytelling,” wrote Stephanie.“It's an important way to build community and solidarity among other people who feel strongly or are disproportionately affected about/by the world around them (eg. feminists, LGBTQ people, women, stray cat feeders) and remind them that they are not alone.”

The troupe is returning to Lit Up this year, performing on the 27th and 28th of September at the Aliwal Arts Centre. This year’s show is called XPOWERMENT!, and will – for the first time – feature a storyline, and a ton of cardboard sets/props.

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“The idea of XPOWERMENT is that the Sekaliwags are a performing troupe that tours the schools of Sunny Singapore to teach them about how lucky they are to be Singaporeans and how to prepare for The Future. This will all happen through the power of education skits and a handmade time-machine,” they wrote.

It’s an idea that came to them while talking about how they came about their knowledge of Singapore, and where they had picked up these narratives.

“We realised a lot of our ideas about our country are what we learnt, and then unlearnt, from institutions like schools, and the mass media,” they wrote.“This led us thinking about history, and the select history we were taught and how we wanted to fill in the blanks through TIME TRAVEL because PEW PEW PEW!!!”

The budget isn’t huge, but audiences shouldn’t underestimate what the Sekaliwags can deliver.

“In essence, it is a political critique of the education we were given in school and continue to be given, told through very low-budget technology (mainly cardboard-based) and slapstick humour about involving poorly executed sci-fi plots. I MEAN AWESOMELY EXECUTED SCI-FI PLOTS. We aim to be the teachers you wish you had. In your worst nightmares.”

Catch the Sekaliwags performing today and tomorrow at Aliwal Arts Centre.

Top photo by Marc Nair from Sekaliwags Facebook page.

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