For many of us, our first heroes are our parents. But what happens when the people we think we know best are keeping secrets?
In Instant Cafe Theatre Company’s (ICT) latest production, The Secret Drawer, theatre practitioners Lim Tiong Wooi and Ling Tang turn the spotlight on their own family histories, unearthing the lives their parents led before they made a family – with a particular focus on their fathers and the stories they left behind.
Blending personal memory, family history and theatrical storytelling, the production explores what we inherit from our parents – and what remains hidden in the spaces between the stories we tell about them. First presented as a research-based piece at the What The Elders Left Us festival in Petaling Jaya last November, The Secret Drawer now expands into a full-blown theatre production, bringing these deep family histories to the stage.
The play is the inaugural theatre production at The Studio, an experimental space at the new Jeffrey Cheah Performing Arts Centre (JCPAC) in Sunway Square, Bandar Sunway. The show runs from Sept 2-6.
The Secret Drawer is also part of ICT’s FirstWorks dramaturgical programme, which has nurtured landmark works including Air Con, Parah and Nadirah.
Directed by Jo Kukathas and performed by Lim and Tang in Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Bahasa Malaysia, the show (with surtitles) traces the separate yet parallel journeys of their fathers in the 1960s. Both men were detained and imprisoned for their social activism, against a backdrop of a Malaysia marked by both promise and conflict.
A timely connection
A highlight of the What The Elders Left Us festival, The Secret Drawer has grown organically from a series exploring Malaysia’s performing arts history in the post-independence period.
Lim and Tang met and became friends through theatre, only to later discover that their parents knew each other too. Both had long wanted to tell these stories, making Tang’s invitation from Kukathas to take part in the festival particularly timely.
“I believe that art, and theatre in particular, is revolutionary. So there’s no better platform to tell our story than on the stage,” says Tang, 50, in a recent interview after a rehearsal at JCPAC.
“Jo asked me who or what came to my mind when I thought about the Chinese theatre scene back in the 1960s, and I immediately thought of Wooi’s father, so I invited her to work with us on this,” Tang shares, gesturing to Lim, whose father had started a theatre programme during his time in prison.
For this staging, the play has expanded from 45 to 100 minutes, deepening existing stories, adding new ones and bringing greater theatricality to the performance. Yet it retains its intimacy, like friends sharing their deepest secrets in a heart-to-heart.
On stage, both women navigate the past through family memories, archival material and re-enactments of plays, poems and songs. A secret drawer and a box of nearly 60 official documents become portals into their fathers’ histories, revealing how their ideals and beliefs shaped the women’s identities and aspirations as people and artists.
Still, bringing these unspoken histories to the stage has not been easy, especially for Lim, who for years avoided opening the Pandora’s box of her father’s archive.
“To be honest, telling this story, which is so personal, has been a painful process, because we’re wrestling with grief for the past and what happened,” says Lim, 47, who – through the theatre research behind the work – has also come to a better understanding of her father.
“At the same time, we felt like it had to be done, because not everyone gets the chance to go down memory lane and discover the truths behind their families’ stories.
“The more we researched, the more I got to understand my dad, and I’m really grateful for it,” she adds.
A young nation, dreaming
The Secret Drawer, the actors agree, is ultimately a story not only of their fathers, but also of Malaysia and the ideals that shaped the nation in its formative years.
“In the show, we explore the very same things we often ask ourselves: what does it mean to be Malaysian? What does tanah air mean to us?” says Tang.
“I can’t say that we’ve come to any definitive answer, but there’s plenty of food for thought. I think we all have our own hopes and dreams for the future,” she adds.
Kukathas, 63, says that in the play, there are sound recordings based on actual conversations between Lim and Tang. The Secret Drawer is also her first theatre work as a director in Chinese.
“They shared with me all the messages they’ve sent to each other, asking really profound questions about theatre, life and home. So we took the essence of them and turned them into recordings, like phone calls,” says Kukathas, who, through What The Elders Left Us has found new pathways into – and conversations around – the Merdeka era and beyond.
“There’s even a touching story about a teapot that Wooi’s father made for her mother while he was imprisoned. So the play is kind of a choral piece in that way, with stories told through different elements such as objects, sound and music,” she adds.
Making a connection
Family dynamics and parent-child relationships are central to the play, and Lim has been surprised by how strongly it has resonated with audiences.
“After we first staged it last year, there were a number of audience members who told us that they wanted to reconnect with their older relatives and learn their own family histories. It was only then that it really hit me how impactful this project is,” says Lim.
Kukathas, a longtime advocate of research-based theatre, hopes The Secret Drawer will prompt audiences to look beyond the performance and become more curious about the histories and stories that shape their own lives.
“I really like these kinds of family stories, but I feel like we’re not telling enough of them – these stories of supposedly ‘ordinary’ people are actually really extraordinary when you take the time to sit down and listen,” says Kukathas.
“So I hope plays like this will make other people think, ‘Well, maybe it’s time to open our family’s secret drawer and research our past’. Because I don’t think we pay enough attention to our histories,” she concludes.
The Secret Drawer will be staged at The Studio, Jeffrey Cheah Performing Arts Centre (JCPAC), Sunway Square, Bandar Sunway, Petaling Jaya from Sept 2-6. More info here.
