Singapore Hokkien Festival - Cultural Performance

The Singapore Hokkien Festival, organised by the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan, was was held at Bras Basah Complex last weekend. It is the first of such festival to be held locally, whereby different Hokkien groups like the southern Min (mainstream Hokkiens in Singapore), Fuzhou (Hockchew) and Putian (Henghua) get together to showcase their cultural essence. Other than having stalls selling traditional Fujian food at the festival venue, there was also a makeshift stage where different cultural performances like music, dance and opera were put up by various societies and performance troupes. Another event in conjunction with this Hokkien Festival was the cultural performance over at Drama Centre, just a street away, which showcased excerpts from classic shows of various Fujian opera genres.

Our troupe was one of the participating troupes, and we were scheduled to staged 2 shows, "The Street Paddler" and "The Storm Pavillion", at the makeshift stage on Saturday afternoon. The weather was still clear when "The Street Paddler" was being staged, but by the end of it, the sky turned dark, and it started to rain heavily. The rain was so heavily that even the ground got flooded and our percussionist had to stand on her feet to play her music! I joked that this was one of our most "successful" version of "The Storm Pavillion", as we had got real rain to compliment our sound effect. If we'd acted "Flooding the Golden Monastery", the effect would be even better! Jokes aside, it was tough acting in this kind of weather as the actors and musicians had to beat the rain in terms of volume, and I wonder if the audience downstage could hear us at all.

The rain was still pouring after both shows ended, but that was not the end of our work. We still had another performance at the Drama Centre, which was just across the street. Hence, we had to brave the rain in umbrellas while trying to avoid ruining our makeup and costumes. Over at the Drama Centre, there was another cultural performance in conjunction with this Hokkien Festival. This time round, fortunately, was an indoor performance. However, this Drama Centre performance was more stressful to me as compared to the outdoor one, as we would be acting alongside professional troupes from Fujian Province, among them were Experimental Major Liyuan Opera Troupe and Gao Jia Opera Troupe from Quanzhou, Experimental Minju Theatre from Fuzhou and Putian Academy of Arts. Though stressful, I was still excited in this performance, as I would have the chance to meet some of my favourite artistes like Zeng Jingping and Zhang Chunji from Quanzhou Experimental Major Liyuan Opera Troupe. I did not have time to interact with them on Saturday, but I managed to catch them during their afternoon break on the following day when I was not acting, and got them to autograph on my Liyuan opera DVD. They were very friendly and they left a great impression on me.

It was a great experience to perform together with these fine professional artistes, even though we may not be acting side by side at the same time. Hopefully there'll be a second year for this Festival, and that we would be able to meet up again, to interact and to perform together!