Interview With Jo Kukathas: Breaking the Boundaries of Malaysian Theatre

Here at KLue, we crave new Malaysian plays and we had the chance to interview Jo Kukathas, the Artistic Director at The Instant Café Theatre Company. Her latest offering, Break ing Ji Poh Ka Si Pe Cah, opens 24 September and with that kind of title, it‘s not to be missed. The title’s relation to the play stems from the desire to explore the theme of language, a topic that comes up regularly in Malaysia, but it also denotes the desire to collaborate and to break the real or imagined boundaries between communities, languages, art forms and practices of art.

Collaboration is certainly one of the most important elements in the play. Without the combined efforts between Jo’s theatre company Instant Café, Pentas Project and Alternative Stage, Break ing Ji Poh Ka Si Pe Cah would never have started. Loh Kok Man, the artistic director of Pentas Project, and Jo share the vision of a stage without boundaries, a stage that makes the exchanges and relations between different cultures more fluid, and their latest play is an extension of their noble ideals.

Within the play as a whole, you chose to collaborate with different theatre companies creating a production with three separate parts. What are the main differences between these pieces, and besides the overarching theme of language, what are the 'shared identities' that you describe?
Each piece has a different form and mode of exploration:
Silence, Please looks at those times when words simply won't do. When listening becomes about listening to not what people are saying but what they aren't saying. We watch what people are doing and not saying. The approach is visual and aural. In this way we are voyeurs to other people's secret lives. Repot takes a documentary approach to exploring language by interviewing people about what they feel about language in Malaysia (and specifically Chinese languages/dialects) and then and reconstructing the interview for us to see. It also deconstructs language through a Chinese group re-enacting a P. Ramlee movie. WIP looks at the politics of language and language as manipulation. It is about power and language as power. How language can be used to torment and oppress.

The shared identities are the ones that make us human. Our common humanity transcends the apparent boundaries/barriers of race, religion, language etc. Grief/love/joy/fear are levelers. Our shared most human identity is as human beings. But we have to fill in the blanks on too many forms that compartmentalise us into categories of Belief and Physical Attributes. After a while that's what we think we are. There is no easy dialectic. A common language and a shared ethnic or religious or cultural background does not make us understand each other and make us 'one'. Neither does a different language or a different ethnic or religious or cultural background make us 'other'.

Why do you think that humor gives impetus to your projects, which feature such strong themes as culture, ethnicity and politics?
In much of Instant Cafe's trademark work humour plays an important role. But I think comedy is the flip side to tragedy. We laugh so that we do not cry. We look around us - we want to cry (some choose to emigrate), but people come see an Instant Cafe comedy and they laugh. Sometimes people laugh until they cry. Our comedy tries to portrays the truth - as we see it. The truth hurts. So we laugh till we cry. But sometimes we need to cry so that we don't just laugh it off.  Both laughter and tears are important. In Silence, Please I took a very different approach but my impetus and my themes are still culture, ethnicity and politics. Laughter is an act of empathy and understanding. We laugh because we recognise the truth of something. But in Silence, Please we empathise and understand not through shared laughter but through shared silence.

Which current Malaysian issue would you most like to address next in a play?
The Malaysian judiciary. (We saw that one coming!)

The play also showed in Tokyo and Singapore. How was the response of a non-Malaysian audience towards a very Malaysian play? Did the issues come across clearly, or were there some cultural barriers?
Audiences in Tokyo were amazed and fascinated at this image of a country that was so unlike their own homogenous culture. They could see the complexity of our society. Unlike 'cultural' shows that promote Malaysia they saw a contemporary reality of a country that was still discovering itself.
In Singapore audiences were fascinated at the richness of the languages used by all the different performers.

It's 16 September today, which marks the formation of Malaysia. What is your wish for Malaysia?
That we can be more like our food. Rich, complex, subtle, ever evolving, varied: aware of our history,  aware of our past, aware that our most local ingredients are immigrant.

Note: Interview was conducted on 16 September.

Text Maybritt Rasmussen