Both core creators have experienced living under autocratic regimes. Creator and writer Cerise Jacobs grew up in colonial Singapore and then, under the “benign” autocrat, strongman Lee Kuan Yew before her family fled. It was only when she went to law school in America that she learned about another world view – democracy – as enshrined in the Constitution. She did not understand free speech, free thought, indeed, free anything . . .  Her collaborator, composer Jing Jing Luo was a child when she witnessed the arrest, detention, degradation, and death of her father, Zong Xian Luo, a renowned composer, by the Red Guards. Her father’s “crime”? The championing of Indigenous music and stories. 

Cerise crafted a libretto using techniques of the Theater of the Absurd where characters illogically attempt to impose a new order and purpose on their existence, exposing the void that exists in their brutish new world, devoid of intellect, compassion and rules. The principles of democracy and its core values of free speech, thought, and association are brought into focus by its absence:  It’s absurd, it doesn’t make sense; it’s alienating, characters are solipsistic; it’s disorienting, it creates dread.

Musically, the piece experiments with a spectrum of sound, lament, folk songs mixed with classical influence and electro-acoustics to enhance the feelings of isolation and oppression. The production uses a robot or puppet which slowly comes to life and then morphs into the human singer as a metaphor for the growth of resistance, of the reclaiming of self.