Tikam-tikam

As part of my time at the University of Glasgow’s Theatre & Performance Practices masters, in the Contemporary Devising module, I have been working on a piece of contemporary adaptation. Performed 2nd Dec 2021.

This is why I have been muttering about spoons for the past few months.

Below are some pictures of the piece and I have attached the accompanying programme note.

Devised by: Abbie McLaren, Esme Paul, Oliva Vong & myself.

Performers

Programme Note

Do you want to play with us?

Tikam-tikam grew out of our desire to explore the idea of play as a form of storytelling. Translated from Bahasa Melayu to mean ‘random picking’, it refers to a guessing game that used to be played by children in neighbourhood shops in Singapore where numbers were written on small slips of paper that were folded up and put in a bowl. For about five cents, children would get to pick one of the slips of paper and win a small prize that corresponds to the number on the slip of paper that they have picked. The possibilities seemed endless at the time, but it was really just another way that play and fun were pre-determined by an existing set of rules, invisible to a child’s eyes.

Drawing upon this concept, and armed with a book of nursery rhymes, we dove headfirst through the lens of the rose-tinted glasses where many seem to view the bygone years of childhood. Inspired by the nonsensical verses of rhyme, we developed three strategies to generate material for our piece. The first was through structured game play where we shared a variety of childhood games that we grew playing. Next, we tapped into the more-than-human qualities commonplace objects seem to be imbued with when we were children. Finally, it came down to us just simply sitting and sharing our own stories from childhood – the good, the bad, the ugly but most of all the funny. It was then that we realised that we wanted to bring our audience through this journey of nostalgia and rediscovery, exploring the liminal space between reality and memory.

As much as we wanted to have full-on unbridled chaos onstage, we soon realised that with all things related to childhood, organised fun was the way forward. In order to do this, we adopted the dramaturgical structure that tikam-tikam afforded us. It offered a frame through which the sheer chaos could take place as the audience would at random decide the sequence the piece would be performed in, yet the order we needed to bookend and structure the piece in a way that made sense. The concept of time was also something we had to contend with when exploring the transient nature of childhood. Each episode is but a vignette that recreates an ephemeral slice of time where the freedom to play, indulge, dream and reminisce in the safe space of the work, until the reality of time jolts us back to the present.

We are no longer children, nor are we playing younger versions of ourselves. What we wish to do is to make room for the memories we have of childhood. Brief and fleeting though they may be, they will forever be a part of who we are, and who we become.

So, would you play with us?

Photography: Samantha & Melisa Huang

Marina Johnsonuniversity, devising, contemporary, glasgow, performance, childhood, play, adaptation, theatre, academic