Salusuah Ver 3.0 Analysis

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Salusuah Ver 3.0 is a play focused on a man’s search for his personal identity, specifically in the local context. The play itself is a monologue which incorporates dance movements and multimedia to actualise the character’s inner struggle with his mixed religious and racial identity. While the play demonstrates the use of epic mise-en-scene, the actor himself mobilises actor-spectator proxemics, voice and gestures to produce signs to create various characters within the play, such as the main character, his beloved grandmother and his emotionally distant father. In doing so, the actor successfully highlights key events in the character’s life which detail his conflicting identities and inability to reconcile them together.

The actor relies …show more content…

In particular, sound and lighting is used in tandem as cues to dramatic highlights and plot development. For instance, in the scene where the main character was drunk, the dimming of lights, blurred and indistinct projections on the screen, coupled with the techno music was effective in bringing the audience into his state of mind where he was delirious and incoherent in thought, such that he was unable to comprehend the severity of his father’s hospitalisation and impending death. This scene in particular was impressionable as the three elements were able to complement each other and present a realistic portrayal of drunken stupor that the audience recognises and perhaps, empathises with. The sarong was initially worn as a costume by the main character and functioned as an extension of the character to symbolise his Malay heritage. However, the sarong later is used as a prop where it is folded three separate times and laid at the three corners of the stage – to symbolise his birth, his grandmother’s and father’s death. When the actor, acting as the main character’s grandmother, cradles folded sarong and sings a lullaby, the primacy of action effectively suggests to the audience that the bundle is the main character as an infant. In the last scene, the lighting illuminates a tub of water of the heart of the cross, which was previously not visible

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