OPEN HOMES 2019

Presented by La Boite and Backbone Theatre, Brisbane Australia

OPEN HOMES 2017

Review by The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/25/would-you-invite-30-strangers-into-your-bedroom-singapores-open-homes-project

Would you invite 30 strangers into your bedroom? Singapore’s Open Homes project

Arts festival events let you rifle through the drawers of strangers – all in the aim of promoting transparency in the famously restrictive society

‘With these kinds of projects, people start communicating,’ says Open Homes program director Jeffrey Tan. Photograph: Alamy

Steph Harmon

@stephharmon

Friday 25 August 2017 02.01 BST

Last modified on Monday 28 August 2017 04.03 BST

On my third morning in Singapore, I find myself on the 20th floor of a public housing flat in Clementi, sitting next to a cat who is baring her teeth, hissing.

“You have to pet her rougher than that,” my host tells me, smiling. “Otherwise she gets ticklish.”  I go harder but I’m not a cat person, and her teeth grow bigger and seem to get sharper as the strangers around me laugh. There are lots of strangers around me.

The owner of this cat is Mohamad Musta’in Bin Abdul Shukor, and he’s one of the 80% of Singaporeans who lives in subsidised flats built by the government’s housing and development board. HDB has been a part of Singaporean life since before the city-state became independent 52 years ago, under the same government that holds power today.

Shakur is shy but warm and his flat, while small, is bright and packed with stuff. There are curtains, couch covers and tablecloths of a shiny blue material, emblazoned with a galaxy of stars (“I made these myself,” he tells us proudly, more than once). There are two plastic dinosaurs perched on his TV screen (“I don’t know what else to do with them!”), and a cabinet by the wall packed with keychains, miniature animals and sparkling jewellery that he uses to make traditional Malay clothes for his family and friends.

Mohamad Musta’in Bin Abdul Shukor, showing 20 strangers his bedroom wardrobe as part of Open Homes. Photograph: Sifa 2017

I know what’s in his cabinet, because he let me rifle through it. A factory worker by day and tailor-in-learning by night, Shukor has invited 20 strangers into his house as part of Open Homes: a program which ran for three consecutive weekends as part of this year’s Singapore international festival of the arts.

Under the direction of Sifa’s outgoing festival director, Ong Keng Sen, the 2017 event is officially themed as “enchantment” but in practice it’s more about transparency and a look at behind-the-scenes – a response in many ways to Singapore’s infamously restrictive government, which Ong (although officially employed by that government) has spoken out about at length.

Open Homes ties in perfectly with that idea of transparency: far-flung Singaporeans of all ages, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds worked with local theatre-makers or “facilitators” to fine-tune a half-hour walk-through of their homes and their lives, and present it to the public in three or four performances.

It’s a brave thing to let 20 strangers into your house; braver still to let them go through your photo albums, take pictures of your fridge magnets, and challenge your ticklish cats. But it’s also a chance to get a rare glimpse into the lives of people you might pass on the street and never meet – and who doesn’t want permission to open someone else’s drawers?

The program’s artistic director and producer, Jeffrey Tan, puts it succinctly: “It’s moments like these where you feel you’re alive; you feel you’re connected.”

Jeffrey Tan, the director of Open Homes. Photograph: Sifa 2017

Tan presented his inaugural iteration of Open Homes at 2015’s Sifa. It returned after a break with a new focus on diversity: this year 20 of the 30 participants live in public housing, and many of the facilitators and participants come from different backgrounds to Singapore’s Chinese majority.

Shukor, for instance, is Malay, Muslim and a bachelor embarrassed by the size of his queen bed. (“It was a gift.”) He shows us photos of his family, and his beloved recipe book – dictated by his late mother, and transcribed by him. He introduces us to his lemongrass and pandan plants on the balcony before handing us tea he made from them; he also serves us glutinous rice balls with sugar syrup and sends us home with salted eggs that took him three weeks to make.

Tan found the Open Homes participants through a Facebook call and word of mouth – recommendations from friends, from 2015 participants, and from the facilitators themselves.

“In Singapore, in public housing, you look out beyond this door and all the other doors are closed,” he says. “People don’t talk – I think that’s true. And with these kinds of projects, people start communicating. I think the most moving experiences are when neighbours come, and realise, ‘Oh wow, I didn’t know. I didn’t know what you were going through.’”

In another Open Homes piece called Bao Bao – a Chinese term for both “baby” and “treasure” – Joan Lee and John Sng told the story of losing their firstborn. “The birth was also the death of their first child. When I first heard that, I was a mess,” Tan says. “These are the kinds of stories we just rarely hear.”

Danny Raven Tan with his mother. Photograph: Sifa 2017

Another piece was hosted by a young painter, Danny Raven Tan, who lives with and cares for his mother, who has dementia. His mother was present for some of the performances, lending a heartbreaking air to the piece’s title: Mummy Not at Home.

Singapore has a rapidly ageing population, with Singaporeans aged over 65 set to double by 2030 and rates of dementia on the rise; as the government grapples with strategies to deal with that, society is already feeling the effects.

For many in the audience at Mummy Not at Home, Jeffrey Tan tells me, Danny’s story rung true. “At the end of the performance quite a few audience members very quietly snuck up to him to give him a hug and said, ‘Thank you – this, I’m going through this too. This means a lot.’”.

Singapore international festival of the arts runs until 9 September. Guardian Australia was a guest of Arts House Limited