SINGAPORE: At 56 years old, actor and theatre veteran Adrian Pang has realised that optimism is a choice.
But, he admits, it is one that he is “not normally predisposed to”.
“When the pandemic hit, I thought I was going to be okay. But very quickly, I took a turn for the worse and before I could even scramble around for my life vest, I found myself drowning. I was drowning really quickly,” he recounted to CNA.
“I was constantly being lifted up by family and friends, just trying to shove me up to the surface again. (I was) just gasping for air.”
Then just as he had learnt to tread water, Mr Pang, who is the artistic director of local theatre company Pangdemonium, was approached to be the creative director for the National Day Parade (NDP) 2022.
Having hosted the parade in 2008, it is his first time behind the scenes this year. Being creative director was never on his bucket list – in fact, he considers himself a “wild card” choice.
But Mr Pang, drawing parallels between Singapore’s battle with the coronavirus and his own fight against depression during the pandemic, found the parade theme “Stronger Together, Majulah!” resonating with his own struggles.
“I think if I had been approached in any previous year to do this, and if I had said yes, I would have struggled to know what I wanted to say. But they just happened to catch me at this time of my own journey where I felt maybe there was something worth sharing. … This is a new way of trying to look at my life to see where I am and where I’m going,” he said.
“And I think communally, this is a collective story. We have been going through a really, really difficult time together (as a nation).”
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BRINGING THE INTIMACY OF THEATRE TO A HUGE STAGE
To that end, Mr Pang hopes to inject the intimacy from theatre into the parade show, so both live and home audiences have “something they can experience viscerally”.
“But on a stage as humongous as that, I told myself early on that it’s going to be folly to try and tell any kind of narrative on the stage, tell a little story, have actors yell their intimate lines … there’s been none of that,” he said.
“And so, a lot of the live performances would be painting broad brushstrokes of images and putting across a feeling or an idea that hopefully is clear and resonant enough for people to go, ‘Ah I see, this particular performance is all about resilience’ that kind of thing.”
Without sacrificing an intimate narrative, Mr Pang will then use film to present “intimate scenes between individuals with different locations” and “an actual storyline that would be best achieved by film”.
The film, called Connections, is written and directed by award-winning Singaporean filmmaker Ken Kwek, and will be interwoven into the performance.
“So the structure of NDP this year really has been very cleanly and neatly spread across five live chapters, interspersed by four episodes of film. To tell a big, grand, in-your-face idea and then we go into an intimate story on film.
“And then just alternating that while having a coherent and cohesive arc from the first live chapter across all the films, across all the chapters, right to the final chapter,” added Mr Pang.
On occasion, he returns to the advice of “one very wise person” who spoke to him before he accepted the gig of creative director.
This person told him to “dream a big dream, but one day you must wake up”, he recalled.
“If you don’t start with a big dream, you’re just thinking small, thinking within your box. So just start off with as wild a dream as possible. And then as reality sets in, and as one becomes much more aware of the needs of a show like this, you adapt and you convince yourself that the word compromise is not a bad word,” he said.
“As long as I am not undermining the very heart and spirit of what I wanted to create, then at least I can look myself in the mirror and go, ‘You know, the final product was not this absurd fantasy that I had envisioned, but it still achieved what I wanted it to achieve in a different way.’”
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TAKING STOCK, MOVING FORWARD
Unexpectedly, the past 11 months also produced a different outcome for Mr Pang.
Being NDP 2022’s creative director didn’t just stretch him professionally. It also provoked deeper reflection of his personal revelations from the pandemic – lessons he said he might not have learnt if he hadn’t gone through a dark time.
“You just coast along and things are okay. You don’t question things, you don’t appreciate things. You’re not provoked to take stock. This has forced me to take stock and to reevaluate,” he said.
“We, as a nation, have been through a very challenging time of our lives in the last two-and-a-half years. But you have to learn some lessons from it. You cannot pretend that this period hasn’t happened. If you want to just erase it and hope to go back to normal, we would have wasted three years of our lives,” he added.
“That message of gratitude for what we still have that’s good in our lives, and also moving forward with a sense of hope, a sense of optimism, with a sense of ‘I’ve grown from this difficult time’ in order to go into the future … I hope that comes across in the show.”
And despite not having felt like he was the obvious choice for creative director, Mr Pang’s reflections ultimately led him to realise the journey was for himself.
Even after his role in NDP comes to a close next month, he will continue with the uniquely challenging role of being a “better version” of himself.
“Growing up as an angsty teen and youth, I didn’t know what outlet to express myself. Probably why I became an actor. And I grew into an angry old man. But as amusing an idea as that might be, it’s not good for myself. I don’t want to be angry. … I am trying to learn some valuable life lessons from the last few years to be better,” he said.
In the meantime, Mr Pang may impart these lessons to 5.8 million people – all while putting on the best show he can.