Nicholas Leow
Synchronize your priorities with everyone else’s or get left behind – this seems to be the central sociological theme in Back To Back Theatre’s Small Metal Objects, a play that depicts the clash of two very different worlds – that of the successful executive’s and the intellectually challenged.
Consisting of just 4 characters – Steve, an intellectually challenged single; Gary, Steve’s close friend; Allan, a dodgy executive who pays Gary because he is able to acquire items he needs; and Caroline, a psychologist and Allan’s colleague, this play is a showcase of the glaring incongruence that plays out everyday between mainstream materialistic culture and the groups that do not fit in to it such as the intellectually challenged.
Using the concourse outside Sentosa station at Vivocity as a stage, the play begins with a conversation, which the audience listen with the aid of headphones, between Steve and Gary before they finally become visible to the audience, emerging out of the dense weekend crowd. The whole performance is only 45 minutes long and the playwright wastes no time in giving a human face and presence to the abstract term “intellectually challenged”.
Steve and Gary talk about everyday topics such as food, family and each other’s love life. The audience is called to pay attention to the humanity that exists within these characters and by extension, that a crowd is not just a mish-mash of people but rather that there are deep and profound desires, pains, sufferings and principles that exist in each and every individual in that crowd. These exist even in persons whom we naturally regard as less capable of possessing such “complex” cognitive and emotional notions, such as the intellectually challenged.
“Everything has a f***ing value!” This was the concluding line before the music darkened and Allan entered the plot. As it turned out, Steve had a breakdown and refused to move from where he was standing.
Gary had what Allan needed in some lockers elsewhere but Gary refused to leave Steve despite Allan offering three thousand dollars for the exchange. Allan tries to up his offer to try to “buy” Steve into going along with them but fails. He then tries to get his colleague, Caroline, to persuade Steve. Caroline, being a psychologist, knew how to use emotional tactics to try and manipulate Steve into coming along but once again, she fails. Allan and Caroline then give up and leave but not before Caroline told Steve that he was “useless”.
“Everything has a f***ing value!” Even Steve’s need to stand still and not move has a value. But here then comes the central question: by whose standards do we assign values to things? Here is where power relations trickle from the macro-systems that shape society right down to the micro-systems such as the transactions that have taken place between our four characters as well as the countless other interactions that take place between others in the background crowd.
The modern urban society values anything that generates economic advancement. Intellect, industry and innovation are but examples of the traits that would serve towards this purpose. As a consequence, anyone who excels at these move ahead and gain more power in the forms of wealth and prestige whilst those who do not or cannot become the so-called “underdog class”.
In the play, these power relations become very apparent. It is fairly obvious to the audience how come Allan is justifiably frustrated with Steve. All Allan requires of Steve is for him to follow them – something easy enough that can be done even by an intellectually challenged person.
Due to a seemingly childish insistence on the part of Steve to want to stand still, Allan’s busy agenda is frustrated and his plans ruined. In contrast, it takes us quite awhile longer to understand Steve’s needs which is quite simply this – he had a breakdown and he needs to stand still to cope with it.
This is also the ingenius part of the play – it uses the audience’s own reactions to understand the power relations. Allan has more power not just because he is successful and therefore fits in to what the larger society wants, he is powerful precisely because the resulting culture of the modern urban society makes his goals and agenda easily understandable by everyone else. This is so much such that one might easily feel Allan and Caroline are justified at being frustrated at Steve.
What then about Steve’s needs and goals? Do we, regular persons, forget about those who simply cannot fit in to our materialistic society? Even if we do not consider ourselves materialistic, do we easily understand what the marginalized among us need? Gary did.
“Everything has a f***ing value!” Allan and Caroline missed the point. Despite all their power, they could not buy Steve over with money or even with the offer of sex. Gary on the other hand, recognized Steve’s needs and accordingly assigned them a high value, definitely much higher than Allan’s three thousand dollars.
All in all, this play is a representation of the defeat of unsympathetic materialism’s pre-set criteria for determining what and who should be accorded a high value. Gary and Steve lost the three thousand dollars for apparently nothing and should be considered losers by common standard. But really, were they left behind? They can honestly look straight at the money and say “so what?”
“Everything has a f***ing value.” A sharp observer may even be able to pick out that while Allan and Caroline focussed on trying to convince Steve to move, neither of them ever thought of convincing Gary to shove Steve out of his mind just for awhile in order to make a quick trip to the lockers. A quiet, subtle admission and recognition for the value of Gary’s care for Steve perhaps?