As an artist who has devoted his life’s work to crossing cultural barriers, Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen doesn’t like to be categorized.
“I reject stereotypes. You may be Chinese, but you are not only Chinese. You are a product of your experiences and your history,” Ong said. “You are yourself first.”
The director will present a globe-spanning UC Regents’ Lecture tonight at Kaufman Hall. His latest project is a documentary on the uprooting of a people and the triumph of human endurance in a new environment ““ something Ong has experienced firsthand.
In “Diaspora,” Ong interviews people from Southeast Asia, posing the question, “Where do you want your remains to be after life?” The question forces the respondent to think about where his or her true cultural fidelities lie.
But “Diaspora” tells you a whole lot more about the director than even he might assume. Ong is a child of diaspora, a man whose family migrated to Singapore, and like many other families that did so, modified their old Chinese traditions and created new ones. His life’s work has been the exploration of the results of diaspora and his own place within the intermingling of cultures.
As the founder of The Flying Circus Project, a lab for artistic collaboration for artists from all around the world, and as the artistic director of TheatreWorks in Singapore, he is here at UCLA to discuss that transculturalism.
“My work transcends the cultures that came together to make it. The actors in the company come in, rehearse, and perform, but they have their own lives from all over the world, so what we’re working on becomes multinational,” Ong said.
Although Ong is based in Singapore, he is the only Singaporean in his theater company and production team. Chucking away at work that focuses solely on local issues, Ong invites artists from Hong Kong, Beijing, Paris, Tokyo and the United States (just to name a few) to create productions that cover more universal issues.
For his lecture today, Keng Sen plans to show the highlights from his professional career. He is known for the synergy of politics and entertainment onstage.
For instance, in the documentary “Beyond the Killing Fields,” Ong voices strong opposition to the communist Khmer Rouge party in Cambodia, a government that sought to destroy the old customs and social infrastructure of its people. For the art world, this meant the feudal arts had to go.
“I have a 68-year-old court dancer, two men from the court troupe and a shadow puppeteer reenact through oral history their experience of surviving the Cambodian genocide,” Ong said. “In a documentary such as this, my goal is to broaden the horizons of theater by putting a mirror up to society and having the stage become a source of information for the public.”
Ong will also be showing an excerpt from “Geisha,” which breaks apart the stereotype of the Japanese geisha. The lead geisha in this production is played by a black woman, and the cast is black and Japanese.
“After interviewing real-life geishas, I discovered that a geisha is a self-described weaver of dreams. You go to the services of a geisha to relieve tension, to escape the real world,” Ong said.
But what is most important to Ong during his visit to UCLA is that on April 18 and 19, he will get to conduct workshops with students. Just as he does with The Flying Circus Project in Singapore, Ong seeks to create a space in which artists can come together and negotiate cultural differences.
“Aspiring filmmakers, actors and visual-arts specialists should be mindful of other artistic styles and influences. For everyone involved, it is a process of growth ““ it’s about nurturing the artists,” Ong said.
He wants students to realize that dreams are not solely reserved for the young and guileless. His experience so far has been living proof that dedication pays off and that people, even those displaced by diaspora, can emerge unscathed.
“Some people will say that you are dreaming the impossible. I originally got a degree in law, and now I’m directing radical plays in which people speak different languages. My dream still continues,” Ong said.