The Final Performance

An early start![i]

There is a school outing type buzz in the air. The 12 seater mini-bus is not quite full by Cambodian standards. We’re only taking 20 people plus the antiquated sound system and a few props and costumes. It is the day of the performance. A local festival is to celebrate a ½ Marathon that’s being run near a little village about an hour and a half away. The Marathon itself is a fund-raiser for a Charity that’s been working in the village for the past year to alleviate extreme poverty. We are the entertainment at the end of speeches and prize giving, but it’s fitting that Epic (another local Charity) should have the opportunity to spread awareness about what it does. Half the ladies from the cafe will be coming along after us in a slower tuk-tuk loaded down with cakes to sell! It’s like that film “Wages of Fear” where 2 truck transport nitro-glycerine across a mountain and jungle terrain, one false move or pot hole taken at speed and there’ll be carrot cake everywhere!

For us performers it’s the natural conclusion to 14 days of drama workshops and rehearsals. It wasn’t planned this way and the original brief had no mention of an expectation to produce any “product”, but I’m pleased and relieved that as well as raising skills in a whole range of theatre disciplines we have created 7 self contained mask/mime pieces, 4 of which will be getting their debut today.

The students are looking in decidedly better shape than we are. It wasn’t, perhaps the best night to go on a bender, but Jai had a friend down from Phnom Penh and it was Australia Day. We went next door to the Backpackers run by Hugh, the Aussie ex-pilot, ate and drank on the floating pontoon and had our ears assaulted by Aussie classics like ACDC (it’s obvious that Hugh has been here far too long and is picking up Khmer musical tendencies on the volume front.)

Some of the students had a sleep over in the rehearsal room of the Cafe last night as they live too far out of Kampot to make this 6.30am start. When presented with this problem on Friday I had a minor panic as Jai wasn’t around to help translate, but as we discussed that night it was a very ‘Barang’ reaction. We had forgotten that this is Cambodia and in Cambodia the family rallies around. The deaf community of the Cafe is like a small close-knit family and some of the more senior members volunteered to leave their families for the night in order to stay over in the cafe to supervise the younger ones.

Once we are underway the breakfast is broken out – Khmer style bacon and eggs – strips of pork on a bed of rice with chilli sauce to lubricate each mouthful. A great hangover cure! As we arrive at the venue, after a final 30 minutes of bumping down a potholed road amidst water buffalo, rice paddies whose stubble is quietly burning and the ever present sight of children running past shouting ‘Hello’, we discover a large assortment of locals and foreign NGO types gathered together. It’s the finish line for the ½ marathon and the first runner is coming down the road. It’s just gone 8am.

Of the 96 assorted Marathon runners, 10 km Fun runners and bike riders, there are about 4 Khmers. The rest are European or American. They have all paid $50 for the privilege of getting up at the crack of dawn on 2 consecutive days to run/cycle the distance in 2 stages. Added to this, each has raised an additional $250 as part of the deal. It is uncomfortably hot even at this time of day. The local Khmers must think we are truly a strange race of people.

The performance goes well despite us waiting around for almost 2 hours before we are on. The stage space is ½ the size of the one we rehearsed on and the CD player mysterious breaks down during the 3rd of our 4 pieces. (I have a theory that the Music Gods were unimpressed with my subtle use of the volume knob!) But that’s touring for you!

I've worked with better equipment!

The audience of mixed Khmers and Anglo-Saxons are visibly attentive and appreciative, but it is the Khmers who laugh the hardest and whose smiles of recognition are the broadest. The stories are fairly basic, the Masks easily comic and I feel that my ‘theory’ about the universality of body language has been proved in the field. There is a clear recognition of injustice in the piece about the boss who favours one worker over another and pays him twice as much for half as much work. Then laughter and nods of approval as the ‘underdog’ finds a priceless pearl necklace on the way home and is able to reverse the ‘taunting’ he has got at the hands of the first worker. Quite political when you think about it – I’m left wondering if my simple comic Masks could tackle something more ambitious like... police corruption or whether satire would land you in prison or worse. I was told a story the other day of a friend’s cleaner whose house was burnt down because she voted for the ‘wrong’ political party. May be I should stick to the simple Chaplin-esque routines.

On the way home the atmosphere is euphoric and even prompts some singing (not the signed version of “100 Green bottles” -although I would love to see that) but some half tuneful wailing from some of the more extravert types. But generally it’s quite. A quality of the deaf that would make most hearing teachers quite envious. They disappear into their own head spaces separated from the world by a wall of silence.
The other day Jai was making some props with some of them as I rehearsed and she remarked how she loved the quiet focus of the deaf kids as it was a state she gets into herself when absorbed in a ‘making’ project. I know exactly what she means. The task she had them engaged in was counterfeiting 10,000 Riel notes for the piece about the under-paid worker. She had photocopied and enlarged the real thing in a local shop – no questions asked and despite the concern from one of the kids who signed that ‘she could go to prison’ she had a production line going in one corner colouring them in. The results were frighteningly convincing and were it not for their comic size might have fooled the odd, visually challenged shop keeper.

The counterfeiting sweat shop[i]

The only thing of note about the return journey (apart from the serene silence) was seeing the largest load I’ve ever spotted being carried by a motor bike. The poor driver was crawling along in the dusty gravel that is regularly used as an escape route when some bigger vehicle honks you off the road and in the space where a pillion passenger would sit was balance a precarious mountain of furniture - wardrobe, bed frame and dining room table. Goodness knows how he got started or indeed how he intended to stop. The 3 ‘Barang’ on the bus spoke animatedly in disbelief. The deaf children and the driver didn’t bat an eye lid. Seen it all before!