Parah nak explain cerita ni

It’s been some time since I’ve been to KLPAC, and I was there yesterday to watch an opening night performance of ‘Parah’, a play in Malay that touched on issues of race and identity.

I was struck by how dark the drive through KLPAC’s grounds was in the evening. It felt like there wasn’t anyone else there to watch the show, my car being the only car rolling through the dimly lit path.

That’s not true though. Many turned up that night, tickets were sold out. I came later and sat on the floor with fellow latecomers, within whispering length to the night’s performers.

‘Parah’ I admit is rather difficult to write about. It’s a play, written in Malay, with a multi-racial cast, by a Singaporean playwright, about a Malaysian controversy. Just trying to decide what language to write this piece on was a challenge in itself. I asked myself: should you approach the play from a neutral, supposedly dispassionate vantage point, or should you dredge up your communal vocabulary and see if the play can stand against its blows? Thinking about it only reveals more knots that needed to be pinched through, while trying not to get lost in the complexities.

Let’s address what is most obvious first. This is a play in Malay, but I’d hesitate to call it a Malay play. Sure they spoke Malay. Yes the Chinese and Indian characters spoke in their slight accents, and conveyed their slighted feelings. Naturally some interracial love was hinted at. But it was Hafiz that fascinated.

As I watched the character, that insecure, contradictory, fiery young Malay male, I found it difficult to place him as someone who emerged from that ethnic context. The clichéd keris-waving lines and attitude were there, which marked him as what polite society would call an ‘ultra’, but his ethos felt alien.  The other Malay character’s, Melur, frustrations for and against Malayness were easier to relate to, but with Hafiz there was a sense of differentness, a nostalgia for intense suffering, perhaps confusing to many this side of the Tebrau.

But maybe that’s the point. He is a confusing character because he himself is confused by what fate made him into. His spirit built upon a jumble of influences that swayed every time the wind blew. For anyone to be in his place was difficult because he was hard to understand even to himself. The only translation of the character I’d be happy with was that Hafiz was a young boy who tried to force his self into an accepted convention, and failed every time.

Iedil Putra who played Hafiz was met with great applause at curtain call. I scanned the room; I thought it looked like the typical KL crowd – theatre tragics, college students, expats sampling local culture, courting males unsure if they were allowed to enjoy the show; Hafiz seemed to have won all of them over.

They applauded, despite his obvious racism and conservative posturing. The dissonant tones of his inner turmoil and struggle was able to strike a sharp chord with a crowd that would have cursed someone who said the same things outside. It turns out at the end, Hafiz was a character for every human being in the crowd.