Body X, directed by Li Xie and Danny Yeo, is set in 1974, on
a wedding day. Just before the commencement of the wedding banquet, the groom
was found dead. 40 years later, audience members of Body X play the role of a detective to help figure out who the
murderer was in this case. In this site-specific production staged across
various spaces at The Arts House from 7-9 Nov, every character had some sort of
conflicts with the groom or could have benefited from his death, and thus everyone seemed
likely to be the murderer. And yet, every character seemed to be able to
justify that they were innocent.
I truly enjoyed the
piece and I admired:
1. the focus that
the performers had in portraying their characters convincingly despite the fact
that the audience members were constantly moving around in close proximity to
them and messing with their props.
2. the concept of
allowing the audience to move around the "performance areas" freely and
investigate in ways they like, which is highly challenging.
3. the sort of
coordination needed to execute such a site-specific piece, whereby the audience
members have to choose what they want to watch and piece the "story" together
for themselves in order to solve the mystery at the end of the performance. The
coordination needed to execute such a piece has to be highly thought through
from the perspectives of plot development, movement of performers, scene changes,
characterization, usage of spaces, etc.
4. the carefully
designed props with great details and delicacy.
5. the ambiguity presented
through the plot and character development– every character could be a murderer
or could NOT be a murderer. The fact that my two friends and I who attended the
performance together each decided on a different murderer showed that the plot
is highly complex!
All shows are sold
out. More information can be found here:
