Orangutan tells the story of a primate displaced by deforestation, industrialisation, and human intervention. While the themes in the work send a message about our environment, the story of an Orangutan removed from her habitat is also a metaphor for the migrant journey of humans. Read more about Alice's family story, and then answer the study questions.
My mum is from Sarawak which is in Borneo. It’s part of the top which is now Malaysia. Mum moved away from Malaysia when it was still British Borneo in the early 70's with my dad. I grew up with all these amazing childhood stories. My mum would tell me about growing up near the jungle. Having pet monkeys. She went to a Catholic school with a really strict upbringing. She told me about sticking her leg in a stagnant pond and letting the leeches attach, then pulling them off quickly and frying them on a hot piece of corrugated iron. Funny, weird, real stories.
To me Malaysia and Borneo were this dream paradise. But of course there is a huge amount of deforestation that has happened. Humans have put arsenic in the water as a way of clarifying gold – separating gold from the silt. My mum went back in 1981 and I always remember her telling me that she went back to a concrete jungle. The home that she knew was no longer. Part of Orangutan is about telling my mum’s story. Part of it is also about exploring the use of a mask in creating non-verbal theatre. I think about my family. They all speak English, but what would it mean to perform a show for them where language was no longer a barrier to understanding the work. Which is why we cut dialogue out completely. The idea of the Orangutan being this metaphor for the journey any migrant takes is an important one. You’re in your home. You learn your own ways of being and traditions. And then, whether by force or by will, you are put into another environment. Your routines no longer work, and you can’t function properly. Then you begin to learn the new culture and behaviours of your new environment. And as you apply these behaviours, you are rewarded for them. In the case of the Orangutan when she is put back into her natural habitat, she can no longer operate in the same system. So the show became a metaphor for the migrant story, my mother’s story. The displacement that we feel in those situations. It is also a commentary of course on what is happening to our environment. The Palm Oil industry. It’s really sad, but it’s tricky and problematic. I did a lot of research into rural communities that depend on mining, for example gold mining. These communities depend on gold because it is a rich resource. So they’re selling this resource in order to have an education, to support their families, to keep the community alive. If you cut off the mining of the resource, you cut off their livelihood. So then what happens? It’s easy to be straight up and down. To think mining is bad and environmentalism is good. But when you look at these families and their dependence on mining, when you take it away, they aren’t left with much. It becomes a question of ethics. Palm oil is bad because they are clearing native forest in order to replant. While they are doing this, wildlife is being pushed out. But that agricultural industrialisation isn’t uncommon. We do that in New Zealand all the time. Clear large sections of land to replant something that has economic gain. So the work is saying something specific about the migrant journey, but there is a strong underlying environmental message. |
Study questions
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