History can never be old and boring because there is never one fixed ideal version.

Since completing renovations that cost $132 million last December, the National Museum of Singapore can still be regarded as being in a state of renewal.

With this idea, and coinciding with the 120^th anniversary of NMS this year, TheatreWorks produced a play written by Ong Keng Sen and Robin Loon held on Oct. 13 and 14.

The performance utilised the renovated indoor and outdoor museum premises to depict a fascination for the old and the new, and to question the authenticity of history. 

Loon, an associate professor at National University of Singapore, said the conceptualisation of the performance was to unravel history within spatial confinements. 

In an e-mail interview, he said, “Keng Sen and I were interested in the place of history in space, and in a space.” 

In promenade theatre style, the audience were led through various installations by directors such as Royston Tan and Tan Pin Pin that depict historical moments in Singapore. 

Tan Pin Pin’s installation weaved 40 years of National Day Parade in a seven-minute loop. 

Royston Tan created a Malay film triptych that paid tribute to old Malay films like P. Ramlee’s “Bujang Lapok” and Ramon Estela’s “Pontianak” 

Besides showcasing exhibits featuring archival film and artefacts, the performance was also characterised by vast empty spaces. 

It is easy to assume that the spaces are meant for exhibiting artefacts in future history-making. 

However, an obvious lack of artefacts, and the existence of a massive multimedia wall in its place, sought to challenge the notion of what a museum should look like. 

More pointedly, it was to challenge the artefact’s symbolism and the relationship between it and the “history” it represents. 

The self-reflexive nature of this exhibition was to defy the understanding of the audience that historical representations stemmed from artefacts. 

"We were both keen to explore authenticity and artefact. One can never really tell (them apart) any more these days and yet we are all quite willing to believe,” Loon said. 

This is also a reminder that history is subjective and bias. The danger is that given enough time, people might take them to be infallible truths.
 

Theatre actress, Janice Koh, exemplified this notion in her performance as she played the role of five different characters. 

She took on the role of Sir Stamford Raffles, General Yamashita, both their spouses and Iskander Bin Mydin. The latter is the senior curator of NMS. 

General Yamashita and Sir Stamford Raffles were portrayed as tired and misunderstood characters with their fates sealed in history textbooks. 

History also needs to be emotive and thrives on this life-giving force imparted onto the past. 

Theatre performer, Nora Samosir, said “I think there’s also some nostalgia in it for me. Going back, I remember the little faces of the museum. I remember when there were these ice kachang men, bandung men, hawkers inside the gate of the fence between the museum and the library.”

The dynamism of NMS is as dependent on contrary accounts as it is on the museum that holds the history.

Quite often, it is the people outside the museum that knows history best.