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| Sunday, 24 April 2005 |
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Singapore play recounts tsunami survivors' stories SINGAPORE, April 23 (Reuters) - A Singapore theatre group will stage a play based on accounts by tsunami survivors, one of the first attempts to give an artistic interpretation of the unprecedented catastrophe that rocked Asia on Dec. 26. The play, titled "Boxing Day, The Tsunami Project", will explore the devastation experienced by those affected by the tsunami, using excerpts from interviews conducted with survivors. The production, staged by Singapore's The Necessary Stage, features 20 characters from four countries. It will explore the theme of human resilience in the face of tragedy, and look at human behaviour in the aftermath of the disaster. Thirty-five people were interviewed for the play from five different tsunami-hit locations, including the Indonesian province of Aceh, the historic city of Galle in Sri Lanka, the tourist areas of Phuket and Phang Nga in Thailand and Malaysia's Penang island. "In one of our interiews, we met this person who talked about how he found his younger brother in front of the mosque. He wanted to go and look for the rest of his family, but his younger brother pleaded desperately for him not to go," Haresh Sharma, the playwright, told Reuters. "His brother said: 'Just accept it. Our family is dead, we are only left with each other'," Haresh said. Twenty different narratives were incorporated into the play, which will run from May 5 to May 13. Alvin Tan, the artistic director of the play, said that video footage of the disaster will be played in the background during the performance, with images of bodies being washed out to sea by giant waves, mothers frantically searching for their children and survivors living in ramshackle tent villages. December's Indian Ocean quake sent monster waves crashing onto the shores of Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India and other countries around the Indian Ocean rim. The latest official data put the number of dead and missing at 227,989. More than half a million people were displaced and tens of thousands of homes were destroyed. |
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