Doomscrolling in pursuit of meaning.

Playing as part of SMU Arts Fest 2023, theatre club SMU StageIt’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information corresponds perfectly well to the festival theme of ‘Post’. Comprising a series of short form vignettes, watching Love and Information feels akin to the flood of posts we’re greeted with each time we open TikTok or Instagram, every story a fleeting glance into strangers’ thoughts and lives, before swiftly moving on to the next one.

Directed by Tan Shou Chen, with 13 student cast members, this production of Love and Information heavily leans in to the digital aspect of the narrative with its staging, and seems to drive home the point that all of us, our experiences and emotions, can essentially be broken down into data and analytics. There is something distinctly bleak about the whole set-up, with harsh strobe lighting during scene transitions, angular, translucent screens for set pieces that evoke feelings of anonymity and division, digital screens that initially show glimpses of social media posts from around the world, before glitching and flashing fragments of code.

A Caryl Churchill play is always a challenge to perform, partly because of its esoteric language, and its unusual flow, verging on absurdity with its non-sequiturs and unusual dialogue. Love and Information exacerbates that further with its form, in that because of its rapidfire vignettes, one’s attention constantly flits from story to story, almost like a reboot with each new scene, and requires us to reset our mind to take in each new scene. It’s energy-consuming, but while the play does drag on somewhat after the first hour, through such a structure, one also realises how much we put our bodies through when we doomscroll in real life too.

To that end, despite its weight, director Shou Chen has done well to occasionally break up the monotony with big group scenes involving the entire cast, from an army-like formation to watching as the cast precariously stack one screen atop the other using a rope and pulley system, creating tension in the audience. More importantly, Shou Chen has also managed to match his young cast to their countless roles, each actor grasping the essence of their brief characters in a split second with their voice, physicality and performance overall.

With every actor donning the same colours for their costumes – a white top and brown pants, it perhaps signifies how social media and the internet have robbed us of individual personality and dulled our emotions, or that everyone onstage is part of an intricate system. Across these vignettes, we witness scenes that are sometimes silly, sometimes profound, suggesting everything from a dystopian future to intricate family dramas captured in a matter of minutes. You never know what to expect with each new scene, some of which even completely change midway through, ideal for our attention-deficit times, a world filled with short bursts of absurd humour and quickfire punchlines.

Standouts among the cast include Nasreen Khalid, who adopts accents with ease, her expressions pulled to extremes, whether in shock or a tender look of love. Law Ke Yun Shannon carries a stoic disposition, but also a quiet air of self-assuredness that serves her well, given some of the lengthiest lines that she delivers with gusto, never fazed. Justus Chan puts his all into his roles, often bringing an enthusiasm and energy to them that allows each one to shine with his personality. And with his clear enunciation and confidence, Joshua Sanjay Das commands attention and is a delight to watch perform, even when his characters are of the meeker variety.

In considering the overall impact of Love and Information, what is made clear is that the world we live in is rapidly changing, faster than we can ever imagine, and those that adapt quicker are those that will thrive, be it with virtual wives or allowing our human capabilities to be improved further still. At the same time, we are left to question how much of our humanity remains, as we tend closer than ever towards becoming machines, from inhumanely slaughtering animals for experiments, firing someone via email, or displaying cruelty to those who do not conform. As much as we can and should embrace technology and this new world of all-access information, we must still be careful to retain our emotions.

In its ending, we suddenly hear the classic piece ‘Bolero’ by Maurice Ravel, while the cast begin to move as if in a trance, while binary code is displayed across the screens, as if entering a matrix. Unwittingly or not, ‘Bolero’ also happens to be a prominent composition featured in the 1999 anime series Digimon Adventures, in which a group of children are transported to a digital realm. As the cast moves, we ponder over how much of the digital world has seeped into our own, and how much of us has seeped into there. The play ends with a series of trivia questions which the cast take turn to answer, and with their keen sense of timing, it’s evident how much effort have gone into rehearsals. But beyond all these facts and figures we are likely to one day forget, one thing remains: an acknowledgement that what differentiates us from robots is our ability to empathise, feel and love.

Love and Information played at the Drama Centre Black Box from 22nd to 24th September 2023. More information available here.

SMU Arts Fest 2023: Post ran till 24th September 2023. Full programme and more information available here