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SINGAPORE: Many classic-movie lovers would remember Gregory Peck's Oscar-winning performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in the 1962 film, "To Kill a Mockingbird". Now, a play based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name is being staged in Singapore.
The story centres around 6-year-old protagonist Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, her brother, Jem, and her father, Atticus. When the latter agrees to defend Tom Robinson – a black man accused of raping a white woman – the Finch family finds themselves targets of attacks and insults in their community.
Produced by writer-director Sharon Ang who studied the novel as a literature text back in school, the play's themes of prejudice and hypocrisy are played out in a different setting from the one in the book or film under the direction of Christopher Jacobs, based on the dramatisation of Christopher Sergel.
The story originally takes place during the Great Depression in a town in Alabama, United States. The play, however, is set in a generic communal society, with all references to location or specific time period removed.
This is to propel the issues raised in the play from ethnocentricity to world-centricity, focusing on the psychological aspects of human behavior which Jacobs described as "infinitely variable".
"The issues are world-centric within this play, but the themes in Harper Lee's book are ethnocentric and egocentric, so we try to widen it and explore the world-centric themes in the play as encapsulated in the character of Atticus – the way he brings up his children, the way he tries to develop a world-centric philosophy in his daughter Scout, to her growing up and losing her innocence in the play," Jacobs explained.
Veteran actor Gerald Chew, who plays the intellectual Atticus, said: "It's not so much about racism, but how you bring up your own children with the ideals that you believe in and how you actually tell them to deal with these real issues.
"Atticus has to deal with what the public thinks and says, try to manage his private world, and live with his conscience at the same time. I relish the challenge that the role brings."
Other members of the cast include Yeo Yann Yann, Lum Kay Li, Pavanjeet Singh and Neelam Chugh.
Asked what the audience could take away with them when they attend this play, Jacobs said: "I would like them to identify with the central themes, to look at themselves and how they perceive other people and to take away the masks – not be stubbornly insistent on their own point of view, but try to see from other people's point of view."
"To Kill a Mockingbird" runs from 19 to 23 August at the Jubilee Hall, Raffles Hotel.
- CNA/so
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