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For American Lee Breuer, turning Jesus into a Bob Marley-ish figure for an adaptation of The Crucifixion is just part of a 37-year-old theatre career that has also seen him stage a gender-reversing King Lear in which the characters sprouted Shakespeare with a Southern twang.
The Crucifixion, written in the 12th century, will be the latest play to which the 70-year-old director will apply his trademark avant garde twist. Meanwhile, theatre-goers in Singapore will have a chance to experience this in Mabou Mines Dollhouse, staged as part of the ongoing Singapore Arts Festival.
Adapted from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen's classic, A Dollhouse, the play's attack against the chauvinistic conventions of the Victorian era is brought to the fore by Breuer in the use of male actors who range in height from 0.9m to 1.2m.
"I'm interested in creating worlds of metaphors, in this case, where power is false, because the men who wield it are so small," said the founding co-artistic director of leading American theatre group Mabou Mines.
The set of the play has been scaled down to their size, creating a literal dollhouse-like setting in which the female actors have to kneel to interact with their male counterparts.
The play, conventionally taken to be a tragedy — a woman negotiates her role in society and family while confined by Victorian-era feminine ideals — has also been given a comic twist. There will be "physical comedy", and Breuer likens parts of it to that of the Marx Brothers'.
A New York Times review of the play has described audience reaction as being "laughter of pained recognition" — a sentiment which prompts Breuer to launch into one of his favourite stories. At one performance in New York, an audience member, impatient with the play, exhorted his partner to leave mid-way, only to have her tell him to leave and let her be.
"The story is being played out everywhere," said Breuer. "We've met so many people who've told us 'this is the story of my life'."
"We all have to negotiate power and relationships," added his co-adaptor Maude Mitchell, 46, who also takes on the lead role of Nora.
It is this universal "recognition" that has made, according to Breuer, Mabou Mines' most travelled play.
Singapore is its 24th venue, after Hong Kong, Australia and Spain where it gained the adoration of Oscar-winning director Pedro Almodóvar, and Israel where, surprisingly, Breuer and his cast met with indignation about using dwarf actors.
"I've learned how to differentiate macho-ness and patriarchy," said Breuer. "In Australia, where they have all this "dude" stuff, they loved it. But in places like the American south and Israel, people just think: 'What are you trying to do? Are you trying to make fun of men?'"
Breuer said it took a long time to cast the dwarf actors, and even longer to find their understudies, because such actors are usually not well-trained.
"As far as we know, this will be the first time that three little people get to play classical roles," said Mitchell. Their role in the play, she added, is intended to prompt the audience to ask themselves this question: Will any of us ever evolve into full humans?"
Mabou Mines Dollhouse is on at the Drama Centre at the National Library from tonight until Saturday. Tickets are still available for the matinee performance on June 23. - TODAY/sh
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