Terre-Ville: In Dialogue with the Audience

Audience Voices

Watching Terre-Ville as a child, I did not experience many emotional ups and downs during the first 50 minutes. But the images Chen filmed with the handheld camera were really impressive, easily on a par with those of a professional cinematographer. In the next 50 minutes, when Chen appeared and those very ordinary things happened between her and her mother, I was immediately reminded of my own mother, who would often tell me to lift my head while doing homework in junior secondary school. I really connected with that. Finally, I want to say to all mothers: may you become stronger, more dignified and prouder!

Terre-Ville surprised me. There are no intense dramatic conflicts, no twists and turns in the story; even the expression of emotion is restrained. And yet, throughout, there is a warmth that seems about to well up, and tears that seem about to spill. As the young single mother repeatedly struggles with exhaustion and despair through restless nights, that glittering dress is like her own young, exuberant, free-spirited life, only to be put away again the moment she hears her child cry.

Like so many ordinary mothers, she chooses to lose herself, giving her child the gentlest voice in the world and the best years of her life. There is an undeniable cruelty in this, made tangible by the long struggle to settle the child to sleep at the beginning of the play. This is not dullness or a lack of plot. It is a young life, taking on everything another small life needs, beginning an endless wearing away against time. This daily, monthly, yearly erosion through small things is immense, and great: too great to be expressed through a few moments of conflict. Perhaps this is what is meant by “the greatest music is scarcely heard”. Such restraint in performance becomes the truest form of expression.

This play moves beyond the label of the “perfect mother” to explore the balance between selfhood and motherhood. It allows us to see that a mother is herself first, and a mother second. Its attention to women as individuals is both gentle and powerful. Today, Terre-Ville brought me an unexpectedly intense sense of comfort. May every mother become stronger, more dignified and prouder!

During the discussion between the audience and the company, someone suggested that there was not enough conflict in the story. To me, this quiet way of letting things unfold is precisely what makes the direction so accomplished. Like an art film, it is closer to life, and all the more absorbing for it.

I really liked the way the director used black, white and grey to express the mother’s world, and colour to present the child’s. I liked even more his explanation, at the end, of the space left open by these choices of colour. The black, white and grey of the adult world need not mean sacrifice, nor are they entirely bleak. They might be the warmth of memories in old photographs, or the underlying structure on which colour is built in a drawing. They might be the strength hidden within a mother’s particular sensitivities and sense of identity, or real emotions that deserve to be seen onstage today. They can also bring healing in their response to the child’s colours. From the moment a child arrives, becoming a mother means that both grow through something like a tearing apart. However hard life may be, that space left open gives us strength. Life has no textbook; its experiences intertwine beyond right and wrong.

A Letter from Sifan Shao