1 Waterson, Roxana, ‘Trajectories of memory: Documentary film and the transmission of testimony’, History and Anthropology, 18, 1 (2007): 51–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 It would be impossible to list here more than a fraction of this literature, but see for example Fentress, James and Wickham, Chris, Social memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar; Social memory and history: Anthropological perspectives, ed. Jacob Climo and Maria Cattell (Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2002); Perilous memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), ed. Takashi Fujitani, Geoffrey White and Lisa Yoneyama (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); Tanube, Shigehara and Keyes, Charles F., Cultural crisis and social memory: Modernity and identity in Thailand and Laos (Richmond: University of Hawai'i Press; London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002)Google Scholar.

3 On individual memory processes, see Cohen, Gillian, Memory in the real world, 2nd edn (Hove: Psychology Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Episodic memory: New directions in research, ed. Alan Baddeley, John Aggleton and Martin Conway (Oxford: The Royal Society / Oxford University Press, 2002).

4 Ibid., p. 313.

5 The latest studies of the brain using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging indeed confirm that largely overlapping areas of the brain are activated in imagining the future, as in remembering the past. See Jessica Marshall, ‘Future recall’, New Scientist (24 Mar. 2007): 36–40.

6 Halbwachs, Maurice, On collective memory, ed., trans. and with an introduction by Coser, Lewis A. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

7 Climo, Jacob, ‘Prisoners of silence: A vicarious Holocaust memoir’, in The labyrinth of memory: Ethnographic journeys, ed. Teski, Marea C. and Climo, Jacob J. (Westport: Begin and Garvey, 1995), pp.175–84Google Scholar; Hirsch, Marianne, Family frames: Photography, narrative, and postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

8 There is no space to pursue those two concepts here, but see for instance Damasio, Antonio, The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999)Google Scholar; Hoffman, Martin, Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nesse, Randolph, Evolution and the capacity for commitment (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2001)Google Scholar; and Casey, Edward, Imagining: A phenomenological study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

9 LaCapra, Dominick, History and memory after Auschwitz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 183Google Scholar.

10 Benjamin, Walter, ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, in his Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999 [1935])Google Scholar.

11 Waterson, ‘Trajectories of memory’, p. 69.

12 Gell, Alfred, Art and agency: An anthropological theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998)Google Scholar.

13 Bennett, Susan, Theatre audiences: A theory of production and reception (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 167Google Scholar; The politics of theatre and drama, ed. Graham Holderness (London: Macmillan, 1992), p. 93. Bennett cites John McGrath (1974: xxvii), who writes: ‘The theatre can never cause a social change. It can articulate the pressures towards one, help people to celebrate their strengths and maybe build their self-confidence. It can be a public emblem of inner, and outer, events, and occasionally a reminder, an elbow-jogger, a perspective-bringer. Above all, it can be the way people can find their voice, their solidarity and their collective determination.’

14 LaCapra, History and memory, p. 185.

15 See especially Turner, Victor, Dramas, fields, and metaphors: Symbolic action in human society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974)Google Scholar, From ritual to theatre (New York: PAJ Publications, 1983), and The anthropology of performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1987); Cohen, Abner, The politics of elite culture: Explorations in the dramaturgy of power in a modern African society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Kapferer, Bruce, A celebration of demons (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Schechner, Richard, Between theater and anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The future of ritual (London: Routledge, 1993); Barba, Eugenio, The paper canoe: A guide to theatre anthropology (London: Routledge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Schechner, Between theatre and anthropology, p. 117. An especially vivid example is provided by the career of Vaclav Havel. The Velvet Revolution of 1989 unfolded like a well-planned drama because, as Deputy Foreign Minister Alexandr Vondra later recalled, it had indeed been scripted. Havel, immediately on his release from prison on 10 Nov. 1989, the day after the Berlin Wall fell, had spent 10 hours plotting it in painstaking detail, ‘like a screenplay’ (Guardian Weekly, 6–12 Feb. 2003). Nothing could illustrate more clearly how the element of performance may be deliberately woven into a real life drama, nor for that matter its positive power to help ensure a good outcome. By contrast, in the unpredictable drama played out in Tian An Men square in 1989, the moment for compromise was lost, at least partly because certain student leaders seem to have been unable to resist the temptation of the dramatic gesture that would lead to tragedy.

17 Minow, Martha, ‘The hope for healing: What can Truth Commissions do?’, in Truth v. justice: The morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Rotberg, Robert and Thompson, Dennis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 235–60Google Scholar; Marlin-Curiel, Stephanie, ‘Truth and consequences: Art in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, in Art and the performance of memory: Sounds and gestures of recollection, ed. Smith, Richard Cándida (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 37–62Google Scholar.

18 While some earlier Truth Commissions, like the Chilean, were not held in public for fear of retaliatory action from the military, the proceedings of the South African TRC were broadcast live on TV and were watched by audiences of millions daily. The ambitiousness of this process, and the difficulties of achieving its sometimes conflicting goals, have been thoughtfully commented on by a number of writers. See for example, Truth v. justice; Ross, Fiona, ‘Speech and silence: Women's testimony in the first five weeks of public hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, ed. Rotberg and D. Thompson, in Remaking a world: Violence, social suffering, and recovery, ed. Das, Veena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 250–80Google Scholar.

19 Minow, ‘The hope for healing’, p. 245.

20 Frisch, Andrea, The invention of the eyewitness: Witnessing and testimony in early nodern France (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Dept of Romance Languages, 2004)Google Scholar; Felman, Shoshona and Laub, Dori, Testimony: Crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history (New York: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar.

21 Derrida, Jacques, Demeure: Fiction and testimony (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

22 Barba, The paper canoe, p. 105.

23 Ibid., p. 95.

24 Smith, Richard Cándida, ‘Introduction: Performing the archive’, in Art and the performance of memory: Sounds and gestures of recollection, ed. Smith, Richard Cándida (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 The Japanese Cemetery Park was founded in 1891 by Tagajiro Futaki, a plantation owner, philanthropist, and by some accounts, also himself a brothel owner, who donated 7 acres of land from his rubber plantation to be used for the burial of young Japanese women who died in destitution. These women came to Singapore in large numbers in the late 19th century to work as prostitutes (Karayuki-San). See Warren, James, Ah-Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in Singapore 1970–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. Roughly half of the 910 graves in the cemetery are of Karayuki-San, many of them anonymous. The poet Futaba Teishimei, best remembered for his translations into Japanese of the works of Dostoyevsky, died in Singapore and was buried here in 1909 after falling ill on board a ship on which he was returning from Europe to Japan. Also buried here are the Supreme Commander of the Japanese Forces in Southeast Asia during World War II, Field Marshal Count Hisachi Terauchi (who died of a stroke in 1946), two other officers wanted for war crimes, who shot themselves to avoid surrender, and a number of Japanese soldiers, airmen or prisoners of war.

26 Wee, C.J. W.-L. and Keng, Lee Chee, ‘Breaking through walls and visioning beyond: Kuo Pao Kun beyond the margins’, in Kuo Pao Kun, Two plays by Kuo Pao Kun: Descendants of the 4 eunuch admiral and The Spirits Play, ed. Wee, C.J. W.-L. and Keng, Lee Chee (Singapore: SNP Editions, 2003), pp. 13–34Google Scholar.

27 Perhaps the most commonly recounted memory of Singaporeans who lived through the Japanese Occupation is of having to eat tapioca (cassava) because of rice shortages. Tapioca has become emblematic of wartime hardships, almost to the exclusion of more varied memories.

28 Warren presented this film at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 22 Oct. 2002, with a talk on the theme of ‘Singapore's avant-garde theatre: New ways of viewing the history of Japanese women in Southeast Asia’. His comments cited here are from that occasion.

29 Warren, James, Rickshaw coolie: A people's history of Singapore 1880–1940 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar. Women in general, and prostitutes in particular, are under-represented in both Japanese and Singaporean histories. In Singapore's recently opened Chinatown Heritage Centre, the curators have presented a peculiarly sexist account of male Chinese migrants and their encounters with the Ah Ku. In a part of the display depicting a room in a brothel, the accompanying text reads:

30 For an anthropological study of the Cambodian genocide, see Hinton, Alexander Laban, Why did they kill? Cambodia in the shadow of genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar. A thought-provoking parallel in film is Jocelyn Glatzer's The flute player (Over the Moon Productions: Distributed by NAATA Distribution, 2003; 53 minutes). It concerns a musician, Arn Chorn-Pond, who as a young boy was recruited into the Khmer Rouge. He survived the genocide, much traumatised by his experiences as an enforced perpetrator, and now dedicates himself to reviving Cambodia's musical heritage.

31 Becker, Alton, ‘Text building, epistemology, and aesthetics in Javanese shadow theater’, in Becker, Alton, Beyond translation: Essays toward a modern philology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 26–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Ibid., p. 26.

33 Schechner, The future of ritual, p. 234.

34 Langer, Lawrence, Holocaust testimonies: The ruins of memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 205Google Scholar.

35 On the application of Freud's concepts of ‘acting out’ and ‘working through’ to the analysis of social trauma, see LaCapra, History and memory, p. 185.

36 On the Sook Ching massacres, see Sook Ching, ed. Daniel Chew and Irene Lim (Singapore: Oral History Department, 1992); Blackburn, Kevin, ‘The collective memory of the Sook Ching massacre and the creation of the civilian war memorial of Singapore’, Journal of the Malaysian branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 73, 2 (2000): 71–90Google Scholar; Modder, Ralph, The Singapore Chinese massacre: 18 February to 4 March 1942 (Singapore: Horizon Books, 2004)Google Scholar; and Gunn, Geoffrey, ‘Remembering the Southeast Asian Chinese massacres of 1941–45’, Journal of contemporary Asia, 37 (2007): 273–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Examples include Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight: Los Angeles (1992) a solo performance based on transcripts from the Rodney King trial and verdict; Ubu and the Truth Commission, by Jane Taylor with William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company (1997), (text reproduced in Gilbert, Helen, Post-colonial plays: An anthology (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 25–47Google Scholar); and The colour of justice by Nicholas Kent (1999), based on transcripts of the trial of the accused racist murderers of a black British teenager, Stephen Lawrence, in London in 1993.

38 Gilbert, Post-colonial plays, p. 25.

39 Programme notes, The Continuum.

40 Turner, From ritual to theatre, pp. 68–81.

41 For more about the ECCC, see the website of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (http://www.dccam.org, last accessed on 13 May 2010).

42 Yeo, Robert, The Singapore trilogy: Are you there, Singapore?; One year back home; Changi (Singapore: Landmark Books, 2001)Google Scholar.

43 ‘Relax rules on traditional media for open political debate’, Straits Times, 28 Feb. 2006.

44 On general developments in Singapore theatre since the 1980s, see Nine lives: 10 years of Singapore theatre, 1987–1997: Essays commissioned by the Necessary Stage, ed. Sanjay Krishnan (Singapore: The Necessary Stage, 1997); Kuo Pao Kun: And love the wind and rain, ed. Kwok Kian Woon and Teo Han Wue (Singapore: Cruxible, 2002); and Lo, Jacqueline, Staging nation: English language theatre in Malaysia and Singapore (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004)Google Scholar. For an exploration of repressed themes in Singapore's recent history, see Paths not taken: Political pluralism in post-war Singapore, ed. Michael Barr and Carl Trocki (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008).

45 ‘Film about ex-political detainee is banned’, Straits Times, 11 April 2007.

46 As for traditional print media, a space is opening up between mainstream media and blogging, giving rise to a debate in Parliament in November 2006 in which some MPs called for greater relaxation of the rules for control of the former, in the interests of closing the gap (‘Relax rules on traditional media for open political debate’, Straits Times, 10 Nov. 2006). Recognising that technological changes (notably YouTube) have already rendered the current film laws unenforceable, the government in January 2009 also accepted a majority of the recommendations of an advisory council appointed to study the impact of new media. This includes an easing of the ban on ‘party political’ films that are deemed to be ‘objective’, subject to approval by a panel of ‘prominent non-partisan citizens’. Amendments to the Films Act, heralded as a ‘mindset change’ by the Straits Times, will allow for ‘factual documentaries of events held in accordance with the law’; but the government still refused to decriminalise the making of ‘party political’ films in general, or to commit itself to providing any reasons for the banning of films under Section 35 (‘Ban on party political films to be eased’, Straits Times, 10 Jan. 2009).

47 Cited in Gilbert, Post-colonial plays, p. 25.

48 See Ndebele, Njabulo, South African literature and culture: Rediscovery of the ordinary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Krog, Antjie, Country of my skull: Guilt, sorrow and the limits of forgiveness in the new South Africa (Johannesburg: Random House, 1998)Google Scholar; It all begins: Poems from post-liberation South Africa, ed. Robert Berold (Scottsville: Gecko Poetry, 1999).

49 Interestingly, another somewhat similar theatre production based upon personal testimonies, Breaking the silence (produced by Phnom Penh group Amrita Performance Arts), has toured rural areas of Cambodia in February 2009 as a contribution to outreach in the run-up to the ECCC trials. The stories in this play deal with troubled relationships between survivors – both perpetrators and victims – and are combined with song, poetry and dance (Taing Sarada, ‘Play aims for Khmer Rouge reconciliation’, bulletin of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, 24 Feb. 2009 (http://www.dccam.org, last accessed on 13 May 2010).

50 Butsch, Richard, The citizen audience: Crowds, publics and individuals (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 4Google Scholar.

51 Charles Leary, ‘Performing the documentary, or making it to the other bank’, Senses of cinema, http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/27/performing_documentary.html (2003) (last accessed 13 May 2009).