This must count as one of the more moving presentation of the genocide inflicted on the Cambodian people during the reign of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. Yet Singapore-based director Ong Keng Sen uses essentially clear-headed, non-sensationalist means: spoken and taped descriptions, film clips and projected text. At the center is Em Theay, once a dancer in royal court spectacles in Phnom Penh but now, at age 69, a main contributor to the recovery of Cambodian traditional arts. It is a wonder that she is still alive. Pol Pot and his cohorts broadly targeted persons with any scrap of education such as her for execution or else retraining in the agricultural countryside, which amounted to the same thing.
Six players plus Theay use the most matter-of-fact delivery tone, thereby increasing the impact of their horrifying stories of death and destruction. Mothers were forbidden to comfort their dying children; friends and co-workers disappeared forever. Theay herself tells about one of her few hundred artist colleagues that died during this period in addition to four of her children. One surviving daughter, Thong Kim Ann (known by her nickname Preab), has inherited her mother's traditional character of the Giant. Preab is with this production as is another dancer, Kim Bun Thom, to show the subtleties of Cambodian courtly dance. Theay takes a few turns as soloist, highly applauded at this performance.
Shadow puppets replete with skulls and furious gods are Mann Losal's realm; he himself escaped from a forced construction project and survived in the forest until Vietnamese forces liberated his country. Now he (the only man among the performers) infuses this vernacular art with contemporary history. Noorlinah Mohamed's videos show dance rehearsals, and Yen Chang's electronic score admits minimal traditional music. Dorothy Png successfully focuses attention on the specific performers for each scene even with raised house lights for the audience to follow English scripts of the text, mostly spoke in the sweet, modest Cambodian language. The players' shadows on the white backdrop add needed animation to Ong's sometimes static concept. A few elements such occasional stridency of content and delivery and annoying voiceovers are distractions in an overall affecting performance.
It is a tribute to Connecticut's International Festival of Arts & Ideas that they were able to bring The Continuum: Beyond the Killing Fields to the US.
