On my way to meet Ruby Pan I wondered what exactly qualifies as a "big voice." I expected a low-pitched richness at a fast pace – Judi Dench meets Whoopi Goldberg. But Pan doesn't actually have a big voice. Not physically, anyway.
She is enthusiastic, articulate, intelligent, but she speaks at a regular tempo, regular pitch. She has a slight accent, a product of her native Singapore.
Next week will find her onstage at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, performing her own solo composition alongside rappers from Queens and the Bronx, hip hop artists and poetry slammers. One girl raps about killing a boy for his Air Jordans. Another half sings, half speaks about her Jewish heritage. It's a fairly incongruous picture.
Pan '06 is one of six American artists performing in the RSC's "Big Voices" competition in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England. The idea is to gather together the best young creative writing talent in Britain and America to perform their own interpretations of the theme "Tragedy." After a week-long workshop with director Dawn Walton, Pan will perform her work, tentatively titled "Smiling Orchid," on Oct. 17.
What is it about Pan's voice that is so important?
"Smiling Orchid," according to Pan, explores "the easiness of forgetting — how quickly we make decisions unthinkingly." Pan draws together her personal experiences in America and a commentary on contemporary Singapore. The play is divided into three sections, performed with an American accent, a British accent and in Chinese. It moves from general ethical responses to tragedy — "It encourages people to spend money, as if that can make things better," Pan said — through Pan's own ethical decisions, including her own pregnancy scare, to end looking at "how easily people can smile in Singapore today, but how that ignores a lot of our history," Pan said.
I am impressed but confused.
"Singapore is represented as being very happy," she explained. "There is a Singapore story that goes that the current government, which is a single party government, won its seats naturally, and that it is continuing strongly, but if you look back, there was a lot of double-dealing to get people into power." Hence, "Smiling Orchid" because the orchid is the national flower of Singapore, and the piece is about how the country's beauty hides a lot of political repression. "Basically the piece is about accountability," Pan said.
The political situation in Singapore — particularly, its implications for the performing arts — is a live issue for Pan. Her parents were "leftist" and were educated in Chinese-speaking schools.
"They had trouble adapting to a world that took English as its main language," Pan said.
She graduated from the "gifted" stream of schools in Singapore and is attending Princeton on a Public Service Commission scholarship. The scholarship has provided her with the opportunity to take theater and creative writing courses at Princeton under playwrights such as Erik Ehn, who recommended her for "Big Voices," but it also means she is committed to six years of teaching in Singapore when she graduates.
"I guess I'm trying to figure out how to sustain teaching and an artistic life," Pan said. "It's going to be a struggle. Although the Singaporean government is currently pumping money into the arts, they are encouraging people to create popular mainstream works to generate income, and that is not the kind of work I'm interested in."
Her ambition is to start her own theater company. Along with her boyfriend, Frankie Ng, who graduated from Princeton last semester, she is planning an art installation in a gallery in Singapore this summer. "We're calling ourselves the FaR company – for Frankie and Ruby!" she said.
She realizes it is not going to be easy. She told me a story she heard about Kao Pao Kun, Singapore's most celebrated director and playwright. "When he was young, he was involved with Chinese theater, and a lot of Chinese groups were connected to the leftist movement. So he was put in jail. Later, when he was setting up his company, The Substation, they told him that if he didn't accept a Cultural Medallion, then you won't get funding for it. I'm just really annoyed because now they're like 'We're opening up the arts,' and there is no mention of all the crap that has gone before that," Pan said.
In the meantime, though, she is looking forward to "Big Voices." But she has some nerves about it, too. "I woke up in terror before the audition at five in the morning and had to go back to bed because the audition was at 10. Then, when I arrived, everyone was blown away by the talent that was there. I went last and was like, 'Oh, God, can I just watch.' I find it so much easier to be a character than to say: 'Hi. This is me,''' Pan said.
Among the other performers chosen from the New York auditions, there are equally fresh interpretations of tragedy. There is Patty Duke, the girl who raps about street crime. There is another rap artist called Queen, whose piece "Thanksgiving" "was a sort of apology to everyone she'd dissed before," Pan said. Then, there is BJ, who works two jobs and doesn't really have time to write. "His piece was about his hopes for the future, based on the neighborhood he grew up in, wishing that fathers could be good role models for their children, that they could be proud of each other," she said.
The blurb for "Big Voices" reads "Our mission is to celebrate language — the language you speak — and find the voices that don't get heard on political, media or theatrical stages." This is what "Smiling Orchid" is all about: "Things that people don't talk about," Pan said.
So Ruby Pan doesn't have that loud a voice. No problem. She's in good company, and she can more than hold her own.
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