Exquisite Pain

Image courtesy of Forced Entertainment

Watched Exquisite Pain on Saturday by myself. Good thing too, as I think a lot of people didn't like it. I did like it, though, will explain in a minute.

This is a summary of the synopsis: When a lover fails to meet a woman as promised in New Delhi, mid-way between where he was in Paris and where she was in Japan, the woman is devastated, and she deemed it the day of her greatest suffering. She asked some friends, "When did you suffer most?" and records their stories of pain, each accompanied by a photograph.

The concept was extremely simple. Two desks, one for each performer, each equipped with a script and some drinking water. Behind each desk, a screen flashing an image to go with each tale. One male performer, one female, each seated at a desk, reading from the script. Technically, that's it. No blocking, no moving about, no dialogue with each other.

They take turns to tell the tales of pain. Hers is always the same tale of the woman's heartbreak in New Delhi, but each time she recounts the story, it is slightly different.

After the third or fourth time she tells the same story, I could hear some of the audience start to fidget in impatience. Near the end, the guy next to me was nodding off. I could see why many of the audience got bored, probably because of the lack of action and what they deemed to be repetition.

But to me, it wasn't repetition at all, not in its purest sense. It certainly helped that my own very recent experiences lent me complete understanding of the woman's journey.

And that's what the repeated re-telling of her tale was - a journey. It began "Yesterday, the man I love left me," then "2 days ago, the man I love left me." And it goes on, until the 90-something-th day (skipping some days in between, of course) when she tells it for the last time. Each consecutive time is only slightly different from the last, but you realise that by the time she's gotten to the end, the way she tells the tale has completely changed.

And isn't that how we all tell our tales of pain? We vary them according to how near the pain is, who we're telling it to, what our current mood is, the details that are suddenly remembered, details that no longer matter. In other words, our perspectives of events alter and shift bit by bit according to how we are dealing with them.

I was intrigued from start to end, probably because being primarily a writer and one that's focussed on perspectives and sensory experience, I was deeply interested in the words and the act of telling these stories. I was caught up with visualising each story in my own mind, put together by little more than short tales told in simple language. Each phrase and word shifts with a purpose and correspondingly shifting state of mind, and it was these that fascinated me. Each shift moved us a step down her journey from fresh heartbreak to coming to terms with it.

I say well done for an intriguing emotional journey and different approach.