Page 6 - PULSE@FASS e-Bulletin 04_2020

FACULTY OPINION PIECE Issue no. 4 | 2020
FACULTY OPINION PIECE

musicals have been available for free online. Solo
artistes and entire orchestras have livestreamed
concerts. Art museums all over the world have also
offered carefully-curated exhibits, and e-books are a-
plenty. The attendant comments sections, message
boards, and live chats on various online platforms
testify to the positive impact of these offerings, in
providing a much-needed sense of community along
with the aesthetic experience.

There is a real sense in which the arts can play a
significant role in the preserving health and lives at this
moment. This is not to downplay the economic distress
many families are in, or to deny the immense
indebtedness the nation owes its frontliners. I am also
not ignoring the complexities of mental well-being, and
the impossibility of measuring it by a temporary feel-
good moment. But it is imperative that governmental
policies to deal with the effects of the pandemic look
Dr Kok Su Mei with her beloved family
also to the health of the arts industry because more is at
stake than the stricken paycheques of practitioners. In
tomorrow and tomorrow, stretches before us at this
September this year, the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and
petty pace.”)
Culture hosted a virtual arts festival, which allowed
local actors, dancers, and musicians to showcase their
Needless to say, not everyone will take pleasure in
work online. More of this nature needs to be done.
Shakespeare. I am all too aware that, for many of my
students consigned to remote learning, Shakespeare is
Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare enthusiasts have reached
creating more pressure than pleasure. I am also
out for his plays. Many have turned to the comedies,
troubled by the growing number of reports that
exulting in the opportunity to escape for a moment into
university students are crumbling under the demands
a world of laughter and romance. Yet, there can also be
of the current circumstances. Thus, even as a teacher, I
great solace in the tragedies, with their intense focus on
am challenged to return to the fundamentals of why art
the personal sufferings and eventual death of an
matters and to direct attention to the ways it can speak
individual, whose name is spotlighted by the title.
to our lives. If nothing else, a work like Romeo and
These affirm the value of a single life at a time when
Juliet -written by Shakespeare a year after the outbreak
news reports flood us with photographs of mass graves
of 1592 – acknowledges the indelible mark that is left
and of body bags in refrigerated trucks, and reduce
on the psyche by the experience of widespread. It also
each Covid-related death to just another number. (The
holds out the possibility that, like Romeo and Juliet, our
tragedies also supply standout lines which are
current experience may one day be remembered less
immensely adaptable. Cooking more often than I ever
for the rude intrusion by a disease and more for the
have in order to feed a housebound family, I peel yet
intensely human experiences of love and forgiveness
another potato and echo Macbeth: “Tomorrow and
while living in the shadow of death.
“...arts can play a significant role in the

preserving health and lives at this

moment.”

6 | Pulse @ FASS