One Day We'll Understand
Performance
About
This new multimedia performance explores memory, inheritance and the family history of visual artist Sim Chi Yin against the backdrop of the Malayan Emergency.
Part documentary, part speculative meditation on confronting the past, One Day We'll Understand excavates hidden histories, Chinese diasporic experiences and colonialism's long legacies. Through Sim's life and camera, we time-travel into her family archive, recovering traces from the anti-colonial war in British Malaya and beyond.
Led by a Singaporean-Australian creative team, the work combines haunting imagery with narration, archival footage, and a driving live score by percussionist Cheryl Ong. It gives voice to Sim's multiple personas as artist, historian, writer, mother and granddaughter, opening new ways to think about our pasts and futures.
Collaborators
Awards
2025 Winner, (Nick Roux) for Best Multimedia, Straits Times Life Theatre Awards, Singapore
Presentation History
2025 Footscray Community Arts, Australia, as part of Asia TOPA [27 February - 1 March]
2024 Singtel Waterfront Theatre, Esplanade, Singapore [30 August - 1 September]
Reviews
'Miraculous counter-archive brought to life … packs an epic journey into an hour-long multimedia performance. Cheryl Ong’s percussive soundscape… broadens the ambit of the story into something mythic.'
'Urges us to critically reconstruct our interpretations to formulate our own version of the truth.'
'One Day We’ll Understand was a flawless, tightly executed show. What began as an autobiographical journey of self-discovery left us with a glimpse into the haunting impact of colonial trauma.'
'The choreography, so to speak, of movement, speech, images, and of its structured revelations is breathtaking and beautiful in its sadness. And it is a high artistic achievement, a ‘mixed media’ presentation of a largely forgotten history in which Australia is implicated. It deserves to be widely seen. It will fit many venues, and it will be a revelation wherever it is shown.'
Partners
One Day We’ll Understand has been commissioned by Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. It received partial funding support from the National Arts Council, Creative Australia, and contributions from Ho Bee Foundation, and Foundation for Arts and Social Enterprise.
