再见了金鹰潮剧团!
Goodbye to Kim Eng Teochew Opera Troupe

11 Feb 2007, a day that placed 金鹰潮剧团 as a new entrant to the history of Chinese Opera in Singapore.

While surfing the net, I came across an article about the disbanding of Kim Eng Teochew Opera troupe by Ng Tze Yong of The Electric New Paper, dated 17 Oct 2006. You may read the article by visiting the URL: http://www.tnp.sg/printfriendly/0,4139,115678,00.html

I have reproduced the article below for easy reference.

The Electric New Paper :

Established Chinese opera troupe Kim Eng to disband

Once, they performed for thousands
Now, only a handful show up
TONIGHT, there are four.
When the show begins at for the Kim Eng Teochew Opera, the audience is meagre again, as usual.

By Ng Tze Yong

17 October 2006
TONIGHT, there are four.
When the show begins at for the Kim Eng Teochew Opera, the audience is meagre again, as usual.
'We used to perform in front of thousands,' says Mr Ng Ying Siong, 64, as he waits backstage, decked out in a glittery warrior costume.
'Now, we perform to houseflies.'
He spoke to The New Paper two weeks ago.
Mr Ng, better known as Ah Siong, chuckles. He's used to it now.
When his cue comes, Ah Siong prances majestically onto the stage.
Cheeks flushed with hot pink, he starts singing in Teochew, in a falsetto voice.
He tells the night's tale - a meeting between six generals - with thoughtful strokes of his beard, sharp sideway glances and dramatic throws of his long sleeves.
Like the rest of the crew, Ah Siong still performs as if there are thousands watching him.
But next February, it will be curtains for Kim Eng.
There will be sighs of regret, and relief.
Kim Eng (which means 'Golden Eagle' in Teochew), is one of Singapore's most established troupes.
'In the '80s, if you didn't book them a year in advance, you could forget about getting them,' said Madam Diana Chua, a heritage guide.
'I want to leave while we are still popular,' said Mr Chua Hock Kee, 66, who founded the troupe in 1980. 'I want Kim Eng's reputation to last.'
Despite the poor attendances, Mr Chua's schedule - neatly written on a scrap of paper he keeps in his shirt pocket - is still packed with events.
Kim Eng moves from temple to temple to celebrate festivals, for stints that last several days each. It is paid between $1,200 and $1,800 per day.
Three years ago, Mr Chua realised the road ahead led only downhill. He said: 'Frankly, deciding to call it quits was not a difficult decision to make.'
Few young people understand dialects nowadays. There is no young blood. And he feels no one is watching wayang anymore. (See report on facing page.)
Like the heroes he often plays on stage, Ah Siong, however, is gung-ho about his uncertain future.
'Life's journey is unpredictable. You have to forge a path for yourself,' he said with a philosopher's air.
But later, he admitted that he feels 'left behind by the times'.
'When all this is over, I probably won't be able to sleep for three months,' he said.
Most of Ah Siong's fellow actors have done wayang their whole lives.
Ah Siong's wayang career started when he was 12, when he was living at a kampung in Kim Keat.
'We were so poor that sometimes, my four siblings and I shared one boiled egg for breakfast,' he said.
His father was ill and the family had to sell most of their possessions to pay for his treatment.
When he died, 10-year-old Ah Siong left school to help make ends meet.
'My mother felt wayang would be a useful skill to learn,' he said.
RIGOROUS TRAINING
Mornings started at 4am. Ah Siong's head would be filled with the giddiness of endless somersaults and the rattle of sabre practice.
'Sometimes, we had to balance a candy on the back of our hands while standing on one leg, while our teacher went to the loo,' said Ah Siong.
Breakfast was Teochew porridge ate squatting against a wall.
Today, Ah Siong, who never married and lives alone in a two-room Whampoa flat, is one of the senior actors in Kim Eng.
The youngest in the troupe is 38. The oldest is almost 80.
They are all full-timers, paid $1,000 to $2,000 a month.
Like the others, Madam Tan Pian Choo, 55, is resigned about Kim Eng's closure.
'Even if we don't close next year, we'll close the year after next. How long do you expect we can do this?'
Mr Chua plans to downsize Kim Eng into a puppet troupe later on.
Puppetry is a Cantonese art form but Mr Chua wants to adapt it to Teochew. To survive, he is fusing his own dialect culture with another.
At 8pm sharp, the show began.
'The gods are watching us,' whispered a spear-wielding warrior waiting at the sidelines.
They sit in the front row, he said.
'If they see you make a mistake, you will find yourself with a toothache or diarrhoea the next day.'
Unlike getais which play to 'hungry ghosts', wayang is the gods' theatre.
But the human audience that night was made up of just four elderly aunties, in flowery blouses, legs propped up on plastic chairs.
They had dragged the chairs out from a corner of the temple themselves. Kim Eng doesn't even bother putting out seats for the audience anymore.
In the old days, fans followed troupes all over Singapore, not unlike today's boyband groupies.
After performances, some would scramble up backstage to give herbal soup to their idols.
But now, when the performance ends, there is no applause, no calls for encores.
The actors move swiftly, cleaning and packing up to catch the last bus home. Ah Siong hasn't made any plans for life after Kim Eng.
He remembers having worked as a cleaner at a furniture store once for a while.
'Maybe I'll go back there.'