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Saturday, July 26, 2003
Changing Times: Lucilla Teoh Interviewer : Dawn Fung Lucilla Teoh Lucilla Teoh is a familiar figure in the Singapore arts scene. Having worked at Theatre Works and acted in the highly received movie, 12 Storeys, you'll be hard pressed not to turn your head when she walks past. She's the founder of Can! Creative Arts Network and currently serving full time. Sitting down with Lucilla for a cup of Frappucino at Orchard's Starbucks is all too...cliche, if you are aware of the stereotypes around you. Yet having a conversation over arts, life and Jesus with Lucilla seems disarmingly familiar, as if it should be the current choice of topic for everyone else in the vicinity. Two years ago, God suddenly called me to full time ministry and I thought, 'I am the least likely person to go to a church because I had no idea what it meant to serve in a church and I didn't lead a blameless life.' Lucilla : I became a Christian when I was in secondary school around fourteen or fifteen years old. The walk was fairly stereotypical- I was passionate about youth work in church but when I hit university I told God that I wanted to grow my career. Serious drama took a lot of my time. I backslided but I never stopped believing. I went to church once in a while, read my bible and prayed but I felt that I did not need the Christian community. Religion got in my way of doing my art. Dawn : When did you enter professional drama? Lucilla : I started drama in university and after that I started to get a lot of freelance work. So I met up with Ong Keng Sen, who was then a law student. We did a couple of productions together and at that time theatre in Singapore was semi-professional, so we kept our day jobs while doing lots of theatre. It was then that I started directing and stage-managing. I went to Kuo Pao Kun for acting, while Keng Sen went to him for directing. Meanwhile I also did a bit of work with other theatre groups. Along the way I made up my mind on what I wanted to do although it had been an interesting phase because I could try out a lot of genres. From stage-managing and production work, I gradually went into design and then educational theatre. Later there was a lot of writing and directing and eventually acting. Dawn : As an artist within a secular work environment, how did you keep your testimony without compromising? Lucilla : I realise now in my Christian walk, which is closer and tighter, that I don't want a distinction there between my work in the secular world and my work in the Christian world. What I mean by this is when I choose to do a secular project I don't put my beliefs outside the rehearsal room. As an example, in one of the secular projects I did with TheatreWorks, one of the Christian actors came up to me and said, 'What to do? I have to put my religion outside the rehearsal room!' I thought, 'No, I think if you are Christian, you are Christian, full stop. You don't stop becoming a Christian at any point in time.' So if there were things that I were made to do or say that I felt compromised my Christian witness, then I would seriously reconsider, rethink my part in the project. For example, after I finished the movie 12 Storeys, the director asked me if I would do a part as a phone sex worker. I replied, 'I have to think carefully because I know in Singapore people tend not to differentiate between you and the character you play. If there was not a point to the plot or character, then I would like to think about it.'In another instance, I did a play with TheatreWorks that had to do with religion. I'm fine if [the play] has nothing to do with Christianity. However I had to have long talks with the writer because I felt that he was trying to put in a stereotypical view of Christianity as a controlling religion. Things like that… Dawn : So, from professional drama to serving in full time ministry, you gave up everything you had to follow Jesus? Lucilla : It was very funny because I knew it was God calling. Working at TheatreWorks was a dream, and I've been associated with TheatreWorks for so long that I could not make the jump from secular to Christian environment. When I got the job with the church, it was as if God gave me the right timing and the opening. Theatre in Singapore is so intense; I was working almost 24 hours everyday. It was around National Day that I was hospitalised for 10 days. They diagnosed it as stress even though it had been unclear. At that point, I asked God, 'Lord what are you trying to show me?' I had a vision of my previous pastor at the church steps welcoming me. I prayed to understand what that was and literally I heard a voice from God saying, 'Will you follow me?' I said, 'Excuse me?' So the voice came again, 'Will you follow me?' I thought, 'Oh oh, it's now or never.' I handed in my notice to TheatreWorks but during that last month I was bogged down with work that ended way past my resignation date. Then I asked God for 2 more years in order to complete these projects. I told God, 'If you want me to serve at St James, you have to take away all these projects and solve all my problems.' I also asked God for healing on my hand because I had 5 warts growing that ate into my flesh -- the only cure was laser surgery. That was a Sunday.On Tuesday, TheatreWorks took away every work that I had been given and said that I could go. As soon as I looked down at my hand, I noticed that the warts were gone. I was completely cured. 'Oh my God.' I called up my pastor, 'I'm coming!' Everything went into place after God called me. The hard thing is learning to trust in him. Now things are clear. I learnt not to compromise, and the importance of fellowship within the body of Christ. The interesting is that God has been my mentor; so whatever God tells me and I just do lor! Initially I thought only the good people [are able to minister and work in the church]. I call myself a reformed feminist. When I had read the bible before I thought it was so misogynist. And that Paul was such a grouch. But now a lot of things make sense. The bible is the perfect guide for living, and it's a matter of understanding what it really is. The rules and regulations are not there to hamper your life but to protect you. Dawn : How have things changed for you since you've made your move? Lucilla : Now that I'm in the Christian arts scene, the issues for me are standards, quality and being excellent for God. From what I've observed, especially from the 'wonderful theatre' productions that people have remarked, I recognised that a lot that a lot of Christian compassion went into the comments.. God honours these productions but people tend to be very kind and they have lower standards somehow. As people who are trained and know better, we need to bring in professional standards because we want to be excellent for God. However I do not want to bring in the secular values that often come with productions - like the 'dog eat dog' thing, or 'I don't care about you' thing. So what I want to fight against is that unhealthy competitiveness. Therefore in a church production, I would rather try to include as many people who are interested in performing and try to raise their standards. This is preferable to saying, 'I want the best person. Too bad, you're not good enough. I think I'll need to use a non-Christian actor because I want the best for my production.'The production values do change when I move from the secular to the Christian arts environment. I think that there's a consciousness from teaching and mentoring as well. A creative community is often created through a project, but it becomes a very dangerous community because there are cliques, there is backbiting, there's a lot of bitchiness and competition. A community that I want to create will be where the competition isn't so much with each other, it comes from an introspective view of how good I can be for God, how much more can I improve my character and raise my standards. The danger comes when we invite those secular values that put human pride first, like, 'I just want the best part'. A Christian artist needs to have a bigger perspective of God. In 2001 at a pastors' prayer summit, where I also met Kimberly, I told God, 'what is my role as a creative arts person…what are you telling me? He showed me a map of South East Asia. The black and white coloured parts of the map represented the Christians. I questioned, 'What about creative arts?'Suddenly the whole map changed colour and became colourful. I began to see people singing and dancing and performing for the Lord. Somehow the Lord wants me to use creative arts for missions. Since then I started to crystallise my idea of a creative arts network. What was interesting is that during my years away from him, God never let go. At critical moments I felt him holding me back, although this sort of thing was weird because I came from a non-charismatic background. It was five years ago that I was hungry for a right life with God. Two years ago, God suddenly called me to full time ministry and I thought, 'I am the least likely person to go to a church because I had no idea what it meant to serve in a church and I didn't lead a blameless life.' But God told me, 'All I need is for you to be obedient.' I've re-negotiated some things. I realized that for the past years I've carried around baggage that were negative and values that were ungodly. Even though coming back to God meant that I had to make a stand in issues that I previously did not and release harmful friendships, my friends have remarked that they've never seen my happier. At the moment, some friendships have turned more superficial because it is hard to connect with someone with your journeys diverge. However, God has placed me where I am for a purpose for such a time like this. I'm probably only the only Christian that my friends know. There are opportunities to share Christ with them, and pray for them.  bridging generations - lucilla and dawn! Dawn : Seated cross-legged and behaving like an eager novice, I probe: what's the low down on the local Christian artists scene? Lucilla : The way I see it is this: for a long time artists have been roughly divided between those who worked in the secular world and those who were purely involved in churches. While the former group were just doing the things like that of any creative arts person, they blended in so well that they did not see themselves distinct from their peers. For a lot of us, it was very hard to make that distinction [as Christians in the world]. On the other hand from the second group, there came a sort of movement with 'All Good Gifts' ministry where a couple of them came together contemplated if there was something to be done about mentoring and guiding. However the timing was too early and the creative arts in churches were not too developed yet.Honestly, I think that what often impacts the secular scene will impact the church scene. In the general arts industry, it wasn't till the mid eighties when things started to get professional and people actually started thinking of doing arts for a living. From that point you then start to think about standards in the industry, like what we consider to be a good show or a bad show. I noticed that churches started moving together as to be more professional in wanting to harness creative arts. However things were rather ad hoc and people tottered along to see what they could do. Also at that time, I didn't think that there were any Christian creative arts schools to go to. In the last 3 or 4 years, as part of the more senior members of the Christian artists community in Singapore, we've come to a point where we don't want to keep doing another show. I want to impact or help the ones coming up. The first phase was that we all needed to be out there doing it before we would progress onto the mentoring level. In the last three years, two things have developed. One is Watchman for the Arts. This is a small loose network of people who are working in the creative arts. A few of us have gotten together where we meet once a month to pray - we pray about the arts scene, what's going on there and for each other's ministries. We're a support group for each other in a way. This was started by a bunch of creative arts people that came from Church of Our Saviour, like Sydney Tan, Sean Tobin, and Eileen O'Connor. I belong to the 2nd batch of people who came in. The funny thing is that within the group, we've worked with each other at one point or another in the secular field. When we got together, we thought, 'Oh God wants us to come together for one big project.' After a while that we realised that didn't seem to be the thing. It was not the one big thing that he wants us to be, but to grow and support each other so that we can have the strength to go out and help other people. The second thing is Can! Creative Arts Network. God gave me a vision a few years ago of a creative arts network. And he has been wonderful getting co-workers like Paul Seow and Kimberly Creasman to share the vision with. The creative network hasn't become an official organisation - maybe it will, maybe it won't. After a year and a bit we're ready to expand because there are people coming in to grow that vision. Otherwise it will die with just Paul, Kimberly and I. Our journeys and milestones will make it hard to always sustain it. Having been in productions for 17 years now, I wanted a network of churches who want to use creative arts for the Lord, who want to come together to share, help and build up resources. Although we want to help our own churches grow, we also want to help each other. We recognise that the creative arts is a very specialised field and not all pastors and church congregations understand it. Our bigger vision is to embrace creative arts for worship, and not for entertainment. I totally agree that worship teams shouldn't be bogged down about being entertainment fodder. When I plan a sketch for my church, it's never for entertainment; it's always with the idea that God has a message that he wants to communicate to the body. It is hard because you have to lay the groundwork for the members of the team. The important thing for any creative arts team is to ask, 'where's your spiritual walk?' before any rehearsals. Last year I did a production with the youths in my church- it was stressful but interesting. At the beginning of each session I would have worship, word and sharing, and then rehearsals. All of the youths were a bit freaked out. After three weeks they were coming to me and reminding me to pray! Let's put God first and learn to trust God. -- First published 260703.
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