Teater Kami brings 1950s kampung back to life in Salina

Director and playwright Atin Amat has hung on to the set of the 1950s kampung drama Salina for more than 30 years.

- Shawn Hoo

The set will be reused in the restaging of her adaptation of the Malay-language novel as part of Pesta Raya 2025 Malay Festival of Arts.

Theatregoers who caught Teater Kami's stagings of Salina in 1993 and 1997 will thus recognise bits of Kampung Kambing (or Goat Village in Malay) at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre. The props will include trinkets the Cultural Medallion recipient salvaged from the bygone Sungei Road Thieves Market and a tempayan (stoneware jar) from her old kampung home.

In Salina, the story's titular protagonist fights to survive in the aftermath of the Japanese Occupation in Singapore. Forced to become a sex worker while supporting her unemployed lover, Salina lives in a squatter village converted from a goat pen where "the walls are thin and the roofs are leaky", a setting Atin has tried to recreate faithfully.