So if hawker centres might be replaced one day, what is it that we’ll be losing beyond sentiment?

With more public spaces becoming incessantly monetised, hawker centres become one of the last bastions for free, communal gatherings. Lynn comments that she’s often curious about why youth in her neighbourhood often hang out at the food court beneath her place and make noise. But where else can they go that provides shelter, lights, good ventilation, and the option to buy food and drinks?

It makes you question what the function of a hawker centre is.

“Is it really the food that makes the space, or the auntie that gives you free ice milo?” Lynn asks.

But what makes hawker centres truly special is the intimately embedded idea of sharing. As a country without the luxury of space, we’ve been strong-armed into sharing tables with strangers. And in this arrangement, we also end up sharing our own lives.

Hui Er lays out a scenario that most of us are no doubt familiar with.

“We’ll be engaged in our conversations and they in theirs, but we can hear them and they can hear us. And there’s the idea of I don’t care, because they’re strangers you’ll never see again.”

Against the clamour of the hawker centre, there’s this mutual, unintentional eavesdropping that a hawker centre facilitates. The proximity to others while allowing for noise in a public setting is something few other spaces afford. And the knowledge that these are strangers gives one a freedom to let them into your unfiltered, intimate life—like how it’s easier to spill secrets online anonymously rather than to your friends.

The Hawker skillfully recreates these voyeuristic elements. An actor might be shouting over at another table, and you’ll be able to catch the ruckus. Or the tables will be positioned such that if you sit just right, you can hear another table’s conversation spilling into yours.

Though it is a performance, like all theatre it aims to capture an essence of reality. Hui Er confesses that she enjoys taking such a voyeuristic view because that’s how we experience others in our day to day lives.

“It’s awful, but the more you eavesdrop the more empathy you have. Because you see people as they are, and they’re not putting on a show, and there’s something precious in that.”