By Kathy Rowland (400 words, 3 minute read) “I asked her out six times in thirty seconds.” In 2013, a Youtube video by slam poet Neil Hilborn went viral. In the clip, Hilborn delivers an impassioned performance of OCD, a poem that celebrates, then eulogies, a love affair that falls victim to one lover’s obsessive […]
SIFA 2018: “OCD Love”‘s Dancing in the Face of Love Read More »
Ugly in the Morning’s 3 or More If You Can Afford It Album Launch Concert, Esplanade Annexe Studio, Saturday 14 April 8pm Join alternative funk/rock band Ugly in the Morning for the launch of their third album, 3 or More If You Can Afford It, a 10-song journey of funk beats, catchy melodies, tight vocals,
Weekly Picks: Singapore (9 – 15 April 2018) Read More »
By Corrie Tan (1,160 words, six-minute read) The audio tours of spell#7 – the husband-wife duo of Kaylene Tan and Paul Rae – promise a variety of small adventures. In their previous work, they’ve invited us to move through several spaces in Singapore, peeling back layers of stories and eavesdropping on conversations as the tours
The Loud Echo of “In the Silence of Your Heart” Read More »
By Akanksha Raja (825 words, four-minute read) We’ve been seeing a variety of theatre revolving around dementia and its effects on families in Singapore over the past few years, such as Pangdemonium’s The Father, The Necessary Stage’s Don’t Forget to Remember Me, and Drama Box’s forum theatre shows The Wind Came Home and Exit. The
“Potong” by Teater Ekamatra: Of Kin and Skin Read More »
By Chan Sze-Wei (1,110 words, six-minute read) Norhaizad Adam’s second full length work with his company P7:1SMA (say “prisma”) is set in another world. The audience steps through the door of the Drama Centre Black Box into an arena of wooden crates and sacking, the whiff of wood and coffee beans in the warm light
“Ngopi” by P7:1SMA: Stop and Smell the Coffee Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Jakarta, and Yogyakarta from 2 – 8 April 2018 Start your Monday with Asimetris, a documentary on the palm plantation in Indonesia. A production of Watchdog and Ekspedisi Indonesia Biru and produced by Indra Jati and Dandhy Laksono, Asimetris aims to shine light on the palm oil
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (2 – 8 April 2018) Read More »
In The Silence of Your Heart by Kaylene Tan, Esplanade Theatre Studio, 5 – 8 April In the Silence of Your Heart is an invitation to enter the world of a charming politician and inveterate drinker. Thian has been paralysed for 13 years. He’s been still and silent all this time, but his mind
Weekly Picks: Singapore (2 – 8 April 2018) Read More »
Bali 1928 is an ongoing international and interdisciplinary project established by American ethnomusicologist Edward Herbst in 2002 to “research, find, understand, document, explain, restore, re-release, and repatriate the first published recordings of music in Bali along with rare film footage and photographs of musicians and dance-drama performances from the 1930s”. With support from the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s Regional Mobility
If life is fleeting and death is certain, how do we make our days count? Over five productions, The Studios invites us to confront this question in our everyday. In this year’s series, Esplanade takes on the theme “Between Living and Dying” and presents a showcase of deep and thought-provoking works by five female creators: Edith Podesta, Faith Ng,
Esplanade Presents The Studios: Between Living and Dying Read More »
Alice in Wonderland by L’arietta, Aliwal Arts Centre, 29 Mar – 1 Apr This Easter, take a trip down the rabbit hole with your kids and your parents as Lewis Carroll’s classic tale of whimsy and wonder come to life again, reimagined into a 75-minute opera with a modern spin, which promises to be fantastical fun
Weekly Picks: Singapore (26 March – 1 April 2018) Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Medan, Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Jember from 26 March – 1 April 2018 Indonesia’s ocean contains some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of the population cares about the ocean and have the wisdom to preserve the reefs. One of Indonesia’s
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (26 March – 1 April 2018) Read More »
By Akanksha Raja The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2018 takes place at different venues across the Civic District, including Victoria Theatre, its sprawling Empress Lawn, and the Esplanade Theatre. Nestled comfortably between these locations is The Arts House, dubbed the Festival House. If SIFA 2018 were a living, breathing person, the Festival House is
SIFA 2018: The Festival House and The Outdoors Read More »
Dinh Q. Lê: Monuments and Memorials, Singapore Tyler Print Institute, 17 Mar – 12 May 2018 Dinh Q. Le’s “Splendor and Darkness” series of woven photographs is a depiction of the Cambodian history that blends images of Khmer temples with portraits of Khmer Rouge victims killed at Tuol Sleng. Singapore Tyler Print Institute presents these
Weekly Picks: Singapore (19 – 25 March 2018) Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Solo, Yogyakarta and Jakarta from 19 – 25 March 2018 On Thursday, in Central Java, there are 2 music performances to watch for your Thursday night art entertainment. In Solo, the Parkiran Jazz series presents “Wanita Berkarya”, a jazz night dedicated to women. The night will feature
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (19 – 25 March 2018) Read More »
In an example of cruel irony, October 20 is when we celebrate annual Vietnam Women’s Day, and also the anniversary of the passing of Mai Nga (commonly known as Nga Nhi), the lead singer of Go Lim – a Hanoi-based female post-punk band that, albeit short-lived, struck a blow for women’s representation in rock and
Duration: 22 min In March’s edition of Fresh Blood, we get to know Thereabouts Theatre, a new young theatre group interested in site-specific performances and dance theatre. Their first production Set Apart, which broadly explores the notion of the taboo through the use of movement and text, opens on the 24th of March at Emily Hill.
Podcast 36: Thereabouts Theatre Read More »
By Akanksha Raja (780 words, five-minute read) Pangdemonium’s first play of 2018, The Father, revolves around the 70-year-old titular character, André (Lim Kay Siu), and the harrowing effects of his increasingly uncontrollable symptoms of dementia on daughter Anne (Tan Kheng Hua), her partner Pierre (Emil Marwa), and Laura (Frances Lee), one of a series of
Pangdemonium’s “The Father”: Dementia Becomes Us Read More »
By Akanksha Raja The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2018 is just over a month away, and the programme offers an extensive palette of art and performance not only from Singapore but also as farther afield as Germany, Palestine, India, Cape Verde, and more. It’s hard to define or label the types of shows on
SIFA 2018: Top Ten Picks for the Art Lover Read More »
Duration: 30 min This year, Esplanade’s The Studios series runs from 29 March to 29 April at the Esplanade Theatre Studio, and features five deep and thought-provoking works by five female creators: Edith Podesta, Faith Ng, Kaylene Tan, Michelle Tan, and Zizi Azah. Corrie Tan speaks with Edith, Faith, Kaylene and Michelle about their inspirations, the
Podcast 35: Esplanade’s The Studios 2018 Interview Read More »
Singapore Improv Festival 2018, Aliwal Arts Centre, 15 – 18 Mar Remember that rib-tickling TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway?, which brought comedic improv theatre to the masses? Catch Singapore’s own improv talents take the stage for the second annual Singapore Improv Festial (SIF) at Aliwal Arts Centre this weekend where they present impromptu sketches and
Weekly Picks: Singapore (12 – 18 March 2018) Read More »
Marking Kumar’s 50th year alive, and the start of Dream Academy’s 2018 season at the Capitol Theatre, Kumar50 is a celebration, a retelling of history, but most of all, a show meant to entertain — Kumar is the undisputed queen, and star, of the Singapore drag scene. Kumar50 is also here to make some money:
“Kumar50”: More significant than SG53 Read More »
Chloe Chotrani is a movement artist and writer based in Singapore. She has set up the performing arts archive, Talking Circles, a digital archive of performing artists from South, Southeast Asia and its Diaspora. A continuous work in progress, the archive stands as a blog – Talking Circles; where you can find informal interviews of performing artists where we
The importance of documenting & archiving the performing arts (via ASEF Culture360) Read More »
By Chloe Chotrani (1,040 words, five-minute read) The one who loves you hits you. The one who hits you loves you. The one who loves you hurts you. This is a piece about relationships, unfortunately. (We can’t get away from them.) One woman, one chair, one microphone. And a chair opposite her, for you. In
“Talk to me and I slap you”: confronting intimacy and violence Read More »
By Bernice Lee (995 words, four-minute read) The Esplanade Theatre Studio is awash in red light. It feels like the set of a Marvel movie – gloomy and dystopian; a planet overtaken by villains, awaiting rescue. Red mechanical legs hang from above the stage. The audience sits in the round, beyond the reach of this
From the lucid dream of “Cut Kafka!”, a promising new artistic path Read More »
Textures – A Weekend With Words, The Arts House, 9 – 11 March Presented by The Arts House and co-commissioned by #BuySingLit, Textures – A Weekend With Words is an inaugural literary festival taking place from 9 – 11 March, chockablock with performances, workshops, book-themed exhibitions, and over 30 panel discussions, all in honour of homegrown literature, and the
Weekly Picks: Singapore (5 – 11 March 2018) Read More »
Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Bandung and Jakarta from 5 – 11 March 2018 We start our picks this week in Bali. Photographer Syafiudin Vifick invites you to Perjamuan Terakhir, or The Last Supper. Through this solo photo exhibition, Syafiudin would like to engage visitors to reflect whether Bali is truly a
Weekly Picks: Indonesia (5 – 11 March 2018) Read More »
By Corrie Tan (1,300 words, eight-minute read) This review has been translated into Mandarin by Liu Xiaoyi, artistic director of Emergency Stairs. Read his translation here. If the avant garde director Robert Wilson died and went to purgatory, Einstein in the Carpark is probably where he’d end up. Part performance, part installation, part misshapen creature stitched together
Life isn’t a beach in “Einstein in the Carpark” Read More »
You know a Nine Years Theatre production when you see one. There’s the smell of precision about it, from the calibrated ensemble to the period-perfect set pieces. Every single performer seems to be breathing in and out in perfect sync. The language is exact, the direction exacting. The company has made significant strides since it
Kuik Swee Boon and Nelson Chia, dreamers of dance and drama (via The Esplanade) Read More »
Ama-Lia by Teater Kami, 1 – 3 Mar, Goodman Arts Centre Teater Kami continues its practice using theatre as a tool for education and social and cultural awareness with this performance written and directed by Keatar HM. Performed in Malay, this semi-musical tale of two girls, Ama and Lia, and the toy shop run by
Weekly Picks: Singapore (26 February – 4 March 2018) Read More »
Cambodian Living Arts believes that arts and cultural expression are essential to a thriving future for Cambodia. This month, we tell the story of Phal Saravuth, leader of Yu Vek Selapak troupe, a group of young artists skilled in dancing, music and theatre. Phal Saravuth formed the troupe Yu Vek Selapak out of the Khmer
Inspiring Arts: Phal Saravuth (via AsiaLIFE Cambodia) Read More »
