Tender notes on violence in “A Notional History” by Five Arts Centre
By Patricia Tobin ( 700 words, 5-minute read) It starts with a song. Faiq Syazwan Kuhiri strums the ukulele and gently sings about hope and the future. For a lecture-performance, A Notional History, a work in progress by Five Arts Centre, is…
Fahmi Fadzil’s “GE14”: The sound and fury signifying everything
By Patricia Tobin ( 700 words, 5-minute read) “GE14 will be the arts festival to outdo all arts festivals,” said performer-politician Fahmi Fadzil. He is referring to the live spectacle: from theatre productions to political speeches, performativity is a constant….
Migrant Ecologies Project: A Grain of Wheat Inside a Salt Water Crocodile
By Lucy Davis (600 words, 5-minute read) Another Chinese tradition, which probably has no connection with the previous one is that the Butterworth cannon belonged to ‘Panglima’ (Warrior) Ah Chong a bravo of the Inter-Chinese wars which took place in the Larut tin…
Transgression, triggers, and the thousand cuts of “Blunt Knife”
By Corrie Tan (2,700 words, 13-minute read) Content Warning: Mentions of a sexual relationship involving a teenager This response contains major spoilers for Blunt Knife by Eng Kai Er and A Doll’s House by Theatre of Europe. Dear Kai,…
Reconstructing the Virtual in “Frogman”
By Shawn Chua (1,088 words, 6-minute read) Having securely fastened the headgear, I am submerged into the virtual world of Frogman. The instructional voice of the Queensland Jury service informs me through an earpiece that I have been selected at…
Pretty Displaced: Staging Sexual Assault in the Age of #MeToo
By Nabilah Said (1,887 words, 7-minute read) Trigger/Content Warning: Discussions of sexual assault I watched two shows in the span of two weeks recently. Besides the fact that they were Singapore plays, they did not, from the outset, seem…
Go Big or Go Home: “Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner” Takes Flight
By Helmi Yusof (1,387 words, six-minute read) Why do people choose to go into poor, dangerous, war-torn countries to work as humanitarian workers? Do they have boundless courage, hope and kindness? Do they have a death wish? Do they believe…
“A Dream Under the Southern Bough: Reverie”: Down the Ant Hole
By Jocelyn Chng (1,138 words, five-minute read) My strongest memory from the first instalment of this three-year series by Toy Factory, A Dream Under the Southern Bough: The Beginning, was its dramatic cliffhanger of an ending. There, the protagonist, disgraced…
Mad women, divine punishment, and “Dionysus”
By Corrie Tan (1,700 words, eight-minute read) This review contains spoilers and/or plot points for The Bacchae, a 2,500-year-old ancient Greek tragedy; Beware of Pity, a 1939 German novel adapted for the stage by the Schaubühne Berlin and Complicité; as…
“Beautiful Water”: Intercultural Theatre Made in Threes
By Ken Takiguchi (1,229 words, 6-minute read) As I enter the auditorium of Kirari Fujimi, a public theatre located about one hour away from the centre of Tokyo, I find myself in the waters of somewhere in Asia. The audience…
Reframing Colonialism: “Civilised” by The Necessary Stage
By Naeem Kapadia (954 words, 4-minute read) There has been a slew of works responding to the bicentennial of Singapore’s founding by Sir Stamford Raffles, an event that the authorities have chosen to spend all year celebrating through a series…
Silent Rooms, Silent Memories: “Flowers” by Drama Box
By Akanksha Raja (1,155 words, 5-minute read) It’s a series of plastic white flower-fans lining the fence of 74 Jalan Kelabu Asap that lets me know that I’ve arrived at the site of Drama Box’s first work of 2019, Flowers,…
Does Singapore Theatre Have a Directing Problem?
By Adam Marple (1,781 words, 9-minute read) I always tell people this, right, if there was an international convention that invites the main people, directors from Singapore over, and that plane crashes, we’re screwed, right? We don’t have anything…
The Beauty of Time and Image: “ST/LL” at SIFA 2019
Seamlessly blending the digital image, live dance and a richly evocative music score, ST/LL is startlingly beautiful treat for the eyes and the ears. This production celebrates the performance collaboration of composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and visual and multimedia artist Shiro Takatani. (Sakamoto’s concert Fragments, with visuals…
Programming The Studios 2019: An Interview with Lynn Yang
By Selina Chong (519 words, two-minute read) The Studios is Esplanade’s longest running platform for supporting Singapore’s theatre scene. This season opens at the end of March, and the theme this year is “The weight of a stone in a…
Of Math and Art: “A Game of Numbers” with NUS Arts Festival 2019
By Elaine Chiew (1195 words, five-minute read) ‘A GAME OF NUMBERS’: Elaine Chiew interviews Mary Loh and Professor Victor Tan on the mathematically-themed NUS Arts Festival 2019 believed to be first-ever in Singapore. Organised by NUS Centre For the Arts,…
“Dionysus”: Suzuki Tadashi Brings Vengeance to SIFA 2019
By Kathy Rowland (642 words, three-minute read) Suzuki Tadashi is one of the brand names in the international tour circuit, whose productions have earned critical praise and inspired several generations of audiences. A decade on from his last production in…
ArtsEquator’s Top 10 Picks at the Performing Arts Meeting 2019
Established in 1995, the Tokyo Performing Arts Market (TPAM) was created to be a platform to network Japanese artists with producers and funders. 24 years later, TPAM has expanded in scope and purpose, to include live performance, panel discussions and…
Eleven New Elements from the Asia-Pacific Region Inscribed on the List of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage
Meeting in Mauritius until 1 December, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage inscribed eleven elements from the Asia-Pacific region on the Lists of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. Among them, two elements have been added to…
Vince Tañada’s postmodernistic theater (via The Manila Times)
Playwright and University of the Philippines faculty member Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero pioneered in bringing theater out into remote provinces in the ’60s through the UP Mobile Theater. This was to afford his grassroots audiences with his kind of theater away…
Podcast 47: TheatreWorks’ “13.13.13” and SRT The Young Company’s ‘The Fall’
Duration : 33 mins Theatreworks’ 13.13.13 and SRT’s The Young Company’s The Fall are the two works discussed in this month’s podcast. Hosts Matt Lyon and Naeem Kapadia are joined by Ann Lee, playwright, LGBTQ activist and PhD-to-be in reflecting on…
AExGTF Chats: Prof Tan Sooi Beng of Ombak Potehi at George Town Festival
Potehi puppet theatre is a traditional Hokkien art form brought to Southeast Asia by immigrants from southern China several centuries ago. Despite originally being performed in Hokkien, potehi came to be performed in the different languages of the region, and…
What the Arts in Malaysia Needs: More Transparency, Less Intermediaries
By Kathy Rowland (2145 words, 8 minute read) 2 July 2018 – The receding brown moon on millions of Malaysians’ fingernails are a biological marker of the eight weeks since the end of the Najib administration. These past 55 days…
Art That Moves: Marc Nair
Art that Moves is an occasional series where we ask artists and other creative workers to reflect on artworks, performances or events that were personally important to them. Marc Nair, poet and photographer, is producer of Note for Note: #Skintones, an…
…Sodade… at SIFA 2018
An enchanting French evening of aerial circus performed to live music. …Sodade… is a nostalgic ode to life, a fable of love and loss in the air as told by two musicians playing and singing on a unique circus structure…
SIFA 2018: Walking death’s footsteps in Zelda Tatiana Ng’s “0600”
0600 is named for the time that executions are carried out. What makes an artist take on the polarising topic of the death penalty in Singapore? Zelda Tatiana Ng has been a fixture in the Singapore performing arts scene for…
Esplanade Presents The Studios: Between Living and Dying
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” …
Theatre Reviews: Last Word or the Start of a Conversation
On Sunday, 28 January, 3pm, ArtsEquator held its first public forum, “Theatre Reviews: Last Word or the Start of a Conversation”, featuring British theatre critic Lyn Gardner, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival director Sean Tobin, ArtsEquator’s guest editor Corrie Tan, and…
Gaurav Kripalani: a new festival director plots a different path
By Corrie Tan (3,890 words, 20-minute read) A few days after the launch of the 2018 edition of the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA), I had coffee with newly minted festival director Gaurav Kripalani to discuss the programme he’s…
Ong Keng Sen: educating the curator; curating the everyday
By Corrie Tan (4,360 words, 25-minute read) I sat down with Ong Keng Sen after the conclusion of the first edition of the Curators Academy, which ran from 24 to 28 January. Organised by TheatreWorks, the academy sought to establish…