Between Worlds: Café Sarajevo, ATARA and No Place
By Nabilah Said and Germaine Cheng (1,580 words, 7-minute read) What does it mean to be between worlds? To behold yet not belong? Three works – Café Sarajevo, ATARA and No Place – presented as part of M1 Singapore Fringe…
Behind the scenes with the Women of SIFA
By Nabilah Said ArtsEquator speaks to four women that are part of the local commissions of SIFA 2020 – Siti Khalijah Zainal, Jodi Chan, Ellison Tan and Mia Chee. SITI KHALIJAH ZAINAL, THE YEAR OF NO RETURN Siti…
Podcast 75: Patch and Punnet
Duration: 25 min Nabilah Said speaks to Krish Natarajan and Astley Xie of Patch and Punnet about their upcoming production, Fika & Fishy, which is billed as a kids’ show made for adults. Warning: This podcast contains language that is…
A house is not a home: Centre 42 and Arts Resource Hub
By Nabilah Said and Kathy Rowland The fate of a certain house is a matter of contention amongst a group of people in Singapore. In this case, the house – a bright blue, pre-war bungalow located on 42 Waterloo Street…
Tangled and tackled: Black Ties at Sydney Festival 2020
By Maria Herminia Graterol Garrido (550 words, 4-minute read) The challenges of fusing and representing more than one culture while planning and executing a memorable wedding are well-known to us in real life and in fiction. Movies like My Big…
A sound collaboration: 宿 (stay) at Sydney Festival 2020
By Maria Herminia Graterol Garrido (571 words, 4-minute read) There is a huge difference between watching a great piece of theatre with a beautiful original score, and experiencing a process that gives equal importance to all the creative aspects, including…
Podcast 74: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2020
Duration: 30 min Matt Lyon, Naeem Kapadia and Nabilah Said discuss three productions at this year’s edition of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival – Contemplating Kopitiam & Kampong Wa’ Hassan by NAFA and Oliver Chong; A Tiny Country by Attempts;…
ArtsEquator’s Top 10 Picks of TPAM 2020
The Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama will focus on dance and physical expression this year. Since it was established as the Tokyo Performing Arts Market in 1995, the annual event has never quite stopped moving – including a move to…
Podcast 73: Spacebar Theatre
Duration: 21 min In our latest episode of our Fresh Blood podcast, Nabilah Said speaks to Lee Shu Yu and Eugene Koh of Spacebar Theatre about their latest production, The Utama Spaceship, which imagines what happens when Singaporeans are sent…
The top ArtsEquator articles of 2019
Here’s a list of the top 10 ArtsEquator articles in 2019: Enter Stage Right: Tay Tong by ArtsEquator “It is amazing how one’s identity is so associated with one’s job. Especially for me – after 30 years, all of…
Podcast 72: ArtsEquator End-of-Year Theatre Podcast 2019
Matt Lyon, Naeem Kapadia, Kathy Rowland and Nabilah Said discuss their top picks for theatre in 2019. Content warning: Mentions of sexual assault/violence, self-harm and suicide. Duration: 38 minutes Stream Podcast 72: Also available on Spotify. Download Podcast 72 here (right-click…
Chain reaction: Lie With Me by Intercultural Theatre Institute
By Kathy Rowland (1,014 words, 6-minute read) ITI’s graduation production, Lie With Me is filled with broken characters, caught in capsules of emotional decrepitude. The work, written by Kaite O’Reilly is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, repurposed to examine…
Podcast 70: The Hawker & Rumah Dayak
In this latest podcast episode, Kathy Rowland, Matthew Lyon and Naeem Kapadia discuss recent productions The Hawker by Second Breakfast Company, an immersive piece that pays homage to individuals in a hawker centre, and Rumah Dayak by new theatre collective…
Lightfay ofway ancyfay: “Peter Pan in Serangoon Gardens” by Wild Rice
By Naeem Kapadia (1,062 words, 7-minute read) It’s quite impossible to bid the year goodbye without WILD RICE’s traditional holiday pantomime, a veritable institution on the Singapore theatre calendar. Over the past 15 years, the company has developed a niche…
Monsters’ Ink: A Fiend’s Diary & Heather
By Nabilah Said (1,500 words, 7-minute read) Spoiler Alert: The following contains major spoilers for the shows A Fiend’s Diary and Heather. I watched the stories of two monsters in the theatre recently. In A Fiend’s Diary, Oliver Chong…
Caught: Goodbye Lin Bo, we hardly knew ye
By Nabilah Said and Eugene Tan (2,500 words, 10-minute read) Spoiler Alert: This review contains major spoilers for the show Caught. Nabilah: I approach the venue for Caught with some trepidation. There had been scant details from the Singapore…
Words in Transit: George Town Literary Festival 2019
By Akanksha Raja (1,715 words, 7-minute read) The George Town Literary Festival returns for its ninth year next weekend (21 – 24 November) with the theme of forewords/afterwords, a decidedly future-oriented focus pertaining to notions of transitions and new beginnings….
Podcast 68: Critics Live! Wild Rice’s Merdeka
Theatre critics Corrie Tan, Nabilah Said, Carolyn Oei and Kathy Rowland discuss the recent production of WILD RICE’s Merdeka / 獨立 /சுதந்திரம், in a critics-led post-show conversation held in front of an audience on 19 October 2019 at WILD RICE’s…
Jelmaan Baharu Teater Tradisional dalam “Hikayat Cendawan Putih”
Oleh Fasyali Fadzly (1,120 patah kati, 6-minit bacaan) Antara pengarah teater yang kurang dicanang dan disebut-sebut dalam pementasan teater kontemporari adalah Sharul Mizad atau lebih senang dikenali sebagai Ejad. Beliau merupakan graduan terawal Akademi Seni Kebangsaan (kini ASWARA) bersama beberapa…
How would you fare in the afterlife? Haw Par Villa: ArtsEquator Edition
Scenario: You are visiting the Ten Courts of Hell in Haw Par Villa. Your friend who likes asking deep questions suddenly asks: how would you fare in the afterlife? You pretend you don’t hear them because it’s your rare day…
Merantau Sejarah/Identiti Selat Melaka: Name Laundering oleh Irwan Ahmett dan Tita Salina
Oleh Fasyali Fadzly (1,150 patah kati, 6-minit bacaan) Jauh perjalanan, luas pandangan. Mungkin itulah prinsip yang diambil oleh dua orang seniman Jakarta, Irwan Ahmett dan Tita Salina apabila mengambil keputusan untuk menjalankan kajian sosial dan artistik selama 10 tahun menjejaki…
BACC: Whose art centre is it anyway?
By Siriwat Pokrajen (1,180 words, 6-minute read) Anyone following the news about the Thai art scene must have already known about all the rough storms the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) has been sailing through in the past couple…
This is what succession looks like: The Finger Players
By Corrie Tan (3,800 words, 15-minute read) I. “They are constantly making magic look like it’s very simple.” You could call it love at first sight – the moment Ellison Tan and Myra Loke encountered The Finger Players, they…
A Bigger Party Than Expected: Honouring Rex Shelley at SWF 2019
By Akanksha Raja (830 words, 4-minute read) On 1 November, The Arts House plays host to an unlikely wedding celebration titled A Bigger Party Than Expected, which features “silent disco” dances to an Eurasian folk song, multidisciplinary art installations,…
Translating Homeland: Tanah•Air 水•土: A Play In Two Parts
By Nabilah Said (1,900 words, 7-minute read) In less than a week, Drama Box will premiere Tanah•Air 水•土: A Play In Two Parts, a production revolving around the theme of histories, those that are remembered, and those who are sidelined….
The brutal examinations of “Constellation of Violence”
By Patricia Tobin (561 words, 4-minute read) Constellation of Violence consists of a very simple setup: a giant screen on stage, a historian, two artists and a group of individuals. These elements are combined, in varying degrees, to form…
The Personal, the Humour and the Horror: Interview with Irwan Ahmett
By Patricia Tobin (1,140 words, 6-minute read) The concluding production of TPAM 2019 was Constellation of Violence, a lecture-performance by artist Irwan Ahmett, which focused on the culmination of the Cold War in Indonesia in 1965, from its lead-up…
Say No To Droogs: Teater Ekamatra’s “A Clockwork Orange”
By Faezah Zulkifli (1,020 words, 4-minute read) “ORANG_” The wordplay in Teater Ekamatra’s A Clockwork Orange is no accident. An inventive linguist, author Anthony Burgess, who lived in Malaysia in the 1950s, borrowed the title for his magnum opus from…
Discovering and Re-discovering Kluang: The INXO International Residency Programme
By Akanksha Raja (1,493 words, 6-minute read) It’s almost 4pm as the KTM train I’m travelling on trudges to a slow halt at the railway station in Kluang, Johor. The first thing that catches my eye is Kluang Rail Coffee,…
Seven Views of “Seven Views of Redhill”
By Nabilah Said (1,670 words, 7-minute read) We are in a rehearsal for Seven Views of Redhill. Well, not me – I am just a hanger-on trying to fold myself into a corner of the Chesterfield-like sofa backed up…