Chair Stories
In this visual essay, puppet maker and designer Daniel Sim, begins with a set of rejected stage chairs, and ends up on a lyrical journey through Singapore’s theatre history.
Haresh Sharma
Pain and Cauterisation in “Off Centre”
By Casidhe Ng (1, 543 words, eight-minute read) When the play ends (although it never really ends), Saloma sits on stage, alone, even after the house lights have been turned back on, with a look of uncertainty and shock plastered across her face. She feels – no, she is entirely real, and even more so …
To V and S in “Off Centre”
By Teo Xiao Ting (1,103 words, five-minute read) Dear Saloma and Vinod, I first met the two of you seven years ago, when I was 16. I dissected your words, and tried to live alongside you in Off Centre. I fear I have outlived you. Yet after meeting the both of you again, I know …
Art That Moves: Embracing the Off Centre
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. This article is also one of three pieces on ArtsEquator this week focusing on the people, plays and processes of The Necessary Stage, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Aside …
“Being Haresh Sharma”: Parading a Lifetime of Achievements
By Eugene Koh (970 words, 10-minute read) The stage is bare, somewhat bare, with the lighting set-up visible from the wings and a simple structure fixed upstage that prominently features a wide screen for multimedia projection. At one definitive moment in the play, the multimedia projection zooms in to focus on a young Haresh Sharma …
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Podcast 14: La Cage and Tropicana
Duration: 30 minutes Former Flying Inkpot reviewers Matthew Lyon and Naeem Kapadia get together to discuss Tropicana the Musical and Wild Rice’s La Cage – two glamorous, star-studded, cabaret-themed musicals that opened within a few days of each other within the past month. While one’s a localised version of a Tony Award-winning Broadway original, the other’s a Singapore original that …
Review of Tropicana, The Musical: Memory Malfunction
By Felipe Cervera (910 words, 9-minute read) Theatre is a memory machine. Its engines run with dialogues and recollections, fuelled by the invisible streams of thought and emotion that run in and out, through the minds and bodies of the people gathered. We enter the theatre hoping to forget, to remember, wanting it to remind …
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‘Hope (Harap)’: No Hope in Contemporary Hell
By Kathy Rowland (728 words, 8 minute read) Teater Ekamatra’s Harap opens with its five characters frozen in the shadows, standing on low plinths. Taking centre-stage is a series of monochromatic, indeterminate images, projected on the backdrop and over their bodies. When the characters break free, the stage crackles with the easy energy of Hadi …
Review of “Fundamentally Happy”: Shame and Scandal in the Family
By Kathy Rowland (920 words, 8 minute read) Eric, a social worker based in Australia, has returned to Singapore for his father’s funeral. He visits an old neighbour, Kak Biba/Habiba, whose home was a childhood refuge from his own impersonal family. The reunion seems like a genuinely happy occasion. There are hints however – a …
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Class Conflict: “Those Who Can’t, Teach” by The Necessary Stage
By Marcus Yee (904 words, 9-minute read) The Necessary Stage’s most recent production, Those Who Can’t, Teach makes a strange journey to its eventual arrival as a “play that salutes teachers”. For one, Haresh Sharma’s script distances itself from the conventional narratives of a teacher’s struggle over a difficult student, with the student’s future success …
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