A Response to ‘Every Thought I’ve Ever Had: Contemplating the Origin of the Sun’
Veteran playwright Leow Puay Tin is intrigued by the methods used by a trio of young performance makers to sustain a 12-hour performance.
Performance
Parastoo Theatre: Art, Refuge, Action
The pioneering theatre company, founded and run by Afghan theatre maker and refugee, Saleh Sepas, is creating a practice that enriches the cultural landscape for all Malaysians.
Disability Arts — Expanding Ecosystems, Protecting Foundations
Disability arts researcher Yeongmin Mun reflects on ecosystems, access and platforms in response to the online panel discussion, Ground Up: Building Effective Ecosystems for Disability Arts. The full video is also available to watch, with Singapore Sign Language and Korean Sign Language interpretation, and captions in Korean and English. Art has no borders — that’s …
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장애예술 – 생태계를 확장하며, 토대를 지켜내기
문영민은 생태계와 접근성, 플랫폼 등에 대해서 이야기한 그라운드 업: 장애 예술을 위한 효과적인 생태계 구축에 대한 글을 썼습니다. 싱가포르 수어, 한국 수어, 언어 통역과 한국어와 영어 자막이 제공되는 전체 비디오도 보실 수 있습니다. 예술에 국경이 없다고 했던가. 알레시아 니오, 김원영, 피터 사우 세 작가의 발표를 들으며 장애예술 창작자들의 고민과 시도에도 경계가 없다고 느꼈다. 싱가포르와 한국의 …
Alternative Lessons for Women: Sonia Kwek and Tan Weiying on sex, desire and the erotic
By Aditi Shivaramakrishnan Adapting its title from Lessons for Women <<女诫>>, a text by the first known female Chinese historian, Ban Zhao, Alternative Lessons for Women is a double-bill of two solo works: Hymen Instinct created and performed by Sonia Kwek and What? That’s It? created and performed by Tan Weiying. Hymen Instinct subverts the …
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Brown Is Haram: Kristian-Marc James Paul and Mysara Aljaru reclaim their space
Brown Is Haram: Reconstructing The Brown Narrative is a performance-lecture exploring different aspects of the experience of being brown in Singapore, exploring issues such as social mobility and masculinity. This show is based on the work and ongoing collaborative project of writer and activist Kristian-Marc James Paul and writer-researcher Mysara Aljaru, and is directed by …
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Harrowing and sublime: Topography of Breath 2.0 by Pat Toh
By Chan Sze-Wei (739 words, 4-minute read) In grainy close up, we see segmented views of one woman, fighting to breathe with every fibre of her sinewy body. She grunts, writhes, sweats, hyperventilates. Her body multiplies by video effect but perhaps also by mass audience hallucination. Depending on which way you lean, Pat Toh’s Topography …
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Podcast 77: Fika and Fishy by Patch and Punnet
In this latest podcast episode, Nabilah Said, Matthew Lyon and Naeem Kapadia discuss the recent production of Fika and Fishy by Patch and Punnet, the collective’s first production for the year about the friendship between a dog and a fish. Trigger/Content warning: Allusions to domestic/sexual abuse Nabilah Said (NS): Hello everyone, welcome to the …
Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Hallyu love and cementing disaster
ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources – so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region. In the weekly Southeast Asia Radar, we publish a round-up of content that …
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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, You invited us to write to you after the performance. So here I am, writing. …
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“OCD Love” by L-E-V Dance Company: Mental Illness Plus Dance Equals Ballet and Horror
By Chan Sze-Wei (849 words, 5 minute read) L-E-V Dance company’s OCD Love is tightly choreographed and intense in its physicality, as might be expected from a choreographer issuing from years dancing, choreographing and directing for the iconic Batsheva Company whose Gaga style of dancing and theatrical physicality has become iconic of Israeli contemporary dance. …
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“Four Horse Road”: buried histories and blind spots
By Corrie Tan (2,400 words, 13-minute read) Four Horse Road is The Theatre Practice’s show pony of the year. It’s got a lot of performance buzzwords going for it – site-specific, interactive, multi-generational, multilingual – and promises an epic odyssey into both the history of the company and of the country it shares a birth …
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Pangdemonium’s “The Father”: Dementia Becomes Us
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 …
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“Talk to me and I slap you”: confronting intimacy and violence
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 …
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Rantau Reviews: “Co/exist” & “Private Conversation” in Bangkok
In the middle of the black box studio of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre there is a white rectangle placed on the floor. Above it, a rectangular box is mounted, casting fluorescent light diffused through a white screen. At the periphery of the studio, there are rows of slender pillars attached with fluorescent tubes. …
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Rantau Reviews: “Bangkok Notes”
Tokyo Notes, a 1994 play by Oriza Hirata, was inspired by the 1953 film Tokyo Story by Yasujiro Ozu. The shift from ‘story’ to ‘notes’ forms what could be described as the play’s conceptual frame. While Ozu’s film tracked the story of an elderly couple visiting their children in Tokyo, Hirata’s play, fragmented and elliptical, …
A Short History of the Singaporean Pantomime
By Corrie Tan (2094 words, 20-minute read) The pantomime has come to be associated with a set of recognisable traits: traditionally staged during the winter festive season, they are musical comedies based on folk stories and fairy tales, stuffed with songs, farce and some form of audience participation – with colourful gags for the children …
“Khwaab-Sa”: Shakespeare with masala and magic
By Naeem Kapadia (800 words, 6-minute read) Atul Kumar is no stranger to Shakespeare. The artistic director of Mumbai-based group The Company Theatre was first seen here in 2009 in the title role of Hamlet: The Clown Prince, which featured a troupe of clowns attempting to stage Shakespeare’s tragedy with a good dose of madness …
Tikam-Tikam Japan: Table and Chairs
Recently I caught a round of theatrical experimentations by Southeast Asian and Japanese directors in Tokyo. Called One Table Two Chairs Meeting 2017, it was the second of a 3-year series at the Za-Koenji Theatre. Taking part were Prumsodun Ok (Cambodia), Kamei Juntaro (Japan), Fasyali Fadzly (Malaysia), Chey Chankethya (Cambodia) and Liu Xiaoyi (Singapore). One …
Podcast 31: Emergency Stairs & Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project
Duration: 30 min From 12 December to 24 December 2017, up-and-coming theatre group Emergency Stairs presents Southernmost: One Table Two Chairs Project, a first-of-its-kind intercultural arts festival in Singapore that focuses on intercultural dialogue, through the format of One Table Two Chairs. It seeks to bring prominent and established traditional and contemporary theatre artists from the …
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“Swordfish+Concubine”: Sebuah Teater Epik yang Dramatik
Pada 15 – 18 Disember tahun lalu, Swordfish+Concubine karya Kee Thuan Chye telah dipentaskan di dalam bahasa Mandarin di Pentas 2, KLPAC. Tidak sampai setahun, naskhah ini dipentaskan sekali lagi di KLPAC. Kali ini di Pentas 1, ruang yang lebih besar, dan diarah dan diterbitkan sendiri oleh Kee Thuan Chye dengan barisan pelakon yang baharu …
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The Finger Players’ Contemporary Classics Season 2017: “Poop!” and “The Spirits Play”
Poop! by Chong Tze Chien A family left stranded in the aftermath of a father’s seemingly irresponsible, selfish suicide, must learn to navigate its way through the nooks of grief and crannies of letting go and letting be, all whilst holding to semblances of hope through a widow’s grief, a mother’s denial, and the celebration …
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Pangdemonium’s “Fun Home”: Safety in Numbers
By Patricia Tobin (534 words, 5-minute read) Pangdemonium’s Fun Home is a musical based on the same-titled graphic novel by cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Set in Pennsylvania, Fun Home zigzags between forty-something lesbian cartoonist Alison, “young Alison” as a child, and “medium Alison” as a college student. Her father is an English teacher and director of …
Podcast 28: SIFA 2017 Part 2; International Shows
Duration: 33 mins Hot on the heels of our first podcast on Singapore International Festival of Arts 2017, which focused on the festival’s Singaporean commissions, the second part of our podcast recap zooms in on the international productions, which all saw their Asia-Pacific premieres at the festival. In studio, Chan Sze-Wei, Shawn Chua, Felipe Cervera, Naeem …
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Call for Applications
Deadline extended to 20th June 2017. If you have any questions or need more information, email us: Contact(at)artsequator.com Tags: Criticism Performance