Striving to experience Natasha on their own terms, Xiao Ting Teo runs through the gamut of emotions, from exhaustion to uncertainty, to amusement, to moments of connection at the Singapore Biennale 2022.
Natasha: A Biennale By Any Other Name Read More »
Azrin Fauzi mengulas “Two Lines in A Square”, persembahan yang dilancar di Taipei dan Kuala Lumpur dari dua perspektif berbeza.
Memori Menonton “Two Lines In a Square”: Penjara Bahasa dan Sang Tahanan Bebas Separa Read More »
“Make Hantus Great Again”, Teatre Ekamatra’s latest production, combines kooky supernatural characters with social commentary this Halloween.
Make Hantus Great Again: Breaking Bread With the Undead Read More »
Faisal Tehrani’s ‘Ghaib’, a complex portrayal of family, agency and voice, contends that real emancipation is still elusive in our society.
Ghaib: Can the Unheard Speak? Read More »
In Wild Rice’s restaging of Animal Farm, Rebecca G finds a production that leavens the darker aspects of the text by drawing out the absurdities of the narrative.
Reconsidering the Commandments with Wild Rice’s Animal Farm (2022) Read More »
While acknowledging the value of art in addressing national trauma, Pristine de Leon raises questions about the limits, and ethics of representation on stage.
A Gap in the Telling: Review of Virgin Labfest 17 Read More »
From technological frustrations to climate catastrophes to queer representation, the Ilham Art Show has it all. Mira Sharon untangles the pieces which prize on the themes of family, love and loss.
Ilham Art Show 2022: An Introspection Into What Was Read More »
Remotes x Quantum, a Singapore-Philippines collaboration, is a daring, experimental work that never quite attains cohesion, which Jennifer Anne Champion finds is on-brand for SIFA 2022’s experimental nature. This performance is a part of the Singapore International Festival of the Arts.
Remotes X Quantum: Daring Collaboration Defies Cohesion Read More »
Dr Shahril Salleh reflects on the challenges and rewards of intercultural collaboration in the Singapore Festival of the Arts 2022’s opening show, MEPAAN, using a beloved local drink as an analogy.
MEPAAN: The Air Bandung Conundrum Read More »
By Eugene Tan (1,503 words, 5-minute read) As has become customary for every review of a Singapore International Festival of the Arts (SIFA) 2021 show (or as the festival programme now calls them, “content”), we should applaud the fact that these shows are happening at all. After all, COVID-19 restrictions are wildly challenging for artmaking
The Commission: Why do these three meet again? Read More »
We recently announced our selected resident writers for the inaugural AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency, focusing on the development and promotion of critical writing about arts and culture in Southeast Asia. They are: Nhuan Dong from Saigon; Dwiki Aprinaldi from Yogyakarta; Eddie Wong from Petaling Jaya; Wilda Yanti Salam from Makassar; Mariah Reodica from
AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency: Meet the Writers (Part 2) Read More »
We recently announced our selected resident writers for the inaugural AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency, focusing on the development and promotion of critical writing about arts and culture in Southeast Asia. They are: Nhuan Dong from Saigon; Dwiki Aprinaldi from Yogyakarta; Eddie Wong from Petaling Jaya; Wilda Yanti Salam from Makassar; Mariah Reodica from Las
AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency: Meet the Writers (Part 1) Read More »
ArtsEquator and Goethe-Institut Singapore are pleased to announce the launch of the inaugural AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency 2021/2022. This is a digital micro-residency focusing on the development and promotion of critical writing about arts and culture in Southeast Asia. The residency programme is unique in its positioning of the online editorial space as
Open Call for AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency 2021/2022 Read More »
by Kathy Rowland ArtsEquator sometimes feels like a mythical creature. Looking back over the past 4 years, it takes the shape of a unicorn, a joyful improbability. With Covid-19, it can weigh like an albatross, cash flow statements instead of wing span, web traffic in place of talons. Perhaps it is a hippogriff, half earthbound
ArtsEquator, Deadline Now Read More »
By Elaine Chiew (1,600 words, eight-minute read) Art historian Patrick Flores first addressed the phenomenon of the artist-curator in his seminal essay Turns in Tropics [1] as someone who holds a certain power and who has become a key figure in shaping the art history of contemporary Southeast Asian art. Manit Sriwanichpoom’s exhibition Rediscovering Forgotten
In the assembly hall of Chatsworth International School hang six statues of Sir Stamford Raffles. However, these aren’t your typical heroic effigies of Singapore’s chief colonist. They’re headless, legless, composed of patchwork fabric with Javanese words stitched into their skins, dangling from the ceiling at odd angles, as if participating in an erotic rope bondage
The Artists’ Colony: A Review of OH! Emerald Hill 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 »
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 »
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 »
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 »
By Akanksha Raja (920 words, four-minute read) On the heels of Objectifs Centre’s January showcase “we will have been young”, a group exhibition of works by fledgling Southeast Asian photographers themed on contemporary youth culture and the future, comes a very different solo showcase. This latest exhibition reverses its gaze, looking backwards on snippets of
Lui Hock Seng: The Past and Passing Read More »
There is an unspeakable tranquil that washes over the audience seated inside the chapel at Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film in Singapore. For the first five minutes of Be Longing by Sara Tan and Yejin Kwon, the windows are thrown open and we watch the traffic of Middle Road roll past. Passers-by unknowingly become performers as
“Be Longing” moves between home and away Read More »
By Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai (1,150 words, 8-minute read) The final instalment in Ravindran Drama Group’s trilogy, Adukku Veetu Annasamy 3, picks up right after the lovers Rajendran (Annasamy and Kokilavani’s son) and Prema (Panchatcharam and Gunasundari’s daughter) have parted ways. Their incessantly nosy neighbour, Sathiavathy, is cajoling the family into finding Prema a groom in India. The
“Adukku Veetu Annasamy 3”: a rip-roaring trilogy comes to a close Read More »
The following roundtable discussion was held as part of the Lyn Gardner Theatre Reviewing Training Programme. Particpants Teo Dawn, Ezekiel Oliveira, Isaac Lim, Patricia Tobin, and Richard Chung discussed Displaced by Ground Cover Theatre, staged at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018. The play examined the migrant experience through the lives of three women from different backgrounds,
“Displaced” by Ground Cover Theatre at the Singapore Fringe: A Roundtable Read More »
By Naeem Kapadia (885 words, 5-minute read) It’s an exciting time for the emerging playwright in Singapore. Workshops, residencies and other artistic opportunities abound to develop and showcase fresh work, often in collaboration with theatre companies. These include platforms such as The Wright Stuff by Toy Factory, The Orange Production by The Necessary Stage and
“Platform Series: Journeys”: Of Skin and Sole Read More »
By Corrie Tan (1228 words, 10-minute read) A man is rising from the water. The sea is birthing him: his closely-cropped hair, his bare chest and shoulders, his damp sarong clinging to his thighs. On land, another man with a shorn scalp is sitting cross-legged in the sand and mud, his distended lips pulled back
“Cinta Tuah Jebat”: Love on the Rocks Read More »
By Wong Wen Pu (600 words, 4-minute read) Forked by Jo Tan follows the experiences of one Jeanette Peh (played by Ethel Yap), a Singaporean student, as she heads to London to study acting, against the vehement objections of her father and the reluctant acquiescence of her mother. Already a minor celebrity in Singapore through
“Forked” by Jo Tan: An Uneven Production Read More »
By Bernice Lee (722 words, 5-minute read) Jo Tan’s first full-length play Forked hits plenty of right notes. High energy, uncomfortably honest and deliberately racist, it’s funny because it’s true. In spite of its great momentum however, the play’s pace feels weighed down by its thematic frames, just as the characters are stuck within their
“Forked” by Jo Tan: Shapeshifting Identities Read More »
By Richard Chung (738 words, 7 minute read) Jo Tan’s playwriting debut offers a simple yet familiar story of one Singaporean girl with big dreams. In Forked, Ethel Yap plays Jeanette, a young aspiring actor who heads to London for drama school. Upon arrival in London, Jeanette gets the biggest culture shock of her life
“Forked”: Privilege Gets Served Read More »
![Installation view of Maile Meyer & Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick’s KĪPUKA [for “Natasha”] (2022), as part of Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum](https://artsequator.s3.ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/2022/12/Installation-view-of-Maile-Meyer-Drew-Kahu%CA%BBaina-Brodericks-KIPUKA-for-Natasha-2022-as-part-of-Singapore-Biennale-2022-named-Natasha.-Image-courtesy-of-Singapore-Art-Museum-1620x1080.jpg)
