The Commission: Why do these three meet again?
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…
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…
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…
CRITICS LIVE: A post-show response to “Merdeka”
Join critics Corrie Tan, Nabilah Said, Carolyn Oei and Teo Xiao Ting in a post-show conversation about W!ld Rice’s Merdeka. Critics Live is a critics-led programme series created by ArtsEquator to give arts audiences an insight into how critics formulate…
“Press Gang”: confessions of yet another ex-ST journalist
By Corrie Tan (2,015 words, 10-minute read) “My concern now is how to nurture the critical sensitivity of the playwright, and for that matter theatre and literature and all the other arts. Because I think we have a way of…
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…
Lessons in “Grandmother Tongue”
By Patricia Tobin (483 words, 4-minute read) “Have you eaten?” is the go-to greeting for Singaporean Chinese families. Typically asked in dialect (“Jiak ba buay?”), or sometimes Mandarin (“Chi bao ma?”), “Have you eaten?” is a sign of courtesy towards…
W!ld Rice’s “Hotel” at Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival
By Ben Brooker (910 words, 5-minute read) In 2015 Singapore celebrated ‘SG50’, the city-state’s golden jubilee, marking 50 years of independence as a sovereign nation. Commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts to respond to that year’s theme of…
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…
Photo Essay: Backstage Pass to Wild Rice’s “La Cage Aux Folles”
Photography By Zane Gan, text by Sean Ghazi Photographer Zane Gan tracks Sean Ghazi, who plays George in Wild Rice’s La Cage Aux Folles, capturing the camaraderie, rituals and water bottles that keep the show going on. The hit musical,…