Lower Depths – 61 Kerbau Road

Wednesday 9 June to Saturday 12 June
61 Kerbau Road (premises of Maya Dance Theatre)
Performance Timing: click here
Admission: $25 (Admission limited to 10 people per session)
Advisory: Contains Mature Theme.
To buy tickets, please call 63377800 (Chris) or email chris@substation.org.
Supported by The Substation.

In this highly unique performance, TheatreStrays, a new physical theatre group led by The Substation Associate Artist Elizabeth de Roza, explores the plight of Singapore’s poor and marginalized through the lens of Maxim Gorky’s classic play, The Lower Depths. The work is being produced by The Substation’s Associate Director Audrey Wong.

Performance Timing (3 sessions per day):

Wednesday & Thursday –
7.30pm to 8.30pm
9pm to 10pm
10.30pm to 11.30pm

Friday & Saturday –
7.30pm to 8.30pm
9pm to 10pm
11pm to 12am

Performed by: Sharda Harrison, Oon Shu An, Matthew Heys and Lim Jun Jie
Directed by Elizabeth de Roza
Dramaturg: Shelly Quick
Sound design: Terence Lau

Reframed in a Singaporean context, this site-responsive, physically devised work – also produced by The Substation’s Associate Director Audrey Wong – will take place at Maya Dance Theatre’s shophouse on 61 Kerbau Road.

Lower Depths – 61 Kerbau Road tracks the impoverished lives of four characters over the course of a day. On the periphery, lacking a sense of power over their own destinies and forced to share a cramped living space, the piece will highlight how these people struggle to make sense of their existence. Inspired by the indigent in areas such as Desker Road, Geylang and abandoned buildings, this elegiac production aims to invoke a sense of empathy for the less fortunate in our society. Rather than a restaging of Gorky’s original, the play is loosely adapted and has been devised by the actors and director over the past few months, while TheatreStrays has been training together as a group since November 2008.

The performance is directed by The Substation’s Associate Artist Elizabeth de Roza, while The Substation has also supported the group with rehearsal/training space and by inviting them to participate in an exchange of performers’ training & theatre-making methodology with Pro-Rodopi of Bulgaria during SeptFest last year.

In order to immerse the viewers fully and intimately into the world of the play, each showing is limited to an audience of 10 persons. Upon entering the shophouse, the audience will be viscerally transported into the world of the inhabitatnts, with the sights, sounds and scents of the location as part of the experience. Proximity to the characters and the action that unfolds will invite the audience to become close observers of the life-stories revealed in the performance.

Says Elizabeth de Roza: “In the Lower Depths – 61 Kerbau Road, we hope to create an intimate experience. The performance will be both highly stimulating and interactive, allowing actor and audience to awaken to the total sensory environment that a play brings to the surroundings and vice versa.”

Lower Depths – 61 Kerbau Road is TheatreStrays’ first public performance. In addition to artistic director Elizabeth De Roza, TheatreStrays is comprised of Oon Shu An, Sharda Harrison and Matthew Heys, all recent graduates from LASALLE College of the Arts, and Lim Jun Jie from NAFA. For this debut performance, the group has also invited director Shelly Quick to join them as dramaturg, and Terence Lau to create a soundscape for the production.

For more info about the performance, please call 96287009 (Elizabeth de Roza) or email ederoza@singnet.com.sg.

About TheatreStrays

TheatreStrays is a Singaporean performance and research physical theatre group that has been regularly training together since November 2008. We are bound together by our passion for theatre and our belief in the importance of actors’ preparation as the foundation of an actor’s performance. We work as an ensemble that practices continual and progressive training throughout the year. TheatreStrays focuses on Asian Theatre practices in combination with Contemporary Theatre training for actors.

We believe that theatre has to connect with people, and with our humanity.

TheatreStrays’ members comprise established and young theatre practitioners, including artists who have worked for many years in local theatre with groups such as Asia-in-Theatre Research Centre, The Necessary Stage, Cake Theatre, Buds Theatre Company, and The Substation.

The group was the brainchild of Elizabeth de Roza, a movement-based theatre artist and educator and Associate Artist of The Substation. Group members are: Sharda Harrison, Matthew Heys, Oon Shu An and Lim Jun Jie. For their first production of ‘The Lower Depths’, the group has invited director Shelly Quick to come on board as dramaturg.