What's On / Performing Arts / Archive

October 2007

Awakening Room :
Awakening in Motion

Be enticed by the profound yet dramatic movement pondering upon Love, Anger and Beauty. With LOVE, we nurture and grow to be with people, to meet people and to love one another. We ponder upon the meaning of love and what it can motivate us to do. When ANGER comes to play, negativity and criticism lingers in some people’s lives, making them make extreme choices out of their own perception and emotions. BEAUTY comes from being at peace with oneself. To accept and recognize who you are and recognize that we are not perfect but special. We are who we make out to be.

August 2007

Yang Ming :
The Mismatched Girl

A whimsical play about a little girl who has the penchant of wearing mismatched slippers wherever she goes. And her sole pleasure in life is to watch the lights of the HDB flats in the night as it shines the brightest in the country. One day, an old man accidentally joins her in her mischievous pleasure. This shared pleasure of gazing at the bright lights unknowingly forges a special friendship between the both of them in one of the unlikliest places. Written by Yang Ming and directed by Gemia Foo.

August 2007

Agni Kootthu (Theatre of Fire :
Transportation

TRANSPORTATION explores the pain of the exilic journey - penal

transportation - migration, experience of enslavement, forced removal for labour, oppression and exploitation, focusing on this as both an individual and as a collective experience. The play captures the displacement and suffering, cultural denigration and crisis of identity that ensues from all forms of estrangement in the colonial period in the penal convict settlements. It reconstructs the experiences of convicts transported overseas to prisons and penal settlements in South and Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century to the penal settlements established by the British,from the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.

July 2007

The Substation & Little Red Shop:
Project Chiaroscuro

Four fresh actors. Four books. Three mentor-directors/ Put them together to create four new dramatic monologues. Project Chiaroscuro 2007 is a new incarnation of a theatre experiment first presented in 2006 as Chiaroscuro: The Monologue Sessions. Come and see new dramatic works by fresh voices in local theatre: Libby Gott, Sol Iglesias, Sharda Harrison and Mayura Baweja. Mentored by Samatha Scott-Blackhall, Michael Corbidge and Noor Effendy Ibrahim.

 

May 2007

Jayanthi Siva and Raka Maitra present:
The Grey Festival

The Grey Festival ~ The Indian Contemporary Dance Festival, is an intensive and exploratory 5-day festival that journeys into the open discussion on new tools and creative sharing of ideas in the arena of Indian Contemporary Dance (ICD). The festival is significant in three respects; it is the first of its kind in Singapore, it explores Indian choreography in the contemporary idiom and thirdly, creates a platform for emerging artists who are willing to experiment.

The Festival will include invited dance practitioners and scholars, both local and from abroad, to present works and to engage in discussion about their respective ICD practice and professional development. This is to create a critical and supportive environment for peer to peer communication and to support and challenge practitioners and audiences alike to enable a wide range of approaches to be addressed, to develop ideas and to support collaborative practice.


International (India)
* Astad Deboo
* Anita Ratnam
* Sadanand Menon
* Ajit Das Bhaskaran

Singapore
* Nirmala Seshadri
* Sanjeev Purushottum
* Priyadarshini Ghosh
* Santha Bhaskar
* T Sasitharan

May 2007

The Substation & Magdalena (Singapore) present
Cristina Castrillo/Teatro delle Radic:
Umbral

“About theatre, about the actor, in truth, about life. Through the emotions and the images Cristina Castrillo returns to the roots.” Don't miss this return visit by acclaimed actress Cristina Castrillo from Switzerland, who wowed Singapore audiences with her stage presence and theatre-craft at last year's Crossroads 2006 International Festival of Women in Theatre. Umbral is the first part of a project called "Travel's Note". It deals with journeys, enclosing the need to reflect around a creative path; that, as each important travel includes not simply the map of a way, but also the images, the meeting, the uncertainties, the blind-alley of a long journey.

Cristina has over three decades of dedication to professional theatre: from the foundation in the 1970s of Libre Teatro Libre, one of the most famous Latin American companies in Argentina to the birth of the Teatro delle Radici in Switzerland in 1980. Dedicating all her efforts to the research of elements that are basis of an actor's training, she has contributed to the creation of collective and individual shows in which the actor is always at the very heart of the inventive process. She has created, performed, and directed numerous shows that have been performed around the world. In addition to performance, Cristina has created, in cooperation with colleagues of the Teatro delle Radici, a “Theatre Lab School” for foreign actors. Her method has been presented at countless workshops that she has been invited to lead in different countries in Europe, Central and Latin America, United States, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand.


Cristina will also run a two-day workshop at The Substation and host a forum on the actor's craft, as part of The Substation's new programme In the Works: Performance Research Lab, which is aimed at nurturing the professional development of performing artists and enhancing the understanding of performance craft. Please check www.substation.org for more details and to register.

April 2007

Little Red Shop and The Substation present:
Between Woman and Man: The Erasure of Verena Tay

A theatrical project between Verena Tay and Richard Chua exploring female-male energies through storytelling, movement and sound, in collaboration with The Substation’s Associate Artist Scheme.
What does it mean to be female? What does it mean to be male? What is theatre? What is storytelling? The first two questions about personal and gender identity have been bothering me as a person for quite some time. The latter two questions have been also bugging me, a theatre practitioner who ventured recently into storytelling. To find answers to these questions, I invited Richard Chua to help me in this theatrical exploration of various gender archetypes present in ancient folktales from around the world. And now, we would like to invite you: Come journey with us for two rollercoaster evenings of exciting discovery!!! ~ Verena Tay

We grew up with fables and they seem to tell us morals. Since we were kids, there was no other choice but to think they were the truths. Are they really what we should live by? I approached Verena with this question, since she is a storyteller, but she did not say anything. Therefore I decided to explore this by inviting her to be the characters in her stories – to see if these morals do work on her. In addition, I hope she could be all of them, both as a man and a woman. This is going to be fun! ~ Richard Chua

April 2007

The Substation Collaboration:
Because We Have Big Mouths

What do ants do when they approach a building? They crawl into its crevices and maybe even make their homes in the cracks. Responding to the theme of Master and Slave, and the narratives of pain, subservience, power and politics, Rizman Putra, Noor Effendy Ibrahim, Zulkifle Mahmod and Zai Kuning take to the The Substation Gallery like ants to honey, occupying its corners as a way of finding a response to notions of injury, sacrifice and healing. This is the second time such a collaboration has taken place between these established artists from different artistic genres to create a multidisciplinary presentation that defies categorization.

 

April 2007

The Substation Literary Sessions with BooksActually:
How to cook a wolf: a two-step women's poetry session

How To Cook A Wolf is a two-part collective poetry session celebrating
the women poets of our time: held in conjunction with a wine served session at The Substation Theatre on the night of Friday, 13th April; with a following tea party at BooksActually on the afternoon of Saturday, 14th April. The technique of fashioning mere words into the linguistic art known as poetry is very similar tothe culinary craft of food preparation – a skill commonly associated with the female – requiring both creative and stark virtuosity.
Featured poets-

Sharanya Mannivannan, Angeline Yap, Kristina Tom, Koh Tsin Yen, Rachel Au Yong, Teng Qian Xi, Heng Siok Tin (as read by Jasmine Seah)
Donations welcome at the entrance

April 2007

The Substation and George Chua present:
Silent Agreement II

Silent Agreement is a series of concerts presented by George Chua with The Substation as a platform for presenting sound art performances for small audiences with a small selection of artists for each concert. It focuses on the unique practice of each individual artist; the materiality of sound and the artist dedication to the form as an uncompromising approach to the experience of listening.

There will be two solo sets followed by one duet improvisation set.
Read more about George Chua and his work with The Substation here (pdf, 372kb)

April 2007

The Substation Performance Lab :
A Talk by Max Schumacher

Max Schumacher is the founder of post theater, an interdisciplinary performing arts think tank; his pieces have toured around Germany, the US, Korea, Singapore, Austria, Italy and Serbia, and he has been invited to several international festivals. Earlier this year, he was an artist in residence with the Taipei Artist Village. Singapore audiences may remember The Real Forensic which played at The Substation in 2001, and "Heavenly Bento" (conceptualised with Hiroko Tanahashi) which was presented at the 2005 Singapore Arts Festival. "The Real Forensic" was a performance by an actor playing a forensic scientist, who turns out to be the forensic himself. And "Heavenly Bento" was about the founding of the Sony Corporation. Max, who studied dramaturgy at Humboldt University Berlin and performance studies at New York University, will talk about post theater's upcoming Nanking Project, as well as past projects.

March 2007

Teater Ekamatra presents::
Mat Champion: The Musical

Mat Champion : The Musical is an interactive theatre performance for the young and the young at heart. The play relates the comic and zany adventures of three tragic-comic heroes taken from Malay fables (Cerita Jenaka). A dark shadow looms over the city as three evil villains, with the aide of their latest invention, pull of the crime of the century: The Stealing of Language. All over the city, communication is breaking down as people lose their ability to utilize language. The three heroes; Mat Smart, Mat Kental and Mat Bunga, jump to the rescue of the speechless victims. But in their path lies countless mysteries filled with dangerous and difficult challenges.

Through catchy tunes, energetic dance sequences, positive role-playing and the help of the young audience, the heroes race against time to save Language or lose it forever. Will they fail or will they succeed and forever be remembered as the "champions" of their community?

The Musical will feature choreography and original songs composed by Rizman Putra, the charismatic singer of popular local band "Tiramisu".

February 2007

Hong Kong Spotlight:
I-CITY: Animation showing curated by Hong Kong Arts Centre

i-city is Arts Centre's first animation creation project. A collaboration by more than ten young animators (among them Hong Kong Independent Short Films and Video Awards winners) of different artistic style that took a year, from inception to completion, to come into being, it is Hong Kong's first ever large scale collective creation. Comprised of nine animations, each an execution in individual style and content and technique breakthrough, some nostalgic, some critical, some hopeful, but all try to bring i-city to life in animation, the work is a tribute to i-city by thirteen animators in fluidic poetry.

  1. Nonsense Noise – FU Lilian and FU Vivian
  2. The Tired City – CHAN John and HUNG Pam
  3. I am fine – CHUNG Wai-kuen, Welby
  4. Gentle Rain – Tamshui
  5. Lonely Moon – SO Man Yee, Stella
  6. The Vanishing City – CHEUNG Kwong Chuen
  7. The Great Actors and the Citizen – TSANG Snowman and CHUNG Thomas
  8. My Swallow – NG Seung Ho, Peter
  9. Corroder – rice 5

February 2007

Hong Kong Spotlight:
Yellow Wallpaper English drama performed by Theatre Action

Enter the mind of a woman in the grip of a mental breakdown in this dramatisation of the haunting late-19th-century novella by American author, anthropologist, critic and socialist feminist Charlotte Gilman Perkins.

Perkins' semi-autobiographical tale charts the gradual mental disintegration, encroaching hysteria and delusional psychosis of a comfortably upper-middle-class American woman suffering from severe depression.

Two actors represent competing aspects of the character's schizophrenic tendencies; projected images suggest her hallucinations; the songs and incidental music, performed live, underscore the woman's fragile mental state. And the tale resonates across the centuries – the use of two Hong Kong-Chinese female cast-members emphasises the relevance of the issues in a modern Asian context. Adapted and directed by Mike Ingham; performed by Jessica Yeung and Eliza Yau with musician Ben Robinson. Hong Kong-based drama group Theatre Action was founded in 1997 with the aim of promoting transcultural, linguistically plural theatre.

This is the programme of both City Festival 2007 and Spotlight Hong Kong in Singapore.

December 2006

Agni Kootthu (Theatre Of Fire) presents:
O$P$

Rated: RA-18

A monologue based on the world of loan sharks, their runners and their victims. ëZELOí (Zero), the most feared in the business, boasts about the ëups and downsí of his profession and his conflicts with his clients. He stumble into his ex-wife and child with her lover. A fierce argument erupts.

December 2006

Stages presents:
Pulau - An island tale

The story happens on an island smaller than ours, barely large enough for two. With nowhere to go and nothing to do, they reminisce, talk, love, feed and play. It keeps them sane. An examination of our environment, our identity and things we have to forego. It reflects on the meaning, or the lack of it, in our existence. Can they find a way out?

PULAU was first performed by STAGES directed by Adrian Tan, featuring Judy Ngor and Edric Hsu. The play was nominated for Best Original Script in the 2005 Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards.

December 2006

H.O.M.E and Migrant Voices presents:
Voices

A distant future. A faraway land. Uncertainty and excitement in her mind. This is the story of a young woman crossing the seas to Singapore to work as a domestic worker. Little did she know, her life will never be the same again.

Voices is a theatrical and musical performance by residents of H.O.M.E, a shelter for migrant workers in distress to commemorate International Human Rights' Day (10th Dec) and International Migrants' Day (18th Dec). Together with arts group, Migrant Voices, the play aims to celebrate the artistic talents of foreign workers in Singapore.

December 2006

The Salvation Army THQ Youth Department presents:
Youth Arts Fiesta

Programme Line-up: A showcase of short video by PDP Changkat and PDP Bendemeer; A 20 min. play - PDP Changkat, PDP eastview, PDP Springfield; Stomp & musical performance by PDP Mayflower; Mask & costume performance by Gracehaven; Art installation exhibition- PDP Springfield, PDP EastView and PDP Mayflower and street magic.

Sherman Ong is facilitating the short video and Dovan Ong is facilitating the arts installation.

December 2006

Ravindran Drama Group presents:
ëNil! Gavani! Sel!í (Stop! Observe! Go!)

Dance is the fever gripping today's Indian youths; so much energy and enthusiasm channelled in dance that it is displacing priority to their studies. The youth also faces new materialistic demands, with young girls finding ways and means to meet these needs. Inspired by real life events, ëNil! Gavani! Sel!í (Stop! Observe! Go!) hopes to alert and educate of the impending social costs at hand.

One of the prevailing issues faced by our society today, which need urgent attention, is the sudden growing interest our Indian youths are showing in dance. Our youth are showing more interest and enthusiasm in dance instead of excelling in their studies. The director is not trying to say that dancing is wrong, but he feels that the time and energy the youths spend on dance aspects can be channelled more fruitfully towards their studies.

Another concern that the director wishes to highlight in the play is about the ëservicesí provided by young girls. Due to the materialistic demands amongst the youth, young girls are finding ways and means to meet these demands, thus going wayward.

Tamils not speaking in their mother tongue and other social and family issues are also touched upon in the play. The director hopes to alert the public, especially parents of youth of the impending danger at hand.

For more info, go to www.rdg.org.sg