Time Out Singapore: 30 Things We Love About Singapore Theatre

Rising stars

With more students graduating from the various theatre programmes and courses, we’re seeing a lot of new talents bursting onto the scene in recent years. Some of the greatest young actors we’re especially impressed by include Siti Khalijah and Sharda Harrison (both of whom were deliciously ferocious and hilarious in The Necessary Stage’s Poor Thing, and have been making regular appearances in other productions), as well as Erwin Shah Ismail (last seen with a sex toy in Square Moon). 2013 also saw quite a few youngsters making their professional debuts, including Frances Lee and Zachery Ibrahim (as Helen and Carter in Pangdemonium’s Fat Pig), Theresa Wee-Yenko (as Lady Montague in Toy Factory’s Romeo and Juliet, and also a character in the secretive Inside Job) and Ethel Yap. We also saw a lot of energy, passion and potential at several amateur productions, but one young’un that really caught our eye is the 22-year-old Adeeb Fazah, who masterfully co-wrote, directed and acted in Yellow Chair’s fantastic production of You Think, I Thought, Who Confirm? in March – remember his name, he’ll be making it straight for the top soon.

Get involved

If you’ve fallen so hard in love with the stage that you want to get on it (but wish to try it out before enrolling for a full course at one of the universities or colleges), well, you’re in luck. Many of the theatre companies in town have an education arm that caters to all levels, interests and ages. W!ld Rice has just re-launched their 18-month young & W!ld programme for 18- to 26-year-olds hoping to work with esteemed industry professionals (their 2014 season has already started, but keep a look out for their 2015 audition dates), while Act 3 International’s Drama Academy has classes for tots as young as 18 months and up to 15 years old. Interested in puppetry? I Theatre’s Creative Edge teaches that, as well as mime, physical theatre and other elements. Into more quirky, experimental stuff with a touch of dance? Wait for the return of Cake’sIn A Decade. And if you’re keen to just dive right in, Yellow Chair are constantly looking for new, young actors and welcome people with little experience to their auditions – who knows, you might even find your life’s calling after giving a few lines a go!

The mighty pen

We’ve peppered mentions of some brilliant works throughout this feature, but there are a few prolific playwrights behind many of our local classics that really helped put Singapore on the map. Dick Lee and Michael Chiang have both been writing musical after musical since the ’80s, but while the former has barely left the scene since then, he continues to forage into new things, with his most recent work Rising Son being the first straight play he’s ever done; the latter, on the other hand, took an unplanned 14-year hiatus but made a comeback with the well-received camp comedy High Class last year. But the ’90s also saw an army of playwrights bursting onto the scene. There’s the locally-based Malaysian Huzir Sulaiman(co-artistic director of Checkpoint Theatre, and behind works such as Atomic Jaya), Haresh Sharma (who has written more than 100 plays to date and shows little sign of stopping) and Alfian Sa’at (whom we love for both his hilarious and political works as well as epic Facebook rants), while later on in the decade saw the rise of Chong Tze Chien (artistic director of The Finger Players and clinching several Singapore Dramatist and Straits Times Life! Theatre awards) and Jean Tay (whose most recent work, Senang, exquisitely captured the true story of one of our forgotten islands).

Brave new companies

There are now more theatre companies in Singapore than ever before, with new kids joining the block left, right and centre, many of which were formed by friends who met during theatre school. Some of the ones to have been founded in the last couple of years include Couch Theatre (whose first production, Sarah Ruhl’s Melancholy Play, opened to a full house and received critical acclaim last July; their next show, Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, is on from 17-26 Jul), Our Company (their first show, Three Children & Hokkien Me: A Double-Bill, also debuted last July, with Dear Noracoming up later this month), Bound Theatre (the intimate Scroll opened this February, with plans to stage another show next March) and Red Pill Productions (who announced their arrival on the scene last October with Haresh Sharma’s sex. violence. blood. gore and a new work about the local LGBT community coming up in August).

Back in the day

With a whole network of new-fangled technology and modern day inspirations available to us, it’s easy to keep moving forward too quickly. But sometimes it’s worth remembering what brought us here, as well as what came before: long before the faces and places we mention in the feature even existed, people used to enjoy a very different kind of performing art. Traditional Chinese street operas, wayang, for instance, were very popular until the Japanese occupation, and is now a dying breed. The Main Wayang Company, however, still painstakingly tries to preserve the art form, and will be preparing a range of shows for their tenth anniversary this year at the Night Festival, National Day Celebrations and other events. Getai has likewise been around for decades, and indeed is still popular in heartland areas throughout the mid-year Hungry Ghost Festival; if you want to catch it earlier,the Lien Foundation and Ang Chin Moh Foundation are currently staging a production called Die Die Must Say (4 & 10 Jun) in a campaign to get people to talk about death and dying. Other styles include wayang kulit(shadow puppet play that are typically centred on epic tales of gods) from Java and bangsawan (a type of Malay opera that usually depicts traditional legends about love and treachery), though these are less commonly seen today.

A new gen of playwrights

With the increasingly robust support system for budding playwrights and companies, there are, unsurprisingly, a great number of new faces cropping up. Faith Ng and Joel Tan have both been making waves for the past few years as associates with Checkpoint Theatre: the former being the creator ofFor Better or For Worse and the latter having written plays like People and W!ld Rice’s Jack and the Beansprout. Dora Tan and Michelle Tan also impressed with their works at SRT’s Made in Singapore series last year with the hilarious yet thought- provoking A Wedding, A Funeral and Lucky, the Fish and the chilling Stand Behind the Yellow Line. And try to catch the second staging of Wang Liansheng’s The Boy Inside at The Studios, too.

Imported goodness

While Singapore has spent the past few decades painstakingly building up a local repertoire of theatrical works, it’s still nice to have the luxury of catching West End or Broadway shows without having to necessarily get on a plane. Luckily, we have easy access to them year-round: last year alone, the SRTintroduced Singapore to Shun-Kin, Musashi and The Suit as part of the 3 Titans of Theatre series, while ABA Productions brought over the West End’s A Woman in Black and the first ever visit of Shakespeare’s Globe with an all-female production of The Taming of the Shrew. The British Theatre Playhouse, co-founded by John Faulkner – a former West End actor himself – and his wife, also routinely import shows from Blighty, including The Mousetrap (2013) and Yes, Prime Minister (which ended its run last month). Meanwhile, musical fans can enjoy big glitzy affairs at MasterCard Theatres, presented by Lunchbox Productions and BASE entertainment – their next show, The Sound of Music (11-27 Jul) will see seven talented local kids, who won their roles through an open audition, perform alongside the pros.

Government support

Yes, as we mentioned above, the arts and state do not necessarily co-exist peacefully all the time. But it’s also true that Singapore’s government is one of the few in the world that is actively pumping money into developing the arts (the UK, for instance, has been battling against cuts in funding for years, to no avail), with several grants, schemes and other platforms from the NAC available to theatre groups and practitioners. And then, of course, we have the kickass Arts NMPs. The former The Substation artistic director, Audrey Wong, and actress Janice Koh have both made their marks as formidable fighters for the arts community, and while Koh will be stepping down from the role after two and a half years this summer, her successor will be announced shortly (although Drama Box’s artistic director Kok Heng Leun was the only person to have put his name forward at the time of print, with the blessings of many in the industry).

Class A alter egos

There are plenty of hilarious people on our stages (as Dream Academy’s recent Happy Ever Laughter proved for the second time this April), but out of the lot, we really do owe a lot of laughs to Hossan Leong. Not only is he funny himself, his Hossan Leong Show also gave rise to some of our most memorable onstage personas: remember Karen Tan’s civil servant character,Lorrie Chia? How about Judee Tan’s Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor,Teow Chow Moi (aka TCM TCM)? Happily, they’ve taken on the roles so well that they occasionally appear even outside Mr Double Confirm’s shows, such as during Dream Academy’s Happy Ever Laughter and Crazy Christmas. Another guy we love has got to be Sebastian ‘Broadway Beng’ Tan, who mixed his love of Broadway with his ah beng roots – and a devoted flock of chiobus – for a truly unique persona. And if you want to get a hit of that right now, search for his Hokkien version of Bruno Mars’ ‘Just The Way You Are’.

Graduating talents

It’s a win-win situation when it comes to school productions: yes, they might not be as polished as the ones put out by professional companies, but everyone’s got to start somewhere – plus tickets for these are usually substantially cheaper than all the other shows out there, and you never know what new talents you might be surprised by. The graduation play season has just ended with some fantastic productions on offer, but when next May rolls around, keep an eye out for what the kids from Lasalle, SOTA, NUS, NTU and NAFA get up to.

Getting more bang for your buck

If you want to find out more about a show and have a chance to chat with the cast and creative team, one tip is to call up the theatre company in advance and ask them which night their post-show talks will take place, as many performances will be accompanied by at least one of them. Most theatre festivals (including SIFA and The Studios) also have public education or engagement programmes that provide workshops, talks or other activities to help audiences gain a deeper understanding of what the main performances are about. Plus, they generally don’t cost much either, so why not try to get more out of the shows?

Improv anywhere

Forward planning and rehearsals are all good and well, but sometimes it’s good to be a little spontaneous – and The Improv Company (formed by previous members of NUS Stage’s IMPROVables from 2010-2013) does a great job of spreading that free spirit. They meet up every Saturday at The Improv Den, where the two-hour sessions are designed to introduce participants to the basics of improvised theatre, while also performing their side-splitting skits monthly at various venues around town. Tapestry Playback Theatre is another group worth checking out. If you’re not familiar, playback theatre is a form of improv where a play is formed on the spot based on the audience’s life stories. Tapestry was founded in 2002 and remains the first and only one of its kind – their most recent show, Left Behind, took place last May.

A healthy dose of Shakespeare

While The Bard was unlikely to have ever visited Singapore, we’re pretty sure that he would be happy to know his works are very much alive and kicking on our little island. This year alone, we saw four productions of Romeo and Juliet(by Toy Factory, Lasalle’s Level 1 and 2 drama students, Singapore Dance Theatre and the UK’s TNT Productions which, if anything, gives a taste of the spectrum of performances we have to offer). The SRT also celebrated Shakespeare’s 450th birthday by sending an actor decked out in Elizabethan frills around town, pictured – part of a publicity stunt for their annual Shakespeare in the Park, which was back last month with The Merchant of Venice. November will also see the return of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, this time with the delightful comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (13-16 Nov).

The backstage heroes

It’s the end of the show. The cast take a bow, and then raise their arms to gesture vaguely into the distance as the audience continues to cheer – but really, the backstage crew deserve more credit than they get. Their jobs are essentially to make sure everything runs smoothly – from costumes to lights and sound to set, they all need to be meticulously planned and executed – while the whole thing wouldn’t have been possible without the producers and directors to begin with. See our backstage heroes feature as we get some of the best people in their respective fields to tell us what their roles are really all about, so next time you clap at the theatre, you know exactly what – and who – you’re clapping for.