Within an isolated cell, a writer tries to retain her imagination and freedom by writing stories and letters to her daughter, even as she resists attempts by her jailor to force a written confession out of her.

Meanwhile, within the magical world that the writer creates, her young heroine, Ann, similarly defies the authorities to put her stories on the page and bring her brother back to life. However, as pressures on the writer intensify in the real world, she is forced to choose between her stories and her own daughter.

Before long, the boundaries between the two worlds dissolve, and events go spinning out of her control in both her real and imagined life.

Written by Jean Tay (Everything but the Brain, Boom) and co-directed by US-based Singaporean theatre/filmmaker Mei Ann Teo (Lyrics from Lockdown) and Benjamin Ho (Paper Monkey Theatre), the workshop production of The Shape of a Bird evokes a magical world of warring birds and cicadas through the creative use of puppetry, brought to life by performers Tan Kheng Hua, Brendon Fernandez, Jean Toh and Thomas Pang.

Credit source: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2016

Inspired by Antigone as well as stories from the Cultural Revolution, The Shape of a Bird evokes a magical world of warring birds and cicadas through the creative use of puppetry. Within an isolated cell, a Writer tries to retain her imagination and freedom by writing stories and letters to her daughter. She forges a tentative friendship with her jailor, even as she resists his attempts to force a confession out of her. In the meantime, she creates a magical world of birds and cicadas in her mind, which features a young heroine, Ann, who similarly defies the authorities to put her stories on the page and bring her brother back to life. However, as the pressures on the Writer intensify in the real world, she is forced to choose between her stories and her own daughter. Gradually, the boundaries between the two worlds dissolve, and events go spinning out of the Writer’s control, in both her real and imagined life.

The play was supported under the Centre’s Guest Room programme earlier in 2015 where the text was presented in a read to an invited group of audience members comprising of playwrights, producers and theatre practitioners.

Co-producer/ Playwright – Jean Tay
Jean Tay graduated in 1997 with a double degree in creative writing and economics from Brown University, USA. She has been nominated thrice for Best Original Script at The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards, winning for Everything but the Brain in 2006. For her fiction, she was awarded Weston Prize for Fiction from Brown, as well as the 1st and 3rd prizes from the National Arts Council’s Golden Point Short Story competition in 1995 and 2001 respectively.

Jean was attached to the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) as Resident Playwright from 2006 to 2009, and since the start of 2012, has been helming SRT’s Young Company’s Writing Programme. She is also currently an adjunct lecturer in playwriting at Nanyang Technological University. Her plays Everything but the Brain and Boom have been published by Epigram Books, and Boom is currently used as an ‘O’ and ‘N’ Level literature text.

Jean’s most recent projects include being scriptwriter for the 2015 National Day Parade Golden Jubilee celebrations and collaborating with Drama Box on It Won’t Be Too Long: The Cemetery for Singapore International Festival of Arts 2015. Jean is the founding Artistic Director of Saga Seed Theatre, set up in 2015 to bring Singaporean stories to the stage, and provide a platform to showcase and nurture local talent.

Co-director/ Dramaturg – Mei Ann Teo
Mei Ann Teo is a Singaporean theatre/film maker working internationally and based in the US. Her work has toured the US and international festivals including M1 Singapore Fringe Festival and Belgium’s Festival de Liege (Lyrics From Lockdown), Beijing International Fringe Festival (Labyrinth: Defining Humanity), Edinburgh International Fringe (MiddleFlight), INFANT Experimental Theatre Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, Shanghai International Experimental Theatre Festival, Dumbo Arts Festival, and the Montreal World Film Festival.

She has worked at The Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, The Hungarian Theatre of Cluj Romania, Theatre of Yugen, Crowded Fire, and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival.

As Resident Artist at Pacific Union College for seven years, she created a program focused on devised ensemble work through collage and documentary theatre techniques. She is the 2015 Phil Killian Directing Fellow at OSF, a Hemera Foundation Tending Space Fellow, Asian Cultural Council Fellow and a recipient of the Network of Ensemble Theatres Travel Grant, Center for Cultural Innovation Grant.

She has an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University, and is currently an Artist in Residence for The Performance Project at University Settlement 2015/2016 and the Assistant Professor of Directing and Dramaturgy at Hampshire College.

Co-director/ Puppetry Consultant – Benjamin Ho
Benjamin is a madman who vows his love and life-long devotion to inanimate objects called PUPPETS. He accumulated mileages from land, sea and air, just to acquire knowledge and skills so as to bring these puppets to life! His mastery of puppetry has not gone unnoticed. He has shared his great love with local audience through many production companies such as TheatreWorks, The Theatre Practice, The Finger Players, Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble, The Necessary Stage, W!ld Rice and Singapore Hokkien Huay Guan Arts and Cultural Troupe, just to name a few; and audience abroad through participation in various puppetry festivals in Asia and Europe. Injection of life into puppets is not only his sole purpose in life; he also aspires to take this educational and meaningful art form to greater heights by combining his mastery of puppetry with multimedia and our rich Asian culture and stories, to enthuse and engage his audience, young and old.

In 2009, under the support of the National Arts Council’s International Arts Residency (IAR) initiative, Benjamin participated in the La Mama International Symposium, a training programme for professional directors held in Umbria, Italy.

Co-producer – Thong Pei Qin
Thong Pei Qin’s theatre journey began as a student director for National University of Singapore (NUS) Theatre Studies’ The West Wing, which toured to Shanghai in 2008. She graduated with a BA degree with honours in Theatre Studies in 2009, and eventually brought NUS Thespis’ devised work, Re: Almost Left Behind, to the Singapore Arts Festival 2011, as a site-specific production spread throughout The Substation. Thereafter, she earned her MA degree in Theatre Directing with distinctions from the University of Essex, East 15 Acting School. Directing overseas, she collaborated with international artists on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Rhoding House, London, 2012), before training in directing at GITIS: The Russian University of Theatre Arts, Moscow. She also assisted in directing David Schneider’s premiere of Making Stalin Laugh (Tristan Bates Theatre, London, 2013).

Back in Singapore, some of her directorial credits include Alan Ayckbourn’s Ernie’s Incredible Illucinations (The Arts House, 2014) for children, as well as Ovidia Yu’s Life Choices (Centre 42, 2014). She has worked with different theatre companies such as TheatreWorks, Nine Years Theatre and Faust International Youth Theatre, and enjoys staging picture book adaptations for disadvantaged children. Currently, she is honoured to be on board The Finger Players’ Watch This Space (Directors’ Cycle, 2014-15), and is also teaching theatre modules at both NUS and the National Institute of Education.

Actor – Tan Kheng Hua
Kheng Hua is a well-known award-winning theatre and television actress/producer in Singapore. She is regarded as a veteran of Singapore theatre and was recently selected as one of 50 iconic local stage personalities in an exhibition celebrating 50 years of Singapore theatre. Onstage, she has appeared in lead roles in local landmark plays including Beauty World, Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and Animal Farm. Most recently, she was seen in W!ld Rice’s Cooling Off Day and TheatreWorks’ Fear Of Writing.

Kheng is a household name in Singapore from her role of Margaret in Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd, as well as in well-received television dramas including War Diary, The Singapore Short Story Project and The Pupil.

She is one of the more prolific stage and television creative producers in Singapore, with credits including the critically acclaimed original musical cabaret The Dim Sum Dollies® from 2004 to 2006.

Kheng was co-creator, producer and performer for the sold-out No.7 (Georgetown Festival 2011). In 2014, she brought more than 64 Singaporean and Malaysian artists together to Georgetown Festival in The SIN-PEN Colony, celebrating Singapore and Penang’s shared heritage in food, visual art, music, theatre and design.

On the international scene, she was cast in The Philanthropist, The Patriarch, Serangoon Road and scored a major role as the Empress Dowager in the Netflix Original Series Marco Polo.

In 2015, she directed a site-specific dance for Singapore’s only arts-walkabout OH! Open House and was one of the 20 Singaporean contemporary artists chosen to represent Singapore in a showcase presented by the Singapore Tourism Board in Beijing, London and New York City.

Actor – Brendon Fernandez
Brendon’s theatre credits include Public Enemy (2015), The Importance of Being Earnest (2014, 2013, 2009), The Optic Trilogy (2013, 2001), Company (2012), La Cage aux Folles (2012), Romeo & Juliet (2012), Equus (2011), To Kill a Mockingbird (2010), The King Lear Project: A Trilogy (2008), Boeing Boeing (2005), Everything but the Brain (2005), Landmarks: Asian Boys Vol. 2 (2004), Bent (2003), Rent (2001) and The Theory of Everything (2000).

Actor – Jean Toh
Jean Toh graduated from the BA(Hons) Acting Programme at LASALLE College of the Arts. Her stage credits include The Lower Depths, Tartuffe and An Enemy of the People (Nine Years Theatre), Abigail Williams in The Crucible (Toy Factory Productions), Decimal Points 7.7, Decimal Points 810 (Cake Theatrical Productions) and Stand Behind the Yellow Line (Singapore Repertory Theatre). TV credits include main roles in HBO Asia’s Grace and Mediacorp’s Working Class. In 2013, she was the selected artist by Institut Français to attend the Avignon Theatre Festival in France. Jean is a founding and core member of Nine Years Theatre Ensemble Project.

Actor – Thomas Pang
Thomas Pang holds a First Class Degree in Acting from LASALLE (’15), and a diploma from the San Francisco School of the Arts (’08). Recent work includes The Good, the Bad, and the Sholay with Checkpoint Theatre, Versus at Singapore International Festival of Arts 2015 with Cake Theatrical Productions, and Tribes with Pangdemonium Productions. Thomas has also performed internationally, in Vietnam at the Asia Pacific Bureau Theatre Schools Conference 2013 with Aubrey Mellor, and the world premiere of Philip K. Gotanda’s No.5: The Angry Red Drum in San Francisco (’09). Thomas is deeply grateful for all the mentorship and support he has received.

Credit source: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2016