Centre 42 » Attempts: Singapore

ATTEMPTS: SINGAPORE | by Rei Poh

Eugene — Fri, 16 Mar 2018 07:44:37 +0000

SynopsisCreation ProcessCreative Team

Corporate conglomerate ARC has reached out to the public in a bid to decipher a mysterious databank that has surfaced on their Artificial Intelligence (AI) system named J.O.A.N.. Your profiling skills are urgently required to halt this potential international crisis.

Attempts: Singapore is an immersive theatrical experience that draws inspiration from Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life. It takes audience-participants through a non-linear narrative pieced together through the accounts of various witnesses who attempt to describe a missing character named Anne—and in doing so, may incriminate her in the ARC incident. As we collectively try to define her, are we closer to understanding—or destroying—her?

Credit source: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018

Attempts: Singapore is an immersive theatrical experience that takes audience-participants through a non-linear narrative involving technology, an elusive character named Anne and her involvement in a potential international crisis. The work was inspired by Martin Crimp’s 1997 postmodernist play, Attempts on Her Life, where the audience is presented with 17 unrelated scenarios that give clues about the possible identity of a woman named Anne. Rei Poh had created and staged the first iteration of the piece in Melbourne in 2016 when he was studying for his Masters in Theatre Performance & Directing at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Attempts: Singapore aims to look at the ways and processes that different types of devising and/or interactive performances have adopted, so as to come up with a way to effectively devise and rehearse performances that spectators can partake in. Questions Attempts: Singapore are exploring includes: What are the qualities required from actors or non-actors in devising and rehearsing for participatory performances? What are the ways actors can train and rehearse a participatory performance?

Using the text from Martin Crimp’s Attempts On Her Life, actors are tasked to create images that will be condensed and expanded into possible scenes. The creation process includes having the cast and creative team – including the stage manager, sound designer, and intern – to devise the content of the piece from scratch. In each rehearsal session, the team would look at one or two scenes and come up with a series of images based on the text, which they will then expand into a performance. Often incorporating local context into the piece, and tackle issues that are relevant to Singapore.

With an emphasis on location specific, in-situation creativity, all rehearsals will take place at the performance location at Centre 42. The interactive piece is stimulated and developed through game design and further elevated through training of the actor’s facilitation and technical skills.

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Director/Concept & Game Designer – Rei Poh
Rei Poh is a theatre practitioner, director and actor interested in the use of gaming narratives within participatory theatre. As a citizen of “meritocratic”, achievement-obsessed Singapore, Rei believes in embracing and celebrating failures.

KEY FAILURES
1995 – Moved from Express stream (average) to Normal stream (sub-par)
1997 – GCSE O-Level score of 26 (the lower, the better. 6 = perfect score)
1998 – Failed to complete Manufacturing Diploma
2001 – Applied for Police Academy, but gave up on multiple entry exams
2008 – Unemployed and living with parents
2016 – In debt upon completion of VCA Masters programme

Dramaturg – Zee Wong
Zee is an actor, singer, playwright and theatre maker. Her acting credits include ITSY – The Musical (The Finger Players); Café (The Twenty-Something Theatre Festival); and Normal (Checkpoint Theatre). She is currently writing a play about gender issues and sexual violence, as part of Centre 42’s Boiler Room 2016 cycle. She is also an Apprentice (2016-2018) with The Finger Players.

Production Stage Manager – Izzatul Fia
Izz started out in the industry as a dresser which later sparked her passion in the performing arts doing production and backstage work. She has worked for various stage productions and major events such as the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival and Esplanade Presents festivals. A graduate of Victorian College of the Arts, Izz developed versatility engaging in productions of different genres and being part of the collaborative creative process. When not busy working, she would be cuddling with her two cats at home.

Sound Designer – Jing Ng
Awarded with a National Arts Council scholarship, Jing graduated with first class honours from Rose Bruford College (UK) specialising in Performance Sound. He has a keen interest in sound design in theatre and dance, and enjoys collaborative, devised and experimental works. His Singapore credits are: Silly Little Girl and The Funny Old Tree; Titoudao; A Fleeting Moment; Grind; Lord of The Flies; Red Sky; Prism; Fundamentally Happy; Dragonflies. Jing was nominated for Best Sound Design in the 2014 Off West End Theatre Awards for Outfox Productions’ Corpus Christi (UK).

Projection Designer – Genevieve Peck
Genevieve graduated from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London in 2012 with a BA(Hons) in Theatre Practice, specialising in Lighting and Projection/Video Design. She has worked with companies such as Pangdemonium, The Theatre Practice, Toy Factory, Frontier Danceland, Sing’Theatre, Drama Box, The Arts Fission Company, Siong Leng Musical Association, Singapore Repertory Theatre, Apsaras Arts and Sightlines Productions. Genevieve has also worked on events such as the ASEAN Para Games 2015’s Opening and Closing Ceremonies and Kit Chan’s Spellbound concert.

Performer – Farez Najid
Farez Najid was trained in BA (Acting) at LASALLE College of the Arts for two years. His works include PRISM (Toy Factory Productions, 2017), Geylang (W!LD RICE, 2016), and Tan Tarn How’s The Lady of Soul and the Ultimate “S” Machine (Esplanade’s The Studios 2015). Farez aspires to be a competent educator in the realm of theatre education.

Performer – Henrik cheng
A native of New York City, Henrik has worked in a gamut of theatre roles. A chance encounter with Singaporean artists at a La MaMa symposium led him to question the American-centric approach and limits of his practice. From there, it has been a 9,521 mile journey to Singapore. While at the Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI), Henrik has worked on Speak Cryptic’s The Tribe (The O.P.E.N.), Wright Assembly’s Alamat Bahru, and Tan Liting’s Pretty Butch (M1 Singapore Fringe Festival). Henrik gravitates towards performing work that provides hope, is healing, or encourages positive, proactive change.

Performer – Julie Wee
Julie Wee trained as an actor at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her stage credits include Normal (Checkpoint Theatre), Mosaic (Take Off Productions), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (W!LD RICE), Portia in The Merchant of Venice (Singapore Repertory Theatre) and Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible (Toy Factory). She is a professional voiceover artist who runs her own home studio. Companies that use her voice include Visa, SK-II and Olay. Julie’s showreels can be found on her YouTube channel: JulieWeeVO.

Performer – Sabrina Sng
Sabrina Sng is an artist from Singapore. Her work learns from the body–its memories and its truth. A National Arts Council Undergraduate Arts Scholarship recipient, she graduated from NYU Tisch School of the Arts (Experimental Theatre Wing) and holds a BFA with honours in Theatre Arts. She is a graduate of the inaugural SITI Conservatory Program, an immersion program for international artists. Her recent work includes: Lobsters (Lucy-Margaux Marinkovich), Adam and Evie (SITI Conservatory) and Salomé (Kevin Kuhlke, ETW Mainstage).

Performer – Suhaili Safari
Suhaili Safari has worked professionally as an actor since 2003, and her recent works include MainMain (2017, Teater Ekamatra, Esplanade Presents Pesta Raya) and Medea (2017, Cake Theatrical Productions). She has also written and directed The Kingdom Under My Bed (2010, Esplanade Presents Octoburst!), a children’s play by Teater Ekamatra. Suhaili was also nominated for Best Sound Design at the M1-Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards 2017 for her work in a collaborative independent production, Mother, I (2016).

Deviser/ Intern – Wong Shao Qi
Shao Qi is an aspiring performer who is in her second year at LASALLE College of the Arts. She is excited to be a part of a project that brings together her two greatest passions—gaming and theatre. Shao Qi hopes to continue growing as a performer, and to contribute to the arts scene in Singapore.

Credit source: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018

Development Milestones

Attempts: Singapore was developed in residence at Centre 42’s Basement Workshop from November 2017 to January 2018.

24-27 January 2018:
World Premiere at various spaces in Centre 42, as part of M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018

Who run the world?

Lee Shu Yu — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:03:14 +0000

Rei Poh and Zee Wong (centre) run through a scene with the cast of “Attempts: Singapore” during one of their rehearsal sessions. Photo: Gwen Pew

Rehearsal rooms are typically patriarchal, according to Rei Poh and Zee Wong. The director, playwright, or producer is the king who sets the rules, and everyone else are the followers who carry out the instructions given to them. This may be the conventional way of getting the job done, but the pair wanted to find out whether there are other approaches to the process.

Their chance came in the form of Attempts: Singapore. Rei had created and staged the first iteration of the piece in Melbourne in 2016, when he was studying for his Masters in Theatre Performance & Directing at the Victorian College of the Arts. The work was inspired by Martin Crimp’s 1997 postmodernist play, Attempts on Her Life, where the audience is presented with 17 unrelated scenarios that give clues about the possible identity of a woman named Anne. Rei was commissioned to restage the work as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2018, and as director, the first thing he did was to bring Zee on board as his dramaturg. After all, she was a big part of the reason that he started examining what it means for him to be a feminist, and it’s a topic that the couple would often discuss.

“I think it was a very natural progression [for me to dramaturg for Rei’s work] because we have always been aligned in terms of our interest in feminist theatre. And examining the male gaze is something I do in my own work as a playwright as well,” says Zee, who is also an actor and singer. “As a dramaturg, my role is to help the team look at patterns, and to help them find meaning in the images they come up with. I’m also there as a second pair of eyes for Rei and the team.”

At the time of this interview, the team has had about five rehearsals, and Rei has already been learning a lot.

“Zee has taught me many things, such as how to relook my position as a man,” says Rei. “I’ve learnt that even in my practice of creating works, I am still subconsciously abiding by the laws of toxic masculinity.”

Together, they have been making a conscious effort to create what they call a “feminist rehearsal room” for the Attempts: Singapore team.

“One of the ways we’re attempting to subvert the patriarchal hierarchy of traditional rehearsal rooms is by focusing not on the product, but on the wellbeing of the team,” Rei explains. “Because of my training in Forum theatre with Drama Box, I also see myself as a facilitator rather than a dictator. So in the rehearsal room, we replaced comments like ‘you should have done this’ with ‘would you consider doing this?’ This has somehow made a very strong impact on the progression. I no longer feel the need to dictate, and the collaborators are now owning their parts in this project. In a feminist space, everyone has their own role that they are interested in. It is a space where they can challenge themselves and at the same time feel safe.”

To build on that, Rei invited the cast and creative team – including the stage manager, sound designer, and intern – to devise the content of the piece from scratch, even though he had already staged the work before. In each rehearsal session, the team would look at one or two scenes and come up with a series of images based on the text, which they will then expand into a performance. Rei and Zee would encourage them to incorporate local context into the piece, and tackle issues that are relevant to Singapore.

Rei and Zee have been creating a feminist rehearsal environment, where everyone can feel safe to try out new ideas. Photo: Gwen Pew

Naturally, the resulting work is similarly feminist in its nature and structure. Attempts: Singapore is set in a fictional world governed by a corporate conglomerate called ARC. The company provides an Artificial Intelligence system called JOAN, which predicts and caters for the needs of the population. But when a mysterious database containing the memories of a woman named Anne is found within JOAN’s code, the audience members – or “players”, as Rei likes to call them – are tasked to deduce Anne’s identity by exploring a series of spaces. As the piece is rooted in the genre of participatory theatre, players are given the agency to make a decision, and thus determine how the play ends: a feminist element in itself.

But while the team will take every care to create a safe environment for participants to feel empowered to speak out and make decisions, Rei and Zee hope that those who attend Attempts: Singapore will confront their own biases and prejudices, too. For instance, the players will have to decide whether they would be willing to relinquish certain powers that they might enjoy in a more patriarchal system, in exchange for more feminine values. They will also be meeting quite a few complex female characters.

“In Singapore, there can be a sense that women have achieved full equality, and we don’t need to fight for women’s rights anymore,” says Zee. “This sort of thinking is dangerous, because it means that the women who quietly live with spousal violence, unfair treatment and sexual harassment at their workplaces solely because of their gender are ignored and forgotten. As an artist, I hope to get people to see that there really is something wrong with the way we’ve defined gender today. And really, we need to stand up for each other a little more.”

By Gwen Pew
Published on 10 January 2018

OTHER FRINGE FEST EVENTS @ C42

Hayat
By Pink Gajah Theatre
17 – 20 Jan
Performed by mother and daughter pair Ajuntha Anwari and Sharda Harrison, Hayat is centred on a woman who has just lost her aged mother. With a title drawn from the Arabic word for “life”, the work is a celebration of the process of living and dying through the use of ritual, texts, and movement.
More info here.

Theatre Reviews: Last Word or the Start of a Conversation
By ArtsEquator
28 Jan
Join The Guardian’s theatre critic Lyn Gardner, local arts writer Corrie Tan, playwright Alfian Sa’at, and M1 Fringe Festival’s artistic director Sean Tobin as they discuss the relationship between critics and artists, and how reviews can serve as the starting point for conversations.
More info here.

Find out more about Attempts: Singapore here, and catch the show at Centre 42 from 24 – 27 January 2018.

Centre 42 » Attempts: Singapore

ATTEMPTS: SINGAPORE | by Rei Poh

Credit source: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018

Credit source: M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2018

Who run the world?

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #4.