All this, and more, will be up for discussion at our final Living Room of 2018. Over 150 local theatre productions lit up our stages this year, and we would like to invite you to join us for a casual evening of conversations to look back at some of this year’s most noteworthy trends in Singapore theatre.
Reviewers from Centre 42’s Citizens’ Reviews programme and arts website ArtsEquator will begin the evening by sharing some of their observations, based on the shows that they watched and wrote about this year. You can then pick a topic and engage the reviewers in small-group discussions. Year in Reviews is an opportunity to reflect on the performances you watched, as well as the wider local theatre landscape.
The event will be accompanied by the exhibition “Singapore Theatre in 2018″, a timeline of all local theatre productions that were staged in Singapore in 2018. The timeline, spanning over five metres long, also features artefacts from Centre 42’s digital archive, The Repository, drawing a link between present day and Singapore theatre history. The exhibition is on display in the Centre 42 Front Courtyard from 4 December 2018 to 31 January 2019.
EVENT DETAILS
Tuesday, 4 December 2018
7.30pm @ Centre 42 Black Box
Admission price: Give-What-You-Can
(Cash only, at the door)
Christian W. Huber
Christian is a C42 Boiler Room 2016 playwright, and enjoys being an audience member to different mediums of the arts. He finds arts invigorating to the soul, and truly believes that the vibrant arts scene has come a long way from its humble beginnings.
Cordelia Lee
Cordelia is a final-year Theatre Studies major trapped in a full-time relationship with the National University of Singapore. Whenever the opportunity arises, she purchases discounted tickets, slips into the theatre and savours every moment of her temporarily bought freedom. She prefers performances that run no longer than two hours, and is always in the mood for innovative directorial choices – the less she sees them coming, the better. Outside of theatre, she routinely tortures her obliques in the gym and sings to ’90s hits in the shower.
Isaac Tan
Isaac graduated from the National University of Singapore with a BA (Hons) in Philosophy, and he took Theatre Studies as a second major. He started reviewing plays for the student publication, Kent Ridge Common, and later developed a serious interest in theatre criticism after taking a module at university. He is also an aspiring poet and his poems have appeared in Symbal, Eunoia Review, Eastlit, and Malaise Journal.
Jocelyn Chng
Jocelyn is a freelance educator, practitioner and writer in dance and theatre, and has written for various platforms since 2013, including The Flying Inkpot and Arts Equator. She holds a double Masters in Theatre Studies/Research, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (Dance Teaching). At the heart of her practice, both teaching and personal, lies a curiosity about personal and cultural histories; writing about performance allows her to engage with this curiosity. She sees performance criticism as crucial to the development of the performance landscape in Singapore, and a valuable opportunity to contribute to ongoing discussions about performance and society.
Lee Shu Yu
Shu Yu is a currently pursuing a degree in Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore and loves exploring all that has to do with the arts. Her latest foray into reviewing stems from a desire to support the vibrant ecology of the arts in Singapore.
Liana Gurung
With a Literature major’s love and propensity for over-analysing, Liana is a mostly-reader, sometimes-writer who was raised on a diet of musicals (read: Julie Andrews). Her attention has since turned to the gritty, innovative and often subversive world of the Singaporean play: the leaner, the tauter, the more spare – the better.
FROM ARTSEQUATOR.COM:
Akanksha Raja
Akanksha is an arts writer from Singapore. She has been writing reviews on theatre (and occasionally visual art) as part of the editorial team at ArtsEquator.com since its launch in 2016, and is an alumnae of the Points of View Performance Writing workshop organised by the Asian Dramaturgs’ Network in 2018.
Naeem Kapadia
Naeem is a finance lawyer and passionate advocate of the arts. He has acted in and directed student drama productions in both London and Singapore. He has been writing about theatre for over a decade on his personal blog Crystalwords and has contributed reviews and podcasts to publications such as London student newspaper The Beaver, Singapore daily newspaper TODAY and arts journals The Flying Inkpot and ArtsEquator. Naeem enjoys cooking, running and travel.
Patricia Tobin
Patricia Tobin is Singaporean theatre critic. Her reviews can be found on ArtsEquator and on her blog, havesomepatty.com. She currently works in media.
