The See You Later (SYL) Party was an event to mark Centre 42’s final days at 42 Waterloo Street before we moved out for renovations for the incoming Arts Resource Hub. The event was to take place on 21 April 2020, to mark the day when we first opened our doors to theatremakers, theatre-going enthusiast and artists from all walks six years prior. The SYL Party was going to be for our community, by our community.
In addition to a communal dumpling-making activity and a yard sale (because down-sizing!), we were also very fortunate to have a group of artists and friends readily step up to offer short performances. These short performances were to be staged consecutively throughout the evening of 21 April, sort of like more exclusive version of Late-Night Texting.
As the COVID-19 outbreak worsened and safe-distancing measures grew more restrictive, the SYL Party morphed into an online event, with performances – both live and pre-recorded – livestreamed from our Black Box. But when the Circuit Breaker measures were announced on 3 April 2020, these plans, too, had to be put aside.
Centre 42 would like to acknowledge and warmly thank all the artists and friends who brainstormed and planned with us for the SYL Party.
A Zoom meeting with the SYL Party artists and friends on 31 Mar 2020.
This would have been the programming for the SYL Party at 42 Waterloo Street:
Put Your Hands Up!
By Split Theatre
(20 min)
Artists: Darryl, Mabel, Fadhil, Xin Ying, Teresa, Wei Qi, Ci Xuan, Hao Boon, Jun De and Xin Rui
A random and insignificant watchman sees the fate of the city. Let’s hear him out. Shall we? This short physical theatre piece will revolve around the watchman’s monologue in Agamemnon.
The Last Five Years: A Gender Reversal
By Ethel Yap
(20 min)
Artists: Ethel Yap, Joash Tang, Joel Nah
Ethel Yap presents an excerpt of her 2018 musical adaptation workshop, The Last Five Years: A Gender Reversal. Three songs will be performed to showcase the gender reversal, and the performance will be presented by Ethel and fellow performers Joash Tang and Joel Nah (stepping in for Aloysius Foong, the Music Director of the 2018 workshop).
Dating Sim (Beta)
By Attempts
(50 min)
Artists: Vanessa Toh, Jit Dastidar, Rei Poh, Jing Ng, Cheryl Tan Yun Xin
Description: DATING SIM (BETA) is a participatory theatrical experience that takes the form of an interactive dating simulation game come to life, allowing the audience a closer examination of their agency and prejudices in modern dating and relationships.
Untitled.2 某某.2
By GroundZ-0
(30 min)
Artists: Zelda Ng, Wendy Toh
Description:
//She feels that the World is constantly ending…
She thought she was happily married.
But her dog died… And everything spirals out of control…
She is lost.
//She kept dreaming of the crying lady…
She is confused.
//Then
//She saw herself on a stormy night…
She is puzzled.
//She made a radical decision. She needs an outlet.
(But will she get her way?)
She’s looking for something to feel alive again…
However, against the background of world’s events…
Is her existence even valid?
Fridays are good for Indian Daughters:
A play read
By Brown Voices
(20 min)
Artists: Sangeetha Rebekah Dorai, Shisha, Mumtaz, Raj, Grace Kalaiselvi
For most of their lives, sisters Sindhu and Ruby have roleplayed the “Good Indian Daughter,” abiding by their single father’s overbearing rules. Ruby, who is wheelchair-bound and has cerebral palsy, yearns to explore the dating world. Her caregiver, Sindhu, is at the family’s beck and call and entertains the idea of a life beyond the walls of her family home. All hell breaks loose when Sindhu decides to pursue a fancy degree overseas and Ruby falls in love with a woman. How will the sisters carve their own lives while reconciling with their father’s unorthodox ways? Fridays are Good for Indian Daughters explores the challenges women from traditional Indian households face in modern-day Singapore and how they must straddle between the old world and the new to pave an identity for themselves.
Personal Mobility Device (or Death of a Food Delivery Rider):
Dramatised reading of an excerpt
Co-written by Adeeb Fazah and Nah Dominic (The Second Breakfast Company)
(15 minutes)
Artists: 3-4 performers (to be confirmed)
Hilmi has a credit card debt, but he’s been fired (again) for “unprofessional behaviour”. Separated but obligated to his wife and two children, one day he discovers a way out: a new job as a food delivery rider. But one month in, he faces an inconvenient ban that threatens to grind his hustle to a halt. Incensed, Hilmi galvanises his fellow riders to voice their objection towards the new legislation. Personal Mobility Device, or Death of a Food Delivery Rider chronicles Hilmi’s attempt to redeem himself on his own terms. But when driven by debt and a sense of injustice, will he allow his restricted mobility to consume him or will he finally deliver the much-needed order in his life?
Eat My Shorts:
2 x 10min short plays from the anthology
by Dark Matter Theatrics
1) Traffic by Marcia Vanderstraaten
Things get complicated when a wife is unable to tell her husband from his twin brother.
2) Strange Fruit by Christopher Fok
An art dealer and a buyer come to very strange conclusions about a work.
Where Are You?
by Jaturachai Srichanwanpen (Chuan)
This online showcase will be a short video exploring the question ”Where are you?”. The piece will be in a form of a video call, a call that aims to find out where the person on the other side is. How do we describe things around us? How do we define where we are?
Jukebox Actor
by Tan Shou Chen
Activated only through online donations. Two actors wait to be activated, to read a dedication of play excerpts. This list of plays are a selection of scripts that were developed and/or performed at Centre 42.
Love Letters
by Jean Tay and Thong Pei Qin
Love Letters is a collation of writings from various artists who have come through the doors of Centre 42. There will be a video recording in the style of a ‘tour’ of Centre 42’s physical premises, showcasing the exhibition of love letters installed to the site where the memory resides in/resonates with. The tour will be hosted by actors who would ‘respond’ to letters of choice via a short reading or performance. Love Letters will also exist as an online repository designed with the spatial view of Centre 42, and holding all these collected letters, pinned to a particular site where the memory resides in.
Tactility Studies x Love Letters
By Chong Gua Khee and Bernice Lee
In Tactility Studies x Love Letters, we invite you to open up your body as a site and space for performance. Within this intimate experience, performers will activate a Love Letter, playing with softness and wobbliness, and finding ways to uncoil. How do we collectively listen and feel the weight and textures of these words and memories?
Dumplings TALK (working title)
By Centre 42 and Chong Gua Khee
Artists:
Cloudy with a Chance of Dumplings (Daniel Teo and The Practice Tuckshop Guniangs)
HOT POT TALK: Reading the Tea Leaves (working title) (Conceptualised by Chong Gua Khee, co-created with Adib Kosnan and Suhaili Safari)
Dumplings TALK is a mashup between Centre 42’s Cloudy with a Chance of Dumplings and an initial phase of research for HOT POT TALK: Reading the Tea Leaves (working title), a food theatre piece that seeks to trace the relationship between our values and what and how we eat. What does a philosophy or politics of food x life look and/or taste like, and how do we map the relationships between food and self, food and other people, as well as food and society? Through playing with the communal acts of dumpling-making and storytelling, Dumplings TALK hopes to start to unpack the various stories and histories we have ingested from others and society. There’ll be a 5-10min food/ingredients puppetry segment before the performers engage with audiences in a conversation ‘score’ over the dumpling-making.
[ Unnamed presentation]
by Main Tulis Group