LEAVE, STAY, OR TO DIE | playcircle

Leave, Stay, or To Die is playcircle’s debut performance, exploring the relationship between a child and father. Through this, rethinking our role in the family unit. This play is also a crystallisation of its members’ learning in the arts. Playcircle is a young theatre collective made up of members of the pioneer batch of ARTivate, the youth wing of Drama Box Ltd  (a platform for youths who want to explore and gain all-rounded insight into theatre).

The first phase will involve researching for materials that are related to the theme “relationship between a father and child”. The materials found can range from past scripts to poems to photos to songs to personal writings, such as articles on fatherhood; local literary texts like “The Dragon Prince’s Letter to His Father” by Cyril Wong; academic papers on parenthood and the nature of a parent-child relationship; personal blogs and writings; and more. From there, discussions will be held for the group to come out with questions that they will like to raise in the play, such as “who is my father?”, “what is the nature of this bond?”, “what does it mean to be blood-related?”, etc.

After streamlining the questions, the second phase will begin with retrieving materials that may help in exploring or investigating the questions raised, such as personal photographs of their childhood and family and interviews with their fathers.

During the devising phase, the focus will be to explore the premise raised in the first two phases and the form of performance. The team will start with improvisations with the premise of the script before moving on to the form of performance and use of space.