Synopsis

Frayed Ends charts how the lives of a close circle of friends carry on after one of them decides to end her own life. In the face of a loss that is both immeasurable and sudden, they struggle with the frustrating limits of being human, of trying (and failing) to be there for the ones they love, and with finding some kind of hope even in the inevitability of these failures.

Artist’s Statement/Inquiry

At this stage the work is a two-fold attempt at the following:

• To explore the specific dynamic of loss among a group of friends who are as close as family – what does this journey look like for people not held together by blood or romantic relations? If the blunt force of grief can fracture even familial ties, what impact might it have on an ostensibly more tenuous connection?
• To lay bare/make sense of the writing process; a small experiment in exploring how stories are constructed, and what distance (if any) lies between craft and creation, or between real life and what passes for fiction on stage. If the narrative is about the attempt to cross the divide between where one is (for instance, in mourning/alive and in pain) to where one would like to be (for instance, somewhere closer to okayness/away from present suffering), then to see this embodied in the text would be to see how the play itself also journeys from unwritten and inarticulate to become, hopefully, a thing that says something of some comfort and value.

Michelle Tan – Playwright

Michelle is a writer and drama educator. As a playwright her work has been produced by several local theatre companies, including Cake Theatrical Productions and Singapore Repertory Theatre. Her last play, I Am Trying To Say Something True, was commissioned as part of the Esplanade Studios 2018 season. Currently Michelle teaches in the theatre department at the School of the Arts.

Ellison Tan Yuyang – Performer

Ellison Tan Yuyang graduated from the National University of Singapore with a major in Theatre Studies. She has trained with ECNAD, Cake Theatrical Productions, The Finger Players and Nine Years Theatre. She is an actor, writer and theatre-maker.

Notable performances include: I Am Trying To Say Something True ( Esplanade Studios), Art Studio (Nine Years Theatre), Café (Twenty-something Theatre Festival), Manifesto (The Necessary Stage and Drama Box), Off Centre (The Finger Players (2015) and The Necessary Stage(2019)), and Temple Reconstructed (Cake Theatrical Productions). Play-writing works include: The Dragon’s Dentist (Esplanade’s PLAYtime!) and Inheritance (The Finger Players).

In 2015, Ellison was accepted into the Next Generation Program in Tokyo, a three-year program that aims to grow emerging artists specifically in the field of Theatre for Young Audiences. She co-founded The Wanderlings – a collective that created Singapore’s first baby theatre production.

Ellison is the Co-Artistic Director of The Finger Players.

Ethel Yap – Performer

Ethel is an alumnus of NUS Theatre Studies (2011) and London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Masters in Musical Theatre, 2012). Her recent stage credits include Yellow Chair Productions’ The Last Five Years, W!LD RICE’s Jack and the Beansprout, Toy Factory’s Romeo and Juliet, Our Company’s Dear Nora, I Theatre’s Hop and Honk, TNS’ Untitled Women, Pangdemonium’s Tribes and Urinetown, Dick Lee’s Beauty World and The Theatre Practice’s If There’re Seasons, Liao Zhai Rocks! , Lao Jiu: The Musical and Four Horse Road, and Glowtape’s The Great Wall: One Woman’s Journey. Her tv and film credits include OKTO’s After School, Channel 5’s Code of Law, and feature film Our Sister Mambo.

Ethel is also a singer-songwriter, releasing her debut self-titled EP in late 2017 and a single, “Like”, in 2018. You can listen to her music at http://radi.al/EthelYapEP and find out more about her work at www.ethelyap.com.

Gloria Tan – Performer

Gloria began her career as a teenager, receiving quality training from NYAS, New York Acting School, Singapore, before moving swiftly on to NAFA, where she graduated with a 3-year Diploma in Acting. Invested in culture and country, Gloria joined the Malay community to explore a change of culture and language. She immersed herself wholly into the community, eventually leading to a L!fe Theatre Award for Best Ensemble for Bilik/Ahmad.

Turning her talents to the screen, Gloria appeared in multiple television programmes including BFF, Nora Wedding Concepts, Rempuh, Show Malam Ini (Seasons 1 & 2) Kecoh-Kecoh Ramadan and Ikhlas, as well as acting in her first ever international movie, BANTING (2014).

In 2016, she performed her celebrated, sold out, one woman show at the Esplanade Studio, as part of the M1 Fringe Festival, entitled Kancil: The Chronicles of One & Zero, after which she was commissioned by Channel News Asia to devise a performance piece, targeted at youths, based on depression, which premiered in March 2016, entitled, My Name is Jamie.

Expanding her repertoire and reach, Gloria has been working closely with Japan’s Gumbo Theatre, a critically acclaimed theatre company for the past five years performing in and around Japan. In 2017, Gloria moved her work to Indonesia, working with Singapore’s The Necessary Stage for the sold out showing of Untitled Cow Number 1.

Sindhura Kalidas – Performer

Sindhura Kalidas is a graduate of the NUS Theatre Studies programme. Since her graduation, she has worked with a number of theatre companies and was last seen in the 2019 re-staging of Off Centre by TNS and Ellison Tan’s We Were So Hopeful Then, a new play produced under TNS’s developmental platform The Orange Production. Sindhu is glad to be back at C42 after being part of a dramatised reading of Zee Wong’s The Women Before Me at 2019’s Late Night Texting.

Suhaili Safari – Performer

Suhaili Safari has worked professionally as a theatre practitioner since 2003.

Although largely a stage actor, Suhaili has dabbled in writing and/or directing in productions such as The Kingdom Under My Bed (2010), a children’s play under Teater Ekamatra and Move, As We Move (2017) under Kaizen MD. She actively involves herself in community partnership, and does this through outreach endeavours with Sweet Tooth by Cake Theatrical Productions and Drama Box for Both Sides, Now. Her recent work includes The Clockwork Orange (2019, Teater Ekamatra), Tanah°Air (2019, Dramabox) and Inside Voices (2019, Lazy Native) which won Best Outstanding Work at the annual Vaults Festival in London.

Suhaili is creating solo work beginning with The Cleanse, developing it specifically as part of The Substation’s ‘State of Love and Trust and Stars’ programme this year.

Synopsis

“Ta’at Setia” – Loyal and True

These were the words that the brave soldiers of the Malay Regiment lived and died by. Up until the end, they fought tooth and nail to keep Singapore from falling to the Japanese invaders. And they did, to their dying breath. How did they come to this? Did they ever think to run? What were they fighting for?

In The Regiment, we try to piece together the story of a few recruits in the Malay Regiment, in the years leading up to the Fall of Singapore in 1942. We will see how this group of idealistic, young men come together under the threat of impending war, and how they try to uphold their oaths to each other and to the Regiment in the face of death and strife. Ultimately, we will witness their sacrifice as they succumb to an invading force too great to overcome.

Artist’s Statement/Inquiry

Remembering Who We Are – This story is part of our history as Singapore before independence, and is worth telling as a reminder of our struggle against war, our tenacity as a people, and the everyday heroes that inspire that strength.

Question What We Are Fighting For – When war seems a distant thought, we seemingly have no reason to ask what is it we are fighting for, who we fighting for. The questions this story ask are important as they make us confront where our loyalties lie and what ultimately drives us to sacrifice ourselves. It makes us ask what is important to us not only as individuals, but as a country. What is it that would make us come together to fight for each other in spite of our differences?

The Regiment is currently raising money for the R&D of this project which is slated to premiere it’s full length on 2021. Click here to contribute.

The Regiment‘s work-in-progress showcase is supported by RUMAH x Bodeiga Barbershop.

Isabella Chiam – Director/Concept

Isabella Chiam is an actor, puppeteer & theatre practitioner based in London & Singapore.

Graduated from RADA with Masters in Theatre, Isabella’s recent theatre credits include Snow Queen (Polka Theatre), The Commuters (The Knotted Project), Merchant of Venice (Singapore Repertory Theatre) & The Bride Always Knocks Twice (The Theatre Practice). She was awarded the Life Theatre Awards Best Ensemble with her fellow Young & W!ld members, and twice-nominated again in that same category.

Her first love is acting but she has a deep interest in movement, collaborative theatre-making, actor training & puppetry. Isabella currently teaches movement at Identity School of Acting (UK), and is an adjunct lecturer at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (SG). She also believes that theatre is a powerful tool for empowerment and social change, and is a proud be a part of theatre collective Five Stones Theatre (SG) & Arts for Action Ensemble (UK).

Faizal Abdullah – Playwright

Faizal Abdullah is a Singaporean Muslim-Malay actor and theatre-maker. He graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts (Singapore) with a Diploma in Theatre Arts and had his first professional theatre credit acting in playwright-director Elangovan’s 1915. Since then he has worked with many of Singapore’s leading theatre companies, Including Act3 Theatrics, I Theatre, TheatreWorks, Cake Theatrical Productions,Teater Ekamatra, STAGES and The Necessary Stage. Faizal is currently pursuing an MA in Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Al-Matin Yatim – Devisor/Performer

Al-Matin Yatim is a full-time Theatre Practitioner graduated from Intercultural Theatre Institute with a Professional Diploma in Intercultural Theatre (Acting). He has been working professionally in the theatre since 2010, mainly as a stage actor, with many notable and established companies like The Necessary Stage, TheatreWorks, Cake Theatrical Productions, Teater Ekamatra, Teater Kami, Hatch Theatrics, The Finger Players, The Theatre Practice, DramaBox and Chowk Productions.

He had also performed internationally in cities like Braunshweig, Brisbane and Edinburgh. He shared the nomination of Life! Theatre Award 2016’s Best Ensemble and Best Production of the year in “It Won’t be too long: The Cemetery” by DramaBox under the direction of Kok Heng Leun as partof the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) 2015.

Farez Najid – Devisor/Performer

Farez Najid started his professional career in 2006 and was trained in BA(Acting) Lasalle College of the Arts. His works include “Off Centre” (The Necessary Stage 2019) “Tiger of Malaya” (Teater Ekamatra 2018), “Prism” (Toy Factory Productions 2017), “Geylang” (WILD RICE 2016), and Tan Tarn How’s “Lady Soul and the Ultimate “S” Machine” (Esplanade Presents: 2015). He also participated in international works such Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2017) with “Year Zero” and collaborated with Gambo Theatre in “Super Happy Land” (Hatch 2016).

Syaiful Ariffin – Devisor/Performer

Syaiful is a trained theatre practitioner, actor & performer for both stage and screen. He is also an educator in the arts, specializing in voice pedagogy for the actor. Currently a part-time lecturer in Lasalle College of the Arts. He graduated with an honors degree in Theatre Arts from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), and a Masters of Fine Arts (Voice) from National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). Since 2009, he has done numerous stage performances with various professional companies such as: Cake Theatrical Production, Teater Ekamatra, Singapore Repertory Theatre, and S.I.F.A (Singapore International Festival of Arts). He believes in constantly expanding his skills in his practice. In 2016, Syaiful won Anugerah Skrin, an acting and hosting competition produced by Mediacorp Eaglevision Suria.

Jamil Schulze – Devisor/Performer

Jamil Schulze is an actor, mover, and #bedroommusician, raised and based in Singapore. Some of his theatre credits include; Jo Tan’s Forked (M1 Singapore Fringe); Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons (Adeeb & Shai); Dragonflies and This Is What Happens To Pretty Girls (Pangdemonium). He can also be seen as the lead in Toggle/Channel 5 series Paddles Up (Verite Productions), as well as featured in series Mixed Signals (A Stardust Story). Jamil continues his training with master teacher I Putu Budiawan Miller.

Liu Yong Huay – Lighting Designer

Phase 1: Research and Development (March – April 2019)

Key Research Questions:

• What is the Plot?
• Who are the characters
• What forms & techniques do we want to use to tell the story?
• Does it resonate with audiences?

Outcome: By-invitation script read

Phase 2: Work-in-progress (November 2019)

Key Research Areas:

• Strengthening the Story
• Experimenting with Form
• Natural Materials
• Light & Shadow
• Sound
• Set

Outcome: Work-in-progress showing at Centre 42, under Guest Room

Synopsis

It’s been day 4XX since graduating school and this girl still hasn’t used a chengyu in her life. Or much Chinese at all. However, years later, perhaps it’s finally time to try. The Chronicles of Xiao Ming is a recollection of one individual’s journey through Singapore’s Chinese Language syllabus, documenting the tribulations faced along the way. From a primary school child knowing barely five words in Chinese to an adult struggling to order food, The Chronicles of Xiao Ming is a humourous and poignant observation of the education system and its impact on one’s sense of self growing up.

Artist’s Statement/Inquiry

Using the autobiographical journey of the writer through the Chinese syllabus, this piece aims to address the absurdity of the education system and the image of success it paints. Through this, the piece thus asks the audience to reflect on their own experiences with the education system and consequently, the image of success they have placed upon themselves and others as a result.

For this phase of the play-development, Miriam hopes to test and gather audience feedback on the following:

1.  How relatable is the play for audience who did not go through the typical Singaporean schooling? Or for those who took a different mother tongue?

2.  Does the work speak or resonate to audiences who do not know the writer, thus contesting the autobiographical form?

3.  How do elements involved in the staging of the piece, ie. props and spoken word, effectively bring out the piece’s thesis in highlighting absurdity of the education system?

Audience’s input at the read-presentation will help the playwright and creative team to develop the script further. There are plans to independently produce and stage the play in 2020.

Writer and Performer: Miriam Cheong

Miriam Cheong is an actor, writer and singer. Her recent theatre credits include Female in RS, directed by Fareed Mohammad and Poh Suan in The Moon is Less Bright, directed by Adeeb Fazah. She also played Liz in the dramatised reading of Auderia Tan’s Touch Wood, directed by A Yagnya and presented at First Act(s), Part Two as part of Centre 42’s Guest Room programme. She will be making a reappearance in First Act(s), Part Three as Tina in Ivy Chen’s A Midsummer White Dream.

Director: Cheryl Tan

Cheryl Tan Yun Xin is a bilingual actor, theatre maker and host based in Singapore. Her notable acting credits include The Insiders directed by Jo Kukathas, Pistachios & Whipped Cream directed by A Yagnya and Animal Farm by Act 3 International. As a theatre maker, her interests lie in experimenting with immersive and interactive theatre, as well as making theatre as accessible as possible to the public. Her ultimate goal is to mash theatre, cartoons, games and pop culture together into an ice cream sundae.

Producer: Adeeb Fazah

Phase 1: Research and Development (March – April 2019)

Key Research Questions:

• What is the Plot?
• Who are the characters
• What forms & techniques do we want to use to tell the story?
• Does it resonate with audiences?

Outcome: By-invitation script read

Phase 2: Work-in-progress (November 2019)

Key Research Areas:

• Strengthening the Story
• Experimenting with Form
• Natural Materials
• Light & Shadow
• Sound
• Set

Outcome: Work-in-progress showing at Centre 42, under Guest Room

First Act(s) is a 4-part series featuring 8 plays-in-progress from a group of budding playwrights brought together by fate. These plays were born at the ‘Playwriting Workshop with Haresh Sharma’ (organised by the National Library Board, September – October 2018), and have now been taken to their next developmental step of rewrites and readings.

The plays will be publicly read to an invited audience for the first time, over 4 separate Guest Room sessions from March to July 2019:

Part 1, March 2019

• Twin Butterflies by Clara Mok
• We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Part 2, April 2019

• Touch Wood by Auderia Tan
• Untitled by XM Lim-Fang

Part 3, June 2019

• A Midsummer White Dream by Ivy Chen
• The House of Golden Chains by Larnce Alahendra

Part 4, July 2019

• If Tomorrow Comes Again by Ivan Choong
• First-World Problems by Alicia Kan

If Tomorrow Comes Again by Ivan Choong

Synopsis – If Tomorrow Comes Again is a play about everyday relationships that define who we were, we are and will become.

Playwright – Ivan has now attempted singing, acting, and writing in perhaps a desperate attempt to find meaning for his soul. He never thought he would act, let alone write – he is thankful and grateful.

Director – Oliver Chong

Actors – Karen Tan, Lian Sutton, Zee Wong, Rei Poh, Vignesh Singh

First-World Problems by Alicia Kan

Synopsis – Noise. In this world that we live in, silence is considered rare. People are often silenced, yet unaware that they are. People are often silencing others, yet unaware that they are, too. What do you consider people who are silenced? Would you say it is based on the comparison that you are at the forefront of this society and ‘privileged’? First-World Problems speaks silence in our everyday language and questions people’s notion of what being silenced means.

Playwright – Alicia majors in Acting and is a lover of sketching and painting in her leisure time. Though a strong introvert, she finds delight in hearing every individual’s story and meeting people from all walks of life, especially in her wanderlust journeys. Occasionally, just, occasionally, Alicia trips over her philosophical indulgence and goes missing.

Actors – Auderia Tan, Christine Chia, Damien Ng Wei Jie, Hilary Armstrong, Grace Kanai, Wayne Lim Wei Wen, Michaela Hay, Rochelle Edelweiss Boon, Su Paing Tun

Synopsis

A night-hour safehouse for the troubled youths, dropouts, runaways and delinquents of the Malay community is run by a pair of ex-offenders. When external intervention looms, it will take all of their collective efforts to keep the walls of their home up, or risk tearing them all down. Rumah Dayak is a look into the struggle to guard a home, when the home is built out of circumstances borne from poverty, deprivation and abuse.

Performed in Malay and English, with English surtitles.

Artist’s Statement/Inquiry

Rumah Dayak is Nessa Anwar’s second full-length play, aimed to be produced and staged independently. For this phase of the process, she would like to gather first thoughts and opinions from a respected mix of regular and non-theatre-going audience members at the read-presentation.

Playwright and Director: Nessa Anwar

Nessa’s most recent play Riders Tahu Time Nak Hujan (Riders Know When It’s Gonna Rain) was commissioned by Checkpoint Theatre for the Singapore Writer’s Festival 2015, and re-staged by Wild Rice for the Singapore Theatre Festival 2016. She is also one of the members of Main Tulis Group, Singapore’s first playwright circle.

Performers: Al Matin Yatim, Farah Lola, Rusydina Afiqah, Tysha Khan, Riduan Wan Ahmad, Yamin Yusof, Saifuddin Jumadi, Alee Mazrin

Production Manager: Kaykay Nizam

Producer: Nabilah Said

Marketing Manager: Hazwan Norly

Presented by: Rupa Co.Lab

First-World Problems by Alicia Kan

Synopsis – Noise. In this world that we live in, silence is considered rare. People are often silenced, yet unaware that they are. People are often silencing others, yet unaware that they are, too. What do you consider people who are silenced? Would you say it is based on the comparison that you are at the forefront of this society and ‘privileged’? First-World Problems speaks silence in our everyday language and questions people’s notion of what being silenced means.

Playwright – Alicia majors in Acting and is a lover of sketching and painting in her leisure time. Though a strong introvert, she finds delight in hearing every individual’s story and meeting people from all walks of life, especially in her wanderlust journeys. Occasionally, just, occasionally, Alicia trips over her philosophical indulgence and goes missing.

Actors – Auderia Tan, Christine Chia, Damien Ng Wei Jie, Hilary Armstrong, Grace Kanai, Wayne Lim Wei Wen, Michaela Hay, Rochelle Edelweiss Boon, Su Paing Tun

First Act(s) is a 4-part series featuring 8 plays-in-progress from a group of budding playwrights brought together by fate. These plays were born at the ‘Playwriting Workshop with Haresh Sharma’ (organised by the National Library Board, September – October 2018), and have now been taken to their next developmental step of rewrites and readings.

The plays will be publicly read to an invited audience for the first time, over 4 separate Guest Room sessions from March to July 2019:

Part 1, March 2019

• Twin Butterflies by Clara Mok
• We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Part 2, April 2019

• Touch Wood by Auderia Tan
• Untitled by XM Lim-Fang

Part 3, June 2019

• A Midsummer White Dream by Ivy Chen
• The House of Golden Chains by Larnce Alahendra

Part 4, July 2019

• If Tomorrow Comes Again by Ivan Choong
• Silence by Alicia Kan

A Midsummer White Dream by Ivy Chen

Synopsis – Sarong Party Girl/White Fever – These just refer to a woman who is mad over white cocks. Why? Do these women want to be colonised by their former colonisers? This is a question that needs an answer to.

Playwright – Ivy is a fresh graduate from NTU with a double major in English and Psychology. She is looking for a job to sustain her side interest, that is, playwriting.

Actors – Auderia Tan, Grace Kanai, Ivan Choong, Jaisilan Sathiasilan, Miriam Cheong

The House of Golden Chains by Larnce Alahendra

Synopsis – Westernized Sinhalese girl who grew up in traditional high caste kandyan family struggling to come out as a lesbian as her fiercely traditional mother prepares an arranged marriage for her.

Playwright – Larnce Alahendra is a Sinhalese born in Sri Lanka and who moved to Singapore after her marriage. She has completed a short course in screenwriting at the Tisch School of arts Asia and is currently editing her first novel.

Actors – Victoria Chen, Grace Kanai, Ivy Chen, Ivan Choong, Tanvi Kothary, Jaisilan Sathiasilan, Te hao boon

First Act(s) is a 4-part series featuring 8 plays-in-progress from a group of budding playwrights brought together by fate. These plays were born at the ‘Playwriting Workshop with Haresh Sharma’ (organised by the National Library Board, September – October 2018), and have now been taken to their next developmental step of rewrites and readings.

The plays will be publicly read to an invited audience for the first time, over 4 separate Guest Room sessions from March to July 2019:

Part 1, March 2019

• Twin Butterflies by Clara Mok
• We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Part 2, April 2019

• Touch Wood by Auderia Tan
• Untitled by XM Lim-Fang

Part 3, June 2019

• A Midsummer White Dream by Ivy Chen
• The House of Golden Chains by Larnce Alahendra

Part 4, July 2019

• If Tomorrow Comes Again by Ivan Choong
• Silence by Alicia Kan

Touch Wood by Auderia Tan

Synopsis – Do we live to fight or fight to live? Is the purpose of life to live or leave?

Playwright – Auderia is a drama practitioner who is exploring how dialogues can inspire audience members to think about the unspoken / taboo topics of our society.

Cast –

Director: A Yagnya
Actors: Catherine Ho, Natasha Lau, Jeremy Leong, Phyllis Serene Tan, Miriam Cheong

Untitled by XM Lim-Fang

Synopsis – Is there any crack in the pragmatism where dreams can flourish? Ensnared by social expectations, Madeline stares down the safe linear path to the Singaporean happy ending and wonders if there can be anything more than this.

Playwright – XM Lim-Fang is an undergraduate with a love for linguistics, writing, and torbie cats. Her work includes the 10-minute short Tragedy of the Commons.

Actors – Rachel Tan Wan Ting, Andrea Ee, Rajkumar Thiagaras, Grace Kanai, Kelly Choo

First Act(s) is a 4-part series featuring 8 plays-in-progress from a group of budding playwrights brought together by fate. These plays were born at the ‘Playwriting Workshop with Haresh Sharma’ (organised by the National Library Board, September – October 2018), and have now been taken to their next developmental step of rewrites and readings.

The plays will be publicly read to an invited audience for the first time, over 4 separate Guest Room sessions from March to July 2019:

Part 1, March 2019

• Twin Butterflies by Clara Mok
• We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Part 2, April 2019

• Touch Wood by Auderia Tan
• Untitled by XM Lim-Fang

Part 3, June 2019

• A Midsummer White Dream by Ivy Chen
• The House of Golden Chains by Larnce Alahendra

Part 4, July 2019

• If Tomorrow Comes Again by Ivan Choong
• Silence by Alicia Kan

Twin Butterflies by Clara Mok

Synopsis – The bosomy lao ban niang aka “Old Butterfly” and her pretty daughter aka “Young Butterfly” are in danger of being cheated by a charismatic guy due to a bet. Told from the eyes of bread shop employees, the play revolves around how Ah Tiong, the bread shop towkay, attempts to stop his loved ones from being snared before it’s too late.

Short story ‘Twin Butterflies’, which the play is based on, is one of ten selected works for the Writing the City showcase organised by Singlit Station (October 2018). This light-hearted play is unapologetic and unabashed in bringing out the worst in its cast of entertaining characters.

Playwright – Clara Mok loves reminiscing about her childhood and wishes to capture snippets of Singapore’s past before they disappear.

Actors –
Chio Su-Ping
Christine Chia
Gabriele Goh
Grace Kanai
Ivan Choong
Kelly Choo
Larnce Alehandra
Tanvi Kothary

We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Synopsis – We Cannot Bring Money When We Die is a play about a middle-aged woman’s funny and frantic search for security, love, and the meaning of life and death when her husband suffers a massive stroke, requiring her to repair relationships with her children and stepdaughters.

Playwright – Christine Chia is a writer, editor, and teacher who enjoys writing about serious issues in a humorous way.

Actors –
Alicia Kan
Chio Su-Ping
Clara Chow
Grace Kanai
Ivan Choong
Kelly Choo
Shaik Nazray
Yeo Wei Wei

In an ever expanding and growing underground passage network, three relationships and a story of a missing cat unfold. Does the man-made space bury or unearth hidden human desires? How wide apart are our lives from that depicted by advertisements on the underground walls?

Artist’s Motivation:
A playwright is (largely) confined to constructing protagonist journeys via spoken words. Yet, there are many limitations on what those spoken words reveal about the protagonists. Spoken words are like tips of icebergs, and every read of a script is a chance to imagine a different existence beneath what meet the eyes.

Under is an exploration in meanings of spoken words, through repetition, permutation and rhythmization. It is also an exploration of what lies beneath what can be seen and heard.

Centre 42 previously supported the play’s development under its Basement Workshop programme where Lee Shyh Jih and his collaborators underwent six months of workshopping to explore the many possibilities of delivering the texts of Under.

Read more about Under at our Basement Workshop programme here.

Playwright & Director – Lee Shyh Jih
Actors – Ric Liu, Jalyn Han, Tan Beng Tian, Neo Hai Bin, Myra Loke

We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Synopsis – We Cannot Bring Money When We Die is a play about a middle-aged woman’s funny and frantic search for security, love, and the meaning of life and death when her husband suffers a massive stroke, requiring her to repair relationships with her children and stepdaughters.

Playwright – Christine Chia is a writer, editor, and teacher who enjoys writing about serious issues in a humorous way.

Actors –
Alicia Kan
Chio Su-Ping
Clara Chow
Grace Kanai
Ivan Choong
Kelly Choo
Shaik Nazray
Yeo Wei Wei

Theresa Tan in 1987. Theodora, better known as Theo, has been living alone in her university hostel. One day, a girl named Sandra dressed all in yellow, moves in. Their personalities and family backgrounds are worlds apart, resulting in their differing perceptions about the world they share. With a healthy dose of varsity dramas, boys, and an “unflushable poop”, this play tells the journey of two ladies who managed to come to some degree of mutual understanding of each other.

Directorial Vision:
When A Yagnya first read Pistachios and Whipped Cream, the images that flashed through her mind were possibly not at all intended by the playwright when Tan first wrote the play in 1987. In her investigation and interpretation of this text, A Yagnya wishes to explore how the existing stereotype of foreigners in Singapore can be made better. Her adaptation seeks to portray the character of Sandra as a Chinese national and Theo as a Singaporean, thus giving rise to a set of different personal interactions between the characters. By working with the comedy present in Tan’s text, she hopes to achieve a work that questions its audience subtly on their views without being preachy.

Presenting this 1st phase of the exploration as a dramatized reading incorporating some basic multimedia and physical theatre work will allow her to crystalise her vision for the full work. The process will help her develop a conscious style for text based direction, through written reflections and documentation of the process.

A Yagnya aims to develop Pistachios and Whipped Cream into a full staging.

A Yagnya, Director
Yagnya is a director who has worked on various capacities with The Necessary Stage (Mobile II: Flat Cities), TheatreWorks (Of Babies [not really] and People), The Singapore Repertory Theatre (Chicken Little and The Nightingale) and the M1 Fringe Festival on theatre projects.

Yagnya aims to develop works for a non-theatre going audience to further discussions about societal issues in a way that she strongly believes theatre can achieve, through compelling stories. When she’s not doing theatre work, Yagnya studies Japanese and does translation and interpretation for the arts. She enjoys a good chat and good tea after shows.

Theresa Tan, Playwright
Theresa Tan’s foray into playwriting began after her first year at university when she decided to participate in the Shell-NUS National Short Play Competition 1987. She did not expect her play Pistachios And Whipped Cream to win First Prize—a win that opened up to her the world of theatre. Theresa went on to become one of the dramatists in TheatreWorks’ seminal Writers’ Lab, which culminated in the Theatre On The Hill event in 1992, a “carnival” of short plays penned by Singaporean playwrights.

Theresa’s Bra Sizes was staged at this event. Her first full-length play Dirty Laundry was staged by TheatreWorks in 1993. In 1994, Theresa collaborated with director Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage to workshop and stage Excuse Me While I Kiss The Sky, a work that featured the true stories of young people who had attempted suicide.

Since then, Theresa has not written plays except for her church’s Easter and Christmas events. She got married in 1995, became the editor at a host of magazines, from Female Singapore to ELLE Singapore to Tiger Tales to Vanilla, and now runs her own commercial writing business, WORD Agency. She is also the author of A Clean Breast, a chronicle of her experience with breast cancer in 2010. She is married with three children, 19, 17 and 12.

Mentor
Alvin Tan

Multimedia
Brian Gothong Tan

Performers
Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai
Cheryl Tan Yun Xin
Ruzaini Mazani

We Cannot Bring Money When We Die by Christine Chia

Synopsis – We Cannot Bring Money When We Die is a play about a middle-aged woman’s funny and frantic search for security, love, and the meaning of life and death when her husband suffers a massive stroke, requiring her to repair relationships with her children and stepdaughters.

Playwright – Christine Chia is a writer, editor, and teacher who enjoys writing about serious issues in a humorous way.

Actors –
Alicia Kan
Chio Su-Ping
Clara Chow
Grace Kanai
Ivan Choong
Kelly Choo
Shaik Nazray
Yeo Wei Wei