Reading-Presentation Details:
12 July 2015, Sunday
8pm
Rehearsal Studio @ Centre 42
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Inspired by Antigone as well as stories from the Cultural Revolution, The Shape of a Bird evokes a magical world of warring birds and cicadas through the creative use of puppetry. Within an isolated cell, a Writer tries to retain her imagination and freedom by writing stories and letters to her daughter. She forges a tentative friendship with her jailor, even as she resists his attempts to force a confession out of her. In the meantime, she creates a magical world of birds and cicadas in her mind, which features a young heroine, Ann, who similarly defies the authorities to put her stories on the page and bring her brother back to life. However, as the pressures on the Writer intensify in the real world, she is forced to choose between her stories and her own daughter. Gradually, the boundaries between the two worlds dissolve, and events go spinning out of the Writer’s control, in both her real and imagined life.
The Shape of a Bird is playwright Jean Tay’s latest creation. With the support of the Centre’s Guest Room programme, Jean, together with director Mei Ann Teo and a team of actors, works towards presenting a work-in-progress play-read on 12 July 2015 in the Rehearsal Studio. Thereafter, input from invited audiences will feed into refining the play for a future staging in 2016.
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Jean Tay, Playwright
Graduated in 1997 with a double-degree in creative writing and economics from Brown University, USA, Jean Tay has under her belt a number of award-winning plays. In 2006, Everything But the Brain was awarded Best Original Script for the Life! Theatre Awards. Boom was conceptualised at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2007, and developed and staged by the Singapore Repertory Theatre in September 2008. It was nominated for Best Original Script for The Straits Times’ Life! Theatre Awards in 2009 and is now an ‘O’ and ‘N’ Level Literature text in Singapore schools -
Following the Guest Room work-in-progress showing, The Shape of A Bird will be premiering at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2016 in January 2016. The Centre continues to support the play’s development under its Basement Workshop programme. Jean Tay and her collaborators in the newly formed collective Saga Seed Theatre will be rehearsing at Centre 42 in the first half of January leading up to the production’s premiere.
Read more about The Shape of A Bird under our Basement Workshop programme here.
