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RICE TALES

THEATRE

Seed

ONE of Singapore's finest playwright-directors, Chong Tze Chien, returns to the stage with Seed, a profound work that's set against the tragedy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Working with Japanese actors, he has crafted a play that tells multiple stories but always comes back to the theme of food, specifically, rice.

In one story, a woman teaches her daughter one last time how to prepare a meal. In another, a woman travels with her dead husband to his hometown for a last meal with his family. In still another, a woman leaves food for her cat outside her door but it is eaten by something else.

Chong, 40, has a humanist body of work that typically centres on ordinary individuals struggling with forces beyond their control. To create Seed, he communicated with the Japanese cast through translators to imagine sc…