Singapore theatre returns in full force

AFTER 19 months of cancellations and postponements, the curtains are finally going up on new productions by Singapore's top theatre companies. This October alone, at least 10 shows are opening physically and virtually, creating a jam-packed month for theatre lovers.

The past year-and-a-half has seen the industry thinning out despite the support packages given out by the government. Several practitioners have left the industry because of the dearth of opportunities and income. Some may never come back.

We speak with five practitioners about their upcoming shows, as well as the struggles and solutions of creating art in a pandemic.

Janice Koh Actress in The Mother Produced by Pangdemonium

Pangdemonium's third production of a Florian Zeller play - always a reliable box-office draw - was supposed to open in June. But Covid-19 curbs forced the production to be postponed to October.

For actress Janice Koh who plays the title role in The Mother, the start-stop journey hasn't been easy: "The process of exploration and discovery, as well as the momentum of building a show towards opening night, has been severely disrupted, especially with having to re-cast the play along the way.

"Previously, we would have interacted a lot more closely with everyone else - from marketing and production, to the creatives and designers. Now it's just us - the cast - in the rehearsal room."

The Mother has played in New York and London, with actresses such as Isabelle Huppert and Gina McKee performing the lead. It centres on a woman with an intense devotion to her son. When he grows up, leaves home and becomes increasingly independent, she starts to unravel.

"Some parents, whose children have left home, go through a certain kind of grieving. This mid-life change, layered with other career and physiological changes as one gets older, can have a monumental effect on our mental health."

Zeller, a French playwright, has long enjoyed mainstream success in theatre.

But it was his 2020 film debut The Father that catapulted his reputation into the stratosphere: it earned an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (which he shared with translator Christopher Hampton), as well as the Oscar for Best Actor for lead actor Anthony Hopkins.

Pangdemonium's The Mother, directed by Tracie Pang, is the company's third Zeller production after The Father in 2018 and The Son in 2020.

Koh says: "Zeller is such an astute observer of human psychology, and the complexity of human emotions and relationships.

He makes visible on stage what is often invisible in real life. He forces us to reckon with issues that we probably avoid talking about."

• The Mother runs from Oct 22 to Nov 7. Tickets from Sistic.

Chong Tze Chien Writer-director of Murder At Old Changi Hospital Produced by Sight Lines Entertainment

Among Singapore's theatre makers, no one has pivoted online more unapologetically than Chong Tze Chien. When Covid-19 hit, the playwright-director was the first to leave behind the physical stage and venture straight into virtual productions with Sight Lines Entertainment.

The first production was Murder At Mandai Camp, a terrific army camp mystery tinged with supernatural elements that drew online audiences both in and outside of Singapore. Its sequel Murder At Mandai Camp: The Case Reopens as well as a subsequent project, the Raffles Hotel whodunit The Curious Case Of The Missing Peranakan Treasure (for which he served as consultant), successfully drew more audiences each time.

Chong says: "Covid has forced us to move into the online sphere more quickly. And it turned out to be a good move, because we were able to find new audiences who normally stayed away from theatre because they found it intimidating. We realised we could be a bridge between art and entertainment, creating virtual shows starring mostly theatre actors, and thereby introducing these actors to a wider audience."

His latest project is his most ambitious yet. Murder At Old Changi Hospital weaves theatrical storytelling with Augment Reality interactive gameplay and immersive spatial audio. It tells the story of a young woman (Munah Bagharib) whose untimely murder leads to the eerie disappearance of four men believed to be involved in her death.

Not only is it streaming online from Oct 8 onwards, but it will also go live during the Halloween weekend with a real-life escape room experience, where participants hunt for physical clues to solve the mystery. This hybrid experience featuring both virtual and physical components will set the format for the Murder At... series from 2022 onwards.

"As theatre makers, some of us used to think of technology as a foreign body that was anathema to the traditional and organic craft of creating theatre. But we now see technology as a welcoming frontier, allowing us to create new opportunities for theatre practitioners and expand our audience beyond Singapore.

"It's an untapped market and we're making up the rules as we go along - it's an exciting time."

• Murder At Old Changi Hospital runs online from Oct 8 to Nov 7. The real-life escape room experience runs on Halloween weekend (Oct 29 to 31). Tickets from thefuturestage.com

Adib Kosnan Playwright-actor in Keluarga Besar En. Karim (The Karims) Produced by Checkpoint Theatre

Checkpoint Theatre has pivoted in the pandemic like no other theatre company has. It has ventured into audio experiences, digital concerts and comic book publication. And it remains a strong supporter of original Singapore writing even in difficult times.

When the July run of Keluarga Besar En. Karim (The Karims) was cancelled because of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert), its director Claire Wong teamed up with filmmaker Joel Lim to transform the play into a film instead.

The result is a nuanced and endearing 82-minute family drama streaming on Sistic Live Stream from now till mid-October.

Performed in Malay and English with English subtitles, the film is written by and stars Checkpoint's associate artist Adib Kosnan.

It centres on a tight-knit family of four whose long-established routines are disrupted by the entry of the new son-in-law (played by Adib).

The proud patriarch (Rafaat Hamzah) has to contend with another man in the house. His wife (Dalifah Shahril) tries to keep the peace in their modest home. Their two daughters and son-in-law each have their own aspirations and ideals.

Adib says: "It's about culture clash: the idea of a progressive-thinking young man entering a relatively traditional family in which the father believes he knows best - and the young man not knowing how he can fit into this picture."

Pivoting from stage to screen happened quite quickly: "When we found out that we were unable to perform before a live audience, we put up the set at the Esplanade Studio space as intended - and rolled the camera instead."

Unlike other filmed theatre plays that have made very few adjustments for the camera, The Karims looks like a real film with close-ups, mid-shots, long shots and the appropriate lighting and acting styles.

"Everyone had to learn to gesture smaller and speak more softly because of the proximity of the film camera... It took a while to get used to that - but we got there."

• Keluarga Besar En. Karim (The Karims) runs from now till Oct 15. Tickets from Sistic.

Thomas Lim Writer-director of Straight Acting Produced by Wild Rice

Writer-director Thomas Lim has tackled many so-called taboo issues: His debut play Grandmother Tongue (2016) looked at the impact of the Speak Mandarin campaign on intergenerational communication between dialect-speaking Singaporeans and their Mandarin-speaking grandchildren.

His follow-up play Supervision (2018) examined the fraught relationship between Singaporeans and their domestic helpers. Both plays were critical and commercial successes that were staged and restaged by Wild Rice.

Now an associate artistic director at the company, Lim's new comedy explores another little-talked-about topic in Singapore: the struggles of LGBT couples to own their own HDB homes.

In Straight Acting, a gay couple (Tan Shou Chen and Darren Guo) and a lesbian couple (Eve Voigtlander and Deonn Yang) want to have a home of their own.

But Housing Development Board (HDB) rules do not allow Singaporeans under the age of 35, other than married heterosexual couples, to apply for a flat.

So the two men and two women conspire to marry each other in order to secure two HDB flats.

Hilarity ensues when their plan turns out to be more complicated than they imagined.

Lim says: "Like my other plays, this one is centred on the family as well - the idea that LGBT folk want a family and a home just like any other Singaporean, but have to go through enormous trouble to get them."

Lim says he was inspired by the landmark case of a gay man who was finally allowed by Singapore's high court to adopt his own biological child in 2018, who was conceived by a surrogate mother - four years after he first began legal proceedings.

"I was deeply moved by the lengths that these parents would go to in order to have children… I hope the audience will leave the play realising that every human being deserves the chance to have a loving family, regardless of their differences."

The play has been twice postponed because of the pandemic, a start-stop process that Lim calls "exhausting".

But he and his team are soldiering on, thankful they can finally open in mid-October.

• Straight Acting runs from Oct 14 to 24. Tickets from Sistic.

Nelson Chia Writer-director of Electrify My World Produced by Nine Years Theatre

In July, Nine Years Theatre ended its seven-year-old ensemble model, which entailed working with a dedicated group of actors who trained together regularly and systematically to build camaraderie and professionalism. It was the only theatre company in Singapore to boast such a model.

Artistic director Nelson Chia has since focused on writing and directing an original script, while also exploring new models for running the company.

His new Mandarin play Electrify My World is about the rivalry between two brilliant 19th century inventors: Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Both made huge contributions to the design of our electricity supply systems. But while Edison went down in history for inventing the light bulb, Tesla died penniless.

Piecing together research and information from books and online resources, Chia explores the history of their legendary rivalry with a dash of vaudeville showmanship and surrealist humour.

"To convince businessmen to invest in their inventions," Chia says, "Edison and Tesla had to be charismatic showmen whose sales presentations looked almost like magic shows."

To underscore this, Chia has designed a stage that looks like a circus ring where Edison (Timothy Wan) and Tesla (Neo Hai Bin) command like ringmasters, pumping up the audience who are seated all around them.

"The 19th century was a truly explosive era. It wasn't just Edison's light bulb that changed the way we lived. There were dozens of other ground-breaking inventions, such as the battery in 1800, typewriter in 1829, bicycle in 1839, telephone in 1876 and the automobile in 1885. So you can imagine what an exciting time it was."

Chia has long cultivated a reputation for lyrically translating classic English plays such as Twelve Angry Men and Fundamentally Happy into Mandarin, and then directing them with uncommon precision.

But his new play, as well as his last one, First Fleet, mark a new direction for Chia to create his own scripts instead of translating classics. He says: "I took a long time to move from acting to directing. Now I think it's time to move into a new phase of writing."

• Electrify My World runs from Oct 8 to 17. Tickets from Sistic.

Five more to watch

PICK from at least five other productions that are also playing in October:

The Swimming Pool Library By T:>Works

T:>Works' new artistic director Brian Gothong Tan parses society's definition of masculinity through an exhibition and a performance starring Karen Tan and Irfan Kasban. The title is taken from Alan Hollinghurst's famous 1988 debut novel.

• From Oct 21 to Nov 7. Tickets from Peatix.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) By Singapore Repertory Theatre

In lieu of its regular tentpole event Shakespeare In The Park, SRT is staging this fast-paced parody of Shakespeare's plays at Pasir Panjang Power Station, directed by Daniel Jenkins and starring Erwin Shah Ismail, Tia Andrea Guttensohn and Shane Mardjuki.

• From Oct 30 to Nov 14. Tickets from Sistic.

Forever Young By Sing'Theatre

Musical theatre company Sing'Theatre reprises its well-liked 2017 show set in a nursing home where a group of retired actors with an undying passion for performing come together for one of their last hurrahs. Directed by Hossan Leong.

• From now till Oct 3. Tickets from Sistic.

Unmasked, The Play By Sharul Channa

Popular stand-up comedian Sharul Channa has been steadily building her resume as a theatre maker as well. Unmasked, devised and directed by her, centres on an Indian expat (Amit Arun Joshi) in Singapore, who has not visited his parents in his hometown of Pune for two years because of Covid-19.

• From Oct 20 to 24. Tickets from Peatix

The Wright Stuff Festival 2021 By Toy Factory Productions

Mandarin theatre company Toy Factory showcases new writing with three original plays by young playwrights: The Time Machine by Lim Shien Hian, Lion by Jedidiah Huang and SKIN by Koh Tian Seng.

• From Oct 1 to 15. Tickets from Eventbrite.