Presented by Our Tampines Hub as part of their National Day Celebrations
https://www.facebook.com/events/803545321181529/?ref=newsfeed
SOCIAL, a new play about social media and Happiness
The Thieves, a new play by Rachel Chin
Eco-warriors or Eco-Terrorists?
Pei Shan, a determined and passionate student-leader, spearheads the Hornbill State Eco Warriors, a dedicated environmental activism group with a burning desire to safeguard the planet. Their mission takes an exhilarating turn when the CEO of a powerful fossil fuel company sets his sights on expanding his empire, threatening the last remaining plot of pristine rainforest. Fueled by a fierce determination to protect nature’s fragile balance, the Eco Warriors devise a bold plan for a daring heist, but with an unexpected furry twist.
Let the Eco-heist begin!
Directed by Jeffrey Tan
15 to 17 Sept 2023, Gateway Theatre
Somewhere in Time
Interactive walking tour
Step back in time and relive the transformation of the historic Tanjong Pagar district, through this interactive walking tour. Enrolled as “errand runners”, wander the streets with our guide and a mystery character from the past, as you complete various tasks to uncover hidden gems and lesser-known tales about one of Singapore’s first conservation districts, learn about the resilience and resourcefulness of our pioneers and how they have strived for a better tomorrow. Be prepared to engage all your senses – you’ll never look at Tanjong Pagar quite the same way again.
TOURS
Saturdays 9.30am to 11.30 am or 3 pm to 5 pm
From Sat 27 Nov 2021 to 26 March 2022.
Food Memories
About the Silver Arts Community Arts Residency
The Silver Arts Community Arts Residency at LB SAC @ AMK 318 is an initiative by the National Arts Council in collaboration with Lions Befrienders Service Association (Singapore). It aims to provide artists with opportunities to engage and co-create with communities, to shape communal spaces, reflect collective stories and complement conversations surrounding Arts & Ageing.
Check out all seven Food Memories video on the Theatre Today Youtube channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_XwBUm5aBpFY4nf1fGrOsw
Review of SAME-SAME (2020)
No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability & Diverse Abilities Dance Collective, DADC (Singapore). Adelaide Festival Centre. 13 Nov 2020
There’s live performance and there’s live Zoom performance. No Strings and DADC have just pulled off both in an absolutely delightful international coup. Each company had a live performance group in situ, one in Singapore and one in Adelaide. But they merged as one interactive body via a Zoom collaboration.
Here in Adelaide, a live audience gathered covid-style in the Festival Centre’s Quartet Bar with the No Strings performers sitting beneath the giant screen whereupon they were joined by the Singapore performers. The theme of the event, apart from being a ground-breaking piece of new-tech international theatre, was an exploration of how performers with disability in two worlds have been coping with covid-19.
The show’s title is the answer. Same Same. Everyone, no matter where, has been going through the same weird and worrying experience of pandemic life.
The show’s creative director and host, Jeffrey Tan, interviewed the diversity of performers one by one, establishing their differences. They have different abilities, different interests, different family groupings, different cultures, even different colour preferences. But they all share new living conditions, particularly the hand-washing rituals. And there were 20 characters on the big Zoom grid, all miming hand-washing at once; quite an artwork if one looks at sheer aesthetics. But it was saying much more.
Tan and Adelaide’s Emma Beech liaise and direct from their venues, Beech guiding the likes of Zoe to perform a lithe, hair-flicking dance of liberation while Tan offers Jasprin in a bright red dress doing something of a lively Bollywood routine. At the end of the show, the Singapore crew is shown as a dance group while in Adelaide, performers swayed in harmony.
Tan has an exceptionally agreeable voice and demeanour. He is utterly inclusive and everyone shows loving patience with those who need a moment longer to get their words out. By the end of the Zoom hour, the strengths, skills, and characters of all the performers have been elicited and an extremely pleasing spirit of conviviality has presided.
And one feels one has come to know a bunch of interesting people from near and afar.
Tan said he devised this performance concept while brooding on the limitations that covid had inflicted on the theatre world. Partnering with No Strings’ Emma Beech brought forth the support of Arts South Australia and the Adelaide Festival Centre and, at his end, Maya Dance Theatre, the Singapore International Foundation, and Singapore Repertory Theatre. Also melded were the professional peers, Subastian Tan over there and Michaela Cantwell here. The whole endeavour grew in substance, strength, and authority; all of which showed when it came to the first of four public performances.
Sightlines in the Quartet Bar are nothing to write home about. Even in covid chequerboard configuration, sitting at the back of a large, flat room, one can’t see the protagonists at the front except via the Zoom screens. So there is a little bit of loss of involvement. Those at the front, however, joined in with the warm-up exercises and there was lots of arm waving. So, it speaks well of the spirit of the production and the hosting of Tan and Beech that such a warm sense of covid-era kinship is communicated.
This is a brave and beautiful use of the tools of the moment with a very positive and beautiful outcome.
Three cheers.
Samela Harris
When: 13 and 14 Nov 2020
Where: Adelaide Festival Centre, Quarter Bar
Theatre Today 