Two years ago, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay’s annual theatre season, The Studios, embarked on a three-year curatorial arc revolving around the theme of LAND. In 2023, they covered Landings, exploring the natural world we live in and the way we interact with it, while in 2024, they covered Fault Lines, focusing on disruptions and movements that shift the trajectory of our lives. Now in 2025, they’re completing the cycle with the final chapter: Sustenance, and how we can provide nutrients and what we need for our body, mind and spirit.

A total of five productions will be showcased during this season of The Studios, coming together to question issues of the climate crisis and speculate on the future, the places we ‘land’ when we are displaced, alienated and at a loss, and to understand that which makes us feel connected to family, a place, a community, a culture. The season opens with David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era, a series of vignettes about the biggest crisis in human history. A couple discusses whether it’s ethical to have children. Scientists try to bioengineer a new coral reef. A Chinese team works to contain a glacier by building an Antarctic seawall. The last frog of its kind calls into the abyss for a mate. Scenes from the Climate Era is a dizzying stream of conversations. Adapted for a Singapore cast and directed by Ellison Tan, the play slips between the absurd and the comic, the domestic and the global, the past, present and possible futures.

In Haribo Kimchi, Jaha Koo (Lolling and Rolling, Cuckoo) invites audiences into his pojangmacha or Korean late-night snack bar and takes us on a culinary exploration peppered with text, K-pop inspired music, video and robotics. We meet three characters—a snail, a gummy bear, and an eel—who take us on a culinary journey, exploring food as shelter for those dislocated from their culture. In a series of intimate, absurdist anecdotes, they recount the evolution of kimchi culture, the bitter pain of unadulterated racism, the shame of trying to blend in, and the deep umami taste of home.  In this story of cultural assimilation and the umami taste of home, food serves as a shelter to the culturally dislocated. Global events bring about a different kind of dislocation and alienation.

In FOOD, Geoff Sobelle hosts an intimate dinner party of smell, tastes and touch, and with the help of the audience, shapes a conversation about personal memories and our relationship with food. At the centre of the performance space lies a comically large banquet table, encircled by audience members. The host of the evening, Geoff Sobelle, conducts this multi-sensory experience with deft hands, animated expressions and impressive physicality. Activating the senses through a myriad of sounds, scents, sights and textures, this acclaimed theatremaker stitches together a conversation about personal memories, consumption and the evolution of food production over generations. You are invited to be a guest at the dinner party—whether around the table or from the surrounding seats.

In August, Checkpoint Theatre presents new play Escape to Batam, inspired by the personal and poignant story of director-playwright Claire Wong’s father, who spent his boyhood on the rural island of Batam to escape the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Drawing parallels from their different life journeys, daughter Claire finds herself discovering what it means to live with the pain of loving those who have left us, and how to carry on for those who are still with us. Intertwined with Claire’s own lived experience of family loss and grief, the piece is a meditation on time, memory and resilience, transcending generations. Stars Adib Kosnan, Chaney Chia, Genevieve Tan, Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai, and Neo Swee Lin. 

The Studios 2025 rounds off with Pickle Party by The Theatre Practice, which places the audience at a pickling workshop within a performance. Co-directed by Ang Xiao Ting and Kuo Jian Hong, Pickle Party is a multidisciplinary, multi-species performance. Enjoy the pickling process as it takes place in real time against the backdrop of Singapore’s rapid development from farmland to modern city, as we are asked to consider how humans, microbes and food security are connected, as you discover the power of edible hope. For each performance, participants can choose to be Picklers (get hands-on with pickling on stage, limited slots) or be part of the General Audience (watch the performance from a different perspective). 

Alongside these productions, The Studios season encompasses workshops (Jaha Koo, Geoff Sobelle, and The Theatre Practice) conversations with artists, and a nature walk. These companion programmes provide different ways for audiences to deepen their engagement with the issues and questions arising from the productions, outside of the theatre. Today, as we continue to be confronted by environmental devastation and geopolitical fractures, join the Esplanade in Sustenance, and see how theatre opens up hope and possibility, for us to critically imagine paths for a gentler, more sustainable future beyond ourselves.

The Studios 2025 – Sustenance runs from July to September 2025. Full programme and more information available here