How much of a pickle are we in when it comes to sustainability and climate change? It all feels like a bit of a crisis, but in the meantime, the solution just might be…pickling? This September, the Esplanade’s The Studios 2025 rounds off with Pickle Party by The Theatre Practice (Practice), which places the audience at a pickling workshop within a performance.

Originally staged as part of Practice’s Recess Time programme, Pickle Party is a multidisciplinary, multi-species performance that lets audiences discover the joys and wonders of pickling, while the team showcases Singapore’s rapid development from farmland to modern city, as we are asked to consider how humans, microbes and food security are connected. All the power of edible hope contained in jars upon jars of pickled food. Speaking to Ang Xiao Ting, Concept Artist & Co-director of Pickle Party, and Joey Cheng, Producer of Pickle Party, we found out more about the origins of the show, the sustainability of Singapore theatre and more. Read the interview in full below:

Bakchormeeboy: How did Pickle Party come onboard The Studios this year, and how much has been changed or adapted since the initial showcase in 2023? What can audiences expect from this showing?

Ang Xiao Ting (Concept Artist & Co-director of Pickle Party): It started from Recess Time as part of Tuckshop’s long-term programming. Back in 2022, we’ve been running this programme for quite a few years and from the sessions, identified how people were concerned about managing their own food waste, but many did not have the practical skills or solutions. On a personal level, I have always loved the idea of using fermentation as a metaphor – it is so primal, so intrinsic. Finally, working on ideas centered on eco creativity for a few years, I was asking myself if it’s possible to build a set with humans as scenography instead, and knew very early on that there’s something fun about bodies on a livestream that serves as a wonderful canvas. It’s incredibly performative. I think our Digital Theatre work during Covid definitely had a huge impact on the aesthetic of the work. Finally, after 20 plus sessions of pickle pop-ups, (not pickle party), the themes and narrative came up through the sessions with volunteers in how there’s an undercurrent of anxiety related to food security and grief (real or projected) associated with our loss in connection to land and agriculture, which eventually was realised via the performance format of a lecture performance. Singapore has a unique relationship with this global ecological turn. Unlike many other places, our connection to agriculture and foodways isn’t as straightforward as ‘returning to the land’. So what does our food future look like?

Thematically, geopolitics and evolving technologies mean that our facts keep changing. It really reflects how unstable our food systems are. It has also shifted in terms of its positionality. As with most climate-related contexts, one of the questions we ask ourselves is: what’s the time frame? Are we looking back in search of answers? Are we examining the present? Or are we looking ahead? With Extinction Feast, it was very much about the present. With Pickle Party, the performance format allows for a much broader investigation of time in that we’re able to examine the past in order to zoom in on our assessment of the present and thus, be able to speculate the future.

This speculation is perhaps intrinsic to those of us who live in urban areas. Approximately 55% of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas, a figure projected to rise to 68% by 2050. This means that just over half of the global population is currently residing in cities and we are so vulnerable to the impacts of the crisis. As an artist, I am also incredibly passionate about how theatre can visualise the impact of the climate crisis to envision pathways of healing and hope. From a more fact-centered assemblage of texts, this upcoming iteration foregrounds real human concerns about how something as abstract as a food system actually directly relates to relationships with kin. It is a universal feeling to want to care for something. Everyone just approaches it differently – whether it’s a parent, a system, a nation or with our more-than-human counterparts. I think our playwright Wang Liansheng really put a lot of thought into working this into the revised script. In terms of tone, I think we’re also leaning into the playfulness and irreverence of the work. Finally, the new cast is fantastic. We can’t wait to work with Izzul and Elizabeth!

Bakchormeeboy: Pickle Party is partly a workshop – how does the act of participation help audiences understand and appreciate the message behind Pickle Party better? Do audience members who choose to only watch the work lose out on anything the participants get to do during the show?

Ang Xiao Ting: That’s why it took time to build the work in terms of the show’s development because we wanted to test out these viewing experiences. Essentially, they experience the work differently, but the scaffolding is such that both audiences get the same ‘story’, just a different way of encountering the themes/narrative.

Bakchormeeboy: Pickle Party will be taking place on a Singapore version of Tanja Beer’s critically-acclaimed The Living Stage. How did the team learn about and learn from Tanja Beer, and how else do you see local theatre productions and companies adopting similar approaches towards their set design?

Ang Xiao Ting: I have been working in this field for a decade and in the early days, I was reaching out and emailing to artists internationally, whom I felt were also exploring and navigating the intersections of arts and the climate crisis. I then reached out to Tanja in 2020 randomly and we began connecting from there. Tanja also featured Recess Time in her book. As colleagues, we have also spoken on multiple panels together, including Prague Quadrennial (2023) and the Asia Pacific Arts Conference (2024).

This is the first time we are collaborating as fellow artists because we felt like the idea of Tanja’s Living Stage could be a basis for the stage design of Pickle Party. The truth is our community has already been doing the work. Tanja’s concept of The Living Stage offers another perspective in the eco system. Also, Pickle Party is also our first time attempting to use The Theatre Green Book (TGB) initiated by renew culture uk from start to finish as part of TGB working group’s initiative. We will be sharing the process in terms of both opportunities and challenges at Green Stages later this year. If you’d like to be part of the mailing list for updates, please fill out the form here.

Bakchormeeboy: Theatre as a practice is often unsustainable, where set pieces and props rarely find second lives due to the cost of storage and maintenance, or the sheer amount of energy it takes when it comes to lighting, air-conditioning etc, and in Singapore especially, where these works usually have such short runs. What do you feel local practitioners can do towards making their own practice more sustainable?

Joey Cheng, Producer of Pickle Party: I believe the statement of theatre as a practice being unsustainable is just a part of a bigger issue – we are living in a society where consumerism drives the market and it does not help that Singapore is also a resource scarce nation. The larger question here is what does it take to make a mindset shift? This is essentially an attitude you take towards the issue, despite the fact that it does look increasingly daunting. We find ourselves in the thick of the Climate Crisis.

In the grand scheme of things it may seem that our impact on the environment is much smaller than compared to many other industries – however, as artists, we have the power to shape and influence the future that we want to see. What better way to start, than to start with re-evaluating the ways that we engage in artmaking? One can revisit practices that have served us well through the years, and through this, find new ways of doing things. Perhaps, it can lead to breakthroughs, or maybe things may stay as status quo. The important exercise here is to constantly question what is done, and what can be done better, and/or differently

Of course, with every piece of work, you will have to prioritise certain design / messaging, but I think we can all start with something small, just like how we did so many years ago. It was not a clean / neat start, like “let’s all be sustainable now”, but it is a gradual transition, with one decision leading to the next and soon, with time, you’ll be looking back and wondering, “how did we even get on this journey?”. It really starts from something small, it does not need to be a grand display.

So I suppose a short answer to your question, take the first step. Link up with practitioners who are already starting in their own small ways. Engaging in a conversation is always a good start. Instead of seeing what we are unable to do, how do we make visible best practices and actionable steps forward within our capacities so the momentum becomes a collective movement? On Practice’s end, we’re invested in a sector shift and we believe that it’s possible, so we’re making theatre, as well as leading in certain advocacy efforts through various channels to help make this a reality.

Bakchormeeboy: Pickling brings to mind ideas of preservation, whether in terms of food or stories. Do you feel Singaporeans in general focus much too much on the idea of something fresh and new, or are we open to the idea of ‘pickled’ goods, where we store things and revive them like fine wine for sharing later on?

Ang Xiao Ting: It’s a balance of both.

Bakchormeeboy: In terms of the educational side of Practice, the team has always been very open towards participation and sharing, whether through Recess Time or other avenues. What’s the next stage of Practice’s educational process, especially in the field of sustainability, following this production? Will this go into cold storage, or are there avenues for it to tour/revive for new audiences to experience in the future?

Joey Cheng: I think the term to use would be advocacy – from when we started our journey with sustainability, it was always to build a platform where individuals (even though they are not familiar with theatre) could come together and have a communal experience – this includes sharing of perspectives and having dialogue. In facilitating these experiences, we have also gained a lot of insight, much of which has culminated into theatrical experiences such as Recess Time, Extinction Feast and now Pickle Party.

By producing these experiences, the hope is always that we could continue building upon these platforms and engaging with different audiences – and this also includes different cross-industry partners, to further the conversation beyond theatre. This is also why our productions often come with a programme extension, to hopefully facilitate that dialogue and point people to directions that might fulfil their curiosity long after they exit the theatre.

Pickle Party would add to our repertoire, and given our belief that every re-staging presents itself an opportunity to sharpen the narrative and reach out to new audiences, the last thing it would do is end up in cold storage. Yet, the truth is producing a show does come with its financial challenges and rely heavily on programming interest. We would love for this to tour, there are so many opportunities for cross-cultural understanding of how food security and land policy differs from continent to continent. So maybe, help us pitch this to friends you might know? Just kidding. Maybe we will re-stage this ourselves eventually.

(Adds co-director Kuo Jian Hong: And hor, we more Sheng Siong than Cold Storage…)

Bakchormeeboy: The theme of The Studios 2025 is “Sustenance”. What do you feel is the sustenance that Singaporeans, or the world needs most right now?

Ang Xiao Ting: To be reminded of the urgency of care – why we need to care and how to care in the best way we know how. Also, if storytellers are the legislators of the future, how exciting is that?

Photo Credit: Tuckys Photography

Pickle Party plays from 11th to 14th September 2025 at the Esplanade Annexe Studio. Tickets available here

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