It’s a humid evening outside Aliwal Arts Centre, and we’re standing in the carpark, watching two women navigating their way around a car, pretending they’re crafting a boat in a forest. There is no forest, of course, only concrete, parked cars and the soft glow of artificial lights. But as performers Elle Cheng and Izyanti Asa’ari begin their quiet, deliberate gestures, the space starts to shift. A car becomes shelter. The air thickens with imagined foliage, taking us back to years past as their voices interchange in experimental dialogue that connects and then becomes non-sequitur. You start to wonder what it means to “rewild” a place that was never meant for dreaming.

This work-in-progress performance, Will This Float: Phantom Assemblies, is part of Rewilding, a new literary and visual arts gathering curated by artist Dave Lim of multidisciplinary trio DASSAD. It is also one of the first public glimpses into Next STAGE, a newly launched creative platform by Arts House Group (AHG) that is betting on ideas before they are fully formed. And rather than waiting for polished premieres, Next STAGE invites audiences into the messier, more intimate phase of artistic creation — where questions outnumber answers, and experimentation takes centre stage.

Launched in February 2026, Next STAGE is AHG’s latest initiative to support Singapore-based artists at the earliest stages of development. Beyond funding, the platform offers something rarer: time, space and hands-on technical support to test ideas that might otherwise never make it past the sketchbook. For its inaugural edition, AHG selected two resident artists at Aliwal Arts Centre: Dave Lim of DASSAD, and experimental music collective weird aftertaste, both known for pushing at the edges of form and discipline.

The result is a pair of radically different, but equally curious works-in-progress showcases: Rewilding in February, and 404:Panto.exe in April. Together, they set the tone for what Next STAGE hopes to be: a launchpad for bold, interdisciplinary experiments that challenge how we experience performance.

The core idea of Rewilding is a simple but provocative question: what does it mean to reconnect with the ecological and the fantastic in a city as manicured as Singapore? The gathering brings together writers and artists across disciplines: poetry, performance, sculpture and visual art, to explore that question collectively. One of its most intriguing moments is Will This Float: Phantom Assemblies, a performance and artist sharing by Elle Cheng and Izyanti Asa’ari, with an accompanying installation and poetic intervention by artists Shawn Hoo and Tristan Lim.

The work draws inspiration from Malay boat-building traditions, particularly the use of gelam bark, a material historically prized for its durability and buoyancy. But instead of building an actual boat, the artists turn to something far more familiar: the car. Here, the car becomes a site of imagination: a vessel, a shelter, a stand-in for the forest. Cheng and Asa’ari, a Chinese and a Malay woman, playfully and poignantly “pretend” their way into a jungle that no longer exists, asking what cultural memory, adaptation and survival look like in an urban landscape. It’s disorienting, funny and oddly nostalgia. It’s also very much unfinished, and that, after all, is the point, much like the invisible boat they’re assembling.

Alongside this performance, visual artist Tristan Lim and writer Shawn Hoo explore the idea of shanzhai, a Chinese term associated with imitation, fakes and replicas. Their work interrogates what authenticity means in a world saturated with copies, borrowing freely from both high art and knock-off culture. A playful poem by Hoo anchors the installation, refusing to take the idea of originality too seriously. Together, these fragments form a loose, evolving ecosystem rather than a neat exhibition, one that invites audiences to observe, question and even influence the work as it develops.

If Rewilding looks to ecology and myth, weird aftertaste’s 404:Panto.exe is set to plunge headfirst into the chaos of digital life. Created with British composer and filmmaker Adam de la Cour, the experimental pantomime reimagines the traditionally family-friendly form through the lens of internet culture. Familiar tropes are interrupted, glitched and distorted, mirroring the fractured attention spans and algorithmic absurdities of contemporary existence.

Anchored by a restless screen, the work explores online identity, half-truths and the compulsion to keep scrolling, even when we know better. Like Rewilding, audiences encounter the piece mid-process, witnessing how research, sound, performance and technology collide before settling into something more fixed.

By opening up the creative process, Next STAGE offers something rare in Singapore’s arts landscape: permission to not have it all figured out. “These intimate sessions allow artists to share their research, test ideas, and refine their work before presenting them on a larger stage,” says Sharon Tan, Executive Director of Arts House Group. For audiences, it’s a chance to engage with art not as a finished product, but as a living conversation.

Supported by BinjaiTree, the initiative also signals growing confidence in early-stage artistic development, an often under-funded but crucial part of the ecosystem. For anyone curious about where Singapore’s performing arts might be headed next, Next STAGE offers a compelling answer: not forward in a straight line, but sideways, backwards, and occasionally into a carpark masquerading as a jungle. And sometimes, that’s where the most exciting ideas begin.

Photo Credit: Arts House Group

Find out more about NEXT STAGE here