Let the power of stories map your dreams. One of the fondest memories of our childhoods is listening to our parents tell us a story before tucking us in to bed. Falling asleep, our dreams would be filled with gallant knights and life changing adventures, dreams we’d rarely want to wake up from. With reality often being far more droll than the world of fantasy … Continue reading SIFA 2019: Bedtime Stories by URLAND (Review)
Finding the answer to life in plane sight. Inspired by the theme of religion and reflection on time, the universe and the divine in T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Colours deviates from Split’s usual themes of education and adolescence to take on a far darker topic – airplane disasters. Written and directed by Split artistic director Darryl Lim, we enter the Centre 42 Blackbox and are greeted by a team of … Continue reading Review: Colours by Split Theatrical Productions
A brief history of a fictitious communist acts as the starting point for which to deconstruct the very nature of truth itself. Far too often in the recording of history, tiny details get lost from simple descriptors, to entire accounts of people. The latter in particular is explored in full with Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Mysterious Lai Teck. Based off a former leader of the Malayan … Continue reading SIFA 2019: The Mysterious Lai Teck by Ho Tzu Nyen (Review)
Joyous, modern take on Prokofiev’s classic that will enchant any child with the magic of theatre. Every once in a while, amidst the darkness and grit that so much of today’s theatre is characterised by, there is a distinct need to lighten up the mood and find optimism in simple, yet powerful reminders of all that is good in the world. Presented by New Zealand’s … Continue reading SIFA 2019: Peter and the Wolf by Silo Theatre (Review)
Tadashi Suzuki draws out the wicked and the divine from a classic Greek tragedy . Staging a classic Greek tragedy has never been an easy feat for any theatre company – as enduring as these stories are, the true challenge lies in having a production simultaneously bring something new to the tale, while still preserving the essence of message of the original tale. In the … Continue reading SIFA 2019: Dionysus by Suzuki Company of Toga & Purnati Indonesia (Review)
Crippling guilt is the driving force of tragedy in this co-production between Schaubühne Berlin and Simon McBurney After closing SIFA 2018 with An Enemy of the People, Germany’s Schaubühne Berlin has now returned to open SIFA 2019 in an almost poetic act of programming continuity. In a similar vein to their production last year, Beware of Pity is a scathing, pointed look at the darkness of the human … Continue reading SIFA 2019: Beware of Pity by Schaubühne Berlin & Complicité (Review)
An audacious celebration of the Singapore Bicentennial and our post-colonial hangups in true TNS fashion. From the very moment the Singapore Bicentennial was announced, fiery controversy was sparked as the sheer audacity of such an event was called into question. After all, which country actually celebrates the anniversary of their colonisation? It is from this central question that The Necessary Stage’s newest production seems to be … Continue reading Review: Civilised by The Necessary Stage
Wag the Dog Theatre is back this June for their annual mainstage production. Once again playing at the Drama Centre Black Box, this year, they’re presenting Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play How I Learned to Drive. Having premiered in March 1997, How I Learned to Drive is set in rural America in the 1960s, and exploring the life of L’il Bit, a teenage girl as she comes … Continue reading Preview: How I Learned To Drive by Wag the Dog Theatre
Theatreworks’ Writers’ Lab programme has been in place since the 1990s, continually encouraging and developing Singapore playwriting with its varied programmes. But this year, they’re changing up the formula a little, and integrating the brand new Not Ordinary Work (N.O.W.) into the programme, dedicating a three week programme to celebrating, as its title suggests, work that goes beyond the ordinary. Helmed by theatre practitioner Noorlinah Mohamed, N.O.W. is an interdiciplinary … Continue reading Preview: TheatreWorks Writers’ Lab – N.O.W. 2019
The Esplanade is set for one of their biggest productions of the year, as they present visionary Canadian theatre director Robert Lepage’s The Far Side of the Moon this November. Touching on a narrative set against the backdrop of the race to the moon between the Americans and the Russians, our story instead centres on Philippe, a struggling introverted philosopher, and his younger brother Andre, a successful … Continue reading Preview: Esplanade Presents – The Far Side of the Moon by Ex Machina/Robert Lepage
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