Season of diversity

A snapshot of the diversity of local theatre is what the Esplanade's The Studios promises this month when the annual season of offbeat and experimental works returns for the 12th edition.

Four out of the five ticketed shows are premieres. The last is a re-staging of The Finger Players' Rant & Rave, which was commissioned for the Esplanade's 10th anniversary two years ago.

The Studios season opens on April 17 with Ten Thousand Tigers by film and performance artist Ho Tzu Nyen, 38, who presents a multi-disciplinary performance about the history of the part-real, part-folkloric Malayan Tiger.

Wrapping up the season in July is Butterfly by Glasgow-based, Singaporean theatre practitioner Ramesh Meyyappan, 39.

Ms Pearlyn Cai, programmer at the Esplanade, says: "We have a good representation of the diversity of Singapore theatre, which ranges from the experimental Ten Thousand Tigers to Butterfly's visual theatre to the realist play Red. It's apt to have Rant & Rave in this season, which in itself is a piece tracing the history of Singapore theatre."

Red, a Tony Award-winning bio-drama written by John Logan about the life of American painter Mark Rothko, is presented by Blank Space Theatre and directed by Samantha Scott-Blackhall, 36.

Ms Cai, 32, says: "Samantha is a skilful and thoughtful director. In her hands, we believe Red is going to be an intellectually and theatrically exciting play."

Butterfly is a theatrical adaptation of Madame Butterfly, the tale popularised by Puccini's opera, using devices such as puppetry. Says Ms Cai: "This piece is about a woman experiencing intense grief and how she tries to cope. We've all experienced grief directly or indirectly and I believe this is a piece which audiences can identify or empathise with."

Another new production is Checkpoint Theatre's #UnicornMoment, an autobiographical work written and performed by actress Oon Shu An, 27, in which she explores her past and what has made her who she is.

Says Ms Cai: "While this piece is very personal to Shu An as she digs deep into her own life experiences, it's also reflective of that search process that many of us go through as young adults, that search for identity and purpose and our place in this world."

Aside from the five ticketed productions, there are also three free performances which are part of Raw, The Studios' four-year-old incubatory platform for works in progress.

Raw comprises three performances. The first is other/s by Elizabeth de Rosa and Danny Yeo, a cross-cultural collaboration between two local and two American directors. The other two are dramatised reading The Boy Inside by Wang Liangsheng; and Dark Room x8 by Edith Podesta, which is based on the true stories of eight incarcerated men.

RED

Red by Blank Space Theatre is based on the life of American abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, who became well-known in the 1930s for his evocative swathes of colour on canvas.

The play by American writer John Logan won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Play. It is a nuanced portrait of the famously uncompromising Rothko, framed by his conversations with his newly hired assistant Ken, who is young and naive.

Director Samantha Scott-Blackhall says the 90-minute show is a thought- provoking discussion of philosophy, fact and fiction.

"Besides gaining insight into the life, personality and work of legendary artist Rothko, the audience is thrown into meaningful conversations about tragedy in art, the politics of life, the culture of a changing and modernising world, the importance of documenting and respecting history and, most thought-provokingly, one's relationship with the people that change you," she explains.

Scott-Blackhall, 36, adds that at one point in the play, Rothko and the fictional Ken, played by Daniel Jenkins and Gavin Yap, actually get their hands dirty on stage.

She says: "Rothko and Ken are constantly priming canvases, mixing paints and, at one very dynamic point in the play, they fully paint a 2.5 by 2.5m canvas with red paint in less than a minute. It's very exciting to watch."

Taking up the paintbrush of the post-war artist is veteran thespian Jenkins, who will be wearing prosthetic pieces to re-create Rothko's prominent nose and tufted hair.

Jenkins, 45, says: "I think what makes Rothko such an exciting character to play is his passion and obsession with creating art that really moves people. He believes good art is a battle between good and bad, life and death. It is much more than mere entertainment."

As for Yap, 36, who was last seen in Pangdemonium's Fat Pig, one of the highlights of the experience is getting to paint on stage.

He says: "Daniel and I are going to get to do some real hands-on stuff with paints, mixtures and canvases. These are all things I've had very little experience with, so I'm very psyched about that."

TEN THOUSAND TIGERS

Ten Thousand Tigers by artist and director Ho Tzu Nyen is a hallucinatory performance, video and sound art project which explores the folklores and cosmologies surrounding the Malayan Tiger.

For Ho, 38, the mythical tiger is a master of metamorphosis and has always been slipping in and out of human consciousness, such as in Admiral Cheng Ho's tiger sightings in this part of the world in the 15th century and the clashes between humans and tigers in the mid-19th century due to deforestation.

He will recount the tale of the striped feline over the last thousand years through live vocalisations and stencilled puppets suspended from strings.

The show will be performed in Malay, Mandarin and Japanese with English subtitles, by actors and vocalists Sim Pern Yiau, Hiro Machida, Rizman Putra and Bani Haykal.

Describing it as a "seance" intended to evoke the spirit of the tiger, Ho adds: "Since the tiger adopts different forms in different ages, we need to draw upon a variety of different resources, ranging from the incantatory to the theatrical to the visual and musical art forms in order to create suitable conduits for the spirit of the Malayan Tiger."

Ho, a film-maker whose works have been shown at the Venice Biennale, has always been obsessed with tigers.

This is the second episode of Three Tigers Trilogy, a set of live performances dedicated to the figure of the tiger as it exists in the imagination, memory and history of Singapore.

It follows 2012's The Song Of The Brokenhearted Tiger, which also made its debut at The Studios. The starting point of that performance was a Javanese myth about the friendship of the tiger and the forest, which Ho says was "much more ritualistic and musical in form".

Ten Thousand Tigers, on the other hand, "has a much stronger emphasis on text and is more committed to the numerous stories and histories of human-tiger encounters".

Through this journey, he adds, "we learn not only about tigers, but also about men and, most importantly, we find out about the thin and permeable line that separates tiger and men, animals and humans, the past and the present."

#UNICORNMOMENTS

A deeply personal journey into the past of actress Oon Shu An lies at the heart of multimedia project #UnicornMoments by Checkpoint Theatre.

In the raw, autobiographical work, Oon, 27, digs deep into her history through interviews with old friends and acquaintances to produce a series of eight videos and a 75-minute live performance which she scripted and will perform.

Through the project, she hopes to collect "unicorn moments", or what she says are "flashes of clarity and insight that swiftly disappear", into a series of life lessons.

#UnicornMoments is co-directed by Huzir Sulaiman, 41, who is joint artistic director of Checkpoint Theatre.

He says: "In order to discover what has shaped her as a person and derive life lessons to share with her viewers, Shu An has embarked on a series of interviews with many of the people who have shaped her in her life, from family members to primary school friends to former boyfriends to old teachers.

"It has been a very brave process on her part. It's taken a lot of courage and equanimity and I really salute her for doing this."

Co-directing the show with Huzir is Shiv Tandan, 23, an associate artist with Checkpoint Theatre.

He says: "Shu An has a unique and powerful writing voice that I really admire. There is a very natural quality to it and she is able to connect with her audience immediately."

Oon says the project was originally Huzir's idea and that when she first heard of it, she "struggled with it for awhile" because she needed direction.

Even after getting the ball rolling, Oon, who was the lead actress in Resort World Sentosa's 2012 theatrical magic show Incanto, says that putting herself onstage for the production is "insanely, insanely scary".

She explains: "There are still battles I have with myself - Do they need to know this? Can we leave that out? Is this part really important? What will people think of me? There have been many times when I've just thought, 'Let's change the idea' or 'That's enough interviews'."

Through the process of creating the show though, she says, she has learnt much more about herself.

In particular, she discovered "how afraid I have become of everything... It may be that I have no idea who I really am, but maybe that doesn't matter."

BUTTERFLY

Watch a desolate soul try to cope with the world crashing down around her in Ramesh Meyyappan's heartrending Butterfly.

The visual theatre production is based on the 19th-century short story Madame Butterfly by American author John Luther Long.

In Meyyappan's multi-disciplinary production, a kitemaker is plunged into loneliness and isolation after her lover abandons her.

The actor-director, 39, who is based in Glasgow, Scotland, says of his creation: "Central to this story is a female character whose life has been shattered by loss and grief. Her emotions are masked by denial as she lives in a fantasy world where her hopes for a better future prevail."

The original short story, which was adapted into an opera by Italian composer Puccini in 1904, is a tragedy about a Japanese woman who is betrayed by her husband and is driven to attempt suicide by the thought of losing her child.

Meyyappan says his version of the story is not a direct adaptation of the 1898 short story.

He says: "Madame Butterfly is classically known for its themes of love, disappointment, loss and hope.

"Butterfly, as an adaptation, focuses on these themes, adding a fantasy element that will create a unique and fresh interpretation. There becomes a sense of wanting to explore how grief and loss manifest themselves both physically and emotionally."

He is known for his eclectic mix of visual and physical theatre, which also incorporates circus techniques and the exaggerated physicality of bouffon, a style of theatre that is a specialised form of clowning.

For Butterfly, he will also be adding another element to his repertoire: puppetry. There will be three performers in the show, including himself.

He is quick to emphasise, though, that Butterfly is not a puppet show: "What I've tried to achieve is to make use of a visual element to support a particular part of the narrative that would be quite difficult to explain with words alone.

"Puppets will symbolise the hope and desperation of the lead character in the world she creates to cope.

"As reality and fantasy collide, the woman is plunged into a heightened state of confusion. The use of both actors and puppets allows for a dynamic twist in the theatrical narrative."

Book it

TEN THOUSAND TIGERS
When: April 17 to 19, Thursday and Friday, 8pm; Saturday, 3 and 8pm

RANT & RAVE
When: May 1 to 4, Thursday and Friday, 8pm; Saturday, 3 and 8pm; Sunday, 3pm

#UNICORNMOMENT
When: May 8 to 10, Thursday and Friday, 8pm; Saturday, 3pm

RED
When: July 10 to 13, Thursday, 8pm; Friday, 8 and 10.30pm; Saturday, 3, 7.30 and 10pm; Sunday, 3 and 7.30pm

BUTTERFLY
When: July 17 to 19, 8pm daily
Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio
Admission: $28 for a single ticket and $90 for four tickets from Sistic (call 6348-5555 or go to www.sistic.com.sg)

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