14th The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards 2014: Kindred spirits

Fourteen years after it started, the annual Life! Theatre Awards ceremony on Monday afternoon was a warm and fuzzy family affair.

The 13 award winners filled their acceptance speeches with moving mentions of their own families, either back home or present in the audience. At the event held at The St. Regis Singapore, they also thanked their theatre families, practitioners with whom they had slogged to create the best of last year's productions.

Two theatre companies, founded over the last few years by husband-and-wife duos, dominated the honour roll. One was four-year-old Pangdemonium, helmed by Tracie and Adrian Pang. It won the coveted Production of the Year and Production of the Year (Reader's Choice) awards for the musical Next To Normal.

The other was Nine Years Theatre, formed just two years ago and led by director Nelson Chia and actress-producer Mia Chee.

Chia, 41, who won Best Director for the critically acclaimed courtroom drama Twelve Angry Men, acknowledged his visibly moved wife in his acceptance speech: "Thank you also to the producer, Mia, who is also my beloved wife - who not only took care of the production but also our kids. Which is very important."

Laughing sheepishly, Chee, 35, told Life! after the event: "I think I am normally very embarrassed by this sort of thing. The last time he mentioned it, I felt so paiseh I wanted to just disappear.

"But yesterday I just thought, I'll take it in my stride. I deserve it!" Paiseh is Hokkien for embarrassed.

Chia last paid tribute to her at the awards when he scored Best Actor in 2011.

The couple's twin daughters were not in the audience but another family showed up in full force: that of performance group spell#7's co-founders Paul Rae and Kaylene Tan.

Their two daughters, Summer and Lola Rae, both in primary school, took a day off from school to attend. And keeping an extra eye out for the two excited girls was Tan's mother Eleanor Song, 67, who is also an actress.

All five of them were nominees for Best Ensemble for the whimsical and personal show, Family Duet, which documented snatches of their family life.

When asked if she was pleased to be skipping school for the awards ceremony, Lola broke out a huge grin and declared: "Yes, of course!" The cosy luncheon, attended by 120 invited guests from the theatre community, was brimming with tributes to kith and kin.

Playwright Alfian Sa'at, 36, who landed his third Best Original Script win with the farcical satire Kakak Kau Punya Laki (Your Sister's Husband), dedicated the trophy to his mother in his speech.

He later told Life! that his elderly mother, who fell seriously ill, had been hospitalised while he was writing the play, and it came to a point where he was not sure if he could go on.

He had several meetings with director Fared Jainal and Best Actor nominee Najib Soiman in the Singapore General Hospital, before deciding to complete his script. Writing the comedy became "therapeutic", he told Life!, and the play was eventually staged last December.

Best Actress winner Edith Podesta, in her 30s, thanked the "Cake family" - Cake Theatrical Productions presented the experimental, boundary-pushing Illogic, in which she starred.

In her brief speech, she admitted to feeling "quite naked without Noorlinah next to me on stage", acknowledging the other half of the two-woman show, actress Noorlinah Mohamed. Also nominated for Best Actress, Noorlinah was absent due to preparations for theatre company Wild Rice's show The House Of Bernarda Alba, which opens today.

But the brightest lights and loudest whoops were reserved for theatre veterans the Pangs, the biggest winners of the day.

The duo exchanged affectionate pecks before they each went up to receive their triple whammy of awards. Apart from the two Production of the Year awards - one decided by a judging panel and the other voted by readers - Adrian, 48, also received his third Best Actor trophy for his role as a grieving father in the play Rabbit Hole. He had won the award in 2007 and 2010.

The actor carved out a tender moment for his wife of nearly 20 years in his speech: "I want to give a big shout-out to my wife and my boss, Tracie Pang.

"She really is the boss of me on and off stage, so I owe you everything and love you very much."

But he couldn't resist sneaking in a quip about his teenage sons later on: "Rabbit Hole was a story about a family going through all sorts of adversity and pulling through no matter what. So, I just want to give a shout-out to my own family, apart from Tracie, my two wonderful boys Zach and Xander - I hope you're in school right now." His sons are studying at the School of the Arts.

When Tracie, 45, went on stage to receive the trophy for Production of the Year, she put her husband in the spotlight: "I dragged Adrian up here because he's also a producer, not only an actor."

She added: "To my wonderful boys, who have had to spend a lot of time being not just motherless but also parentless, while we are in rehearsals or at the show, and they go on and do their thing - I'm so proud of them.

"Boys, I hope you're proud of us too, now."

corriet@sph.com.sg

THE WINNERS

Production of the Year: Next To Normal by Pangdemonium

Production of the Year (Readers' Choice): Next To Normal by Pangdemonium

Best Director: Nelson Chia for Twelve Angry Men (Nine Years Theatre)

Best Original Script: Alfian Sa'at for Kakak Kau Punya Laki (Teater Ekamatra)

Best Actor: Adrian Pang for Rabbit Hole (Pangdemonium)

Best Actress: Edith Podesta for Illogic (Cake Theatrical Productions)

Best Supporting Actor: Johnny Ng for Twelve Angry Men (Nine Years Theatre)

Best Supporting Actress: Serene Chen for 8 Women (Sing'theatre)

Best Ensemble: Twelve Angry Men (Nine Years Theatre)

Best Set Design: Wong Chee Wai for Twelve Angry Men (Nine Years Theatre)

Best Sound Design: Zai Kuning for Family Duet (spell#7)

Best Lighting Design: Andy Lim for Illogic (Cake Theatrical Productions)

Best Costume Design: David Lee for Illogic (Cake Theatrical Productions)

UNOFFICIAL AWARDS:

BEST OUTFITS

Amid a sea of monochrome, dark-suited attendees, the youngest nominees present, Summer Rae (right), six, and Lola Rae (far right), nine, had the most eye-catching costumes by far, not to mention the wackiest take on The Wolf Of Wall Street-inspired dress code.

Little Summer was in a wolf onesie, a costume she had inherited after a school performance. And Lola pepped up her look with sequinned animal masks from Accessorize. The girls are pictured here with their grandmother, Eleanor Song, 67. The three of them were part of spell#7's quirky Family Duet and were nominated for Best Ensemble.

MOST UNASSUMING WINNER

Chinese theatre veteran Johnny Ng, 60, who clinched the award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a juror in Twelve Angry Men (Nine Years Theatre), was visibly shocked to hear his name called.

Dressed casually in a striped polo T-shirt and black pants, the actor said in Mandarin: "Firstly, I must apologise because I didn't know what I should wear to the event, so I feel a bit underdressed. For this, I am truly sorry.

"I had been telling the team earlier, I need to leave at 1pm. I came here to just register my name and say I was present. I never thought that the first award category to be announced would be this one. Thank you, everyone, for your support and please continue to support Chinese-language theatre in Singapore."

BEST PUN

Theatre practitioner Paul Rae, co-founder of performance group spell#7, went on stage to receive the Best Sound Design award on behalf of musician and performer Zai Kuning, who is in Malaysia.

Rae, 40, said: "There is therefore no speech, except to say, perhaps, that we think Zai thoroughly deserves this award. He's a wonderful, wonderful musician, composer and artist."

To laughter and applause, he added, citing the song made popular by Frank Sinatra: "If he was here, I'm sure he would not say - but he should - 'I did it Zai way.' Thank you."

MOST EXCITED NON-WINNER

A huge yelp echoed through the John Jacob Ballroom when it was announced that national serviceman Marcus Lee, 22, had won a night's stay at The St. Regis Singapore hotel.

But the yelp did not belong to him, it came from his cousin Benedict Leong. The 21-year-old is a project executive with the Singapore International Festival of Arts' pre-festival programme, The O.P.E.N.

To laughter and applause from the audience, Mr Lee ran up on stage to receive his prize, with the loudest cheers coming from Mr Leong.

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