Theatre of the people
Hanuman, monkey, leaps into flight

Avenue Of Dream is a one-act play on the squalid lives of a pregnant prostitute and her apathetic daughter in New York City. Second Chance is a play which addresses the sensitive issue of maintaining self-worth in old age.

Virgins. Cherished when they’re 16, discarded when they’re 40. Society plays up our worst fantasies and prejudice. How do women handle this outrage, salvage their self-image, or wallop their oppressors?

A central empowerment of this international gathering will be the sharing of acts of deterritorialisation, enabling transformation and connecting with other multiplicities.

Reminiscent of Chekov’s ‘Three Sisters’, the Makioka sisters are heroines setting out for the new world.

Just as a woman mourns the loss of her TV set, her dead son returns… alive.

A single girl meets a single man at a single party.

This multidisciplinary presentation is an exploration of masculinity, self-identity, and the political issues surrounding them. It investigates the hypothesis of a man’s journey into his ego.

SoftMachine is a dance research project that studies contemporary dance in Asia, and how the choreographic process of contemporary dance has developed over the last decade.

Told through humour, food, and many phone calls, Serunding draws us to the heart and the pain of a mother’s love. A spicy and sweet expression of the Singapore family caught at the centre of cultural values and modern living.

This cross-border collaboration aimed to create a sustained space for artists and local experts involved in cultural negotiation through contemporary art with the changing societies of the Barents Region.

Performances from the SPH Young Playwrights Series 3.

Seams of Change illuminates a time when people generally turned to their immediate environment for what they needed. The focus is on the clothing of ordinary people, rather than on the special clothing of the rich or the royal.

‘The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields’ is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

Block 20 extends beyond aesthetics to question where borders lie today. How can we initiate creative interventions which would transcend borders? What are creative individuals suggesting as strategies for transcendence in the foreseeable future?

Experience the first airing of their winning scripts and watch how professional actors and directors bring their dramatic words to life.

This intensive three-week laboratory offers emerging artists the unique opportunity to develop work integrating video, theatre, performance, dance, sound, and text.

‘
The Global Soul’ is a meditation about travel – time travel, travels in our imagination, travels in our heart, travels in our memory, travels to find the meaning of life, travel for business, travel for leisure.

Based on Pol Pot’s massacre of the royal court dancers of Cambodia, this documentary performance traces the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia.

The Special Edition of the Flying Circus Project in the Yokohama Triennale is a school of politics which looks at an atypical gathering of ‘small’ politics and everyday activism in arts and culture.

Marriage of Inconvenience features a witty script that mirrors society’s prejudice and hypocrisy.

A brand new play on love and romance for all die-hard romantics and cynics!

Your goal: to write a play within 24 hours. Your challenge: to overcome physical and mental exhaustion as you stay creative. Your inspiration: the fascinating newspaper environment of Singapore Press Holdings’ headquarters in Toa Payoh and its ever-changing facets.

Indonesian filmmaker Tintin Wulia will introduce animation techniques to Singaporean children between the ages of 10 to 11, marking the final stage of her international project, ‘The Adventures Of Flo And Kat’, which began in Allermohe, Germany in 2003, and travelled to Bajawa, Flores, Indonesia and Darwin, Australia in 2004.

‘The Revival of Phralak Phralam’ saw the excavation of three episodes from the tales of the Ramayana. ‘Mekong Diaries’ is a collection of documentaries created by the Laotian youths from the Children’s Cultural Centre who had the opportunity to work with filmmakers Wu Wen Guang (China), Angel Shaw (Philippines, New York) and Jason Lai (Singapore).

The political parable of the German playwright combined with the theatrical vocabulary of its Chinese culture of origin by the theatre artist from Singapore, promises a fascinating hybrid theatre: a different kind of Chinoiserie.

The Greenhouse: Dramatised Reading provide the platform for the new writing to be read and heard. Playwrights can gain new perspectives from the working with professional directors and actors, and even engage in discussion with the audience. With the support of Singapore Press Holdings, Theatre Works Writers* Laboratory desires to continue and further its pioneering

A moving drama about how two women cope when a ‘gentleman’ enters into, and threatens to break apart, their fifteen-year relationship.

The second in a continuation of a series of experimental music/sound art events presented by Singapore Sonic Arts Collective (sporesac).

The Global Soul is a meditation about travel – time travel, travels in our imagination, travels in our heart, travels in our memory, travels to find the meaning of life, travel for business, travel for leisure.

The Global Soul is a meditation about travel – time travel, travels in our imagination, travels in our heart, travels in our memory, travels to find the meaning of life, travel for business, travel for leisure.

In conjunction with the performance of Geisha, 72-13 has invited anthropologist and author Liza Dally to Singapore to share her experience as a geisha.

Held at the rustic seaside Aloha Resorts at Changi, the challenge is on again to stimulate one’s heart and mind to produce a play within 24 hours.

Cat Hope focuses on the relationship between sound and image, and the notion of the artist and audience as voyeurs.

Providing an insight into Diaspora as well as the work of various artists in the production, 72-13 presents a series of conversations to introduce audiences to the work and the research for this new production.

The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

Janos Fodor invites the local artists’ community to an open call for artists, to be part of the ‘SingaporeLounge’, while Lise Nellemann collaborates with local artists to explore alternative approaches to writing (art) history.

‘Saying Grace’ traces the life of an accountant battling an eating disorder

Through this story of a particular woman in a particular time and place, it talks about loss, love, and mother-daughter relations in an open way.

On stage, the two dancers, Jerome Bel and Pichet Klunchun, reconstruct a theatrical report of their experience working together.

Bringing together participants from all walks of life with one common objective — to shoot and to edit — this competition brings about the birth of aspiring filmmakers, among which are teachers, designers, students and IT professionals.

Future Of Imagination 4 is a curated performance art gathering of artists whose works have questioned, or attempted to share a continuing interest in the cultural constructs of identity in the global situation and current trends of contemporary art practice.

This initiative hopes to create a theatrical experience for the community by bringing new writing from the Writers’ Lab into the community.

A lab that looks into the craft of performance art.

In January 2010, the FCP continues in Cambodia and Singapore through the creation of alternative universities (ALTERU) with Cambodian partners, Amrita Performing Arts and Bophana Audiovisual Resource Centre. The alternative universities will include intensive workshops by Ong Keng Sen, Jasmine Ng and Wu Wenguang on the subjects of ‘memory’ and ‘archive’.

The Screw Of Thought is a choreographic lab that encourages conceptual thinking as a process in dance making in order to expand the boundaries of dance and to reflect on dance education in Singapore.

This Lab programme is an initiative of the SPIELART Munich Theatre Festival to support artists in the theatre and performance field.

Maslindah and Jamal are married. They laugh, they cry, they fight, and they’re in love. They are missing a child.

A performative exhibition, featuring 14 artists and the most famous featherwork crown in the world: Moctezuma’s Penacho.

In a present time where giants fall and lines of power are redrawn, Lear Dreaming reimagines this tragedy on patriarchy and succession through the pristine philosophy of Japanese Noh theatre.

‘The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers’ is a stunning combination of music, visual culture, live video, fashion, documentary and photo-performance that envisions communications in a not-so-distant future megapolis, a heterotopia of individuals.

In this witty satire of power, Shakespeare is put on trial for falsifying history and defaming Richard Sandaime, the Grand Master of Ikebana. Shakespeare is being prosecuted by none other than Maachan of Venice.

In this witty satire of power, Shakespeare is put on trial for falsifying history and defaming Richard Sandaime, the Grand Master of Ikebana.

Though in ‘Richard III’ the scheming king fights in vain to keep his crown, in this drama transported to Japan he’s vying to head up its traditional flower-arrangement world, and is accused of killing a rival for that position.

‘Archiving Dance’ is a project that explores the possibilities and methodologies of contemporary dance archives.

Sublime Monsters And Virtual Children explores how rituals, both public and personal, shape and transform experiences and perceptions.

With its rich history embedded in the artefacts, installations and exhibitions, the Malay Heritage Centre will inspire our aspiring playwrights to create new writing.

The annual TheatreWorks 24-Hour Playwriting Competition is here again. This 18th edition will be held at the Institute of Mental Health.

Welcome to the 19th edition of the 24-Hour Playwriting Competition Prize Presentation!

‘What the Body Remembers. Dance Heritage Today’ is the Akademie der Künste’s month-long special event series that includes an exhibition on 20th-century dance history showing archival collections, iconic photographs and film clips, accompanied by performances of more than 20 current dance productions that continue to write the legacy of contemporary modern dance.

At this Wonderful Weekend, let your kids be entertained at our Laser Tag Target Shooting and art & craft stations while you go on an aural journey with Inch Chua’s latest work in development, ‘Till The End Of The World And Back?’.

Participants write a completely new play in 24 hours, with various stimuli given throughout the time period. This year’s edition will take place at the historic Former Ford Factory.

The Observatory’s annual experimental/improvised music festival Playfreely returns with a new breath, a broadening of terrains, a call beyond the pressures of the incarcerating cult.

A Wonderful Weekend is a two-day event featuring workshops, staged readings, a stand-up comedy night and sale of handcrafted creations with an emphasis on resourcing and repurposing the old and seemingly mundane into spectacular gift ideas.

A platform for people to meet, share, show, and tell, each ROJAK sees 10 creators sharing their work within 10 minutes and with 10 slides.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, one of the most seminal and influential contemporary artists working today, gave a public lecture at 72-13 on 7 Feb 2007 as part of his residency with LASALLE College of the Arts working with postgraduate visual arts students.

Studio Prive is a project for young fashion designers who wish to refine their signature style and develop their skills as independent designers.

This year marks a precedent for the competition – the competition has broadened its outreach to the larger community with the Writers’ Lab partnering South East CDC as part of the South East District Arts Festival 2008 – ARTXpressions and SHINE 2008.

Singapore artist Ho Tzu Nyen shares on his creative journey on writing and directing first feature film

The play’s central question was whether moral integrity was possible in this world, or another.

Into the 15th year of this challenge, we put you in the futuristic foliage of Gardens by the Bay, to prove yourself by writing a play within a short 24-hour timeframe.

’Til The End Of The World, We’ll Meet Again In No Man’s Land is a multi-sensory performance inspired by Inch’s recent expedition to Antarctica.

Based on Pol Pot’s massacre of the royal court dancers of Cambodia, this documentary performance traces the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia.

Headed by Robin Loon, the Writers’ Lab aims to continually provide new and emerging playwrights the opportunities to hone their creative writing skills.

‘Journey to the Moon’ explores an urban myth that, in 1957, a group of villagers from Turkey’s remote Black Sea coast were conned by a local politician into believing he would build a spaceship factory in cooperation with the US in return for their votes. 

Invisible City chronicles the ways people attempt to leave a mark before they — and their histories — disappear.

Le Temps Scellé assumes a new ceremony, creating an impressive and spellbinding performance. Le Trait Solos is a two-part performance that allows the audience to experience the emptiness that surrounds oneself, heightening the sense of loneliness.

Spektr! is a unique performance in which tactical media workers conduct an audio-visual ‘mapping’ of the electromagnetic spectrum to create sound and video landscapes.

The Marina Barrage hosts this year’s annual 24-Hr Playwriting Competition. Get all your creative juices flowing as you nestle in the amazing architecture and technology that is the Marina Barrage for 24 hours.

Based on Pol Pot’s massacre of the royal court dancers of Cambodia, this documentary performance traces the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia.

The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

The Writers’ Lab Month consists of Playwriting Workshops, Dramatised Readings, and the annual 24-Hour Playwriting Competition.

The Writers’ Laboratory, conceived by TheatreWorks Artistic Director Ong Keng Sen, is now entering its 12th year since its first inception in 1990.

“If you forget somebody, that somebody will forget all about you.” – Robin Loon, Playwright Presented as part of the SPH Young Playwrights Series 1.

Join the playwriting competition that gives you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the turning point of your playwriting career.

Conceived by Mark Lim, this installation is an attempt to materialise Woods&Woods designer Jonathan Seow’s wish to link the past, present and future of fashion through the reinterpretations of used clothing.

‘Shapes Of Sleep’ emanates a great calmness – it is tender, pacifying, and very contemplative. It subtly says a lot about the vulnerability of bodies without having to expose the wounds.

72-13 Offsite is an alternative arts laboratory space converted from a former squash court.

An immersive and interactive multi-channel video installation filmed on location in Shenton Way, the heart of Singapore’s Central Business District.

The 24-Hour Playwriting Competition organised by TheatreWorks at Angsana Resort and Spa, Bintan, achieved great success, seeing more than 70 participants.

The competition provides a platform to liberate ideas and to create new writing, and what better place to inspire the spirit of liberation than at the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall?

Alongside the conservative concepts of national, ethnic, or religious identity, new stories are emerging — the counter-myths, which are based on the lives of people, their specific experiences, with respect for their individual truths.

From the SPH Young Playwrights Series 2.

Presented as part of the SPH Young Playwrights Series 2.

An enchanting story of a timeless romance.

A poignant yet tragic tale of a deformed man rejected by society in Victorian England.

The themes of TRAVELOGUE are memories, local wisdoms, and futureness. FCP 2007 brings together artists from different cultures, disciplines and politics.

A flaky new comedy about old loves, new passions, and high cholesterol recipes.

Ever wondered how this wonderful island-state of ours will be like in the 21st century?

The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

This one-woman play stirs the voice of Safiah to life like a perfect dish of serunding. A Malay homemaker, Safiah’s belief as a devout Muslim and her parental expectations fall into conflict with her children.

The Lab Report series introduces plays in progress written by participants in the Writers’ Laboratory workshops.

At these readings, the works are read by experienced actors, and through these readings, the playwrights receive feedback from the audience, actors, and director.

Lab Report 5 – free nightly readings at the Black Box.

The individual voices of writers splinter into conflicting characters in new plays-in-progress by the Writers’ Lab.

The writers in TheatreWorks’ Writers’ Lab will be presenting two programmes comprising monologues and other works-in-progress.

Come on a River Odyssey and peg out a play in 24 short hours!

Come camp out at Fort Canning Centre and peg out a new play in 24 short hours!

‘Undercover’ is a farce about ambition and ego. It highlights one very basic human flaw – the inability to trust other people, and the need to exert one’s power over another.

Virgins. Cherished when they’re 16, discarded when they’re 40. Society plays up our worst fantasies and prejudice. How do women handle this outrage, salvage their self-image, or wallop their oppressors?

‘The Gift’ is developed out of the writer’s question – ‘how do we find new ways of engaging with our age-group target when we are making theatre for them; ways which invite the children’s own voices into the early creative process of developing a story?’

Theatre of the people
Hanuman, monkey, leaps into flight

Established in 1994 by Ong Keng Sen, Artistic Director of TheatreWorks, the Flying Circus Project (FCP) is a major programme exploring Asian expression in the 21st century.

Four spirits in a ruined fort on an island spend fifty years in forgetfulness.

A ‘picture-theatre-project’ based on the poems and the biography of Max Jacob, a French poet and painter, friend of Picasso, Jew, homosexual, astronomer, and victim of the National Socialism.

Molissa Fenley is a startlingly original choreographer and performer whose works combine an eclectic background with astonishing physical energies to create a uniquely personal dance style.

Mild-mannered schoolteacher Miss Vanda meets Chinese-educated engineer Victor at a Friendship Development Unit (FDU) party. Before their romance can blossom, she is cruelly struck by a TV set hurled out of a HDB flat in Toa Payoh.

From SPH Young Playwrights Series 2.

A picture of life in prison with the woman who enslaved China in order to liberate herself. Through the medium of a one-woman show, it is a portrait of a human being, of facts combined with imagination.

Based on Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, ‘Lear’ is about a young woman who plots to steal the throne and the kingdom from her father.

Lao Jiu, the ninth child and only son of the family, is of outstanding intelligence and carries the hopes of his parents and siblings. Alas, to his family’s disappointment, he abandons his scholastic pursuits for his love of the traditional art form of hand puppetry.

Singaporean girl Shu Yi meets Englishman Jason in Thailand.

All fetuses begin as female. Children are intuitive moralists.

‘Desdemona’ is a dreamscape of discovering the She within the He, of discovering the other within the self, of discovering another culture within one’s culture.

A laboratory, exhibition, performance, presentation and launch of ideas on new approaches to performance research and development.

Set in Singapore in the mid-sixties, ‘Beauty World’ is a musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city.

The film is based on Michael Chiang’s book and stage play ‘Army Daze’ about the misadventures of five young men going through their Basic Military Training.

A new programme of residences for individual Singaporean artists who are initiating international processes.

If you have a passion to write plays, create dramatic scripts and characters, here is a chance to unleash your talents!

Virgins. Cherished when they’re 16, discarded when they’re 40. Society plays up our worst fantasies and prejudice. How do women handle this outrage, salvage their self-image, or wallop their oppressors?

TheatreWorks Writers’ Lab presents N.O.W., a three-week public project. From 2019-2021, Noorlinah Mohd, established actress and arts educator, is appointed N.O.W.’s Artistic Director. 

A hundred days after her husband’s death, things come to a head, with the devout woman’s two sons at each other’s throats over what it means to honour their father’s memory.

Jacob Teo and Joseph Teo, identical twins but born minutes apart. What happens when one child goes missing?

The play is a patchwork of twenty short scenes revolving around an unuttered question – what are human relationships made of?

‘Fever Room’ presents a theatrical experience that takes us far beyond the frontiers of cinema, and plunges us deep into the filmmaker’s dream-like universe.

Life is almost perfect for William and Samantha as they live together in unmarried bliss until things unsaid and things agreed unravel their agreement.

‘Mixed’ scrutinises a racial divide that is supposedly cracked, bringing to light the fragments that still have the power to cut.

Is the absence of a leader possible in making a performance? Will you join us in this journey of discovery with Kai, Faye and Felicia as they venture into the undiscovered and the unchartered?

‘Off Kilter’ is a darkly comedic visual theatre production that explores mental wellbeing, identity, and feeling a little bit different from everyone else – not quite being yourself.

Tackling perceptions that ‘young people do not go through stress’ and misconceptions that ‘people who go for counseling are crazy’, ‘Grey Matters’ aims to better prepare and equip students with the ability to cope through periods of increased stress.

A father struggles with his autistic child and people’s ignorance.

Based on one of nature’s deadlist disasters that killed over 30,000 people, this piece explores the lives of the people most affected – those who lived at the heart of the disaster.

Come witness Faye and Kai becoming premier self-referential dancer-discussers as they reveal their creative process and blur the line between studio and stage, rehearsal and performance, and process and result.

‘She Ain’t Heavy’ follows Faye and Kai as they act on their combined curiosities, unfulfilled desires and discontent arising from their practice of Contact Improvisation (CI).

In a colourful display of their distinct personas, each performer takes the stage to express themselves individually. ‘GALA’ creates a space where ability is dictated not by one’s limitations, but by being the best that one can be. It is a testament to the beauty of the individual.

Born to an English father and a Malay mother, Leila ‘Anjung’ Keats is an unprecedented figure in local history and considered to be one of the pioneers of Malaya.

Using the architecture of Space 3 at 72-13 as a playground, the piece fits itself into a sequence that has its own internal logic and rhythm, revolving around the assembly and disassembly of images across space and time.

This new format comprises a series of three dance classes that ‘audiences’ must participate in. Curious? For $30, you can register for three dance classes which will teach you basic Lindy Hop steps while exposing you to the background of Lindy Hop and topics such as the performance of gender, race and sexuality in social dance and everyday life.

‘Marco Polo’ is about two blind friends who are reacquainted after death. They quickly discover that they are both still blind and proceed to attempt to figure out if they ended up in Heaven or Hell.

Through classical and contemporary dance styled in the format of a high-energy competition and reality TV show, ‘Nay Nai’ sets out to investigate how people today strive to reach the apex of power and influence.

100 ensemble members of LIFT invite you to an evening of fun, laughter, games, music, and storytelling, where happiness is the centre of our conversations.

An interactive experience about the community, by the community, for the community. A board game in which breaking the rules might be the best way to play.

‘Love Love Remote Control’ is a multidisciplinary work which speaks about human evolution with regards to society’s eating habits.

What would you find by looking through a prism of life? Would there be answers to the perennial questions of love, hope, and ultimately, happiness?

Aside from the alphabetical coincidence, all the stories reflect the impossibility of human relationships and the impossibility of dialogue. This performance will take the form of a narration.

For ‘Irregular Hexagon’, Arjona has chosen to present four works, three of which were done in 2008 when in residency at the Watermill Centre in New York, Robert Wilson’s laboratory for performance.

In the tradition of Duchamp’s ‘Bolte-en-valise’, Nowhere Man appears to be a small office tucked behind a room divider with a desk with its drawers open, a chair, a bed, a box, and a bag – most of the elements that Mateo created for installation travel, inside the suitcase which is shown alongside them.

‘National Broadway Company’ reflects on the search for Singapore identity that was prevalent in the first musicals and gives us a glimpse into the future.

In a present time where giants fall and lines of power are redrawn, ‘Lear Dreaming’ reimagines this tragedy on patriarchy and succession through the pristine philosophy of Japanese Noh theatre.

Inspired by John Cage’s ‘Lecture On Nothing’, this performance is a recitation and physical improvisation of Cage’s text, guided by his principles of composition and writing.

‘The Diary Of Alice’ is a playful artistic exploration of ‘Alice’ and the fascinating universe of identities – fact, fiction, or otherwise – that the name holds. ‘Alice’ becomes an open canvas for each guest to scribble their wildest imaginations, desires, memories, and aspirations of who ‘Alice’ can be.

Fusing dioramas, dramaturgy, and installation art, the performance unfolds over decades within a flat.

The Writers’ Lab aims to provide a hotbed for new Singapore plays and cultivate both emerging and established writers.

This one-woman play stirs the voice of Safiah to life like a perfect dish of serunding.

Conceived and curated by TheatreWorks’ Ong Keng Sen, the worlds of entertainment will be evoked though a revue of circus, dance, drama and art! A setting of shining colours, unique patterns and enchanting music is set to delight Night Festival goers. The heart of the night life, ‘Putho!’, a novel circus show created by Cambodian artists, will

An ‘exhibition’ project with no photographs, no sculptures, no installations, no videos – zero things, not one stable object, but artists and areas occupied by gestures, projects, bodies, stories, and dances, which everyone will choose to imagine.

RPM is a dramatic musing on collision – what happens when lives, bodies, and memories plow into one another?

Welcome to an academic lecture about goldfish, with total disregard to the narrow-minded formalities that hinder today’s intellectuals in bringing the fruits of their truly expanding and illuminating work to the wider public.

Four writers – a dissident, a poet, a journalist and a government hack – are under house arrest, ordered to write the living biography of the First Emperor of China.

Perhaps most provoking is the love-hate relationship between Singapore and the shrine.

Combining dance, movements, images, and the human body for a full sensory experience, Dance Dance Dance promises to excite you with its provocative charm.

An interdisciplinary collaboration that crosses time and space, reappraising the Bard and Ming Dynasty’s Tang Xian Zu, two masterful playwrights who lived in two different cultures at the same time, who died in the same year (1616), but who were unaware of each other’s existence.

INTERFERENCE explores the concept of listening to the noise of history – moments that are insignificant in our collective memory.

IMPETUS explores how insignificant events in our history are being recorded, forgotten and fabricated.

Drift Net taps into a man’s journey as he ventures into his second life on the internet, drifting between desires and dreams.

A weekend of video, electronic music, and performances by French and Vietnamese artists, specially curated by Wonderful District of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).

What are our relations to the rest of the world? Are we strangers or are we family?

Karen Kandel will weave together stories from geishas, maikos, clients, their wives, okamisans, offspring of geishas, and anthropologists. Joining her onstage will be female impersonator and kabuki dancer Gojo Masanosuke who will dance the female onnagata role, drawing from the age-old repertory of kabuki and nihon buyoh, for the geisha is the tragic heroine of many a kabuki play.

A sweeping, panoramic docu-performance that explores the diasporic phenomenon of the human spirit in time and space, celebrating humanity and human tenacity.



This first-time collaboration between Benoit LaChambre and Ong Keng Sen challenges the parameters of contemporary dance by working with narrative, the grand epic, a personal response to parallel dream universes, the identities of a revered Asian text, and the outsider.

The focus for the fifth FCP includes literary arts, philosophy and visual art. Over 50 participants, mostly artists, thinkers and cultural workers, will gather in Singapore for two weeks to meet and dialogue.

60’s Talentime meets Pop Idol! Catch the new TheatreWorks production that celebrates the dreams, naivety, passion, and youthful energy of four dreamers from different backgrounds in their quest for fame and stardom!

A powerful cross-cultural multimedia collaboration involving artists from Australia, Japan and Singapore, Sandakan Threnody takes its inspiration from the tragic events surrounding the death marches from Sandakan POW camp in Northeast Borneo in 1945.

Ma: Moment is presented in an architectural pavilion of reimagined old shophouses and cinema screens, built on the site of Chinatown’s infamous Death Houses.

A non-stop 48-hour event of performance, clubbing, music, happenings, videos, installations, ateliers, workshops and social interactions.

Combine the excitement of writing a new script in 24 hours with the thrill of watching thoroughbreds race and horse owners cheer at the Singapore Racecourse.

The CAP is a one-year project of TheatreWorks that focuses on people-to-people collaboration.

Pulse is an eight-minute joyride of light, sound and video that will get your pulse racing. Set in a black box with a visual island, get ready to trip it out with us.

Lim Tzay Chuen is the graduation project of the pioneer class of the Theatre Training and Research programme, a 3-year, full-time, professional actor training programme which immerses students in four Asian classic theatre systems while also using modern actor training techniques from the West.

Bima Labuh focuses on the dignity of the Pendawas, and provides an opportunity for the puppet master (dalang) to present a discussion on philosophical and moral concepts through the varied and rich voices of the characters.

Alongside the conservative concepts of national, ethnic, or religious identity, new stories are emerging – the counter-myths, which are based on the lives of people, their specific experiences, with respect for their individual truths.

Hypnotically moody and sexy. A relationship between a man and a woman. One scene, one space, one story, and five different outcomes. Balance is a treat to rebalance your senses.

A strange tale of two men, Rex and Heng, who turn up at the home of listless friends Lina and Kim one day.

Once upon a time in an Asian city where people call each other comrades, there lives a powerful maverick Mayor who is hungry for foreign investments.

The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

30 plays will be performed over 30 nights at Theatreworks’ Black Box and around Fort Canning Park. The plays will be approached in various ways by a pool of Singaporean directors and actors, including much new blood.

A reinvention of an ancient Chinese myth that tells of the mortals and the gods who originally lived in eternal sunlight., The Silver River is a juxtaposition of Chinese opera traditions with Western sensibilities through its score and libretto.

A racy, sexy drama where office politics and the virtual world collide.

The play: A woman dances and waits for her man. The movie: Born the daughter of a Parsee actor, Meena Kumari arrived on the Indian film scene just as the glamorous style of the 40’s was being supplanted by the histrionic style of the 50’s.

A familiar tale about a half-remembered touch, a kiss, a look, a love which has spanned generations amidst family feuds, lies, betrayal and murder.

Set in Singapore in the mid-sixties, Beauty World is a musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city.

A light-hearted play about the sometimes sticky relationship between love, trust, and bodily fluids.

Half Lives is a series of vivid snapshots of a Singaporean woman, an Asian-American man, and their son.

Two women. One discovering her womanhood, the other losing hers. Be witness to an often zany, sometimes fearful, and always surprising journey of self-discovery.

This saga of family, traditions and change will unfold through the struggles of an immigrant Chinese family — a widow, her six sons, her daughter, and their families.

The Blue Fish is a new full-length butoh performance created by Japanese dancers and talents from Singapore.

The Writers’ Lab programme is a unique self-help programme developed and organised by TheatreWorks in order to provide aspiring playwrights with the opportunity to hone their skills.

What do you see yourself doing in the year 2000? Running a theatre in a cyberclub, collaborating with Malcolm McLaren, having a personal revolution of retiring?

Parallels are drawn between the power struggles of court eunuchs in 15th-century China and modern-day office workers, with the metaphor of castration used to show how much they have sacrificed in order to climb up the corporate ladder.

The bonds of family reel us in, wrap us up in knots, and sometimes repel us. They push us in directions that we cannot always control — a story that exists within all families.

This classic crime of passion examines the thoughts and feelings of a woman taken over the edge by her own physical and emotional desires.

Parallels are drawn between the power struggles of court eunuchs in 15th-century China and modern-day office workers, with the metaphor of castration used to show how much they have sacrificed in order to climb up the corporate ladder.

A long time ago, a group of women embarked on a journey to a new land on a selfless quest for a better life, for themselves and their families.

An intimate and endearing one-woman play that will make you laugh, cry, and wonder!

For the first time, the racial chaos that shook Singapore in the 1950’s will be put directly and dramatically on stage.

longing is like opium, living on the verge
longing is much more beautiful than reality

Imagine a poor village in the east that has no electricity and no clean water.

Humour stripped of cheap circus tricks, a set reduced to its bare essentials, subtlety and excess all at once, this is clown acting of a new kind… delicious and stunningly fresh.

A Triple Bill of performances written by Michael Chiang.

Audience participation is a feature of the Directors’ Laboratory — the audience is encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions on the staging of the play.

Five Singaporeans tell stories about themselves and their families.

ROMANCE. A word that conjures words of meaning. A word of sublime significance, indicating ideas of release and capture.

Violence – in order to understand and to overcome violence in our lives… we must first be aware of it.

Four people build a SCARECROW to protect themselves from DANGER. But the SCARECROW becomes very powerful and turns against the very people who created it.

Sammy won’t go to school. Jimmy, his doting father, tells him that school’s a wonderful place to be.

Lao Jiu, the ninth child and only son of the family, is of outstanding intelligence and carries the hopes of his parents and siblings. Alas, to his family’s disappointment, he abandons his scholastic pursuits for his love of the traditional art form of hand puppetry.

Private Parts centres on a successful yuppie talk-show host, Warren Lee, and the private lives of two transsexuals.

Ten family members hit the long road to Manila in high spirits. They’re heading south for their father’s funeral.

Welcome to our compendium of theatre games — your evening of entertainment, fun and laughter set in the Black Box.

The play opens at dawn after the sacking of Troy by the Greeks in the famous Wooden Horse episode. The Trojan women are gathered together in grief and fear. 

A picture of life in prison with the woman who enslaved China in order to liberate herself. Through the medium of a one-woman show, it is a portrait of a human being, of facts combined with imagination.

New beginnings are thwarted, fear and weakness prevail, and the real truths of the December revolution are discovered.

The owner of a famous fried rice chain hopes to retire, but her two daughters are sworn enemies and refuse to run the business together. A contest is set up to determine the successor of Fried Rice Paradise.

A play based on the relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a Peking opera singer.

Three women in an old folks’ home cope with their bleak reality in their own ways. This equilibrium is maintained until the illusion begins to overtake truth.

Mild-mannered schoolteacher Miss Vanda meets Chinese-educated engineer Victor at a Friendship Development Unit (FDU) party. Before their romance can blossom, she is cruelly struck by a TV set hurled out of a HDB flat in Toa Payoh.

The Swedish classic by August Strindberg written a hundred years ago is about the midsummer’s night seduction of a young noblewoman by her suave valet.

Adapted from the famous novella by Franz Kafka, where salesman Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect.

Three Children is about three grown-up siblings — two sisters and a brother — returning to their childhood home on Kappan Road in Malacca.

Edith Piaf’s funeral was as crazy and theatrical as her life. This is her unique story.

In Kantan, Jiro, a spoiled young man, returns to his hometown in search of his old nanny and the pleasures of a magic pillow she is reputed to own. In Hanjo, Hanako, a young geisha, waits in exquisite sorrow and longing for Yoshio, her lover.

Recognised as a classic, The Maids, on the surface, is a tale of how two maids plot to kill their beautiful but insensitive mistress. Diary Of A Madman tells of how a downtrodden minor civil servant, Poprishchin, is trapped by his position on the social scale.

Pressure mounts as the sales force in a small property firm realises that deals are hard to close during an economic recession. The salesman’s maxim, always be closing, becomes more urgent than ever.

A woman has been raped, but the story of the crime when retold again and again is different each time.

GTG… PTD will be here for you throughout the entire night, and all you have to do is come play with us.

This theatre carnival is a ‘people festival’ based on the carnival concept, designed for a fresh audience, who will be introduced to youthful, exuberant theatre and new ways of enjoying themselves.

A musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city of Singapore in the mid-sixties.

Diverse Malaysian artists – choreographers, dancers, actors, singers, video artists, visual artists, installation artists, performance artists – from Five Arts Centre collaborate with Theatreworks in this explosion of established definitions of dance and visual arts.

A historical piece of two railroad workers in the Sierra Nevada mountains, based on the Chinese Railroad Workers’ Strike of 1867.

Avenue Of Dream is a one-act play on the squalid lives of a pregnant prostitute and her apathetic daughter in New York City. Second Chance is a play which addresses the sensitive issue of maintaining self-worth in old age.

An accurate historical record of what once happened to a village about 200 km southwest of Beijing, Fanshen is the story of how the peasants of Long Bow built a new world.

Working half way between concert and play, music and theatre, sound and meaning, Manuela Infante, Diego Noguera and Marcela Salinas explore electronic live processing and layering of voices to produce theatrical soundscapes and dispersed narratives about voices.

A 17-metre long ship traverses the hall, suspended. As if emerging from the ocean floor, it unloads hundreds of books sealed in beeswax. This is the imagined vessel steered by Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, the first Malay king of the 7th century Srivijayan Empire.

A non-profit, second-hand bookshop that inhabits 72-13 for six nights, open between 10pm – 4pm; a space built for people who can’t sleep at night, a temporary home for insomniacs.

RE/PLAY Dance Edit explores the intent and meaning of re-production through bodily repetition of physical movements. The very foundation and meaning of dance is examined, performance as a format is subverted, and a fresh perspective on dance and performance emerges.

A visceral confrontation of one’s most intimate demons, exploring the themes of obsession, ritual and tragedy, emoting sympathy with pleasure, discomfort with inexplicable excitement.

Retrospective is conceived as an exhibition — a choreography of intimate movements and conversations, where visitors and performers experience how we use, consume and produce time.

The 8th edition of ‘The Flying Circus Project’ focuses on Myanmar artists and contemporary expressions including performance and films, reflecting on the themes of memory, trauma and transition.

Excavated from over 40 hours of oral history interviews from the National Archives juxtaposed with seminal texts and plays of Kuo, Goh Lay Kuan & Kuo Pao Kun presents an intimate portrait of this pioneering arts couple of Singapore.

Fear Of Writing portrays a playwright’s creative handicap — the writer’s block — under intense anxiety and scrutiny, uncovering the existentialism of self-censorship and freedoms in Singapore.

Evolution is at the heart of TheatreWorks, one of Singapore’s longest running theatre companies. For its landmark 25th year, it celebrates the ties that have shaped its journey so far in the ‘Friends’ Season – Tenderness For The Future’.

Diaspora is a sweeping, panoramic performance exploring memory, migration, assimilation and the triumph of the human spirit, an intricate layering of music, video, and live story-telling.

Inspired by the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire, this is a soul-stimulating post-modern spectacle that melds film/performance, race, gender and sexuality.

In a museum, time is confused. What looks old may be a reproduction, what looks new is actually a stained glass window from 1887. 120 will attempt to recast the National Museum of Singapore as a host of luminescent voices.

New York-based performer Karen Kandel weaves together stories from geishas, maikos (apprentice geishas), clients, their wives, okamisans (mama-sans), offspring of geishas and anthropologists, giving life to the secret world of the geisha.

‘like the cat…’ challenges the parameters of contemporary dance by working with narrative, the grand epic and a personal response of parallel dream universes, the identities of a revered Asian text and the outsider.

For the 2005 Singapore Season, acclaimed artist Ong Keng Sen presents an up-to-the-minute survey of South East Asian contemporary arts at the ICA London.

Sandakan Threnody tackles one of the most complex and difficult issues of our time: how to think about war and the crimes committed in its name. It uncovers the very different but nonetheless shared wartime experiences of Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Inspired by Gautama Buddha and the musings of travel writer Pico Iyer, The Global Soul is a poignant tale of contemporary travellers in urban landscapes pursuing connection and contact.

In Search: Hamlet, Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen gathers twenty European and Asian artists in his search for a new Hamlet character belonging to a modern Asian-European culture.

The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

Contemporary Asia is the focus of the 2000 edition of the ‘Flying Circus Project’, with the proposition that religious rituals and traditional arts are contemporaneous within their contexts. This contextualisation balances the continued exoticisation of Asia.

Desdemona is a dreamscape of discovering the She within the He, of discovering the other within the self, of discovering another culture within one’s culture.

A major accident, involving actors from a play entitled PIE, occurs on the PIE on National Day. Coincidence or conspiracy?

‘Descendants Of The Eunuch Admiral’ weaves a powerful tale of castration and politics as it tells of ancient Chinese court practices and the legendary eunuch, Admiral Cheng Ho, who was responsible for China’s most extensive maritime expeditions in the 15th century.

Based on Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, Lear is about a young woman who plots to steal the throne and the kingdom from her father.

The lives of yesterday’s Chinese rickshaw coolies and today’s construction workers from India is the central theme of TheatreWorks’ ‘Workhorse Afloat’.

Set in the Suntec City Fountain, Destinies Of Flowers In The Mirror is inspired by the Ming Dynasty classic, “Jing Hua Yuan”, and the Holocaust.

Six Of The Best uncovers the explosive shifts in a group of expatriates and locals on the day of the Michael Fay sentencing in 1994.

A strange twist of fate brings Jacqueline Atria, newly appointed president of the Singapore Censorship Council and the nation’s moral guardian, and Rosy, striptease queen and star attraction of the seedy Eden nightclub, together.

Using a multitude of art forms including traditional Hokkien glove puppetry, shadow puppetry, Chinese Opera and martial arts, Lao Jiu brings to life the clash of East and West cultures, the merging of the old and the new and the breakdown of the family unit.

A political satire about a government which decides that a nation needs more ‘soul’ to make it a more vibrant place.

Three young people — two sisters and a brother — are troubled by fear and guilt, harking back to their past. They decide to return to their childhood home in Kappan Road to encounter the fount of their troubles.

An earthy, comic, vaudevillean play, Ozone fuses the traditional street theatre of wayang clowns with modern, vogue designs and futuristic new-age music.

A festival of Singapore plays from the years 1960 to 1990, ‘Retrospective’ is held in recognition of the playwright’s role in the national dramatic fabric.

A double bill directed by Ong Keng Sen, featuring the plays Jackson On A Jaunt by Eleanor Wong and As If He Hears by Chay Yew.

Set in Singapore in the mid-60s, Beauty World is a musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city.

A heave, a tumble, a fond goodbye and our assorted heroes in ‘Army Daze’ are off on their first three-tonner ride down the bumpy path of recruit life.

Not Afraid To Remember focuses on the internment of Singapore teacher Elizabeth Choy by the Japanese during the Occupation in the 1940s.

An adaptation of Goose Pimples, the English black comedy by Mike Leigh about the steamier side of human nature.