Cake Theatrical Productions' Simon Says
National campaigns—who hasn’t heard or been affected by these? A new group show at the National Library re-examines their most ubiquitous element.
Actually, it’s not so much new as it is expanded. An earlier version of Campaign City: Life In Posters was exhibited at Evil Empire back in 2010.
Enjoyable as that show was, I had some misgivings about how the artists responded to the idea of campaigns—but this version works much better.
A collaboration by the NLB and Salon Projects (with Alan Oei and Cheong Kah Kit spearheading), Campaign City features 50 contributors from different backgrounds (artists, graphic designers, students, poets, theatre peeps) creating their own posters.
Continue reading ‘Artists give S’pore campaign posters a twist’
It’s that time of the year again.
Standing ovation to this year’s Cultural Medallion recipients: visual artists Ho Ho Ying and Milenko Prvacki, author JM Sali, conductor Jennifer Tham and… all-around theatre awesomeness T Sasitharan!
Particularly happy about Sasi finally getting it. Woot.
And let’s not forget the Young Artist Award recipients. You’ve got nine of them: theatre director Zizi Azah, multi-media artist Brian Gothong Tan, visual artists Genevieve Chua and Tan Wee Lit, sound artist Darren Ng, fictionist O Thiam Chin, dancer Zhuo Zihao and filmmakers Liao Jiekai and Looi Wan Ping. Congratulations to everyone!
By the way, the NAC is also launching its Cultural Medallion Speaker series where you go and, erm, hear Cultural Medallion recipients speak.
First one’s on Oct 28 (feat. JM Sali and Prvacki) and the second one’s on Nov 4 (feat.Ho, Tham and Sasi). It’s free but you have to register here.
And since on the subject of awards, here’s one final shout out.
Fictionist Suchen Christine Lim is this year’s Southeast Asian Writers Award (aka SEA Write Award) winner for Singapore. The Bangkok-based regional literary awards is given annual to Asean writers—last year’s recipient was Robert Yeo.
Congratulations to everyone!
During Cake’s fifth anniversary celebration showcase The Art of Living In The In-Between back in 2010, composer Philip Tan occupied a little corner where he did The Scientist. It was a sound art performance, but Tan’s subtle embodiment of a persona that seemingly had a secret to share, as he tinkered with a bunch of objects to create some unique sounds, made it more theatrical. He was a sound alchemist come to life.
7.7, the third in Cake’s experimental Decimal Points series and Tan’s directorial debut, has a hint of that alchemical approach blown up to the scale of a full production. But, to be honest, I’ve a hard time trying to identify the, erm, compound that emerged from this particular mix.
Continue reading ‘Decimal Points! 7.7! Strange alchemy!’
I move a lot. From one country to another, from one rented room to another, and, as my day job sometimes requires me to do, from one gallery to another. As a true blue Taurus, I don’t really like moving. I do, however, like seeing other people move.
Okay, that’s a rather lame segue into this blog post about three ongoing exhibitions I caught today. I can’t help it. All three have this mobility thing going on in varying ways. Brian Gothong Tan’s Milk And Honey, the Fetterfield festival’s Performance In Frames: Video Mobiles, and the group show Videologue: Beijing-Singapore-Tokyo — they like to move it, move it. Groan.
Continue reading ‘The promised land! Portable art! Cross-country videos!’
0.01 is the second installment of Cake Theatrical Productions’ current Decimal Points series of experimental works helmed by non-theatre directors.
I thoroughly enjoyed the first one, Brian Gothong Tan’s cinema/theatre mash-up 4.44. Despite its rough edges, I had the impression I was watching something quite new, its language felt particularly fresh and innovative.
But after watching 0.01 (which is already sold out), I’m wondering if the point of the DP series isn’t so much as a platform to showcase experimental work (in the context of Cake’s already experimental body of works) as it is a platform for artists to simply experiment. I’m nitpicking here because while first-time director and full-time designer David Lee falls under the latter, the work itself isn’t quite the former.
Continue reading ‘Decimal Points! 0.01! How experimental is experimental?’
Can an experimental theatre group get even more experimental? Looks like it, with Cake’s new series in partnership with The Substation. Their theoretically promising three-year project Decimal Points will see four artists take a shot at directing a theatre piece from the vantage point of their respective disciplines. Somewhere down the road, you’ll have Rizman Putra for performance art, Philip Tan for sound, David Lee for fashion/design, and earlier tonight, it kickstarted with film-maker/video artist Brian Gothong Tan’s cinema-meets-theatre directorial debut 4.44. Continue reading ’4.44! Cinema and theatre face off!’
I was expecting Deciphering The Peach Garden Oath to be a three-for-the-price-of-one Chinese opera treat. After all, you had Cantonese, Hainanese and Beijing opera all onstage at once. Plus, Toy Factory’s Goh Boon Teck, in a previous interview, gamely described their differences for the layman as “a poetry club, a fun community centre and a circus,” respectively.
That all flew out the window when I realised that distinguishing these forms as such doesn’t mean squat to anyone who knows next to nothing about Chinese opera and had his eyes clinging on the surtitles screen for dear life. Yes, that would be me. Continue reading ‘Huayi Fest! Peach Garden! Deciphering Chinese opera!’
The Art of Living In The In-Between is the over-arching title for theatre company Cake’s fifth anniversary celebrations over at Evil Empire.
It sounds all Sun Festival-y but it’s actually a bunch of crazy fun stuff you can’t pin down. It’s got workshops, there’s a weekend pancake brunch (?!), a Madonna karaoke night (?!?!), and a bunch of mini-performance art stuff and video installations. There’s a giant swan outside and one of the doorways inside is, well, slanted.
Continue reading ‘Sounds of science! Disembarking disco dude! Cake’s crazy characters cavorting!’
