Teater Ekamatra presents PROJEK SUITCASE: METAMORPHOSIS.
Teater Ekamatra’s annual festival of new monologues is back! Sixteen invited artists ruminate on the theme, Metamorphosis, to create eight new monologues, each performed with just a suitcase.
This year's installation of PROJEK SUITCASE will see 16 established artists from the industry presenting eight, 20-minute plays, based on the theme, Metamorphosis. Equipped with only their suitcases, the storytellers will spin their tales on the grounds of Aliwal Arts Centre and dare us to follow them on their journeys, excavating forgotten pasts and alternative histories.
With Kafka’s novella about an individual’s evolving relevance to society as inspiration, this year’s festival sees artistic pairings of great diversity whose collaborative efforts deal with a gamut of issues.
In By The Book, film-maker Eric Lee collaborates with star performer Rizman Putra fresh off his turn as Badang (NDP’16). In this devised piece, an actor hijacks a director’s vision and they butt heads on the ‘correct’ interpretation of a performance.
Meanwhile in Jumping The Q, millennial media personality Hirzi Zulkiflie collaborates with Malay theatre stalwart Izzat Yusoff on a thoughtful piece on suicide that asks - if death is merely a spot on the timeline, could it be a celebration?
In the first intercultural pairing, Ebi Shankara, acclaimed Tamil theatre activist and TV personality, directs rising star Al-Matin Yatim on a piece that asks the age-old question - to what extent must one compromise one’s ‘color’ in order to fit in?
Meanwhile, leading theatre educator and director Elvira Holmberg revives her twenty-year artistic musing with regional theatre actress Ema Saleh in a new work investigating the act of running away.
Lo! The most unique collaboration of the festival. Be prepared to be sensually overwhelmed as Singapore’s very own Leonard Cohen, poet-composer Bani Haykal, collaborates with Bharathanatyam dancer Ruby Jayaseelan to reinvent interdisciplinary performance.
And in the much-awaited new work #IstillwantmyPR by independent collective The Art of Strangers, theatre actress Shida Mahadi sings her way to convince the audience she wants to stay in her adopted country while also pining for her homeland.
Since intercultural theatre is the new buzzword, Peranakan theatre stalwart and director Baba Richard Tan collaborates with acclaimed theatre actor Erwin Shah Ismail in Kulit, a new work that delves into the art of leather crafting.
Finally, in 370 well-known Malay TV and theatre personalities Keatar H M and Rafaat Haji Hamzah collaborate on a thought-provoking and emotionally poignant new work.
PROJECT SUITCASE: METAMORPHOSIS goes full throttle with visceral storytelling and powerhouse solo performances set to snare audiences by the heartstrings.
All 8 plays will be showing every night, 2 plays at a time, from 30 November - 4 December. This means, on any given night, an audience member will be able to catch a maximum of 4 plays. Thus, we also have a 2-day pass for audience members who would like to catch all 8 monologues!
Projek Suitcase will be presented in English and Malay. Booklets with English surtitles will be provided.
(Source: Teater Ekamatra Facebook)