Residency Sharing: Playwrights and their F*ck You Plays
23 Feb 2023, 7.30pm - 9.30pm
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Studio | SIFA X: there is no future in nostalgia
20, 21, 27 & 28 May 2023
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No Spot of Ground - A Promenade Writing Workshop
27 Aug 2023, 2pm
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The pilot version of the Playwright’s Professional Development Residency will support four early-career playwrights who will undergo a one-year journey together as a cohort with Programme Leader Joel Tan.
We are thrilled to announce the four inaugural residents:
Artist Statement:
Having left full-time teaching to pursue a more creative life, this residency grants me the opportunity to deepen my craft with more regular writing, and plenty of guidance and feedback from playwrights of various levels of experience and expertise. I intend to seize this opportunity to be more collaborative and intentionally risky with my writing. I’m keen to know what other playwrights deem as contemporary issues, or even taboo.
I am also very keen to be reading the selection of plays that we can deconstruct, so that the learnings can better inform me on how I can play with shaping a play, and how to encourage messiness in my writing — After all, our lives are messy, and my plays should be able to reflect that truth and vulnerability.
Artist Statement:
Playwriting has never been a lonely process, and I enjoy developing works alongside others, be it through devising or by getting critical feedback from peers and mentors. Some of my obsessions include socio-political themes, silences, “weird" aesthetics, comedy, intercultural works and Japanese theatre. I’ve now come to a stage in my theatre career, where I’m trying to solidify my style further as a playwright-director, so that all my interests can come together in creating works for a non-theatre going audience to encourage healthy debates. I’m hoping that the creative ping ponging between the residents will be the perfect kitchen to “find and ferment (a part of) our creative selves” that we’re all looking to nurture.
Artist Statement:
I want to be more experimental and to incorporate different styles and structures within my writing. I also think artistic freedom is borne out of continual negotiations with creative differences. So I'm looking forward to being inspired and challenged by the distinctive peculiarities of my fellow playwrights and the other contemporaries we'll encounter together, and to weave them into my own practice.
I'm interested in unpacking competing notions of truth, their objectivities and subjectivities, and understanding why different groups of people draw the lines where they do. The world can see us in a way that's different from who we are. So in response to these misalignments, how do we adapt, negotiate, challenge, and/or reclaim? And who really gets left behind?
Artist Statement:
I am looking forward to the mentorship and to the deep collaboration, discipline, and professional rigor that this residency will bring. I am excited to have an avenue to "fail forward" with my fellow playwrights in the safe space that Centre42 has created. As a foreign-born theatre practitioner, I'm most fascinated by Singapore's unique socio-political landscape, i.e. Rental discrimination, BTO's, intangible and tangible cultural heritage.
This is a dedicated one-year residency with a structured studio programme designed and run by the residency leader, complemented by numerous public presentation opportunities in the form of reading events, and a small-scale production.
The underlying philosophy of this residency is to develop the writer, not just the play. It is not focused on the writing of a single play, but several creative projects and activations, parceled out across duration of the residency. The aim of the residency is to keep these writers busy, visible, and presenting regularly.
Centre 42 will also seek ways to engage the four selected residents in workshop opportunities, and actively connect the residents with professional theatre-makers. This residency is an expression of interest and confidence in the work of these four playwrights.
This residency aims to:
On the guiding philosophy of the residency, creative associate and programme leader Joel Tan says:
This residency is the cornerstone of C42's recently launched suite of New Writing Development initiatives, which aims to put writers at the heart of the programmes. Throughout this process, we’ve asked ourselves: how do we meet writers and their plays at their point of need? How do we better advocate for writers to the people with producing power? How do we spotlight, support, and develop writers alongside their plays? As a result, all of these programmes are writer centric, but also make it a priority to hold writers within a network of other practitioners– directors, dramaturgs, actors, and producers.
The 2022-2023 pilot residency is a one-year studio programme comprising two phases:
Phase 1: Sep 2022 - Feb 2023
Residents, together with the residency leader, read, discuss, and write around the idea of the contemporary and global, focusing on how to respond to the present moment through playwriting.
Phase 2: Apr 2023 - Oct 2023
Over the course of this phase, residents will develop a short play that will then go into a multiple bill production at the end. This play will be written to a specific brief, e.g. student actors, plays for specific communities.
An update to Phase 2:
Residents and C42 team at the final wrap up meeting of the residency!
