Bitten by Thong Pei Qin & Nidya Shanthini Manokara

Bitten is an intimate conversation on personal accounts and morbid Kafkaesque imaginings of fear and death, erupting into hilarious spewings of superstitious beliefs based on traditional remedies and cures, leading to an adapted strange folklore of a man reincarnated as a blood-sucking mosquito feverishly in search of his lover. Both poignant and itch-inducing, Bitten aims to bring the audience into a world abuzz with rich Singaporean cultures, the supernatural, and multiple truths.

Inspired by the common experience of having fallen prey to the dreaded Aedes mosquito and dengue fever, Pei Qin and Shanthini share their vivid musings of the journey undertaken by the relentless virus inside their bodies, the heightened state of paranoia that came with the disease, and the love and care showered on them as the battle raged on beneath the skin, through devised text and physical movement with a spin on classical Bharata Natyam dance.

This piece borrows from the external physical effects on the body, and delves deeper beneath the skin into the inner human psyche and root of the performers, as they uncover experiences of communicating across generations, different languages, and medical terms, as well as the rich cultures, traditions and beliefs their families have to offer.

Bitten was developed under Centre 42's Guest Room (now known as the New Scripts Residency). Read about Guest Room here.

Bitten was presented at Esplanade Rehearsal Studio as part of the Fresh Fringe category under M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2017.

• Production Facebook Page
• Interview with The Fringe Team
• Tickets to the performance
• Other performances at M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2017

Bitten: Return to Our Roots will be re-imagined as a site-specific performance and presented at Kampong Bugis Event Site under Our Singapore Fund in 2018.

• Our Singapore Fund project page