The Vault: 汐/Sea

Written by Haresh Sharma in 1997, Sea is a phantasmagoric journey through the lives of two sisters who can’t live with or without each other, but are always with and without each other.

This short play was staged as part of a double-bill in 1997 at the Substation. On stage as the sisters were Serene Chen and Zelda Tatiana Ng. In the audience were Robin Loon and Casey Lim. The performance left its mark on the both of them. It made such an impression on Robin that he was inspired to re-engage Sea through translation, a creative process that produced 《汐》.

Eighteen years on, Serene, Zelda, Robin and Casey revisit Sea, refreshed with a completely new Chinese translation, 《汐》, alongside Haresh’s English text. In tow are their personal reflections on the 1997 staging.

Don’t miss this one-night-only performance-presentation. Performed in English and Mandarin with surtitles.

About Sea
Sea is a short but strange conversation between two sisters mysteriously cast adrift in a small boat. Their dialogue is whimsical and peculiar, drifting between past and future events, broaching topics of life and death. SEA’s only staging was in November 1997 by The Necessary Stage as part of a double bill called Moving Home Stories. SEA was directed by Kok Heng Leun and performed by Serene Chen and Zelda Tatiana as the sisters.

About the Playwright
Haresh Sharma is one of Singapore’s most prolific playwrights with over 100 plays to his name. He is the author of celebrated plays such as Still Building; Those Who Can’t, Teach; Off Centre; Fundamentally Happy; and Gemuk Girls.Haresh is the resident playwright of The Necessary Stage. He is the recipient of the Singapore Literature Prize (1993), the Young Artist Award (1997), the S.E.A. Write Award (2014), and most recently, the Cultural Medallion (2015).

About 《汐》
《汐》is Chinese translation of Sea by Dr. Robin Loon. With the memory of the 1997 production firmly etched in his mind, Robin wanted to rejuvenate Haresh’s text by rewriting the play in Chinese.

Translation is more than just finding equivalent words in another language. The translator has to employ creative judgment and intimate knowledge of the rhythms and cultural nuances of bothlanguages. The process involves uncovering the meanings behind the original text and ensuring those meanings are effectively communicated in the translation, even if it means extensive re-writing.《汐》, in this sense, is a completely new work. The Chinese title was chosen as it is a homophone of the English title.

Robin is a senior lecturer of Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore. Apart from his own original works,《汐》is Robin’s second major attempt at translating play-text, the first being 《男男自语》, a Chinese translation of Chay Yew’s A Language of Their Own, staged in 2012.