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Created by Artistic Director Alvin Tan, The Orange Playground (TOP) is The Necessary Stage’s newest initiative in creative research and development. We seek to collaborate with artists in an exploratory environment where risks can be freely taken within and with the creative process. TOP will provide opportunities for free, ad-hoc collaborative “jamming” and play with emerging and established talents.

This Lab focused on exploreingnew theatrical forms by inviting artists to respond to TNS devising methodology. The group explored what new ways social-engaged works can be presented by playing with character, narrative, theme and structure.

A workshop conducted by Suguru Yamamoto of Hanchu-Yuei.

Suguru will guide the participants to a heightened awareness through focusing on the two main types of “places” in theatre:
• The place where it is performed (space)
• The place it is set in the script (scene)

With their sensibilities focused on these two “places”, participants will be able to discover new vocabularies in sincere acting and body movement. Everyone would have had an experience in which our feelings changed when the place altered, or a sense that somehow a certain place never works for us. We hope to lead participants to a greater realisation of the uniqueness of locality and the powerful influence of place in our everyday lives.

The workshop focuses  on different themes pertaining to the future. Members discussed the effects of surveillance capitalism, biometrics and how freely we share information in the public domain via social media and being constantly plugged to technology. 

The Orange Playground 2018: Lab #2 was led by our Resident Playwright Haresh Sharma and theatre practitioner Edith Podesta, centred around interdisciplinary responses to texts within a stipulated time frame. The texts in question are excepts from Stranger to Myself: The Diary of a Bangladeshi in Singapore by MD Sharif Uddin, published by Landmark Books. 

Stranger to Myself: The Diary of a Bangladeshi in Singapore is the first memoir in English written by a Bangladeshi construction worker about his experience on working in Singapore. In September 2018, it won Best Non-Fiction Title at the Singapore Book Awards.

This iteration of The Orange Playground featured emerging artists including actors Deonn Yang, Salif Hardie and Andre Chong together with Sound Designer Jing Ng and Lighting Designer Liu Yong Huay.