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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.

As a ‘global nomad’, Sharon Frese is no stranger to making homes in foreign places. 
By deconstructing and reassembling traditional modes of storytelling, Sharon stitches together a brutally honest narrative marked by hostility, reductive stereotypes and a prevalent sense of homelessness- even in her birth country.  Sharon's story asks important questions about identity: what is it about when one is living in a borderless world?

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 the exchange of devising methodologies employed by David Glass and The Necessary Stage. The artists centred their explorations around In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park.

 

Why I want to leave [versus] Why I have to leave

Who departs?
Why they depart?
Where do they depart to?
What they expect when they arrive?
How is their new live?
When is this taking place?

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.

In this Lab, a new ensemble experiments with set design, sonic elements and text. 

This lab focuses on an exploration of themes such as morality and change. The artists consider the use of language and social media, experimenting with various forms to communicate about heaven and hell.

For 2018, our laboratories will focus on responses to and reinterpretation of texts. This first laboratory is centred around Haresh Sharma's Talk 1, first performed in 1994, subsequently reworked in 2000, and published as part of the anthology Shorts 1. For this series, our Artistic Director Alvin Tan will be working with Theatre GUMBO from Japan, along with artists from Singapore and Malaysia, including Bani Haykal, Ghafir Akbar, Gloria Tan and Rizman Putra.

Revisiting Talk

In this iteration of The Orange Playground, the team will be exploring new performance vocabularies through the genres of comedy and physical theatre. 

Talk 1 is an ensemble piece where 3 actors play a host of characters in a talk show. Stories of cinema bullying and gender discrimination are played out in both comic and tragic fashion. The work was originally directed by Alvin Tan and Kok Heng Leun in 1994. 

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 aims to explore new theatrical forms by inviting artists to respond to TNS devising methodology. It also explores new ways social-engaged works can be presented by playing with character, narrative, theme and structure. There is a focus on alternative stories, histories and narratives that are eclipsed, invisible or absent.

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.

The ensemble from this Lab will be improvising with interactive multimedia. 

Are rules meant to be broken? An ensemble questions and reimagines the conventions and norms surrounding their individual practices. How do we problematize the ideal?

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.

In 2014, The Necessary Stage launched The Orange Playground (TOP), a creative research and development programme for emerging and established artists. A total of five TOP Lab sessions were held, involving 36 artists going through more than 200 hours of intensive research and exploration. From 27 Feb – 1 March, 2015, we are proud to present TOP Showcase 1 where artists will share their works with the audience for discussion and feedback.

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..

“I would give my life to be in your life…To be you.”

Kumon and Ema suffer from wanderlust. Struck by the quiet dissatisfaction which haunts the modern Singaporean despite their seemingly perfect lives, they escape on a destination holiday. However, Kumon and Ema discover that their resentments, regrets and insecurities are capable of haunting them beyond geographical boundaries.

Reviving the heroines from The Necessary Stage’s award-winning plays such as Rosnah (1995, 1996, 1997, 2006), Off Centre (1993, 1994, 2007) and Three Years in the Life and Death of Land (1993), Siti Khalijah Zainal and Alin Mosbit reimagine the heroines’ scripted realities in a fictional world where these women cross paths with Kumon and Ema. Supported by multimedia artist Yusri “Shaggy” Sapari and devised through a series of improvisational ‘circuit training’ directed by Alvin Tan, the complexities of Kumon and Ema surfaces in short vignettes which are side-splitting, yet at times heart-wrenching, raw and bittersweet.

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 was focused on multimedia in theatre and visual arts, led by Brian Gothong Tan.