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8 Addictions is a series of cutting edge performances at The Heeren Shops, Annex

Minah Jambu, come out. Come out from hiding! Come read your poems to us. You are the Secret Voice of the Heartland!

Initial fieldwork documentation of attempts to dialogue with and identify needs of migrant communities A1, A2, A3 and A4. These communities are resident in and around Block 27 Gilstead Road Singapore 309170. The findings will be displayed in the form of photographs, field drawings, field notes and a presentation video.

While we accredit the reason for our existence to many factors, an important and light-heated thing often goes amiss. The thing called faith. The Bluest Flame is an interpretation of this element through a dance in the spirit, presented as an offering to a special friend, Isa.

Talk was first staged in 1994. For this version, we have made extensive changes. The initial impetus behind the original was the whole idea of talk shows and media. It was a send-off, a spoof, a satire.

For this version, we are working with two very giving and dedicated actors, Darren Chiam and Peter Sau. We spent a few rehearsals improvising different scenarios, sexploring various styles and forms, discussing etc. The play/production has taken a different slant. It's now less clear, less coherent.

Our collaboration has been meaningful. Script, set, music and performance have all evolved naturally - bouncing off, and dependent on, one another. Such a process is always daunting - much preparation can be beforehand, but the real composition only takes place during rehearsals.

We would like to thank Peter, Darren and Dimin for making the journey a smooth one. Happy.

You and Me. Father and Mother. Grandfather and Grandmother. Cockroaches and Crickets. Who are we? Why are we? We will because we are. An exhilarating theatrical experience sans Baygons...be plagued by a host of insects and human beings. This performance is conceptualised by Darren Chiam in collaboration with Ivan Goh and with the assistance of Vel Ng. [To Ah Kong and Ah Ma...With Love was developed from an earlier performance which was conceived and performed in the Theatre Studies Programme of the National University of Singapore.]

These plays show how a newly-married couple cope with living independently. Or so they think, till their mothers visit.

Medium: Mixed Media
Dimensions: Variable

The construction of Escapes - the emergency exist, the fire escape, secret tunnel behind the wall etc posed a most beguiling context for exploration of the theme of 'encounters' and 'imagined boundaries' within the ideological spaces where individuals in a community interact. Rather than working to construct a 'livable' space, this project is a surreptitious construct of/for paranoid, claustrophobic/agoraphobic and anomalous individuals whose existence is possible only close to or within these interstitial/heterotopic spaces where the probability for escape from so-called 'livable' spaces is pre-configured.


This collaborative project between myself (fiction & sound etc) Khiew Huey Chian (installation) and Adam Collins (sound design) seeks to compromise and complicate the idea of 'escape' in the circumstance of it being an essential feature in any blueprint for a building.


Initially, we intended to seek out an actual fire escape or emergency exit within the building and intervene in the purpose and function of this architectural feature. Another possibility we considered was the construction of an escape in another site where escape is not seen to be necessary - where it might even be considered an obstruction, a kind of 'paranoid construct' within an otherwise comfortable zone. A version of this concept has become the option taken as the former plan to work within an actual fire escape is understood to pose too many logistical and safety problems.


The work is an interdisciplinary intervention with the concepts behind the architecture of escape through poetry/fiction recorded into speech/sound and an actual construction-installation of an 'alternate route' on the main stairway leading down into The Necessary Stage's space. The construction will be made of white lycra stretched over a wooden structure. Eight speakers will be mounted along the length of the wall behind the lycra at ear-level. Through these speakers, the recorded performance text will be heard. Four different tracks will be played over the four CD players - Whispered, sung, voice-synthesized. The text lingers around ideas of descent, delay, desire-to-linger operating as friction to the simultaneous desire-to-escape - a 'delay system' of seduction and suggestion.


The white space within will be lit with pink fluorescent lights which will create a surreal, deceptively calming, anxiety-deferring evironment.


We hope the sensory experience within the constructed environment will raise questions on the notions of fear and paranoia, safety and reguse, exile and marginality - and of cours, 'escape' - Susie Lingham 

Medium: Acrylic Windmills with Text (30)
Dimensions: 40 x 60 cm each

On a quiet day when the wind is still, remove your lime-green tinted glasses and read between the lines. You may hear your own thoughts.

2 actors and a talk show. Issues of the day are trashed out in the most in-your-face, tongue-in-cheek ways.

Talk was first staged in 1994. For this version, we have made extensive changes. The initial impetus behind the original was the whole idea of talk shows and media. It was a send-off, a spoof, a satire. For this version, we are working with two very giving and dedicated actors, Darren Chiam and Peter Sau. We spent a few rehearsals improvising different scenarios, sexploring various styles and forms, discussing etc.

The play/production has taken a different slant. It's now less clear, less coherent. Our collaboration has been meaningful. Script, set, music and performance have all evolved naturally - bouncing off, and dependent on, one another. Such a process is always daunting - much preparation can be beforehand, but the real composition only takes place during rehearsals. We would like to thank Peter, Darren and Dimin for making the journey a smooth one. Happy.

An over-enthusiastic extra during the filming of a police series.

Three women queueing for the toilet discuss life, love and girl power!