Creating actors: a conversation between Director Alvin Tan, Playwright Haresh Sharma and Dramaturg Melissa Lim

Alvin: I think that we at TNS have always enjoyed a unique position in multicultural Singapore, in that we do not carry the burden of representation as we are not associated with any one ethnic community. We may be known as an English-language theatre company to most people, but throughout our history, we have created characters from all ethnic groups, speaking their own brand of English and other languages.

A Note From Aidli Mosbit

This year, after 22 years of dreaming up this character called Rosnah, I was given the opportunity to once again work with my favourite collaborators and this time to translate the play from English to Malay. Strangely, after 22 years, the words within Rosnah are even more relevant and applicable to people who question the idea of mobility vs. rootedness as we live our lives as global citizens.

Art and Faith

Human tendency is to use institutionalised faith for our own purposes, at times with disregard to differing opinions and minority voices, thus resulting in arrogance and judgemental behaviour. It is folly to believe that our faith should dictate the manner which others should live by. Should our faith in specific institutions limit our faith in human engagement and connection, in compassion and inclusion?

Message

In the end, the play is about the disease systemic lupus erythematous, but it is also about the ordinary and extraordinary lives of the people who struggle, work, play and simply live with it from day to day.

Message
Elvira Holmberg

The cumulative experience of that period was filled with insight, personally confronting and to say the least, disturbing. How does one write a play that could encapsulate the pain the anger, the need and lack of support, the triumph, the sheer tenacity of the human spirit of those daily haunted by the reality of HIV/AIDS in their lives? Where and how does one start to tell teh tale? Which tale does one tell out of the hundreds of thousands that already exist as fact?

Art and Healing

Art builds communities; repairs victims emerging from tragedies; consoles human beings undergoing personal trauma or social crisis. When a human being is unable to reach out to another, Art is easily the mediator, the medium, the midwife with the antidote; the remedy to the malady.

Reading List (Marijuana Use in Medicine)

The New York Times: Dying Woman Loses Appeal on Marijuana as Medication
The New York Times: Prescription For Pain

Talkshow Host's Message
Haresh Sharma

It is you, the audience, therefore, who determine the success of this talk show. Your involvement is crucial. Without your feedback, questions and views, without true dialogue and discussion, the talk show will be incomplete and ineffective.

Notes on Social Media Interaction in Poor Thing
Jason Ng

Eventually, we settled on only asking the audience to befriend one of the characters, Jerome Koshy, before the show, to use Jerome's Facebook account as a real-time narrative device to propel the conflicts of the play.

Nonetheless, the Facebook accounts of the other three characters are still out there for the audience to discover by finding out more about them, with or without befriending them, or interacting with them on their Facebook walls.