Main Season

The Main Season branch stages 2 to 3 productions that cater to adult audiences every year. The productions often boast strong visuals, original scripts and imaginative stagings.

大国民 Citizen x

26 – 29 March 2020 | Drama Centre Black Box (Level 5), 100 Victoria St, Singapore 188064)

In 1928, PRC Liu Shuo Tian set sail from Swatow Harbour to Singapore. In 1998, his grandson Liu Xiaoyi began his journey towards Singapore from Swatow Airport. Their paths never crossed; Liu Shuo Tian was a muffled memory framed in a family photo, and Liu Xiaoyi but a name in the family almanac, the erosion of its imprint slow but sure. One story, two lives, seventy years apart; the uncanny overlap of their journeys down south, and how their fates seem to be inextricably entwined.

Inspired by real-life events, and spanning a century-tracing the great migration towards Nanyang starting from the 1920s, to the War of Resistance against the Japanese, the Civil War, the Anti-Rightist Campaign by the Communists, the Great Purge and the Socialist Education Movement, the Cultural Revolution, and the eventual Chinese Economic Reform, follow the waves of change and its impact on this family rooted but in flux, their fates and future determined by the change of times.

Following successful collaborations on ‘Citizen Pig’ in 2013 and ‘Citizen Dog’ in 2018, Oliver Chong and Liu Xiaoyi embark on the long-awaited last instalment in their ‘Citizen’ trilogy.

Creative Team

Director / Set Designer: Oliver Chong

Playwright / Cast: Liu Xiaoyi

Lighting Design: Gabriel Chan

Sound Design & Operation: Ctrl Fre@k (Lee Yew Jin)

Language

Performed in Mandarin and Teochew, with English surtitles

Duration

1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission

Rating

To be advised.

Ticketing

Tickets are available here.

Public Health Advisory (dated 11 February 2020)

Click here to read more.

剧情介绍

1928年，民国才子刘硕田在汕头码头登上了开往新加坡的帆船；1998年，他的孙子刘晓义在汕头机场登上了前往新加坡的航班。相隔70年的两人素未谋面：刘硕田只是挂在家中老照片里的一个模糊面孔；刘晓义只是族谱末端一个渐行渐远的名字。但是祖孙两人在这条南下的航线上身影重叠却又擦肩而过，命运唇齿相连。

改编自真实事件，横跨近百年历史——20世纪20年代的下南洋移民潮，30-40年代的抗日战争，40年代末的中国内战，50-60年代之后中国共产党展开的反右倾运动、肃清运动和四清运动，60-70年代的文化大革命，以及之后的改革开放浪潮，到底对这个在风雨中飘零的家族带来了怎样的巨大冲击？

新加坡剧场黄金组合——钟达成与刘晓义继2013年的《大猪民》和2018年的《大狗民》之后，再度携手推出三部曲的完结篇《大国民》，由钟达成执导，刘晓义编剧并演出。

创作团队

导演/舞台设计: 钟达成
剧本/演员: 刘晓义

日期｜时间

星期四2020年3月26日 – 8:00pm
星期五2020年3月27日 – 8:00pm
星期六2020年3月28日 – 3:00pm
星期六2020年3月28日 – 8:00pm
星期天2020年3月29日 – 3:00pm

地点
戏剧中心黑箱剧场，国家图书馆(5楼) (100 Victoria St, Singapore 188064)

语言
华语与潮州方言演出，附英文字幕

时长
1小时30分钟，无中场休息

分级
待定

售票网址
请游览https://citizenx.peatix.com/

公众健康防范措施
请点击此处

恶魔日记 A Fiend’s diary

24 – 27 October 2019
Drama Centre Black Box
Advisory (Some Mature Content)

A man did not shed a single tear during his mother’s funeral.
He commits an irreversible act, deemed unforgivable under the judicial system.

Witnesses take to the stand, each one’s account as colourful as their personalities, held together by a common thread – the judgement of a man’s soul.

Is this man a lunatic, a sage, a fool, a fiend or a social misfit?

Inspired by the philosophy of absurdism and existentialism, A Fiend’s Diary is the ultimate revelation of a man’s battle against the judicial machine, and his conflict against a seemingly indifferent society.

STARRING
Oliver Chong

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Director/Text/Set Designer: Oliver Chong
Sound Artist: Darren Ng
Lighting Designer: Lim Woan Wen
Costume Designer: MAX.TAN
Production Manager: Celestine Wong
Stage Manager: Tan Xiang Yi
Assistant Manager: Natalie Wong
Project Manager: Yee Isabelle
Publicist: Lim Kok Siong

TICKETING
Tickets available here

Forked – A Monologue

15 – 18 August 2019
Drama Centre Black Box
Advisory 16 (Some Mature Content and Coarse Language)

Jeanette Peh—a highly-westernised Singaporean junior college valedictorian—decides to abandon law school to follow her dreams of studying acting in London, where she will also hopefully find her occidental soulmate.

On arrival however, she is dismayed to find that her teacher and classmates labels her as one of the “Asian students”. She adopts a British accent and corrects the British students’ grammar well-meaningly, but that doesn’t seem to boost her popularity. At least she’s doing well in school… until she attends Baptiste Laroche’s acting class.

Monsieur Laroche wants her to perform more honestly by speaking in her native language. There’s just one problem: Jeanette is beginning to realise she doesn’t know what her native language is. In fact, she doesn’t really know who she is at all.

STARRING
Jo Tan

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Director: Tze Chien
Playwright: Jo Tan
Set Designer: Chan Silei
Sound Artist & Music Composer: Darren Ng
Lighting Designer: Lim Woan Wen
Production Manager: Celestine Wong
Stage Manager: Geraldine Ang
Assistant Manager: Tan Xiang Yi
Project Manager: Yee Isabelle
Ticketing Manager: Carol Chong
FOH Manager: Yeo Fu Bi
Publicist: Lim Kok Siong

TICKETING
Tickets available here

ITSY – The Musical

Enter the new and dark world of nursery rhymes

24 March – 2 April 2017
Victoria Theatre
General Rating, suitable for 7 years old and above

Itsy Bitsy spider has galvanised his eight-legged army to terrorise the characters in the nursery rhyme world. In comes an unlikely hero, a grandfather who’s looking for his grandson. In his search, Grandpa is reacquainted with familiar and colourful friends from the nursery rhymes that he used to sing to his grandson. Unwittingly, he ends up being their hero, the chosen one against the spiders. To save his newfound friends from the eight-legged terror, an epic war ensues between the spiders, and his assembled army, comprising an unfortunate pair of siblings – Jack and Jill, the directionless Three Blind Mice, the fragile Humpty Dumpty and the Twinkle Little Star. Meanwhile, his grandson reappears, in a form that sends shivers down Grandpa’s spine.

Featuring a dazzling display of puppetry and live action, ITSY – The Musical transports audiences to a dazzling world that explodes with glorious colours, stunning effects and enchanting music. At its heart is the powerful and moving story about the bond between a grandparent and his grandchild.

ITSY – The Musical is a marquee event that will rock your world and senses with its imagination and craft.

STARRING
Sebastian Tan, Lim Kay Siu, Oliver Chong, Ebi Shankara, Tan Shou Chen, Jo Tan, Audrey Luo, Frances Lee, Zee Wong, Ivan Choong, Yazid Jalil, Rachel Tay, Juni Goh, Ann Lek, Kyongsu Kathy Han, Jo Kwek, Tan Beng Tian, Myra Loke

PRODUCTION CREDITS
Book by Chong Tze Chien (Director)
Music composed, arranged and performed by Darren Ng
Sound Designer: Darren Ng
Lighting Designer: Lim Woan Wen
Set Designer: Wong Chee Wai
Costume Designer: Anthony Tan
Puppetry Designers: Ang Hui Bin, Daniel Sim, Myra Loke, Tan Beng Tian
Choreographer: Ricky Sim
Hair Stylist: Ashley Salon
Make Up Artist: The Make Up Room
Sound by: Ctrl Fre@k
System Design: Jeffrey Yue
Operator: Lee Yew Jin
Production Manager: Lam Dan Fong
Technical Manager: Huang Xiangbin
Stage Manager: Woo Hsia Ling
Assistant Stage Managers: Phua Yun Yun, Tan Xiang Yi
Crew: Gordon Lai, Faizul Baharudin, Teo Pei Si
Wardrobe Manager: Theresa Chan
Publicist: Derrick Chew

TICKETING
Tickets available here

POOP

20 – 22 October 2017
Victoria Theatre

“When is life worth living; when is death worth celebrating?”

The notion of death and reincarnation has fascinated mankind’s consciousness, religions and literature since time immemorial.

Poop chronicles the aftermath of a suicide: A GRANDMOTHER bargains with divine powers to release her SON’S soul from hell. Failing which, she brings him home; she takes over the reins of bringing up her GRANDDAUGHTER, while keeping her DAUGHTER-IN-LAW at bay, saving the GRANDDAUGHTER all for herself She tries to instill in her GRANDDAUGHTER that death is merely a joke, that there’s nothing to cry about as she takes her on a mind trip towards the underworld and purgatory — set against an all-too-familiar urban backdrop of fast food restaurants, underground trains, verdant pastures, and SBS buses.

These personal fantasies of the afterlife are challenged however when her GRANDDAUGHTER contracts a terminal illness.

The GRANDMOTHER fights with her DAUGHTER-IN-LAW, converses with the spirit of her SON, goes back in time, drinks a cup of Milo and watches her GRANDDAUGHTER take her final march towards her deathbed in a kind of apocalyptic graphic novel meets Victorian-era toy theatre.

The never-ending days of mourning are brought to lurid 3-dimensional, high-definition life as the agonizing wait for the ultimate redemption is an imprisonment in the realm between living and non-living on earth.

Starring: Jean Ng, Janice Koh, Neo Swee Lin, Julius Foo, Ang Hui Bin
Director/Playwright: Chong Tze Chien
Lighting Designer: Lim Woan Wen
Sound Designer: Darren Ng

The Spirits Play

27 – 29 October 2017
Victoria Theatre

In The Spirits Play, five Japanese spirits – a General, a Man, a Mother, a Girl and a Poet – recall their life experience in the Second World War. They are collectively thrown into turmoil in the process of recollection, and in their wish to “make sense” of the war and its atrocities inflicted upon them, not only by the foreign enemy but also by their own government and army. A notable work in Singapore theatre, ‘The Spirits Play’ poignantly depicts the agony, guilt and turmoil that occur in the aftermath of war.

Starring: Johnny Ng, Tay Kong Hui, Alvin Chiam, Doreen Toh, Tan Wan Sze, Jo Kwek, Myra Loke, Jasmine Xie
Playwright: Kuo Pao Kun
Director: Oliver Chong
Lighting Designer: Lim Woan Wen
Sound Designer: Darren Ng