The BJ Song
You can listen to my song "Touch the Sky", in support of the Singapore team to the Beijing Olympics, this Saturday at Ngee Ann City/Takashimaya. It's organised by Musical Theatre Limited.

Programme: August 2, SAT Ngee Ann City CivicPlaza

1. 230pm to 415pm - Official Programme in presence of Dr Vivian.
2. 4pm - MTL Singers perform Paralympics Theme Song "Best That We Can Be" with Choir from Grace Orchard School (www.go.edu.sg)
3. 430pm - MatthewQUEK MiniConcert, and DariusLIM SeraphimChoir MiniConcert
4. 7p to 9pm - MTL Songwriter Showcase.
5. 9pm - MTL Singers demo perform the song inspired by TEAM Singapore "Touch The Sky" {Lyrics NG-YiSheng, Music DesmondMOEY}

It should actually be performed several times over the evening.

Gah, I'm such a hypocrite.


I don't even have the guts to boycott profiteering off the Olympics.

RESERVOIR Blog!

...and I've also started a blog for RESERVOIR, my upcoming production with TheatreWorks.

http://reservoirproject.blogspot.com/

RESERVOIR
28-30 Aug 2008_72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road

Deep in the heart of MacRitchie Reservoir lie the ruins of the Syonan Jinja, a Shinto shrine built during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Envisioned first as a spiritual and recreational centre for the future empire, then built by Australian POWs and Japanese craftsmen, today it exists only as stone relics and fragments, swallowed up by the thick tropical rainforest.

As young artists, we have embarked on a journey of discovery to reclaim this forgotten monument. Its very existence is intriguing – a beautiful artefact of civilisation from an age of blood and destruction. Its architects made outlandish promises: that the site would be the greatest in the world after the Meiji Shrine, that the area might be a future host for the Olympic Games.

Perhaps most provoking is the love-hate relationship between Singapore and the shrine. Historians and tourism promoters want it preserved, even rebuilt to commemorate our national heritage. Ordinary citizens, however, have violently objected to any celebration of former Japanese rule – even as they happily consume Japanese commercial and cultural products.

Led by director Choy Ka Fai, we are an ensemble of creative people from Singapore and Japan with roots in poetry, dance, drama, architecture, sport and multimedia. We have made pilgrimages to the jungle, probed the site scientifically, studied archival documents, drawings and oral histories, and processed our own collective memories to recreate and re-imagine the shrine as a sacred site.

Our performance, a tapestry of image, sound and movement, will be a drama of recollection, an attempt to capture the Syonan Jinja's sleeping spirit.

Conceived + Directed + Multimedia by Choy Ka Fai
Written by Ng Yi Sheng
Performed by Norico Sunayama+ Rizman Putra+ Patricia Toh
Sonic Compositions by Chong Li Chuan
Set and lighting design by Jiro Endo

I'm going to be a guest blogger at the Singapore Biennale Blog soon.

And I definitely have to post this:

Bottom line: If people aren't protesting, becoming nauseated by, or threatening lawsuits against an artist's work, you can look around for me, but I'm not going to be there. Using light and shadow to mythologize the pastoral and create a setting where human beings and the natural world can coexist peacefully? Best of luck to you. If you need me, I'll be watching a heroin addict use his own HIV-positive blood to paint Hiroshima victims on the side of a school bus. You know, with all the other real art buffs.

I Don't Have Time for Noncontroversial Art Exhibits by Keith Dans, The Onion.

Spotted at GSSQ.

STFBLOG!!!

http://singaporetheatrefestival.blogspot.com/

Given that the Singapore Theatre Festival is paying its playwrights above standard industry rates (they're trying to set a trend, not make us so unaffordable that no-one else wants us), I've decided to start a special blog for 'em. And not just for my play (buy tickets!!!), either - fo' everyone's plays!

If you're involved in the Festival in any capacity and want to be a blogger, just tell me and I'll add you.

I'll be in NYC from 23 June to 5 July.

In fact, I'm in Changi Airport Terminal 3 right now.



So don't call me, can? Waste phone money. :)

Book launch for my first novel, Eating Air

How could I forget? By the way, if anyone official asks, this is a film novelisation, so I'm still eligible for all those other first-novel grants and prizes when I finally compose an independent opus.

Anyway, details:

Friday 20 June
3-5pm
THE POD, Level 16
National Library, 100 Victoria Street

Dress code: business attire. (Yeah, right.)

The books being launched are 12 Storeys by Dr Yeo Wei Wei, 4:30 by James Toh, Eating Air by myself. Hope to seeya there!

UPDATE: Here's a shot of the book itself:



And the wunnerful people behind it. From left to right, publisher Enoch Ng, writer Dr Yeo Wei Wei, and directors Kelvin Tong and Jasmine Ng (who really is much prettier when she's not being derisive). Almost in the picture is Kat, Kelvin's assistant director at Boku films.



UPDATED UPDATE: Ooh ooh ooh! Channel News Asia has an article about it!

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/355416/1/.html

small metal objects

For some reason, the copy editors at ST felt it wasn't worth mentioning that Kinda Hot was banned when it was first performed. Well, let's remind people.

(Not sure if this is my best review, though.)

>theatre
Back to Back Theatre
VivoCity Sentosa Concourse Level 3
Sunday
Ng Yi-Sheng

In the middle of VivoCity, four actors are staging a strange, compelling drama. Two men, Gary and Steve, have been contacted by a high-profile executive named Allan. They’ve agreed to sell him drugs for a big business party tonight, but Steve has experienced a breakdown and won’t move from the spot.

The plot of “small metal objects” is as simple as that, but the way Back to Back Theatre tells the story brings it to a whole new level. Hidden in the crowds, the actors are barely visible to the audience, who’re seated at a distance. They’re only audible to us because their voices are transmitted electronically to our headphones.

While stage characters usually appear larger than life, Gary, Steve and Allan look tiny to us, an oddly believable part of the human landscape that surrounds them. They’re visually obstructed by lines of tourists exiting the Sentosa train station, upstaged by mischievous children playing in the foreground. We almost believe we’re eavesdropping on a real transaction, one of the numerous everyday dramas that occur in our midst.

Productions comparable to this have been staged in the past. Spell #7, for example, created a performance tour of Little India in 2002 entitled “Kinda Hot”, though this was banned by the police due to concerns about “mingling”.

However, Back to Back Theatre has added a deeper layer to this show by recruiting intellectually disabled actors to devise and perform the two main characters. It’s never explicitly stated whether Gary and Steve have disabilities, but their hesitant, muted style of acting is disconcertingly different from what we’re used to.

Simon Laherty’s performance as Steve is particularly unsettling. Slack-jawed and wide-eyed, he stares blankly at the audience through most of the play as if idiotically terrified. But when Allan – and later, his psychologist colleague Carolyn – attempt to bribe him, first with money, then with offers of emotional and sexual favours, he resists with such insistence that he becomes our hero.

For all their money, power and intelligence, Allan and Carolyn are helpless when this man says no. Gary sticks by him, despite the knowledge that he’ll lose money for his devotion. It’s a slap in the face of the capitalist world of the mall, a reminder that some people can’t be bought.

The universe of “small metal objects” is so intimate, so embedded in the private interior worlds of other people that it makes us uncomfortable. Good theatre ought to achieve that.

I'm also a Trevvy columnist now.

Just did an article for Father's Day.

Incidentally, I'm also an outdoor improv participant.







Get in on the action at Mission: Singapore. (No, they're not a Christian recruiting centre. The leader is an 18 year-old kid in the NJC Malay Dance Troupe.)

Heard It On the Wireless

The following review was printed in today's Straits Times Life! - or at least, a version of it was.  Since I disagree with the way the editor treated it, I'm just gonna reproduce the original review here so it can be googlable.

>theatre
Heard it on the Wireless
The Kransky Sisters
Esplanade Recital Studio
Sunday
Ng Yi-Sheng

Even before the Kransky Sisters step on stage, you know they're going to be fun. A projector flashes photographs of their tours across Australia: a provincial world of dodgy rest-stops, community centre recitals and kangaroo road-kill.

Then the three sisters enter, dressed identically in black wigs, long-sleeved polka dotted blouses and low heeled shoes, each one dolled up as the very image of a stereotypical, straight-laced old maid. They bumble into position, introducing themselves with their eccentric brand of deadpan humour.

The real surprise for the audience is their music – oddly beautiful, yet completely off-kilter renditions of pop songs, played on a bizarre ensemble of electone, tuba, tambourine and carpenter's saw. (The last of these produces an eerily lovely twang when stroked with a violin bow).

You have to love the incongruity of the act: three middle-aged women performing tunefully harmonious covers of “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This”, “The Age of Aquarius” and “Highway to Hell”, all in the clipped, precise English of antique schoolteachers.

Songs are accompanied by rib-tickling banter: Mourne, the lead singer, describes their rural Queensland life with appalling anecdotes - memories of drunken fathers, hallucinogenic trips after mushroom soup, accidental burials of pet rabbits in wet concrete.

Mourne is echoed by her sister Eve, the percussionist, who barely dares to speak for herself, while Dawn – the woodwind player, born from their mother's scandalous second marriage – stays rigidly wordless throughout.

It's all terribly funny till halfway through, when the freshness of the concept starts to sag. Mind you, the Sisters never stop being amusing, and some great gags emerge involving audience participation. Still, they can't quite sustain the original energy of their comedy.

And it's at this point that the darkness of the show sinks in. These characters have led horribly oppressive lives, from the abuse suffered under their mother (who went after their ankles with a cheese-grater) to the way Mourne restrains Eve from pursuing romance. At one point, silent Dawn interrupts a song with an unending scream - plus, she's revealed to have tried to murder her sisters by marooning them in the desert.

I have to ask: is it tasteless of this show to mock spinsters, lampooning them as frigid and repressed? Or is it empowering – does it celebrate the figure of the independent, nonconformist older woman, one who can subvert pop culture as casually as she buries a dead emu?

I'm going to WordStorm!

FRIDAY 16 MAY

POETRY SLAM @ Vodka Bar
Hear featured artists Munkimuk, Ng Yi-Sheng, Cristavão Pereira, Scribe Sisters Speaking & Kelly-Lee Hickey before getting up to slam!
8:30-11pm $10/$5
Duck’s Nuts, 76 Mitchell St, Darwin


SATURDAY 17 MAY

LUNCHTIME READINGS:
OVER THERE – A TIGER CONNECTION Dorothy Porter, Yong Shu Hoong, Ng Yi-Sheng and Peter Minter all contributed to the first anthology of Singaporean and Australian poetry – Over There.
1:15-2:15pm Speaking Tree FREE

ADUH! A PEOPLE’S THEATRE
Theatre practitioners John Waromi, Mary Anne Butler, Tom E Lewis and Ng Yi-Sheng challenge ‘the fourth wall’ in community-driven performance projects that matter. Facilitator: Sandra Thibodeaux
2:30-4pm MAGNT Theatrette


SUNDAY 18 MAY

THE PRACTICE OF SUBVERSION
Subversives Charles Firth, Jennifer Mills, Gayle Kennedy and Ng Yi-Sheng recount their challenges to the status quo, the nation state and the States.
Facilitator: Mark Bowling
2:30-4pm Arafura Tent

PASSION @ ABSOLUTELY
Rendezvous with Ng Yi-Sheng, Dorothy Porter & Shellie Morris in a toast to passion and the muse. Drinks & finger food
4:30-6:30pm $10
Absolutely Books, Cullen Bay

Launch of Over There @ South Perth Poetry Park!

Basically, if you wanna come, it's on:

Thursday, 15 May

5:30pm

Neil McDougall Park, Como

Perth, WA

Australia

Oceania

The World

RSPV [sic] essential. Invitation & map attached.

Please email library@southperth.wa.gov.au or call 9474 0800.

From NAC:

A Poetry Park will be launched at the Neil McDougall Park in South Perth, Australia to celebrate the outstanding work and achievements of Western Australia’s poets. The opening also marks the launch of Over There: Poems from Singapore & Australia, an anthology of Singaporean and Australian poets, edited by Alvin Pang and John Kinsella.

The event to be held on Thursday, 15 May 2008 will be officiated by the Honourable Sheila McHale MLA, Australian Minister for Disability Services, Tourism, Culture & the Arts.

The Singapore contingent for the launch led by Lee Suan Hiang, Chief Executive Officer, National Arts Council, will comprise Meritorious Service Medal recipient, Professor Edwin Thumboo, distinguished poet and literary scholar, Professor Kirpal Singh, as well as acclaimed Singapore poets, Alvin Pang and Ng Yi-Sheng, and publisher Ethos Books for Over There, Fong Hoe Fang.

Whee! I've got recognition from NAC! (Now if they'd only start including me in their brochures of notable Singapore writers...)

And then after that, WordStorm in Darwin! Seeya there!)

My first articles on The Online Citizen!

Homophobia Part 1: the MDA Censors the Family

Homophobia Part 2: Under Attack from the Police

Although one commenter's called me a faggot (well, duh), another commenter (who didn't seem completely pro-gay rights) put up a link to a pretty interesting essay of his in which he compares gay male sex to smoking.  His conclusion is that it's harmful to health, but it should be legal, and better education should be available.  (He seems to be very distrustful of the effectiveness of condoms, though.)

What's Coming Up?

A bunch of things!

First off, I'll be doing a reading together with a bunch of Singapore and Australian poets in Perth, to launch "Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia". I'll be going with Ethos publishers.

15 May: Launch at Poetry Park, Perth at 5pm

Then I'll be attending WordStorm, a writers' festival in Darwin.

16 May: Poetry Slam at Vodka Bar, Darwin, 8:30pm
17 May: Out There - A Tiger Connection at 1:15pm
Pride Event at Books Absolutely at 2:30pm

Then in August, I'll be organising a queer poetry reading in Singapore:

5 August: ContraDiction IV at 72-13, (part of the IndigNation Festival)

And having two plays go up:

13-17 August: The Final Temptation of Stamford Raffles by W!ld Rice, directed by Christina Sergeant, at the Drama Centre Theatre (part of the Singapore Theatre Festival)
28-30 August: Reservoir by Theatreworks, directed by Choy Ka Fai, at 72-13.

Just fyi!

The Soldier and His Virtuous Wife
The Theatre Practice
Reviewer: Kenneth Kwok
09/04/2008

The laughs are often cheap and obvious but that shamelessness is the essence of the play: Soldier is here to entertain entertain entertain and this it does with much colour and charm. The funniest moments are when this ridiculously over-the-top musical-comedy take on Chinese opera segues into Western pop cultural references and sensibilities (Bananarama, hip hop, vogueing) but really, the whole play is gag after gag. Kudos to director May Lan for her vibrant vision (and attention to detail - look out for the sight gags in the background) and the strong ensemble cast especially Darius Tan as the billionaire trying to lure the Virtuous Wife from her Soldier husband and Liu Hong and Katherine Tang as his sycophantic sidekicks. Utterly hilarious!

****

Reviewer: Ng Yi-Sheng
04/04/2008

A rollicking good show! Though derived from the tropes and traditions of Chinese opera, The Soldier and His Virtuous Wife overflows with zany contemporary physical humour and wit, stimulating viewers with a non-stop array of song, dance and acrobatics. Director May Lan, who originally staged this Taiwanese musical here in 1996 and 1998, succeeds brilliantly with a new cast of gifted singers and actors. Joanna Dong is especially charming as Meiying, the virtuous wife herself, defending the honour of her husband who's gone off to war with equal parts innocent charm and ballbreakin' girl power, though, in fact, the whole ensemble packs a punch: the goofy husband Qiuhu (Ric Liu), the charismatic villain Master Lee (Darius Tan) and the kungfu-kicking Officer (Gordon Choy), to name a few. And the polymorphic anarchy of the show is unbelievable: arias break into pop songs, tea ceremonies dissolve into the macarena, servants hurl chocolate ingots into the audience and old mother-in-laws or lechers burst out with tunes from The Phantom of the Opera or The Magic Flute or Teresa Teng's Greatest Hits. It is mad, and in the best way possible: I barely stopped laughing throughout the 105-minute performance.

****1/2

This first impressions review first appeared on The Flying Inkpot and has been archived here for posterity.

Clark in Sarajevo
LASALLE BA (Hons) Acting Programme
Reviewer: Kenneth Kwok
28/03/2008

Clark started off strongly with both the playwright Catherine Zimdahl and the director Steven Rassios showing much creativity in the way the situation in war-torn Sarajevo was being presented on a bare stage: besides the use of poetry and physical theatre, for example, most interesting was the risky choice of using humour as the play’s foundation. The second half, however, lacked the coherence of the first and disintegrated into a shaky series of vignettes that did not really build towards the impactful final scene (which saw the actors lighting a rectangle of fire around themselves along the borders of the stage). Even the surreal sight of Jesus as Wonder Woman singing 80s ballad Eternal Flame with a bevy of backing singers and dancers at one point which should have made you sit up and take notice felt a little contrived and not really well thought through. The production was meant as a showcase for LASALLE’s first cohort of BA (Hons) Acting graduates and, in that regard, however, Clark was a resounding success. Led by a charming performance by Crispian Chan as the bumbling reporter Clark Cant investigating the troubles in Sarajevo, the ensemble cast of actors impressed with their confidence, clarity and commitment to their various roles with Rayann Condy as a prostitute with a heart of gold the obvious standout (special mention also goes to the precision of Emanorwatty Saleh’s dramatic soundscape). It is a pity that only one of the cast was Singaporean as, judging by the quality of tonight’s performances, our local students are missing out on a real opportunity for quality training through LASALLE’s BA (Hons) Acting programme under Edith Podesta.

***1/2

This first impressions review first appeared on The Flying Inkpot and has been archived here for posterity.

Death and Rebirth - NUS Lit Nite

Life, love and drama serials. This reading explores how temporal most things are in our lives – and how new beginnings are just around the corner, just when we think things - as we know it – have ended.

I didn't write that blurb, so I can't apologise for it. Anyhoo, that's the theme for the next reading I'm part of: part of the NUS Arts Festival, to be held this Sunday evening.

Details are as follows:

· Date of event: Sunday, 23 March 2008
· Time of event: 6pm – 6.45pm
· Duration of event: 45 min (10 min reading)
· Venue: Theatre Foyer, University Cultural Centre, NUS

Also reading with me are David Leo and Shi Min.

QLRS reviews last boy

Finally. Thanks, Aaron Lee.

Read Heartland of Myths and Alter Egos here.

Theatre Idols – Finals
Action Theatre
Reviewer: Ng Yi-Sheng
17/3/08
Esplanade Concert Hall

What a surprise – out of nowhere, young playwrights Jacke Chye and Christine Sim have appeared wielding remarkably solid scripts at this competition for new Singapore plays. Better still, their plays are completely different creatures, and both rather good: Chye's Catching Adam Cheng is a cute, feel-good comedy about four women escaping from their old folks' home to catch an Adam Cheng concert, with well-drawn characters, strong motivations and good pacing, while Sim's Numb is a mad Sarah Kane-esque psychodrama of sex, sadism and alienation, centred around the character of a surgeon who finds she is slowly losing her sense of touch. Both writers fall into the trap of spouting platitudes, and a whole lot of deadweight's had to be shed between the first reading and this presentation. But it's clear that the theatre writing scene has two new faces to contend with. Let's hope they stick it out. (Since you're curious: Catching Adam Cheng won the audience's vote, but if you ask me, it's the more dangerous Numb that brings something fresh to the table. And it bleeds.) (Oh yes, and acting-wise Jeremy Lee got the audience award, but if you ask me it was Esther Yap whose comic and psychotic roles really carried the day. I just gotta be contrary.)


***1/2

This first impressions review first appeared on The Flying Inkpot and has been archived here for posterity.

I Has A New Book!

And it lookz lyk dis:


Itz mai commisshunned book 4 ACS (Indiependunt)! Da tytle iz "On His Wings: ...soaring twenty years on", it costs $25ive dollarz, and dere is evun a foto of me insidez! L00k!!!1!!


Plz commisshun me 4 more stuf kthxbye.

And for all you ACS boys out there, Happy Founders' Day. Oldham Dauntless Hero didn't come for nuthin', yknow.