I am part of a professionalisation panel organised by the annual conference of the Coalition of English Departments in Asia (COEDA).

September 27-28, 2024 (Friday and Saturday) 
Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
National University of Singapore

The professionalisation panel aims to support graduate students’ career journeys through conversations between senior members of the academic community and graduate students. The panellists are from different academic or academy-related fields with varying career trajectories in different career stages. They will share their own career journeys and offer suggestions about navigating the job market with a roundtable format.

* Prof. Mi Jeong Lee (panelist): Assistant Professor at Seoul National University
* Dr. Cera Tan (panelist): Recent NUS graduate, research interests include critical theory and continental philosophy, and media studies and philosophy.
* Dr. Corrie Tan (panelist): Recent KCL-NUS joint PhD graduate, research interests include theatre and performance in Southeast Asia, new dramaturgies, arts criticism.
* Prof. Nick Huang (moderator): Assistant Professor at NUS, research interests include multilingualism, and cognitive and computational psychology.

COEDA 2024 Theme: ‘Reclamation’

Reclamation, the act of creating new land from sea, is closely intertwined with the making of modern Singapore. Like in many other coastal cities, land reclamation has served as a solution to limited natural land resources and a gateway to increased urbanization and economic growth. However, reclamation is far from a neutral and apolitical act. Critics position reclamation within a logic of extraction that precipitates unsustainable environmental and labor demands. Reclaimed land sits on shifting sands, and the sea that it swallows has no voice. In turn, reclamation may grant space and sovereignty, but at a cost marked by loss that is not so easily recovered.

While the reclamation of land and environment are chief examples, reclamation similarly occurs in more metaphorical contexts. The word ‘reclamation’ conjures a spirit of renewal, and yet remains fraught with possibilities of erasure and violence. Hence, the act of reclamation teems with renewed potential for analysis in the humanities and social sciences, from topics such as identity, heritage languages, and language revitalization, to legal reclamation as elucidated by historians like Nurfadzhilah Yahaya and imaginaries of reclamation as articulated by literary scholars like Jerrine Tan, Joanne Leow, and Saidiya Hartman.

We ask: how are the various facets of reclamation explored with, stretched, probed, or challenged in scholarship and praxis? Can we imagine affinities, reconciliations – or confrontations – between different kinds of reclamation? What does it mean to think of the resonances of a concept like reclamation, in a global terrain where the borders of language and nation are privy to reshaping and destruction? Furthermore, what does it mean to engage with reclamation in Asia, and how do our legacies converge with or diverge from established canons of thought and practice?

English Seminar: Theatre Criticism in the Multicultural Context of Singapore

The utilisation of language within Singaporean theatres reflects its intricacies of multicultural history and societal milieu. Consequently, language transcends mere conveyance of content; it emerges as a pivotal theme in theatre critique, encompassing post-colonialism, political dynamics among languages and races, as well as the interplay and wrestle of multiculturalism and cross-cultural encounters. Moreover, within the multicultural linguistic context, both critique and archiving extend beyond linguistic choices, delving into cultural issues such as systematics, translation, and bibliography. The two individuals invited in this segment have been actively engaged in theatre critique for years, but have now transitioned into alternative capacities: the versatile Corrie Tan, aside from being a researcher, critic, and dramaturg, now also teaches at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts; while Clarissa Oon, currently overseeing Communications and Content at Esplanade, delves into the historical landscape of Singaporean performing arts through an archivist’s lens, contributing a new perspective to critique. How do they contemplate theatre critique within Singapore's multicultural landscape? Furthermore, how do they perceive the roles of arts education and archiving as significant annotations to theatre critique?

Date: 4 June 2024 (Tuesday)
Time: 8:00-9:30PM (HKT/SGT)

Speakers:
Dr Corrie Tan (Senior Lecturer, School of Fine Art, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Singapore)
Clarissa Oon (Head, Communications and Content, The Esplanade Co Ltd)

Moderator and Guest Curator:
Liu Xiaoyi (Artistic Director, Emergency Stairs)

Register Here / More Information Here

Format: Zoom Meeting

Language: Mandarin/English

Presented by: International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong)

Presented by Centre 42, in collaboration with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay

Dive into the dramaturgy of choreography and text in contemporary performance with a panel comprising playwright-in-residence Jonathon Young and dancer Renée Sigouin from Kidd Pivot, as well as performing arts critic Pawit Mahasarinand and researcher and dramaturg Corrie Tan, moderated by theatre-maker Edith Podesta.

Registration and more details here.

Part of the 2023 Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM)

In a close-knit performance ecology, where multi-hyphenate practitioners often take on various roles in a production, three emergent Thai dramaturgs will reflect on and articulate their nascent dramaturgical practices in conversation with practitioners from the Asian Dramaturgs’ Network.

Speakers:
Witwisit Hiranwongkul
Pathipon ‘Miss Oat’ Adsavamahapong
Pathavee Thepkraiwan

In conversation with:
Charlene Rajendran (Asian Dramaturgs’ Network)
Corrie Tan (Asian Dramaturgs’ Network)

More details here.

Critiquing With Kindness
featuring Nabilah Said, Joel Tan and Corrie Tan

🗓 Wednesday, 13 July 2022
🕘 2200 hrs (GMT+8)
🎧 ‘Live’ radio chat on Telegram
🔗 t.me/channelnewstheatre

Why do we critique, and who do we critique for? How do we balance tact and honesty when delivering difficult feedback to someone? Is it truly possible to do so with kindness all the time? Join Nabilah Said, Joel Tan and Corrie Tan in this late night radio chat, where they reflect on their experiences giving and receiving critique in the course of their creative practices and other interactions outside of the arts.

You can listen to the full radio chat on Channel NewsTheatre’s Spotify channel here.

About the speakers:

Nabilah Said is an artist who works with text as material across different forms. She has staged plays with Teater Ekamatra, The Necessary Stage and T>:Works, and worked with multiple independent creatives in Singapore. Nabilah is a former arts correspondent with The Straits Times, the former editor of ArtsEquator, and a co-host of the ArtsEquator Theatre Podcast (https://artsequator.com/category/podcast/).

Joel Tan is a playwright and performer based between Singapore and the UK. He is also one half of the T42 podcast (https://www.instagram.com/t42podcast/).

Corrie Tan is a researcher, dramaturg, educator and critic from Singapore. She is a shapeshifter who works at the intersection of care ethics, collaborative performance practices, and new articulations of performance criticism and arts writing in Southeast Asia >> website: www.corrie-tan.com / resources: linktr.ee/corrie_tan

🌿 What does care mean to you? 🌿
🌿 How can we do better for each other in the arts workplace? 🌿

Over the past six months, some practitioners from CITRUS practices – a loose collective of arts workers committed to expanding conversations and work around Care, Intimacy, TRaUma-informed and Safer practices in the arts – came together to create a Library of Care. The project is conceived as a publicly-available online resource that introduces concepts and tools around care in artmaking processes. CITRUS practices will be sharing its first draft at this public dialogue. 🍊

The first part of the session features Divaagar, Shaza Ishak and Tan Beng Tian – arts practitioners from different disciplines and environments in the arts – in conversation with Corrie Tan from CITRUS practices. They will share about their experience in the past month experimenting and applying approaches from the Library. 🍊

In the second half of the session, attendees will have time to exchange with one another their excitement or suggestions for the Library; an invitation to start thinking and practicing better ways of working together in the arts. 🍊

Join us in this public dialogue if you’re curious and passionate about building our individual and collective care-pacities as arts workers! P.S. You will also get access to read the current draft site of the Library! 🍊

✨ Registration ✨

• https://libraryofcare.peatix.com/

✨ Access ✨

• Speech-to-text interpretation will be provided.

• Wheelchair users may use a chairlift to access the Black Box, located on the second floor of 42 Waterloo Street.

✨ Please Note✨

• All attendees need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or be able to produce proof of recovery or a medical exemption from COVID-19 vaccination.

• Please arrive 15min before the session’s start time for registration.

• Do note for archival purposes we would be taking photos and documenting the discussion through speech-to-text transcription.

• The session will follow the Chatham House Rule. We seek your cooperation neither to reveal the identity nor the affiliation of your fellow attendees.

• If you have queries or specific access requirements, please contact the co-producer Hoo Kuan Cien at kuancien@gmail.com.

🍋 CITRUS practices stands for Care, Intimacy, TRaUma-informed & Safer practices in the arts. We are a group of arts workers who came together in 2021 to dream, read and explore ways in building better practices around care and intimacy in artmaking.
IG: @citrus.practices

🍋 Divaagar is a visual artist who works through installation, performance, and digital media. His practice examines narratives; toying with attachments and proposing new models through the lenses of bodies, identities and environments.
IG: @diva.agar

🍋 Shaza Ishak is the Managing Director of Teater Ekamatra, one of the longest-running ethnic minority theatre companies in Singapore. She leads the company in its strategy and vision, and works closely with the Artistic Director Mohd Fared Jainal. She believes in effecting social change through the art of storytelling and is committed to forging progress for the ethnic minority arts scene in Singapore and beyond.
IG: @shazaishak

🍋 Tan Beng Tian is a disciple of the late renowned traditional hand puppet master Li Bofen and is a recipient of the JCCI Singapore Foundation Culture Award in 2005. A co-founder of The Finger Players and a proud member of SDEA (Singapore Drama Educators Association), Beng Tian is passionate about making the performing arts accessible for all.

🍋 Corrie Tan is a writer, dramaturg, critic and researcher from Singapore. She is a shapeshifter who works at the intersection of care ethics, collaborative performance practices, and new articulations of performance criticism and arts writing in Southeast Asia.
IG: @incorriegible

🍋 Speech-to-Text-Interpreters: Aditi Shivaramakrishnan, Sim Yan Ying and Su Paing Tun

Thank You
The Library of Care project is supported by the National Arts Council, Singapore. 💖

Where did 2021 go? How did the year unravel, and where have we arrived at? 

In a year where the arts has had to acquiesce to multiple rules, hopeful for a return to normalcy, 2021 had us hurtling through an unknown abyss of multiple emotions best captured through this year’s theme: JENG JENG JENG! From anticipation, to tentative excitement, shock, surprise and even the indescribable, our beloved colloquialism JENG JENG JENG covers it all.

This edition of Year In Review is an audio experience featuring live discussions, physical listening pods, song dedications and more! Join us in-person* or on-air to unpack the year in Singapore theatre, or simply unwind together.

Check out our annual Singapore Theatre Timeline to refresh your memory of what happened in 2021: https://bit.ly/sgtheatrein2021 

Date: Saturday, 18 Dec 2021
Time: 12pm – 7pm
For more information: https://artsequator.com/year-in-review-2021/

Year In Review 2021 is a collaboration between Centre 42, ArtsEquator, Channel NewsTheatre and ArtWave Studio.

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact info@centre42.sg

PROGRAMME

12-12.30pm: OPENING

Where did 2021 go? How did the year unravel, and where have we arrived? We take a look at the key trends that have emerged in Singapore Theatre this year, and set the stage for this year’s Jeng Jeng Jeng.

1-2pm: STUDY ART FOR WHAT

Working full-time or exclusively in the Singapore arts industry has proven to be a challenge for many. In light of this uncertain reality, what can arts workers still take away from going to arts college? 
Speakers: Ke Weiliang (host), Selma Alkaff, KayKay Nizam, Michele Lim

2.30-3.30pm: ARTSEQUATOR PODCAST: YEAR IN REVIEW

Join the listening party and live reacc to ArtsEquator’s year-end podcast as the speakers share their thoughts about Singapore theatre in 2021. 
Speakers: Nabilah Said, Ke Weiliang, Lee Shu Yu, Matt Lyon, Naeem Kapadia

4-5pm: FLIRTING WITH THE FRENEMY: ART & TECH

We’ve experimented with the digital space even more than ever – what now? What lies ahead for these bedfellows? 
Speakers: Vithya Subramaniam (host), Adeeb Fazah, Han Xuemei, Cherilyn Woo

5.30-6.30pm: WAYS OF CARING

What are the responsibilities of arts practitioners to care both for themselves and others in and through their work? How might we sustain these ways of caring in the face of great difficulty? 
Speakers: Corrie Tan (host), Shaza Ishak, Xiao Ting Teo, Ahmad Musta’ain

6.30-7pm: CLOSING

Start, stop, open, close – what next? With 2022 lurking around the corner, what are some of the things that we are dreading and anticipating?

“Critical Writing Training: Models, Methods and Pitfalls”
Panel #1: 15th September, Wednesday, 7:00-8:30 PM (JST)

For emerging arts writers, opportunities to learn on the job have become scarce with the decline in arts coverage in the media. What are the necessary skills for writing about the arts? What are the problems that art writers face? In recent years courses of criticism and arts writing have emerged in different Asian cities. The panelists, who have led these learning spaces, will share their knowledge and experiences for future Asian art writers.

To register: https://forms.gle/SHPwnZTm7KvzzUKR9

Panelists: 
Carmen Nge [Malaysia] 
Hiroyuki Takahashi [Japan]
Nabilah Said [Singapore]
Pristine L. de Leon [Philippines]

Moderator:
Corrie Tan [Singapore]
You can see the panelists’ profiles here. >> https://bit.ly/2X9svCN

This time, Asian Arts Media Roundtable will be a part of an online program of the Creators’ Cradle Circuit 2021 co-organised by Karakoa and ArtEquator with a partnership with BUoY Festival in Tokyo. 

The Asian Arts Media Roundtable (AAMR), founded by ArtsEquator in 2019, is a meeting of arts editors, publishers, reviewers, arts journalists, critics, bloggers, podcasters, videocasters, academics and arts makers from Southeast Asia, East Asia and Asia-Pacific. 

“Dramaturgy – both as a theory and a practice – is always imbricated in a network of relations. It enables and arises from collaboration, contestation and disruption.” – Peter Eckersall (2016)

This online conversation will respond to the inaugural volume of “ADN Re/View”, the first of a series of three E-zines that offer insights into the work of dramaturgs and dramaturgical practices in Asia. Each volume features excerpts, keynotes and conversations drawn from past Asian Dramaturgs’ Network events, collectively representing early attempts towards making sense of and theorising Asian-based dramaturgies. “ADN Re/View” (Vol. 1) charts some of the key ideas that have emerged and circulated about dramaturgy and dramaturging in Asia over the past few years.

You can read and download “Vol. 1” at: http://bit.ly/adnre-view

Featuring practitioner-dramaturgs Peter Eckersall, Ness Roque and Nanako Nakajima, and led by Corrie Tan as provocateur-moderator, the online discussion will unpack key themes of tracing Asian dramaturgy, mapping the terrain and dramaturging the ‘inter’.

Registration by donation: https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/critical-responses-discussion-adn-review-vol1-tickets-161424010561

Critics Live!: A post-show response to Three Sisters

Date: Sunday, 6 June, 6.30pm - 7.30pm (Singapore time)

Venue: Zoom (Livestreamed on ArtsEquator’s Facebook page)

Panelists: Corrie Tan (Singapore), Elisabeth Vincentelli (US), Jose Solís (US), Sharaad Kuttan (Malaysia)

Engaging with SIFA 2021’s programming, the Asian Arts Media Roundtable will bring critics together in discussion to unpack what criticism can look like as festivals take on more hybridised forms.

Critics Live! is a critics-led programme series created by ArtsEquator to give arts audiences an insight into how critics formulate their responses to performances. Through Critics Live!, critics will share their experiences watching the show either in-venue or digitally, and discuss how the artists’ choices shape these respectively. Critics Live! is open to the public. 

[UPDATE] You can listen to / read the full transcript of the conversation here.

This panel can be viewed in its entirety here.

Artists today have to grapple with being true to their creative integrities while dealing with the limitations of tech platforms and live delivery methods. With social distancing and restrictions on travel worldwide, is there a way to keep the intimacy alive between artists and their audiences in a way that doesn't compromise the work? Join Bernice Lee (Singapore), Katrina Stuart Santiago (Philippines) and Maria Tri Sulistyani (Indonesia) as they discuss possibilities for and challenges to connection and creativity online. This panel is moderated by Corrie Tan.

In a matter of just months, the making, distribution and audiences’ experience of arts has undergone rapid changes. From abrupt cancellations of major festivals, to shuttering of galleries and theatres, new online avenues emerged to make and share arts.

At the same time, COVID-19 has exposed the extreme precarity of the arts sector. As arts workers face a real existential threat, it is society at large that will be impoverished if artists can no longer make and present their work. Now more than ever, we need artists to challenge assumptions and imagine new futures.

This series of four talks, organised by ArtsEquator, attempts to ask some big questions. Being in the middle of an unpredictable global crisis precludes easy answers. Burning Questions offers a space for regional voices to dialogue and discuss some of the unasked questions facing the arts community.

Register for this free talk here.

This is an event hosted by the critical humanities platform Bras Basah Open School of Theory and Philosophy. More details here.

Welcome to our TheoryFILM "online super tech support group"! This will be a session that varies somewhat from the usual, firstly because it will take place completely online on Zoom, and also because we've planned a number of activities that we will all do together as a workshop-group. We're testing out a format to see what kinds of practices we can co-create online if this will have to be the case for subsequent sessions for some time to come. It's also meant to be a support group of sorts for anyone who might be on quarantine or issued a stay-home notice or is doing physical distancing. [Because of this, we are limiting the number of participants to 20 -- so we don't stress out our internet bandwidths.]

This TheoryFILM session will examine the choreography of illness, community and border control against the backdrop of a growing pandemic, and the kinds of daily rituals we keep as our own iterative performance scores. How is sickness/health choreographed on screen, in our daily life, and in state practice? How does the state attempt to regiment and realign both mobile and immobile bodies in the wake of a border-crossing viral bedfellow? What are resistive gestures of solidarity when strategies of countering virality are only considered efficacious in terms of surveillance, atomization and physical solitude?

We will be sharing a number of short "viral" video vignettes from across the region to do with dancing & disease, which will be paired with a chapter from Kélina Gotman's Choreomania: Dance and Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2017). As it moves through a dizzying array of geographies and dance archives, Choreomania traces the emergence and spread of the choreomania ('dancing mania') through colonial medical and ethnographic circles, showing how fantasies of instability—and of the 'Oriental' other—haunted western scientific modernity. Through an epidemiology of dance and its intersections with social disorder, political agitation, anti-European revolt and decolonization, Kélina's text rethinks epidemic madness and the organization and disorganization of bodies and disciplines in the modern age.

Through screenings, small-group discussions, collective mappings and a few participatory exercises, this workshop will take a closer look at border regimentation and unruly, locomotive bodies, and frame this through the logics of choreography. This session will be co-facilitated by Corrie Tan (National University of Singapore/King's College London) and Shawn Chua (Bras Basah Open).

** This is a private event limited to 20 participants. To participate, please register via the link provided below to confirm your attendance. The confirmation email will contain the readings for this session, as well as the Zoom meeting details.

Registration link: https://forms.gle/MDp3yMY7ir55f1PE7

Introducing Dark Night Dialogues

To encourage more conversations about culture, Wild Rice will be hosting a series of talks and panel discussions covering a range of topics concerning art practices and theatre-making.

January 2020 edition: Touchdown

Various artists from Singapore have participated in overseas residencies, seminars and tours. How have their experiences at these events influenced their own practices? How do they navigate the complexities of cultural exchange? And what techniques and tactics have they learnt that are applicable to local contexts and specificities?

Join us for the ‘Touchdown’ panels, where artists will provide valuable insights into some of the benefits and challenges of participating in various overseas programmes. The aim is to democratise artistic and professional knowledge and to share overseas networks with members of the performance-making community. We will also be distributing a handy reference guide for those interested in applying for the discussed programmes.

Session 2
7.30pm, 20 Jan 2020 (Mon)
Basement Studio @ Wild Rice

Corrie Tan is a performance scholar and critic. She will present on the inaugural Young Curators’ Academy in Berlin (Germany), an artistic and activist platform for discovering alliances, exploring affinities, and consolidating solidarities.

Norhaizad Adam is the artistic director of P7:1SMA LTD. He will present on the Pro-Helvetia Seminar held in collaboration with the Taipei Arts Festival, a programme which enables emerging arts practitioners to attend performances, meet professional artists and exchange, critique and debate ideas.

Chong Gua Khee is an independent performance-maker. She will present on the La MaMa Umbria: International Symposium for Directors (Italy), a program for professional directors, choreographers, actors and others. Internationally renowned theatre artists conducted workshops and lecture/demonstrations, but participating directors could also conduct their own workshops to share insights and techniques with each other.

Jean Tay is a playwright and artistic director of Saga Seed Theatre. She will present on the Asian Playwrights’ Meeting in Yogyakarta (Indonesia), a platform consisting of panel discussions, roundtables and dramatised readings of plays translated into Indonesian.

This session will be moderated by Alfian Sa’at, Resident Playwright of Wild Rice.

===

Admission is free and no registration is required. Seats are limited and will be offered on a first-come-first-served basis. More details here.

How can one get the most out of a theatre experience? What should you look out for? We examine the conversations that follow theatrical performances—from personal views to critical insights—and what matters in the conversations between audiences and theatre makers.

More details here.

FEATURING

Neo Hai Bin 梁海彬 (Singapore)
Neo Hai Bin is a writer and theatre practitioner. Some of his plays include 招: When The Cold Wind Blows (Singapore Theatre Festival 2018) and Cut Kafka! (Esplanade Huayi Festival Commission 2018). He has a volume of essays published as《房间絮语》, and his literary works can be found at thethoughtspavilion.wordpress.com

Corrie Tan (Singapore)
Corrie Tan is a writer, researcher and performance critic currently pursuing her PhD in Theatre Studies (NUS-King's College London). She is contributing editor and resident critic with ArtsEquator, and has also written for The Guardian, Exeunt Magazine and The Straits Times. She is committed to empathy, generosity and collaboration through critical writing practices. www.corrie-tan.com.

Huzir Sulaiman (Malaysia - Singapore)
Huzir is a playwright and Joint Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre, staging original Singapore plays since 2002. He teaches playwriting at the National University of Singapore. Work includes: Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner (2019), The Last Bull: A Life in Flamenco (2016), and the upcoming The Nuclear Family (March 2020).

MODERATED BY
Lucas Ho

Asian Dramaturgs’ Network Conference 2019: Dramaturgy & the Human Condition

Dramaturgs work with choices and actions — the ones made by a creative team working on a performance, and their own in relation to how they intend to play their role(s), and what they hope to achieve.

To act with purpose and meaning, dramaturgs must be deeply interested in the human condition, using their knowledge, experience and relationships with performance and artists to produce particular affects and effects.

Dramaturgy and the Human Condition engages with key questions for the dramaturg in Asia navigating an increasingly complex world in need of critical action and speech. Over two days, dramaturgs, art-makers and observers from the region explore performance-making in relation to crucial concerns about being human, raising possible frameworks for responding to change and choice from an Asian perspective.

Roundtable #2: Human Futures & Histories

Speakers: JEAN TAY, LOO ZIHAN, JO KUKATHAS 

Moderator: CORRIE TAN

With the backdrop of Singapore embarking on its bicentennial celebrations, the performance of history in Asia is a potent site from which to excavate alternative and forgotten notions of what is means to be human. Dramaturgs and artists in the region and beyond have worked to reimagine nationalist narratives, unearth marginalised histories, rethink social cultural reenactments as remembrance, and reconfigure political expressions through memorialisation. This panel focuses on the relationship between past, present and future in performance-making, critically engaging with what it means to take on the responsibility and burden of historical reflection in order to (re)imagine the future. Panelists also address questions about how the performance of history can interrogate the role of humans in the present, and advance a critical consciousness towards more inclusive and just futures.

Admission is free. Register here.

Join in the conversation between critics and art writers as they discuss the current landscape of arts writing, looking at the challenges and opportunities that come from writing when working within small artistic spaces and communities. The panellists will discuss three pressure points: when the critic is also involved in making works within the same scene or has close working relationships with artists they may review; the ethics and opportunities that arise when productions or festivals employ “embedded” critics or bloggers to write; and the pressure to be positive, particularly in arts scenes that are under supported. 

Panellists:
Corrie Tan (Singapore)
Fasyali Fadzly (Malaysia)
Katrina Santiago (Philippines)
Sadanand Menon (India)

Moderator:
Bilqis Hijjas (Malaysia)

Venue:
LASALLE College of the Arts, F202

This event is organised by Arts Equator as part of the inaugural Asian Arts Media Roundtable.

Admission is free. Register here.

Join us for this inaugural series to explore Singapore's theatre and performance histories and their contemporary relevance. This new platform gathers theatre, dance and performance scholars and practitioners in conversation about topics of interest in the performing arts.

Panelists of this session will explore the afterlives and reincarnations of performance in their respective practice. Each speaker will offer intriguing takes on what archives and previous bodies of work mean and do when they revisit them through performance. 

FREE ADMISSION. REGISTER HERE.

Working With/Out
Loo Zihan will share his experience working on two versions in 2015 and 2017 of Completely With/Out Character, a documentary theatre piece devised by Alvin Tan and Haresh Sharma in collaboration with Paddy Chew. Paddy was the first individual to come out publicly as living with HIV in Singapore in 1998. In his revisiting of this play, first staged in 1999 by The Necessary Stage, Zihan will detail the discrepancies and gaps in the archive that allow for creative and productive reinterpretation and engagement of the material.

Loo Zihan is an artist and academic from Singapore working at the intersections of critical theory, performance, and the moving-image. His performance work has been commissioned by the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, the Singapore International Festival of Arts, and the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay. Zihan was the valedictorian for the pioneer batch of Bachelor of Fine Arts candidates from the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University in 2009. He received his Masters of Arts in Performance Studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2018. Zihan was awarded the Young Artist Award (2015) by the National Arts Council of Singapore.

Fragmented Histories
Nabilah Said will explore how she examines and revisits historical traumas in both the personal and public consciousness, with reference to her works ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native, yesterday it rained salt and other plays. She will consider how eschewing a fixed narrative in favour of fragmented storytelling can help or hinder our re-presentation of history, as well as the role of emotional excavation and humour in helping us work through such explorations. In line with revisiting official narratives this year, Nabilah wonders if our narratives should instead reflect the state of our collective memories – a bestial thing that is slippery, changeable and, in tribute to our rich mythical and mystical Asian heritage, one that ultimately shapeshifts.

Nabilah Said is a playwright, arts writer and poet whose work has been presented in Singapore and London by theatre companies Teater Ekamatra, The Necessary Stage and Bhumi Collective. Two new plays will premiere at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2019 – ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native and yesterday it rained salt. She holds an M.A. in Writing for Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London, as a recipient of the Tan Ean Kiam Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities. nabilahsaid.com.

Double Agents
Taking the figure of Lai Teck as his lead, Shawn Chua traces the avatars of the double agent across two productions--Teater Ekamatra's Tiger of Malaya and Ho Tzu Nyen's The Mysterious Lai Teck--to examine how each work in turn becomes a double to an uncanny history of counterintelligence. In this double act, Shawn riffs off Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's ideas on paranoid and reparative readings, analysing how the paranoid enactment of history in each work is engaged with reparative agency.

Shawn Chua’s research engages with embodied archives, uncanny personhoods and the participatory frameworks of play. He has presented his research at the Asian Dramaturg’s Network, The Substation, State of Motion, and Performance Studies internation (PSi). In 2012, he was awarded the National Arts Council Scholarship and he holds an MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Waseda University. He currently teaches at LASALLE College of the Arts, and serves on the Performance Studies international (PSi) Future Advisory Board.

Moderator: Corrie Tan
Corrie Tan is a writer, editor and researcher based in Singapore. Corrie is into radical shifts in performance criticism – redefining the critic as dramaturg, collaborator, archivist, ethnographer and shapeshifter. She is resident critic and contributing editor at Arts Equator, where she co-convenes a critics' reading group and a performance criticism mentorship programme. She has also written regularly about performance for The Guardian, The Stage, Exeunt Magazine and The Straits Times. Corrie is currently a first-year doctoral student in Theatre Studies on the joint PhD programme between the National University of Singapore and King's College London. She holds an MA (Dist) in Performance & Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Goldsmiths, University of London as a recipient of both the National Arts Council Arts Scholarship (Postgraduate) and the Goldsmiths International Scholarship.

SING LIT STATION
proudly presents

NEW PATHS / NEW WORKS
feat. NABILAH SAID, in conversation with CORRIE TAN
alongside performers Izzul Irfan, Hafidz Abdul Rahman, Shafiqhah Efandi and Moli Mohter

Nabilah Said’s play, ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native, had a sold-out run at the 2019 M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. With its lens trained on an adopted woman’s decision to join a national singing competition, the play mashes timelines, characters and genre, and challenges authenticity and historicity to paint a picture of the Malay minority experience in Singapore.

At the heart of NEW PATHS / NEW WORKS is a conversation between the playwright Nabilah Said and the theatre critic Corrie Tan. Together, the two will discuss how Nabilah’s newest works use experimentations in form and narrative to explore the intersections of gender, race and religion, and the dislocations and relocations of personal and geographic histories. ANGKAT, alongside two other plays by Nabilah Said, will also be presented in a series of dramatic readings interspersed across the duration of the event.

The event begins at 8.15pm; door opens at 8pm. We hope to end by 9.30pm, although truth be told it might end at 10pm, as we will open the floor to a Q&A session. Although the event is free admission*, we encourage guests to bring donations, which will go to the lovely people involved. Guests might hear John Coltrane’s Giant Steps playing in the background.

__________

DETAILS

Price: Free admission*
Date: 20 Mar 2019
Time: 8pm till late
Venue: Sing Lit Station (22 Dickson Road, #02-01, Singapore 209506)**

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

1
Nabilah Said is a playwright whose work has been presented in Singapore and London by theatre companies Teater Ekamatra, The Necessary Stage and Bhumi Collective. Recent work include ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native and yesterday it rained salt, which were both presented at M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2019. She is the co-founder of international theatre collective Lazy Native, under which she presented Inside Voices in London in 2019. In 2016 she founded Main Tulis Group, Singapore’s first collective of playwrights writing in Malay and English. Formerly an arts correspondent with The Straits Times, Nabilah is a theatre critic and arts writer and is currently a writer-in-residence at Sing Lit Station. She holds an M.A. in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London. nabilahsaid.com.

2
Corrie Tan is a writer, editor and researcher based in Singapore. She is into radical shifts in performance criticism – redefining the critic as dramaturg, collaborator, archivist, ethnographer and shapeshifter. Corrie is resident critic and contributing editor at Arts Equator, where she co-convenes a critics' reading group and a performance criticism mentorship programme. She has also written regularly about performance for The Guardian, The Stage, Exeunt Magazine and The Straits Times. She is currently a doctoral student in Theatre Studies on the joint PhD programme between the National University of Singapore and King's College London.

ABOUT THE EVENT

NEW WORKS is a brand-new series of monthly conversations and presentations centred on works-in-progress, as well as the developing practices of some of our most interesting writers at work today. The series began in Feb 2019, and will run for six editions till Jul 2019. For more info, visit: singlitstation.com/newworks

NEW PATHS / NEW WORKS is furthermore Nabilah Said’s public-facing programme as Sing Lit Station’s 2018/2019 Jalan Besar Writer-in-Residence. To find out more about the residency, visit: singlitstation.com/residency

__________

*NOTE ABOUT SPONSOR: This event is powered by the National Youth Council’s Young ChangeMakers Grant.

**NOTE ABOUT THE VENUE: We have a cat. Guests with allergies or phobias are to take note of this.

Symposium: 'On Criticism'

Friday 23 November 2018
Royal Central School of Drama and Speech, University of London

Hosted by Royal Holloway's Platform Journal

The cry of criticism in crisis has recently gained a new momentum. In the early 2000s, writers like Noël Caroll, Rónán McDonald, and James Elkins attempted to capture the climate of literary criticism. In his book What Happened to Art Criticism (2003) the critic and art historian Elkins wrote about the tension that operates between a mode of descriptive reviewing, on the one hand, and of critical evaluation on the other. He claimed that 'descriptive criticism begs the question of what criticism is by making it appear that there is no question' (p. 42). He made this statement before the mushrooming of online publishing began to democratise the field of art criticism, while simultaneously expanding it due to the increasing numbers of art writing finding a way to being (self)published.

Yet, these developments might only have increased the tension between these modes of criticism (for example, see Duška Radosavljević's edited volume Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes, 2016). Simultaneously, Gavin Butt's 2004 edited volume After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance (2004), which demonstrates a more performative approach to criticism, as well as the June 2018 issue of the bilingual journal Texte zurKunst (germ./eng.), are two of the most prominent attempts in the recent period to evaluate, critique, and bring art and performance criticism closer together.

At a time when performance (art) increasingly operates inside and outside of the economies and theories of theatres and art galleries, the question of how to critique performance becomes pressing. Drawing on Butt's, Radosavljević's, and Texte zur Kunst's invitations and cautions, the symposium aims to evaluate how theatre, art, and dance criticism can join forces to e/affectively critique live performances in the age of digital network publishing. The symposium, as well as the spring issue of Platform Vol. 13 No. 1, pose questions about the expectations, possibilities, and challenges that writers on theatre, dance, performance art, and art in general face today. What do academics, critics, and reviewers pay attention to when they write? With whom do they collaborate? Whom are they addressing in their writing? To what extent is their critical work financially remunerated? How does their writing achieve a balance between providing details of artistic productions and their socio-political, economic, historical, and theoretical contextualisation? And should they (rather not) make it crystal clear whether they like a performance?

Come and join us for an exciting day of panels, performances, presentations, and discussions!

Symposium Schedule:

09:30 - 09:45 Registration

09:45 - 10:00 Opening Remarks

10:00 - 11:30 Panel 1 & Panel 2

Panel 1 - Class, Criticism, and Accountability
Zofia Cielatkowska (Independent Scholar): Who Can Afford To Be An Art Critic? 
Aimee Oh (Independent Scholar): Barthes on the End of Bourgeois Writing: Écriture Blanche, Robbe-Grillet, and Narrative Point of View
Charlotte Young (Queen Mary University): ‘If You Build It, They Will Come’: Renzo Martens and the Institute for Human Activities

Simultaneously

Panel 2 - Criticism and Institutional Tragedy
Tom Sojer (Karl-Franzens-University of Graz/Erfurt): Saving Democracy: Simone Weil's Theatre Criticism
Alessandro Simari (Queen Mary University): The Italian Theatre is Dead, Long Live the Italian Theatre
Christian Hartwig Steinau (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München): The Case of the Münchner Kammerspiele

11:30 - 12:00 Coffee Break

11:45 - 12:00 Critical Intervention from Megan Vaughan (Royal Holloway)

12:00 - 13:30 Panel 3 & Panel 4

Panel 3 - Care and Vulnerability in Criticism
Michal Norton (Independent Scholar): The Vulnerable Critic: Exploring New Structures of Criticism and Selection in the Arts
Harriet Plewis (Northumbria University): Reparative Criticism
Corrie Tan (National University of Singapore/King's College London): Embedding/Dwelling: Writing Intimately about the Labour of Performance

Simultaneously

Panel 4 - Bodily Virtuosity and Critical Expertise 
Katharine Kavanagh (Cardiff University): The Opportunity in the Abyss: Growing a Critical Culture of Circus
Julia Delaney and Rosie Gerhard (Royal Academy of Dance): Capturing the Sylph: How Dance Critics Bring Ballerinas to Life in their Writing
Josephine Leask (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama): Messing with Convention: Surrendering Authority and Feminist Dilemmas in My Dance Review

13:30 - 14:30 Lunch

14:30 - 15:30 Keynote by Prof Sabeth Buchmann: 
Feedback as the Inside of the Outside of Critique or: Performance in the Evaluation Society

15:30- 16.00: Response from Dr Duška Radosavljević and Questions

16:00 - 16:15 Coffee Break

16:15 - 17.45 Panel 5 - Critical Currents
Hannah Greenstreet (Oxford University): Performing Feminist Theatre Criticism: RashDash’s Three Sisters: After Chekhov
Andrea Liu (Goldsmiths University): Performing the Feed: Durational Performativity and the Live Feed
Heidi Liedke (Queen Mary University): Quasi-Experts and the Paradocumentational Brim in the Context of Live Theatre Broadcasting

17.45 - 18.00 Break

18:00 - 19:15 Round Table with Hetain Patel and Sanjoy Roy and Dr Diana Damian Martin (please book separately: https://bit.ly/2ESKzYb)

Followed by a Wine Reception

Platform is a Royal Holloway-based refereed journal that has been devoted to publishing the work of postgraduates, postdoctoral researchers, and entry-level academics in the fields of theatre and the performing arts for more than a decade. Platform, as the name suggests, works to provide a space for postgraduate researchers and entry-level academics to have their work circulated through online publication. The journal comes out of Royal Holloway. It operates a peer and academic review system to ensure that contributors not only have the opportunity to publicise their research, but also receive valuable feedback. Platform is published twice a year, with each edition following a broad theme, making it possible for diverse research interests to be covered in each volume.

(This event is sold out, but you can join the waitlist here.)

The ITI Theatre Forum returns this June.

Where once “multicultural” was enough and “cross-cultural” was the au courant, the “intercultural” has become a popular buzzword widely bandied around.

However, what exactly do we mean by “intercultural”?

How is the “intercultural” being manifested and represented today?

What are the various tensions, forces and points of rupture that form the “intercultural”?

Are there differing understandings of the “intercultural” and can they be reconciled?

How can the arts, in particular theatre, play a role in shaping meanings and discourses about the “intercultural”?

Come hear from:

• Corrie Tan (Associate editor, Arts Equator)
• Liu Xiaoyi (Artistic Director, Emergency Stairs)
• Soultari Amin Farid (Joint Artistic Director, Bhumi Collective)
• Zelda Tatiana Ng (Creative Director, Ground Z-0)

Moderated by Charlene Rajendran (National Institute of Education)

Opening remarks by T. Sasitharan (Director, Intercultural Theatre Institute)

Closing remarks by Alfian Sa'at (Resident Playwright, W!LD RICE)

This forum is held in collaboration with the Arts and Culture Management Program, at the Singapore Management University School of Social Sciences.

Admission free, donations welcome. Register here.

All donations go towards the Möbius Fund, a revolving loan fund for actor-students. Each and every dollar a student pays back upon graduation goes back to the pool to enable another student to tap on this financial assistance source.

Part of the Singapore Writers Festival's Words Go Round public programming.

[PANEL DISCUSSION] SO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER
Featuring Hirzi Zulfiklie, Kirsten Tan, Gwee Li Sui, Corrie Tan

Do you hope to pursue writing as a career? Are you stumped by what this even means? Let four experts in their own fields offer insights on writing in different industries and what it means to marry your dreams with practical problems of survival.

Visit wgr18doublebill.peatix.com to purchase tickets.

In conjunction with the 2018 M1 Singapore Fringe Festival.

Theatre that is reviewed is the theatre that is valued in world-wide culture.

Work that is not discussed is in danger of becoming an irrelevance.

The decline of mainstream media and the significant drop in revenue streams have led to critics being laid off across the world, and less space for theatre reviews. But these same cultural shifts have given rise to platforms presented by new and diverse voices that engage theatre makers in different ways and create an ongoing dialogue—whether it be on social media or essays online. The review is no longer the last word, but only the start of a conversation.

As we move into the digital age of the 21st century, it is perhaps time to re-examine the relationship between critics and artists. How can critics and artists work together to widen dialogue around theatre, and serve both the art and audiences better?

Panelists: 
Lyn Gardner, Theatre reviewer, The Guardian
Alfian Sa'at, Writer, Resident Playwright, W!LD RICE
Corrie Tan, Theatre reviewer
Sean Tobin, Artistic Director, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival

Free admission. Register here.

An initiative by the National Arts Council. Organised by ArtsEquator Ltd

Presented by experimental theatre company Emergency Stairs, the first edition of Southernmost is a theatre festival that will bring together some of the most outstanding and established traditional and contemporary theatre artists from the region for an intensive two-week intercultural exchange. It features a series of workshops and public presentations, as well as an open forum.

The open forum will feature six invited speakers – prominent artists, arts managers, academics and policy makers from Singapore and the region – with Hong Kong theatremaker Danny Yung as forum commentator.

What is intercultural theatre in Singapore at this juncture? What is the point of an intercultural dialogue? Through this forum, we will attempt to understand our own baggage, limitations and strengths, and why these exist. The next step will be to define, and then redefine, intercultural theatre in Singapore.

Speakers: Alvin Tan (Singapore), Alfian Sa'at (Singapore), Cedric Chan (Hong Kong), Corrie Tan (Singapore), Lim Wah Guan (Singapore), Jobina Tan (Singapore)

Venue: Chamber@The Arts House

Tickets: $12 at the door, or $78 for a 12-day festival pass

For more details, click here.