
About Chinese Theatre Festival
Practice’s Chinese Theatre Festival is a sustained effort to create a space for Chinese-language performances in Singapore . It was started with the intent to address the lack of variety in Chinese theatre performances locally, as well as to make professional standard performances more accessible to both adults and children. As Kuo Jian Hong puts it: “For the Chinese theatre scene to thrive, it needs to be carefully tended.Only then can the saplings grow into trees, and trees into forest, endlessly, ceaselessly.”
Chinese Theatre Festival offers a wide spectrum of possibilities of Little Theatre. It adopts the term “Little Theatre” to frame the types of works it stages and presents. Little Theatre may refer to the performance space, the performance itself, and/or the presenting company of said performance. The phrase also connotes works that may be more “experimental” in nature. Hence, this festival is also comprised of local and international artists and theatre practitioners across the Chinese diaspora, who situate their practice within Little Theatre.
2011
Tell Tales Sing Songs
Am I Crying
The Happy Prince
The Story after Ah Q
Fringe Programmes:
Story Challenge
Waste Not, Want Not
2013
La Naissance Mulan Wanderer-Seeker: A Trek Around My Room Threshold: 1 Table 2 Chairs Experimental Series (Unsound, 10, WC)
2014
Nini in Changi Village
Mo Gu Notes
The Mark Behind the Ear
FLUID
Casting Sword
1 Table 2 Chairs Experimental Series (Unsound 2, X2, Emperor Qin and Lady Meng Jiang)
Fringe Programmes:
Story Challenge
INTERACT (Hsueh Mei Hua, Liu Xiao Yi, Yu Shan Lu, Wu Xi)
FOCUS (Kun Opera Theatre – Zhao Yu Tao, Sun Yijun)
2015
The wee Question Mark and the Adventurer – A Children’s Musical
The Struggle: Years Later
The Last Supper Chronology on Death
Into the Flood
1 Tables 2 Chairs Experimental Series (Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral: Was, Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral: Is, Nothing)
Fringe Programmes:
Storytelling + Singing Session with The wee Question Mark and Friends
INTERACT – In the Living Room
Green Room
2016
Day I Met the Prince
fleet
To be continued
Mamma Luna
Day of Growing Up
1 Table 2 Chairs Experimental Series (Descendants 600, Descendants 400, Gertrude – Ophelia)
Fringe Programmes:
Storytelling: My Flower, My Drawing
INTERACT: The Importance of Children’s Theatre
FOCUS: fleet from the Text
Parent-Child Workshop: Wayang Time!
2017
The wee Question Mark and the Nameless – A Family Musical
The Seven Silences: Anger
The Little Child
Blank Run
Lu Xun Blossoms
1 Table 2 Chairs Experimental Series
Fringe Programmes:
The Nursery Rhymes Project: Imagine Our Songs
Practice Tuckshop – Space of Possibilities
INTERACT FOCUS: The Artistic Journey of Blank Run
approaching theatre Workshop: The Thinking Performer
Parent-Child Workshop: Let’s Make a Puppet!
The Waterloo Murders
14 – 23.03.2003
Creating a unique and intimate theatre atmosphere, this promenade performance invites the audience to walk right into the story and unravel the mystery of The Waterloo Murders.
Moving Gods
09 – 12.07.2003
An exploration on how buildings, like Man, find their current destiny influenced by past lives, Moving Gods is a rumination on loss, inheritance, and the value of preservation when faced of rapid growth and progress.
Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (Malay Version)
25 – 28.09.2003
Importing their own cultural background as Singaporean Malays into the work, the artists involved will seek the spaces in the text which will allow them to question their own hybrid and syncretic identities.
Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole 2013
02 – 05.10.2003
A conundrum that we still face: Is the coffin too big? Or is the hole too small?
What should we do next?
Woman: Tell me more, Lights Up, Fox Tale
19 - 21.12.2003
Woman is a triple bill about women and womanhood, directed, devised and performed by women from Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Singapore.
Tempest
22.04 – 02.05.2004
In the winds of Destiny, not the purest of spirits nor the most wretched of sinners will be spared. The Tempest casts all adrift, and lingering perdition shall soon befall one after another.
Lake Odyssey (Chung Cheng High School performance)
07 – 08.05.2004
The quadruple-bill performance featured retellings of fables and legends like Ma Lang And His Magical Paintbrush, Jingwei Tries To Fill The Sea, Qi Wei Qi Wei and Tao Tai Liang in celebration of the school’s 65th anniversary.
Wu Jun Ru and You and Me and Him (Poor Theatre Series)
01.06.2004
This surreal production explores the fleeting, seemingly insignificant moments in our memory and what happens when they finally resurface.
Legend Alive
18 – 22.08.2004
An international group of theatre practitioners to come together and create a performance to commemorate the passing of theatre doyen and The Theatre Practice co-founder Kuo Pao Kun.
Menage a 13
11 – 20.02.2005
Ménage à 13 subverts all convention of comedy and tragedy with its unique brand of hearty sufferance as they examine our everyday relationships and the societal roles that define us.
Play Play
07 – 15.05.2005
Play Play is about rediscovering the freedom within ourselves to play, and about finding how to see everything around us as a game: not to win but to enjoy every moment of it, not to succeed but to discover the infinite possibilities.
The Last Chinese Helicopter
28 – 29.07.2005
Inspired by The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole’s satirical take on the relationships within our society, Jack Neo shifts between hilariously touching to the seriously absurd.
The Waterloo Murders
14 – 23.03.2003
Creating a unique and intimate theatre atmosphere, this promenade performance invites the audience to walk right into the story and unravel the mystery of The Waterloo Murders.
Moving Gods
09 – 12.07.2003
An exploration on how buildings, like Man, find their current destiny influenced by past lives, Moving Gods is a rumination on loss, inheritance, and the value of preservation when faced of rapid growth and progress.
Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (Malay Version)
25 – 28.09.2003
Importing their own cultural background as Singaporean Malays into the work, the artists involved will seek the spaces in the text which will allow them to question their own hybrid and syncretic identities.
Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole 2013
02 – 05.10.2003
A conundrum that we still face: Is the coffin too big? Or is the hole too small?
What should we do next?
Woman: Tell me more, Lights Up, Fox Tale
19 - 21.12.2003
Woman is a triple bill about women and womanhood, directed, devised and performed by women from Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Singapore.
Tempest
22.04 – 02.05.2004
In the winds of Destiny, not the purest of spirits nor the most wretched of sinners will be spared. The Tempest casts all adrift, and lingering perdition shall soon befall one after another.
Lake Odyssey (Chung Cheng High School performance)
07 – 08.05.2004
The quadruple-bill performance featured retellings of fables and legends like Ma Lang And His Magical Paintbrush, Jingwei Tries To Fill The Sea, Qi Wei Qi Wei and Tao Tai Liang in celebration of the school’s 65th anniversary.
Wu Jun Ru and You and Me and Him (Poor Theatre Series)
01.06.2004
This surreal production explores the fleeting, seemingly insignificant moments in our memory and what happens when they finally resurface.
Legend Alive
18 – 22.08.2004
An international group of theatre practitioners to come together and create a performance to commemorate the passing of theatre doyen and The Theatre Practice co-founder Kuo Pao Kun.
Menage a 13
11 – 20.02.2005
Ménage à 13 subverts all convention of comedy and tragedy with its unique brand of hearty sufferance as they examine our everyday relationships and the societal roles that define us.
Play Play
07 – 15.05.2005
Play Play is about rediscovering the freedom within ourselves to play, and about finding how to see everything around us as a game: not to win but to enjoy every moment of it, not to succeed but to discover the infinite possibilities.
The Last Chinese Helicopter
28 – 29.07.2005
Inspired by The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole’s satirical take on the relationships within our society, Jack Neo shifts between hilariously touching to the seriously absurd.