TheatreWorks

Established  in 1985 by Lim Siauw Chong, Lim Kay Tong, and Justin  Hill, TheatreWorks  (Singapore) is an independent and international  performance company based in  Singapore. It is an Institute of Public  Character. It is currently led by  Artistic Director, Ong Keng Sen.

TheatreWorks is an independent, non-profit Singaporean theatre  company that develops and nurtures professional arts skills. It supports  Singapore artists, and articulates the Singapore arts through its  various productions and developmental programmes.  It promotes and  produces Singapore writing, interdisciplinary performances,  collaborations with international artists.  It also provides residencies  for visual artists, documentary filmmakers or creatives working in  contemporary visual culture and new media.  The company recognises its  responsibility in encouraging awareness of human and social issues, and  is dedicated to sharing the transcendant potential of art with arts  lovers and the Singapore community.

Since its establishment, TheatreWorks has staged  over 200  productions and 2,500 performances in Singapore and overseas, and has   reached an audienceship of over a million. TheatreWorks’ home is 72-13, a   heritage building that was once a rice warehouse on Mohamed Sultan  Road and  next to the Singapore River.
 

TheatreWorks/72-13 is dedicated to the  development of contemporary arts  in Singapore and to the evolution of an Asian  identity and aesthetics  of the 21st Century through a culture of differences.  It asks, what is  Asian in this age of globalisation, internationalisation,  modernisation  and urbanisation? Its works exist on the tension between  modernisation  and tradition; local and global. Representing the continuum  between  tradition and contemporary, the works are unafraid to be exotic and yet   conceptual. TheatreWorks’ projects present the hybrid identity of the   contemporary Asian and embrace the multiple realities.
 

TheatreWorks is a multi-faceted arts company but  always working  intensively across languages, art forms, disciplines and   socio-political borders. Rather than residing stably in the staid  singularity  of one Art or one Culture, TheatreWorks believes in the  idea of leaving one’s  own position, one’s locality, and locating  oneself in the unknown – to co-work  and co-create in a third space.  This vision has made Theatreworks distinct and  sets it apart from other  performance companies in Singapore.
 

TheatreWorks has two main red lines in its work:  the first is the  creation and presentation of inter-disciplinary and  intercultural  productions/programmes that brings together artists from across   disciplines and cultures and from both the traditional and contemporary  worlds.  The second being Docu-Performances which are performances  created from  historical instances and phenomenon, archival materials,  real-life experiences  and living persons.
 

TheatreWorks thrives on developing processes,  creative partnerships and  artistic risk-taking. One of these processes that has  gained  international influence is the Flying Circus Project (FCP) first   conceived by Ong Keng Sen in 1996. The FCP is a long-term programme  exploring  creative expression in Asia. Its focal points are individual  creative action, encountering  difference and strategies of art  practice, emphasizing the tenacity of local  sites – with their artists,  activists and public intellectuals. The FCP is  curated around the  central notion of “world creating”, how do we form new  micro-worlds,  which are responsible, articulated and ethically engaged? The 8th   Edition of the FCP was in Dec 2012/Jan 2013 and was sited in Myanmar and   Singapore.
 

TheatreWorks is committed to developing and  nurturing professional arts  skills by providing residencies to mid-career  artists as well as  Research and Development programmes to a variety of artists,  creatives  and cultural workers using 72-13 as an incubator and laboratory. In   addition, TheatreWorks also encourages new writing through The Writer’s   Laboratory (established in 1990) which organizes the annual and popular  24-Hour  Playwriting Competition since 1998. TheatreWorks is distinctly  the only  performing arts company in Singapore involve in capacity  building in Asia as  well as steadfastly building a dialogue and bridge  in Asia and Asia’s interface  with the rest of the world.
 

Since 1999, TheatreWorks hosts and manages the  Arts Network Asia (ANA).  ANA has been a unique networking and grant-giving body  for intra-Asia  collaborations in multiple disciplines, encouraging mobility  within  Asia as well as developing managerial skills in Asia. It pays attention   to the diverse perspectives of a global Asian urban metropolis and the  multiple  contexts of everyday life in Asia.
 

With The Continuum Asia Project and Mobilising  Arts Communities,  TheatreWorks capacity-build in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia  respectively.  The CAP helps to preserve the rich cultural heritage of Asia by   reviving dying traditional art forms. TheatreWorks is assisting the  Royal  Ballet Theatre at Luang Prabang to revive the Laotian Ramayana.  The MAC, on the  other hand, serves to link artists and local  communities through capacity  building and harnessing skills of  participating artists in Vietnam and  Cambodia.

Source: TheatreWorks

More information: www.theatreworks.org.sg