In preparation - Light Test at Esplanade

Yes! It's on the way... It's happening...

Yesterday, 26 March, we had our light testing session at Esplanade Theatre Studio... This is an experiment session with lights so as to see what could/could not be done...

I took some photos with my iphone and some are really 'mood' and nice... Here are some to share!

To view the entire album - click the title again.

Our Set Designer Tolis pondering... Fantasy and Reality... It starts getting interesting when the demarkation is smeared...

One needs to be young-at-heart to do this project... Totally Benjamin! - Our Costume/Special Effects Designer.

One me... Two me... Three me... Ten me... A Hundred Me!!!

Tolis (Set Designer) : I called Dumbledore last night... And he has given some suggestions... Think we should try it out...

Woan Wen (Lighting Designer) : Hmm... yes. I think his suggestions is kinda cool...

Peter (Producer) : (thinking) Oh, there goes my budget...

Crew from Esplanade : These people try to do magic here?...??

Producer (Peter) giving Director (Robin) the long-waited massage...

Director is screaming... But totally enjoying it!

Robin : Ok... Stop Sir! I promised I will be good... (I shall not blow-up your budget...)

Click HERE to get your tickets NOW!


Let's us share the MAGIC with you!
See you in the theatre!

Introducing The Troupe... Zachary Ho Tze Siang 何子祥 (Singapore)

Elvis the Funambulist

Zachary Ho Tze Siang

(once christened Augustine by the bishop in a church!)

The Fool who does the high-wire balancing acts while lip-synching to Elvis (Suspicious Minds is his preferred number). A faceless Fool with the words 一目了白 written on his forehead, he feels he balances many things whilst walking the high-wire - between Hope & Regret, between Desire & Denial, between the reincarnation of all his past lives (WOAH Mama!). The Fool is a real performer who never lets the crowd down.

As he inches sweaty-step by sweaty-step towards the end of the high-wire, using the taut tension to feed his journey and give cable to his feverish search for Tomorrowland, he almost wishes he could let go and fall - let the song end and the words remain - but he CANNOT! (Sweet Mary and Joseph!) Do not be fooled by the rhinestones and oversized collars, for the Fool knows that as long as he keeps searching before the end of the act, time is always on his side.

Elvis never died. Everyone looked around for him but no one bothered to look up.

Introducing The Troupe... Tolis Papazoglou Τόλης Παπάζογλου (Greek)

Scenographer  Σκηνογράφος

Tolis Papazoglou

One of the motivating reasons for leaving Greece all this time ago was, and still is, my desire to do theatre work and meet with other people. 

Multiculturalism is my thing, tastily manifested by good cooking and good company. This is what you'd do if you'd want to expand your cultural horizons:

Ingredients:

Potatoes, Aubergines/Eggplants, Greek Olive Oil, Onions, Beef / Lamb / Pork Mince, Garlic, Salt + Pepper, Sugar, Tomatoes + Tomato Paste, Lemon, Oregano, Mint, Parsley, Butter, Flour, Milk, Eggs, Tasty Cheese.

Method:

Slice thick Potatoes and Aubergines/Eggplants and fry in a 3/4 inch of Olive Oil until golden brown. lay on a flat roasting tray Potatoes first Aubergines/Eggplants second. Brown first chopped Onions adding the Mince; when both browned up add the  Garlic, Salt + Pepper, Sugar, Tomatoes + Tomato Paste, Lemon, Oregano, Mint, Parsley, 1/2 a teaspoon of Sugar and the Lemon and Juggle together until the ingredients are properly cooked. Then lay it on top of the Aubergines.                             

Mix up Butter, Flour, Milk, Eggs until a very thick but still runny cream is created and pour it over the other ingredients. Sprinkle grated Tasty Cheese on top. Cook @ 150 centigrade in a preheated oven. Remove when golden, score at size you like, leave to cool down a bit and then Serve in blocks size portions. 

Name:

MOUSAKAS 

Now this is a Multicultural Experience!"

Introducing the Troupe... Miyuki Kamimura 上村美裕起 (Japan)

A Wandering Traveler 漂泊の旅人


Miyuki Kamimura

He is from the FAR EAST.

He is looking for THE END OF THE WORLD.

He wanted to be a MOUNTED BANDIT but

he noticed that he couldn't use his good swimming skill in the continent.

One day he met THE MAN FROM THE SOUTH ISLAND,

he fell in LOVE with him (but he is not gay, sorry).

So he swam to the SOUTH ISLAND, following this man.

But he lost him there!

He thought - who could take him to THE END OF THE WORLD?

After that, he went to a lot of countries and met many people but

he still can't find THE END OF THE WORLD.

He heard that THE CIRCUS will be opening at THE END OF THE WORLD.

He wants to see it.

He is still wandering here and there today and tomorrow!

Please take me to THE END OF THE WORLD!

THE CIRCUS will start there!

Introducing the Troupe... Sia EeMien (still cooking) 谢伊敏 (Singapore)

The Wonder Woman

Sia EeMien

Nope, she is not cooking in the kitchen, but is trying to peer through the kitchen window to have some clarity in what people may call it - life. A highly religious person who has continued looking into the looking glass or the mirror for vanity sake even though it's in the middle of the night.

For definition purposes, " highly religious" meaning, her vision is a one liner, she saw only one thing and kept insisting on doing the same thing until the window decides to crack. (Just check with the husband, who hears her same complaints for the past 5 years)

She found enlightenment when she has to wake up one night for every hour checking the temperature of a 3-year-old fireball and drenching it down with ice. With many sleepless nights, she stared into the glass or the mirror. To top that off, she decides to cross "TODAYLAND" and include "TOMORROWLAND" in her life.

She is definitely NOT cooking, but still cooking and will be ready in another fifty years, in her tomorrowland.

Introducing the Troupe... Peter Sau 苏佳亮 (Singapore)

The Intoxicating 'MALIBU MARBLE MAPLE' 

(pronounce this 10 times)

Peter Sau


After 2 years working in a fish factory smelling like pee, MMM decides against digging out fish eyes for making SK2 skin moisturizers.

He (she?) observed religiously numerous obese aunties practicing Tai Chi Gong in the parks for 9 years faithfully.

Finally waking up from one super-deep meditation in Pulau Ubin unharmed by wild boars and durian trees, MMM rode ferociously, from Singapore to Bangkok, on a floating sex doll and used a long dildo as oar.  Clocking a Guinness World Record Time - 49min and 23 sec. 

The rest was history. 

His (her?) latest offering to the artistic world of outrageous madness - a universally stunning circus spectacular drag show on ice in air sometimes within mud but countless times under water -  'The Orgy-Juggling House of Prancing Tyrannies'. To redeem himself (herself?), MMM produces small budget poor theatre productions back home (just once a year), keeping starving artists fiercely committed with meagre honorariums, but actually laughs at them internally for willing to die for their indulgent high-brow low-value ART.

Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende - The Grand Magician! (Playwright)

Michael Andreas 

Helmuth Ende

(12 November 1929 

– 28 August 1995)

Michael Ende was a German writer of fantasy and children's literature. He was born in Garmisch (Bavaria, Germany), son of the surrealist painter Edgar Ende. He died in Filderstadt (Germany) of stomach cancer.

 The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte) is Ende's best known work. Other books include Momo and Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver (Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer). Michael Ende's works have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 20 million copies, and have been adapted into motion pictures, stage plays, operas and audio books.

Ende was one of the most popular and famous German authors of the 20th century, mostly due to the enormous success of his children's books. However, Ende was not strictly a children's author, as he also wrote books for adults. Ende claimed, "It is for this child in me, and in all of us, that I tell my stories," and that "[my books are] for any child between 80 and 8 years" (qtd. Senick 95, 97). Ende often found frustration in being perceived as exclusively an author for children, considering himself rather a man intending to speak of cultural problems and spiritual wisdom to people of all ages in his works; he wrote in 1985:

"One may enter the literary parlor via just about any door, be it the prison door, the madhouse door, or the brothel door. There is but one door one may not enter it through, which is the child room door. The critics will never forgive you such. The great Rudyard Kipling is one of a number of people to have suffered from this. I keep wondering to myself what this peculiar contempt towards anything related to childhood is all about."

Ende's writing could be described as a surreal mixture of reality and fantasy. The reader is often invited to take a more interactive role in the story, and the worlds in his books often mirror our reality, using fantasy to bring light to the problems of an increasingly technological modern society. Not least of all because of having attended a Waldorf school as a child, his writings were influenced by anthroposophy. Ende was also known as a proponent of economic reform, and claimed to have had the concept of aging money in mind when writing Momo.

Books written by Michael Ende

• 1989 Night of Wishes / The Satanarchaeolidealcohellish Notion Potion

(Der satanarchaolugenialkohollische Wunschpunsch)

Summary: Beelzebub Preposteror is a diligent sorcerer, but this year he has failed to meet his quota of villainous deeds, because the High Council of Animals has sent a small cat spy to foil his plans.

• 1988 Ophelia's Shadow Theatre

• 1986 Mirror in the Mirror (Der Spiegel im Spiegel)

• 1982 Juggler's Tale (Das Gauklermarchen)

• 1979 The Neverending Story (Die unendliche Geschichte)

Summary: Story about a lonely, solitary boy who enters an imaginary land on a special and dangerous quest, where he learns the true measure of his own courage and realizes that even he has the capacity to love.

• 1973 Momo (original English 1974 translation published as The Grey Gentlemen)

• 1960 Jim Kompf and Lukas the Engine Driver (Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivfuhrer)

Summary: Having turned their railroad engine into a boat and set sail for adventure because their island has become too crowded, Jim Button and Luke try to rescue the kidnapped Princess of China from Dragontown.

• The Prison of Liberty

Summary: This is a collection of short stories by Ende that examine different and true characteristics of human society, values, and dreams in a context of fantastic and unimaginable lands and realities.

Notes:

According to research, The Juggler’s Tale has never been translated in 

English in prints. There are other arts groups who had performed this script 

in other languages and simply have not circulated or published their translations.

TETC is aiming to translate it into multi-languages with a general overtone 

in English. This is a tough task! – To respect and maintain the spirit of the 

original play with the assistance from native-German-speakers, incorporating 

newfound interpretations by the casts and director.

See you in May! A brand new version of 

The Juggler’s Tale – World Première! (Singapore)