{"id":4795,"date":"2018-07-04T23:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-04T15:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wr\/getting-the-show-on-the-sungei-road\/"},"modified":"2019-12-09T16:23:14","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T08:23:14","slug":"getting-the-show-on-the-sungei-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/getting-the-show-on-the-sungei-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting The Show on the (Sungei) Road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It isn\u2019t often that directors are brought onto a project even before the play has been written. But Zelda Tatiana Ng has been a crucial part of the creative team for One Metre Square: Voices From Sungei Road<\/em> for well over a year now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I came on board this project, we didn\u2019t actually have a script yet,\u201d Zelda remembers. \u201cIt was just an idea \u2013 Alfian Sa\u2019at [the Co-Artistic Director of the Singapore Theatre Festival] discussed it with me, and then we looked for a playwright we wanted to work with. That\u2019s how Sanmu got involved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this took place just a few months before the Sungei Road Market was closed for good in July 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe decided to make this a verbatim play,\u201d explains Zelda. \u201cWhich meant that Sanmu and his research assistant had to conduct a lot of interviews on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelda herself had visited the Market perhaps once or twice prior to taking on One Metre Square<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t a regular patron of the Market,\u201d she says. \u201cPartly because I\u2019m not much of a shopper \u2013 I always know exactly what I want to buy before I go into any store.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the research process began in earnest, she visited the Sungei Road Market a few more times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It surprised her to learn that the Sungei Road community was more complex and diverse than she realised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just not what we expected,\u201d she observes. \u201cNot everybody in Sungei Road was poor and really having a hard time struggling to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the vendors, for instance, didn\u2019t need <\/em>to work \u2013 they wanted<\/em> to. \u201cThey have children who can support them,\u201d Zelda notes. \u201cThey don\u2019t have<\/em> to do the work. But their friends are there, and the Market is part of their daily lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had to set aside some pre-conceived notions, too, about the people who populated the Market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou think they\u2019re not educated or literate? Wrong!\u201d laughs Zelda. \u201cSome of these older folks are degree-holders, scholars even.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Zelda
The cast of Sungei Road<\/em> share a lighter moment during rehearsals
(L-R) Michael Tan, Yong Ser Pin, Tan Beng Tian<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, not all the vendors and volunteers involved in saving Sungei Road were automatically on the same side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot everybody was kawan<\/em> [friends] with everybody!\u201d Zelda points out. \u201cWe could not assume that, just because the Market was going through an existential crisis, everybody would stand on the same side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reality was \u201cquite messy\u201d \u2013 there were many groups of activists, all with different reasons for and ideas about preserving the Market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning about the many different stories and viewpoints surrounding Sungei Road only served to heighten her own ambivalence towards the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can see both sides of the debate,\u201d Zelda explains. \u201cOn the one hand, the Market was over 80 years old \u2013 it\u2019s part of Singapore\u2019s history and heritage. That makes it worthy of preservation. And, of course, I feel for the vendors who lost their livelihoods because of the Market closure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd yet, what value was there in preserving the Market exactly the way it was?\u201d she continues. \u201cWould that actually have made the lives of the vendors better? Could we have made the Market more relevant to contemporary society?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since rehearsals have begun, Zelda has inched closer to choosing a side in the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she\u2019s not keen on forcing her opinion onto audiences who will be coming to watch One Metre Square<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTheatre does not provide answers,\u201d she says firmly. \u201cWhen done well, theatre hopefully helps people to think harder and deeper. I want to show audiences all the different perspectives on this issue, so that they can go home and think about it for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Metre Square: Voices from Sungei Road <\/em>plays at the Singapore Theatre Festival from 19 to 22 July 2018. Visit www.singaporetheatrefestival.com<\/a> for more information!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What was it like working on One Metre Square: Voices from Sungei Road for over a year? Director Zelda Tatiana Ng chats with us about the process, and how it opened her eyes and changed her mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glutenfreepleasure.com\/__proxy_domain\/www.wildrice.com.sg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}