TheatreWorks (Singapore)

Established in 1985, 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 and Managing Director, Tay Tong.

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.

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