Theatre Made Why the Mahabharata
Theatre Made Ready, set, stage
Theatre Made Designing the production
Theatre Made
Theatre Made Designing the production
The devil is in the details
Episode 2: The devil is in the details
How do different creative elements come together for a theatre production? In this episode, we speak with the designers and artists from various departments—set design, multimedia, puppets, hair and make-up—about their creative process and how they built on or complemented one another’s ideas for Kingdoms Apart.
The long-drawn pre-production planning culminated in a whirlwind bump-in month in the Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade, which had officially opened in October 2022. A luxury for most theatre productions, the month-long bump-in finally had all the designers in the same “pressure cooker”, working together in real time with the production crew and director/playwright Chong Tze Chien, to integrate every creative detail into the theatrical narrative. The production ran from 23 – 27 November 2022.
Featuring:
Creative Team
Set Designer: Eucien Chia
Associate Set Designer: Grace Lin
Multimedia Designer: Koo Chia Meng
Puppetry & Props Designer, Puppetry Training Consultant: Myra Loke (The Finger Players)
Hair Designer: Ashley Lim
Makeup Designer: Bobbie Ng
On stage
Actors: Ghafir Akbar, Brendon Fernandez, Matt Grey, Anne James, Neewin Hershall, Loong Seng Onn, Futoshi Moriyama, Farez Najid, Jean Ng, Edith Podesta, Lian Sutton & Vadi PVSS
Puppeteers: Jo Kwek & Vanessa Toh
“...When you finally bring it from idea to stage, when it is finally performed, is a beautiful moment in time in space, it's precious, because it's transient...to be able to live that moment with the audience and the team when it finally gets on stage—that, for me, is what is really special about making a theatre production, because it takes a village.”
Joyce Yao, producer at Esplanade
Theatre Made is a three-part series that takes you behind the scenes of how a production goes from idea to stage, illustrated through the development, staging and performance of Kingdoms Apart, an intercultural theatre work commissioned by Esplanade.
