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Established in 1987, The Necessary Stage (TNS) is a non-profit theatre company with charity status. Our mission is to create challenging, indigenous and innovative theatre that touches the heart and mind. TNS has the honour of being the only arts company in Singapore helmed by two Cultural Medallion recipients: Artistic Director and Founder Alvin Tan and Resident Playwright Haresh Sharma. The company is also the organiser and curator of the annual Singapore Fringe Festival.

Having presented more than 120 original plays in Singapore and abroad, TNS remains focused on breaking new ground in original local content and intercultural and interdisciplinary exploration. For our Main Season, we produce an average of two plays a year. The works are original, mostly devised pieces created in a collaborative process that is based on research, improvisation before scripting, and input from all members of the production.

TNS has also been unwavering in its efforts to nurture new talents and local content, through various platforms including youth- and senior-oriented training initiatives, commissions at the Singapore Fringe Festival, and laboratory and developmental platforms, including the TNS Devising Platform since 2020. The company also has a comprehensive online archival portal at tnsarchives.com, providing the public access to its 38 years of history.

Deonn is an actor, theatre-maker and teacher. She graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts in 2016 with a BA (First Class Hons) in Acting. Deonn is currently an Associate Artist of The Necessary Stage and a core member of Playwrights’ Commune, an independent playwriting collective. 

As an actor, Deonn has been a part of Esplanade’s PLAYtime! and Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts, M1 Singapore Fringe Festivals, and the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA). Her notable theatre credits include Tanah•Air 水•土. by Drama Box, and Straight Acting produced by Wild Rice, which earned her a Best Actress nomination at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards 2022.

As a theatre-maker, Deonn made her professional debut as a playwright-director at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2023. She also recently directed a successful run of Survivor Singapore as part of Esplanade’s Feed Your Imagination (F.Y.I) 2023 programme. Deonn has collaborated with TNS and Haresh Sharma since 2017 and was assistant director to Haresh for Acting Mad (2022), Three Years in the Life and Death of Land (2023), as well as co-director for History, Whose Story? (2025). Most recently, she was assistant director to Haresh for TNS’ SG Insecure for which she was also one of the featured playwrights for the work.

Deonn is grateful and excited for the opportunity to continue working with TNS as an Associate Artist, and looks forward to growing, learning and developing further as an artist. She is interested in people and their stories and in always having a good laugh.

Sindhura Kalidas is a theatre practitioner and educator. She is currently an Associate Artist with The Necessary Stage (TNS) and a core team member of The Finger Players (TFP). 

Sindhu’s recent performance credits include Wild Rice’s Psychobitch, Deonn Yang’s Why Be Good When You Can Be The Best? (2023), presented as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, Singapore Repertory Theatre’s The Coronalogues (2020) and TNS’s Off Centre (2019). 

Her recent dramaturgical credits include the Singapore Youth Theatre’s double bill Every Student Is A Good Student/In My Head (2023), TFP’s Puppet Origin Stories (2022), as well as TNS’s Acting Mad (2022).

She is also the writer of TNS’s Happy Indian Women (2023), a verbatim theatre production which questions the assumptions we make about the diverse South Asian diaspora in Singapore today, which she co-directed with Haresh Sharma. Most recently in 2025, Sindhu is also one of the playwrights featured for TNS’ SG Insecure.

Sindhu is a recipient of the NAC Postgraduate Arts Scholarship and holds an MA (Distinction) in Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London.  She hopes to continue exploring themes of race, gender, and community in future works and shed light on underrepresented and misrepresented groups in Singapore. 

She is deeply grateful to be learning from and growing with TNS.