Dear friends of the media,

For the past two years, Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay’s annual theatre season, The Studios, has centred on a single evolving theme: LAND. It has shaped the curatorial arc over the seasons, offering audiences a moment to sit with the places, communities and personal histories that are often undocumented, ignored or unseen. Each season—Landings in 2023 and Fault Lines in 2024—opened up conversation on the meaning of LAND with its complexities and layers, and proposed ways we could re-discover, re-contextualise, or reclaim our connections to land.

As we arrive at the final chapter in this thematic journey, we look upon LAND as providing Sustenance for the body, mind and spirit. We start by putting our primordial relationship with land under the microscope, examining our dependence on earth, water, microorganisms and the cycles of nature that sustain life so that we may have food. We zoom out into the literal stratosphere to consider the current state of our climate in the midst of crisis and imagine (very real) speculative futures. We dig deep to understand what it is that makes us feel connected to family, a place, a community, a culture. Where do we ‘land’ when we are displaced, alienated or at a loss?

From 18 Jul to 14 Sep 2025, the five productions in The Studios 2025 season reveal a spectrum of possibilities both in terms of theatre-making and in our exploration of Sustenance. We open the season with David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era, a series of vignettes about the biggest crisis in human history. Adapted for a Singapore cast and directed by Ellison Tan, the play slips between the absurd and the comic, the domestic and the global, the past, present and possible futures.

In FOOD, Geoff Sobelle hosts an intimate dinner party of smell, tastes and touch, and with the help of the audience, shapes a conversation about personal memories and our relationship with food. Through illusion and Sobelle’s masterful sleight of hand, the evolution of food unfolds before us, from the days of hunter gatherers through to industrialisation and the overconsumption of today. Pickle Party by The Theatre Practice places the audience at a pickling workshop within a performance. The pickling takes place in real time against the backdrop of Singapore’s rapid development from farmland to modern city, as we are asked to consider how humans, microbes and food security are connected.

In Haribo Kimchi, Jaha Koo invites audiences into his pojangmacha or Korean late-night snack bar and takes us on a culinary exploration peppered with text, K-pop inspired music, video and robotics. In this story of cultural assimilation and the umami taste of home, food serves as a shelter to the culturally dislocated.

Global events bring about a different kind of dislocation and alienation. Checkpoint Theatre's Escape to Batam, is a personal and poignant story of director-playwright Claire Wong's father, who spent his boyhood on the rural island of Batam to escape the Japanese Occupation of Singapore. Intertwined with Claire's own lived experience of family loss and grief, the piece is a meditation on time, memory and resilience, transcending generations.

Alongside these productions, The Studios season encompasses workshops, conversations with artists, and a nature walk. These companion programmes provide different ways for audiences to deepen their engagement with the issues and questions arising from the productions, outside of the theatre.

Today, as we continue to be confronted by environmental devastation and geopolitical fractures, we hope that this season will allow us to critically imagine paths for a gentler, more sustainable future beyond ourselves.

Come and imagine with us at The Studios.

Shireen Abdullah

Senior Producer

The Esplanade Co Ltd