Pulau Rindu

Synopsis:

A city is and is not its buildings. It is and is not the memory of a street corner, of people passing through. It is and is not the hum of lives that covers the walls, like concrete or dirt, layering one atop the other until they become indistinguishable over time.

The stage is a space of possibility and the performers are its architects. Twelve lives converge to build a fleeting city that exists only when seen. Inspired by Italo Calvino's masterwork Invisible Cities, Singaporean theatremaker Tan Shou Chen presents his latest creation, Pulau Rindu, collaboratively devised by twelve young theatre performers.

"What makes a city? The buildings we see—or the memories and visions we embody? Who are the ones building our city?"

Emergency Stairs invites the audience into a profound meditation on memory and loss, constructing impossible cities within the theatre.

Creative and Production Team
Director: Tan Shou Chen
Artistic Director/Producer: Liu Xiaoyi
Co-Producer/Graphic Designer: Huang Suhuai
Production Manager: Victoria Anna Wong
Stage Managers: Voon Yueqi
Lighting Designer: Emanorwatty Saleh
Sound Designer: Meng Jiaoyang (Intern)
Video Designer: Zhu Xuanru (Intern)
Project Coordinator: Ho Yan Xi (Intern)

Performers:

Athirah Nur Salsabila Binte Mohd Khair
Eng Xueya
Giovanna Teresa Kristiani
Jovan Chiang Zuo En
Kerk Faye
Mohamed Khalifah Bin Mohamed Safri
Murugesan Soumya
Nisha Kaur
Nurkhalisa Binte Mohammad Khairullah
Priyanka d/o Saravanan
Ruqaiyah Binti Aminuddin
Seah Guan Sheng, Zorian

About the Director
Tan Shou Chen is a theatre director whose work moves between the intimate and the epic — finding the human pulse in between the traverse of time and space. With over two decades as both performer and director, Shou Chen brings a rare double fluency to the stage: an actor's ear, and a director's eye.

Highlights of his directorial works include:

Theatre: The Last Gardener (The Theatre Practice, 2024); Ng Yi-Sheng's Desert Blooms - The Dawn of Queer Singapore Theatre (Centre 42, 2024); Caryl Churchill's Love and Information (SMU Arts Festival, 2023); Joel Tan's Mosaic (Esplanade Studios, Singtel Waterfront, 2023); Tony Perez's On North Diversion Road (SMU Arts Festival, 2021); Joel Tan's A Bird Calls You to Moscow (2020),13.13.13, (Theatreworks SG, part of the international company's 2018 season); Open Waters (Bangkok Theatre Festival 2017, NAC Creation Grant), MEDEA (The Substation's Director's Lab, 2014); Now Then Again by Penny Penniston (NUS Arts Festival 2016).

Opera: Christoph Willibald Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride; Mozart's Don Giovanni (2024) Henry Purcell's Dido (2023); George Friederich Handel's Alcina (2021), and Orestes by Ifigenia (Singapore International Festival of the Arts, 2019).

www.shouchen.net

About Emergency Stairs
Emergency Stairs is a Singapore-based international experimental arts group. Since its founding in 2017, Emergency Stairs has quickly established itself as one of the representative experimental arts groups in Singapore, and is regularly invited to perform and exchange in more than 30 cities around the world. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Liu Xiaoyi, Emergency Stairs has created a body of works that challenges the existing boundaries of theatre making. The company has also devoted itself to the development of cross-media art forms and cross-cultural art environments by initiating international exchanges, the cultivating of cultural leadership among artists, and promoting arts research and arts criticism. Emergency Stairs endeavours to be a leading cultural institution in the region.