The Necessary Stage
The Company
Formed in 1987 by our current Artistic Director Alvin Tan, The Necessary Stage 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. The Necessary Stage has been identified as one of the Major Arts Companies by the National Arts Council.
Main Season
For its Main Season, The Necessary Stage produces an average of four plays a year at its Black Box and at other venues. These include plays for the Singapore Arts Festival and at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. The plays are original, mostly devised pieces created in a collaborative process that is based on research and improvisation. This process has produced many important works, including Boxing Day: The Tsunami Project (2005), Sing Song (2004), koan (2003), godeatgod (2002 & 2004), Close – in my face (2002), Completely With/Out Character (1999), Frozen Angels (2008 & 2009), Fundamentally Happy (2006), Good People (2007), Gemuk Girls (2008), Pillars (1998), Rosnah (1995), Off Centre (1994 and 2007) and Still Building (1993), which were not only popular successes but also critically acclaimed.
In 2007, The Necessary Stage presented Off Centre at the Esplanade as part of The Studios Season. The play is part of the literature syllabus for GCE 'O' and 'N' levels. The Necessary Stage's Fundamentally Happy, Good People and Gemuk Girls have also received various Life! Theatre Awards, specifically Best Original Script (for all three plays), Production of the Year (for Fundamentally Happy and Gemuk Girls) and Best Actor (for Najib Soiman in Gemuk Girls
In terms of international collaborations, The Necessary Stage’s 2005 collaboration, Separation 40, was produced with Malaysian theatre company Dramalab, and was staged at the Esplanade as part of its Theatre Studio Season, and at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre. In June 2006, The Necessary Stage presented Mobile, a creative collaboration involving talents from Japan, The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, as part of the Singapore Arts Festival. Mobile also toured to Kuala Lumpur following its world premiere in Singapore for a 3-day run at The Actors Studio in Bangsar, as well as to Tokyo in March 2007. Off Centre, The Necessary Stage’s landmark play first staged in 1993, was restaged at the Esplanade Theatre Studio in May 2007, and received accolades from the audience and media. The Company has recently staged a multidisciplinary production entitled Past Caring, a creative collaboration between The Necessary Stage and Tony Yap Company from Australia. We are also currently working on a new production entitled Sofaman with Russia's The KNAM Theatre, to be staged in November 2009.
International Work
The Necessary Stage is committed to international exchange and networking between Singapore and other countries. Such exchange is done through staging the company’s plays abroad, inviting foreign works to be presented by the company in Singapore, as well as through dialogues, workshops and training opportunities. To date, the company has performed in Berlin, Birmingham, Busan, Cairo, Dublin, Glasgow, London, Macau, Melbourne, New Delhi, Seoul, Sibiu, Sziget and Taipei. Resident Playwright Haresh Sharma also participated in a collaboration among Southeast Asian theatres, spearheaded by Setagaya Public Theatre in Tokyo, Japan, which culminated in a production in 2005. Haresh was also one of four international playwrights commissioned by the Glasgow-based 7:84 Theatre Company to write a play on the theme of Separation and Reconciliation in 2006. Sharma's play, Eclipse, is about the Indian/Pakistan partition as told by a young Singaporean man who is making a trip to his father’s homeland in Pakistan. The play saw its world premiere on 11 April 2007, at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and subsequently toured to various theatres in Scotland, including the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. Eclipse made its way back to Singapore for its Asian premiere as a full-length play as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2008. Haresh's 1996 play, Lizard, was also presented at Virgin Labfest in Manila in 2007, at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines.
Theatre For Youth and Community
The Theatre For Youth Branch was set up in 1992 and re-named Theatre For Youth and Community (TFYC) in 2001. TFYC’s principal interest is in theatre work with and for young people and different communities in Singapore. This includes presenting short plays during school assemblies, interactive Theatre-In-Education programmes, workshops, and process-based drama programmes that focus on personal development. Since 1992, TFYC has performed to more than 800,000 students, piloted drama programmes for school curriculum, and worked with numerous non-governmental organisations and voluntary welfare organisations. It was also responsible for the successful Marine Parade Theatre Festival (2000), FamFest (2001), The Necessary Community Festival (2001), M1 Youth Connection (1997 – 2003) and M1 Theatre Connect (2004).
The Necessary Stage also collaborated with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and the National Arts Council as part of the Feed Your Imagination, an arts-education programme. The Company presented Let Me Go! in 2007 and Off Centre in 2008 – both performance and interaction.
Starting in 2008, TNS is working with senior citizens in a 3-year Drama Programme geared towards training the participants in various aspects of theatre-making and arts administration, with the final aim of them setting up an independent theatre company.
M1 Singapore Fringe Festival
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is an annual festival of theatre, dance, visual arts and music created and presented by Singaporean and international artists. Based on a different theme every year and curated by the Company, the festival aims to bring the best of contemporary, cutting-edge and socially engaged works to the Singapore audience. The first of its kind in Singapore, M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is set to be a creative centre with a twin-purpose of innovation and discussion, a platform for meaningful and provocative art to engage our increasingly connected and complex world. The 2008 edition of the Fringe focused on the theme of Art and History, featuring 20 works from 13 countries from 16 – 27 January 2008, and reached out to an audience of over 200,000. The 2009 Festival threw the spotlight on the theme of Art and Family, featuring 21 works from 12 countries, from 7 – 18 January 2009. Come 2010, the Festival will focus on the theme of Art and the Law from 13 – 24 January 2010.
Publications
The Necessary Stage has to date produced eight publications. Still Building (1994), published by EPB, is a compilation of three plays by the company’s Resident Playwright Haresh Sharma. Other published work by Haresh include This Chord and Others (1999) – a compilation of six plays, and Off Centre (2000), published by Ethos Books. The Necessary Stage also published PIE to Spoilt (2002), a maiden collection of plays by former Company Playwright Chong Tze Chien. In 1997, the company published 9 Lives – 10 Years of Singapore Theatre, a landmark book and the first of its kind featuring essays on Singapore theatre, commissioned by The Necessary Stage. 2000 saw the company publish a report, Development Through Drama: Towards Providing A Holistic Education for Singapore Schools, with support from the National Arts Council, documenting its pilot developmental drama programme conducted during curriculum time. Ask Not: The Necessary Stage In Singapore Theatre, a collection of essays on examining the social, political, economic and artistic aspects of theatre-making in Singapore from the perspective of The Necessary Stage, was published by Times Editions in 2004. Recently, Off Centre has been selected by the Ministry of Education in Singapore as a literature text for the GCE ‘O’ and ‘N’ levels syllabi, and has been republished by the company. In August 2007, a new volume of Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, was published with a focus on the works of Haresh Sharma. Interlogue is a series published by Ethos Books that aims to bring critical focus on the works of Singapore writers in English. The publication, written by Prof David Birch and edited by A/P Kirpal Singh, was an extensive investigation into Sharma's development as a writer; the themes and issues he grapples with; as well as his vision and practice of theatre within and outside his work at The Necessary Stage.
The Triangle Project
The Triangle Project was started in 1992 with the aim of providing opportunities for the less privileged to watch theatre. The Necessary Stage matches donors and charities with the former buying tickets to our productions for the beneficiaries. This scheme has proven to be very successful and numerous beneficiaries of Voluntary Welfare Organisations have experienced theatre as a result.
Funding
Revenue sources for The Necessary Stage include ticket sales, donations and fundraisers. The Necessary Stage also receives funding from the National Arts Council under its Major Arts Companies scheme; corporate sponsors such as MobileOne Ltd for the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, in-kind and cash sponsors from the corporate sector and cultural agencies; other bodies such as Community Development Councils, Council for the 3rd Age, Arts Fund, and local foundations such as Lee Foundation.
