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Saturday 22 September 2012
ACT 3 THEATRICS - Singapore's first professional theatre company.
Let the debate be put to rest once and for all.
ACT 3 Theatrics, incorporated on 1st July 1984, is Singapore's first professional theatre company. On that day the organisation became a legal entity; Jasmin, Ruby and I became full-time theatre practitioners.
ACT 3 Theatrics, incorporated on 1st July 1984, is Singapore's first professional theatre company. On that day the organisation became a legal entity; Jasmin, Ruby and I became full-time theatre practitioners.
We set-off to scale a mountain, with our back-packs strapped on, and perhaps with nothing more than our combined gung-ho spirit to rely on. That mountain adventure continues to this day, as the range goes on extending and expanding.
Our first home was a hotel room along Victoria Street. It had an attached toilet but was stripped of all its furniture. (thank you Uncle Ricky!)
Our first office served as our creative hide-out, rehearsal space,
admin corner and function room - here, celebrating my 29th
birthday with Debbie, Marianne & Srinivasan.
We were there for six months. We didn't even give it a thought, but it certainly was the first stage in a do-or-die mission. In the months and weeks before this, I had just parted with my copywriter's job, Ruby, her marketing executive position and Jasmin had just returned after a year's stint in Jakarta.
We had saved some money from the previous 30 months. Our well-wishing friends and families had chipped in.
But what would it take to run a company? A theatre company in Singapore?
And...
Though we had previously functioned as a group we had in most parts, creatively, worked independently. Now we were in a room with no place to hide (maybe the toilet) in case tempers frayed - which did. And now, Debbie had also joined us - so there was even less physical room to manouvre.
We must have done quite well staging family theatre performances that we were commissioned to create and stage a full-length musical - Strawberry Shortcake Extravaganza. (Thanks "Playthings"). This was going to be our first venture into a structured theatre - World Trade Center Auditorium. With 30 adult and child cast members. How to rehearse in that room? Ha Ha. Fortunately Sylvia Mccully came to our aid in lending us her dance studio. (many thanks, Sylvia!)
How we managed to produce our first full-scale theatre production, I shall talk about later.
Next, I'd like to share the charm of children's theatre, where we interact with the audience and where spontaneous reactions take on a live of their own.
The journey continues with: "Prince, you have to kiss her harder"........
2012. all copyrights strictly reserved. R Chandran/ACT 3 Theatrics.
