It's Not About The Numbers for theatre group's new series
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As part of The Theatre Practice's new series for small audiences, Theo Chen (left) will be presenting days to come when I cease to..?, a one-on-one experience in which he will exchange stories and memories with a single attendee at a time.
PHOTO: THE THEATRE PRACTICE
Vianne Chia
For the performing arts industry, the pandemic's constantly changing restrictions on live audience capacities have suggested that size is no longer everything. Which begs the question: How low can you go?
For home-grown theatre company The Theatre Practice, the answer could be eight, two or even one.
On Saturday, it is launching a new series, It's Not About The Numbers, which comprises six live in-person programmes for audiences as small as one.
Its artistic director Kuo Jian Hong, 54, says drastically reducing audience sizes gives theatre-makers the space and resources to create works that would otherwise be financially untenable.
She believes smaller settings will allow audiences to "discover intimate connections through bite-size adventures and surprising encounters".
At present, live performances can host up to 500 fully vaccinated people, up from the phase two (heightened alert) limit of 100, vaccinated or not, with pre-event testing.
Should the Covid-19 situation remain under control, event capacity limits could be raised to 1,000 vaccinated people from next Thursday.
Still, the frequent fluctuations in the rules have left arts groups wary of big shows.
Smaller audiences make works more resilient in the face of such changes, says Kuo. "After a year of postponements and cancellations, artistes and audiences alike have the assurance that this show will go on."
It's Not About The Numbers includes performances, installations and workshops.
Ng Mun Poh's monologue Daughter, about a woman returning home after her father's death, will be performed to an audience of eight.
Days to come when I cease to..? is a one-on-one experience in which theatre-maker Theo Chen will exchange stories and memories with a single attendee at a time. This means that over the show's three-day run, it will be experienced by only nine people.
It's Not About The Numbers comes in the wake of "an exhausting and disempowering two years", says Kuo. "It offers artistes and audiences a refuge where the numbers don't always need to make sense."
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE NUMBERS
WHERE The Theatre Practice, 54 Waterloo Street; Objectifs - Centre for Photography and Film, 155 Middle Road
WHEN Saturday to Aug 29, various timings
ADMISSION $20 from practice.bigtix.io/e
INFO Some works are performed in Mandarin and Cantonese without surtitles