Frozen Angels (2008)
Title: Frozen Angels
Dates: 21st – 23rd March 2008
Venue: University Cultural Centre Dance Studio
Type of Production: Interdisciplinary Theatre Production
Country of Production: Singapore
Year of Production: 2008
Presented by The Necessary Stage (TNS)
as part of the NUS Arts Festival 2008
Production Credits:
Director – Alvin Tan
Playwright – Haresh Sharma
Multimedia Artist – Loo Zihan
Medialogist – Joszef Vamosi
Cast – Cheryl Lee, Kevin Zhang
Production Stage Managers – Elnie Shumastri Mashari, Juraidah Rahman
Production and Make up Assistant – Molizah Mohd Mohter
Production Intern – Layla El-Deeb
Synopsis:
As the world advances its research on life sciences, stem cells and artificial intelligence, what impact is there on human life and relationships? What does the future hold? Can life be built from scratch? Frozen Angels is a workshop-performance exploring current issues of science, using digital media and theatrical performance.
Alvin’s Notes on the Process:
Frozen Angels underwent an interdisciplinary process. We started by reading a lot of articles related to stem cell issues, attending talks and interviewing key experts from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine’s Centre for Biomedical Ethics. We were grateful for the many valuable inputs from the Centre’s Director, Professor Alastair (Chen Su Lan Centennial Professor in Medical Ethics) and his Research Fellow, Dr Jacqueline Chin.
We had a week of rehearsals which included a writing session with the actors and improvisations with actors and the multimedia artists. This phase saw the creation and evolution of characters with 3 narratives that engage with the themes surrounding stem cell issues.
We then started exploring various permutations of the 3 narratives, and how they could be presented. We worked both in the Black Box – exploring form and content – and outside – filming and creating new materials. By the end of February, we had a first draft of the interdisciplinary composition. The next 2 weeks we reviewed the first draft, had more discussions and exploration and recomposed the work for the final week of rehearsal.
The major challenge we faced for Frozen Angels was how to bring a complex subject matter into a human focus and what interdisciplinary theatre can offer to effectively achieve that objective. As i write this process note, we are still exploring. - 25th February 2008
Reviews:
“The play’s superficially about stem cell technology, but in fact it reaches down to grasp at the roots of the human condition: love and death, which even the promise of eternal life through science may not conquer…… dual screen projections and live video feeds work seamlessly with the live action, with the actors making use of the space behind the screen as much as that in front of it.”
- Ng Yi-sheng (Flying Inkpot Theatre Reviews)
“Uncharacteristically for the theatre company, this work featured heavy use of multimedia, and it was a triumph….. Intelligent permutations of live and pre-recorded material also fleshed out the ideas of cloning and reproduction, and technology intruding into life.”
- Adeline Chia (The Straits Times, Life!)
Production Photos: (provided by TNS)
