Front Row

Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we recommend a staging of Hamlet by the Shakespeare’s Globe . Then, we explore a few of the hundreds of performances by the...

Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we’re featuring some readings by children’s author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers . Then, we find out more about the U...

Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we discuss the play Wonderland which tells the story of the 1984 miners’ strike in the UK. Then, we look at local spoken wor...

Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we dive into the wizarding world of Harry Potter as the first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is made availab...

Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we give props to “ Classical Kids Storytime ”, a podcast series for parents to sneakily introduce classical music to t...

Stuck at home with nothing to do because of the Movement Control Order? Worry not, because we're here to keep the boredom at bay. Every day, we present our special curated list of arts, culture, and entertainment that you can experience right from your own home. Today, we talk about National Theatre’s streaming of the play “ One Man Two Guvnors ” starring James Corden. Then, we t...

 In our final show in a series covering the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama 2020 (TPAM 2020), we highlight a Belgium-based performance company called fieldworks, which presented three shows at the event. We speak with founders Heine Avdal and Yukiko Shinozaki about their view of contemporary performance, and how they create works that are both site-specific yet are able to travel.  S...

In our fourth show in a series covering the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama 2020 (TPAM 2020), we spotlight the Malaysian performer who was featured at the event, dancer/choreographer Lee Ren Xin. We speak with her about how she transposed her project, which involved becoming part of a community through a ritual of daily walking and dancing in Section 19 (Petaling Jaya) for 18 months, into a Ja...

In our third show in a series covering the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama 2020 (TPAM 2020), we feature two Southeast Asian artsmakers whose works headlined the event: Eko Supriyanto from Indonesia, and Thanapol Virulhakul from Thailand. We speak to them about their approach to performance, and what contemporary performance means within the context of this region. See omnystudio.com/listener f...

Sometimes, the lines between art, storytelling and history can be blurred to produce interesting results. This is the case with art historian Simon Soon’s first solo exhibition, called The Tyger and the Navigator, or “Sha’er Datok Keramat dengan Sang Mualim”. The show is described as using found digital objects to stage a historian epic of the 18th century Malay world - we...

Inspired by the 1965 P. Ramlee movie “Masam-Masam Manis”, Teater Normcore’s latest stage production “Masam Manis” takes the idea of two bickering neighbours who unknowingly fall in love and adds in a healthy dose of modernity and virtual reality. The result is an examination of public and private spaces, as well as the many personas we each inhabit. We speak with the...

In our second show in a series covering the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama 2020 (TPAM 2020), we speak with the meet’s director Hiromi Maruoka about the beginnings of the event, how it has evolved, and what this year’s shows say about the performing arts field in Asia.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

theatrethreesixty’s latest theatre production, “24 Jam Dalam 37 Tahun” focuses on the story of a young man growing up without a proper father figure, amidst a fractured parental relationship. We speak with two of the actors from the show to hear about bringing the story to life. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the first of our series of shows covering the Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama 2020 (TPAM 2020), three arts critics from Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what interesting ideas emerged from the meet. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Artist Fauzan Omar has been drawn to working on environmental themes in his work almost since the beginning of his career. In his latest exhibition called “Extremely Excessively Harsh”, he continues his fascination with both the natural world and the impact of development and globalisation by drawing on phenomena like the haze and the Australian wildfires. We speak to Fauzan about how...

Akira Kurosawa’s seminal film, Rashomon, set a new standard for storytelling by using the non-linear narrative and the unreliable narrator. Locally, The Actors Studio’s stage adaptation of the classic film has been staged three times, and represents the company’s 30-year-collaboration with The Japan Foundation, Kuala Lumpur. Now, with Rashomon returning to the stage here for the...

In his latest exhibition called “27 Years of Lazarian Delights”, artist and architect Chong Yan Chuah plays space explorer. He has returned to Earth after 27 years of adventure in a planetary system with three planets, two suns and three moons, and has brought back evidence of his adventures. Bringing together scientific knowledge and fiction, the exhibition plays with reality and fant...

Street photography is fast emerging as one of the most popular genres of photography, and a local exhibition is looking to highlight the potential within this field. Called “Pictures of Life”, the exhibition brings together a diverse variety of works that each reinterprets the idea of street and travel photography. We speak to the people involved to understand the many facets of this g...

In “Prerna”, classical Indian dance forms - in this case, bharatanatyam and odissi - are used to explore the issues and emotions faced by the mother of a child who has autism. We speak with dancer/choreographer Sandhya Manoj about how the show uses classical dance to tell a timeless story of motherhood and acceptance. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The moon is often associated with love, passion, and madness - and all of these qualities are channelled into a joint night of performances called “Kinnara - Moon People”, which brings together dance, music, poetry, and theatre. We speak with three of the performers behind the show, dancer/choreographer Geetha Shankaran Lam, writer/performer Lam Ghooi Ket, and musician Hariraam Tingyua...

New artists can often find it a challenge to establish what their works are about and where they are heading. An exhibition called “Tikitiboo” - a word derived from the British occupation of India, which means “everything is fine and alright” - tries to provide a space to examine these questions, by featuring emerging artists of diverse backgrounds. We speak with the organi...

Nikola Madzirov is a poet, essayist, literary translator and editor from Macedonia, born to a family of Balkan War refugees. His poetry has been translated into over 30 languages. During his recent visit to Malaysia for the George Town Literary Festival, we spoke to Madzirov about the roots of his poetry, the value of sharing his work with the world, and how his works often speak of a sense of bot...

Ahmad Fuad Osman is one of Malaysia’s most interesting contemporary artists, who has been creating work since the early 1990s. His work draws on Malay and Malaysian culture, history and sociopolitical events, with a lot of emphasis on research. A mid-career survey of Fuad’s work, called “At the end of the day even art is not important”, is being held at the National Art Gal...

For artist Sean Lean, the past is made up of contradicting cultures that sit, sometimes oddly, next to each other - coming from a “traditional” Malaysian Chinese upbringing, his childhood memories are made up of everything from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, to Lord of the Rings, TVB dramas to American sitcoms. Drawing on these, Lean presents “M2”, a series of works that me...

Playwright Fasyali Fadzly, who made his name in the indie Malay theatre scene, is publishing his debut collection of plays called “Teater Juta-Juta”, bringing together the last decade of his writing for the stage. We speak with Fasyali about his evolution as a playwright, and why it’s important to create a published body of Malaysian theatre works. See omnystudio.com/listener for...