ABOUT

Deonn is a freelance theatre-maker, born and raised in Singapore. As an actor, she has been a part of Esplanade’s “PLAYtime!” (2017 and 2021), Esplanade’s “Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts” (2020), M1 Fringe Festivals (2017 and 2018) and SIFA (2015).

Deonn is a part of Playwrights Commune, where she has been working on writing her own play, and hopes to have it be produced and staged one day. She is interested in people and their stories, and always having a good laugh.

Affectionately known to her patients as Dr Jess, Dr Jessherin Sidhu adopts a holistic approach to patient care at her clinic, Insync Medical. She is a firm believer that relationships, sexuality and sexual behaviour are factors that have a significant impact on overall health. With her sex-positive and health-focused approach, Dr Jess encourages safe and open discussions of sexual health issues that extend beyond just treating diseases. She actively incorporates the positive aspects of sexuality into her practice, such as education of self-exploration and masturbation, respect for one’s gender and sexual preference, and abolishing the shame surrounding menstruation, sex and sexuality to help decrease the stigma associated with sexual health.

Dr Jess loves incorporating the latest and novel treatment options and technology to help her patients restore, maintain or improve optimal sexual health.
She is also a mother of two who divides her time between her kids, her husband, her clinic and outreach work.

Sonia's practice is driven by a fascination with the body, examining the material(ity) of the body and interrogating body politics. Her work moves across disciplines and varying mediums, often through the roles of performer, creator, collaborator and/or facilitator in projects. She seeks to shape space-time for intimate encounters and visceral experiences, to open perspectives about the in-between and unspoken of. Sonia trained in acting and performance-making at the Intercultural Theatre Institute, and also holds a Bachelor of Creative Industries with Distinction from Queensland University of Technology.

Currently, Sonia is an associate artist with dance company P7:1SMA. Sonia also works regularly as a life model.

Lian Hock, 78, is a retiree who believes in now living the many dreams she had in her younger days. She spends her time training hard in ballet, violin, guzheng, singing and more. She has been dancing for years with a troupe currently based at Cairnhill CC, and has performed at many events, including the National Arts Council’s Silver Arts Festival, at old folks’ homes.

Lian Hock received the President's Volunteerism & Philanthropy Award in 2015.

Patricia, 60, has been a hairstylist and makeup artist/consultant for over 40 years, working with regional public figures and celebrities. She frequently imparts her skills, starting as a teacher at the famous Princess School in the 80s. She has also been a judge for numerous pageants including Miss International, Little Top Supermodel, and Teen Singapore. In 2015, she was given the Our Lady of Excellence award.

Patricia has two lovely sons and her passions and hobbies include singing, dancing, cooking, and selfies. She also loves Cosplaying with youths, and performs Yumi and Hippolyta with martial arts moves.

Tini is a sound artist and designer, field recordist and audio technician who works at the intersection of theatre and film sound design, live sound art performance, installation and collaborative projects. Her research interests include but are not limited to, forest networks, spatial acoustics, bio-music, botanical histories and the variables of data translations via biodata sonification.

Tini has been involved in projects and exhibitions across Asia Pacific and Europe. Her recent projects have been presented at National Gallery Singapore, NTU Center for Contemporary Art, Biennale Urbana at Caserma Pepe, Venice and Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei.

Suhaili is an artist both in theatre and music. Since 2005, she engages herself in various theatre productions both locally and overseas, such as “Inside Voices” (2019, Lazy Native) which won Best Outstanding Work at the annual Vaults Festival in London. Although Suhaili occasionally crosses her work into television and voice work, her greatest passion is to advocate for minority voices, which includes her most recent production with Drama Box, “Tanah°Air” (2019).

Suhaili also involves herself in acoustic folk, neo-soul gigs and various music collaborations from “Sounding Now’s Open Spaces” at YST Conservatory (2019), The Observatory’s “Playfreely” sessions, in particular, “No Man’s Land”, an all-women music improvisation (2017) and most recently SAtheCollective’s “ThirdSpace Sessions – Voce” (2020).

Having won numerous copywriting accolades, including awards from the New York Festivals and London Advertising Awards, Corinne was thrust into the hot seat of Editor of Cleo at 27, making her one of the youngest editors to head a top-selling women's publication at the time. She went on to pursue an illustrious career in the regional media industry, holding top positions at companies that included Editorial Director at Australian Consolidated Press (now part of SPH Holdings); Group Editor at Mediacorp; and Managing Director at Edipresse Media.

In 2020, amid the health pandemic, Corinne took the plunge and started a content strategy company called ContentMRKT, a move that she says was made with trepidation. ContentMRKT now has both global companies and SMEs in its client portfolio, and is also an associate consultant company for the Singapore Productivity Centre.

Anne, 73, is a retired teacher who lives with her children and grandchildren. Her hobbies include cooking, mahjong and gardening. She volunteers with the Appropriate Adult Scheme for Young Suspects (AAYS) at the Singapore Children’s Society.

An avid performer, Anne has taken part in black box performances with Theatre for Seniors (The Necessary Stage), in the stage play “From the Belly of the Carp”, a flamenco dance performance for Silver Arts Festival 2019, “Prank It” with Mediacorp, and TV series “She’s a Terrorist and I Love Her”.

Faizah served as a Nominated Member of Parliament from 2012 to 2014, where as a veteran nature advocate and environment educator, she focussed on weaving her environmental platform into every national issue, from education to health, from the economy to national development. Faizah considers voting against the government's contentious Population White Paper in 2013, on environmental grounds, as her most memorable Parliamentary experience. Formerly a corporate lawyer, Faizah is a pioneer in the field of Breathwork, a healing modality for mental and emotional health.

Faizah is one of the first few in Singapore to be a Certified Breathwork Facilitator in 2003. She continues to offer this work today.

Vasun is a Masterchef Season 2 contestant who conducts Thosai Masterclasses from her home and runs the food blog, Monsoon Table, in her spare time. Her passion lies in making thosai from scratch, indianising any dish and researching the food history of dishes, especially South Indian and South East Asian ones. In her kitchen, she often whips up dishes that exemplify the intersection between food, history and culture. When not in her kitchen, she may be found buried under the hundreds of cookbooks she has amassed from her travels, photographing food, or taking long walks.

In the near future, Vasun plans to host dining experiences at her home showcasing regional South Indian foods that are not often found here in Singapore.

A born and bred Singaporean Chinese, Dr. Martha Tara Lee is Relationship Counselor and Clinical Sexologist of Eros Coaching. She has a doctorate in human sexuality, masters in counselling and two other degrees. In practice for 12 years, Dr. Lee is also the appointed Resident Sexologist for sexual wellness boutique PinkLifestyle.com and Clinical Sexologist of Singapore Cancer Society. She was recognised as one of ‘Top 50 Inspiring Women under 40’ by Her World in July 2010, and one of ‘Top 100 Inspiring Women’ by CozyCot in March 2011. She is the author of 4 books.

Elsie struggles with the idea of a biography. She is in a state of wanting to strip off everything that has given her a sense of who she is. Her degrees, her work with children with special needs and teenagers on probation all seem far away and belonging to someone else. Even further away is the journalist who once believed she would change the world with her words.

Elsie considers herself 'bare naked' now and ponders when people want to know "who are you?"

Shivani is a graduate from the BA(Hons) Arts Management programme in NAFA (Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts), is currently the Company Manager for Jazz Cats Pte Ltd and a Freelance Production Stage Manager. Her fascination with the arts started as a dancer in the Indian classical dance form, Bharatanatyam. Since then, her pursuit has brought her to many productions with diverse people, collaborating as the Production Stage Manager.

Some credits include: “ETA 9 Mins” by Main Tulis Group (Stage Manager), Launch of Digital Archive of Singapore Tamil Theatre by National Library Board (NLB) and the Tamil Digital Heritage Group (TDHG) (Production Stage Manager), “In The Silence of Your Heart” by Esplanade (Assistant Stage Manager).

Rajkumar is a bilingual actor and playwright and has trained extensively under mentors such as Elavazhagan Murugan (Calvet, Avant Theatre), Edith Podesta (Young & Wild, Wild Rice), Goh Boon Teck (Wright Stuff, Toy Factory Productions) and Haresh Sharma (Playwrights’ Cove, The Necessary Stage) . Raj has written and performed autobiographical monologues such as “Aishwarya” (Kris P Production) and “The Patient” (Avant Theatre). His short play “Onthakan – The Blue Hour” won the 3rd prize in the 24-Hour Playwriting Competition in 2020 (T:>Works).

Raj is currently a member of Brown Voices, Singapore’s first Indian playwriting collective founded by Grace Kalaiselvi.

Pushpa was born in Hyderabad and is proud to be Sindhi. She was educated in Delhi, where she received training in handicraft, sewing, and embroidery. After graduating at 19, she married a businessman and moved to Singapore in 1958. She has two children and five grandchildren. Pushpa has had the good fortune of learning from various Masters on how to live a harmonious life. Hosting brings her immense joy. She enjoys creating new dishes for family and friends, as well as gifting them handmade cards and bookmarks made from recycled materials.

Pushpa loves to step out in style, and that's earned her the title of Sophia Loren of Geylang Bahru.

Geraldine Tan, founder of The Therapy Room, is a Registered Psychologist (SPS/SRP) and is also a Registered Clinical Supervisor (SPS). She has a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology (California) and has more than two decades of experience working with individuals with a multitude of psychological problems. She has been running sessions for special needs children since 2014. In 2016 to 2019, she was commissioned by a treatment home for teens and a gazetted protected home that housed children who have been abused, to run Camp Global®, a camp that she developed using multi-sensorial activities.

On top of her clinical practice, Geraldine conducts outreach workshops and talks for numerous organisations. She is sought after by and is featured widely in the local media to educate the public about the different disorders, earning her the title of “The People’s Psychologist”. She has an ongoing weekly radio and FaceBook live streaming session with a local national radio station.

Mumtaz is a Theatre Practitioner, Visual Artist and Art Director interested in creating and partaking in works about the body as a site of transgression, negotiation, rebellion and potential revelation. A performer who wears many hats, she has 36 years of experience in various fields such as acting, singing, dancing and management. As a member of the writing collective Brown Voices, Mumtaz wants to bring ethnocentric themes that are potentially unknown outside of the various Indian communities, to all theatre audiences.

As an actor, Mumtaz worked in plays such as “Goddesses of Words - Touch me Not” (2019) & “Angry Indian Women” (2020), “Vel! Vel!” (2021) for The Arts House; “Well of Silence” (2019) for T:>works and “Shakunthala” (2020) & “Amma’ s Sarees” (2021) for Esplanade’s Raga and PLAYtime respectively. She especially enjoys working in productions that involve lots of collaboration, workshopping and pushing emotional and physical boundaries. Mumtaz loves being on stage and every production is another chance to be grateful for her to be part of this beautiful artform!

Zizi Majid is a playwright / director whose work advocates for a shared humanity. Plays include “How To Gild An Eagle” (Finalist, Columbia@Roundabout); “Return To Fall” (Finalist, Blue Ink Playwriting Award (Chicago); Semi-Finalist National Playwrights Conference; Semi-Finalist Bay Area Playwrights Festival; Reading, Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Alaska). “Being In Time” (International Human Rights Arts Festival, NYC), “Coast” (Climate Change Theatre Action, NYC), “How Did The Cat Get So Fat?” (nominated Best Play, Life! Theatre Awards, Singapore) and “Yusof” (Pesta Raya 2015, Singapore).

Zizi was Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra (Singapore) garnering multiple awards during her tenure. She is the recipient of the Young Artist Award (NAC, Singapore) and Fellow of WP Theater’s 2020-2022 Lab, NYC. MFA Columbia University.

Zubee is a consultant in the NGO sector specialising in social issues faced by women and older persons who have been marginalised through economic or social barriers. As a learning and development professional, she has worked with the leading women’s organisations for the past ten years on community building programmes.

Zubee earned her Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management in 2017, and would like to bring the community together more through socially engaged art. Her biggest pride and joy to date is being grandmother to a precocious two year old girl.

Nabilah is a playwright, editor and poet. Recent work includes “Angkat” (2019), which won Best Original Script at the 2020 Life Theatre Awards, and “Inside Voices”, which won the Outstanding New Work award at London's VAULT Festival 2019. She was a dramaturg for “Where Are You?”, directed by Sim Yan Ying, which was presented under WILD Rice’s Directors’ Residency Programme in 2021. She has also presented work with companies such as Teater Ekamatra, The Necessary Stage and Bhumi Collective. She is the founder of collectives Main Tulis Group and Rupa co.lab.

Nabilah is currently the editor of regional arts website ArtsEquator. She has an MA in Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London. nabilahsaid.com

Sangeetha is an actor, singer and voiceover artist. Addressing race, sexuality and identity, her show “Building A Character” premiered at the Singapore Theatre Festival in 2018. A commission by Wild Rice for the 6th Singapore Theatre Festival, it was the first time that an actor of Indian descent had helmed a monologue in the Festival’s history; the sold-out show was also featured as The Business Time’s Top 3 theatre picks of the Year. She also scored a Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Life! Theatre Awards Singapore for her multi-character turn in “Three Fat Virgins Unassembled” (T:>Works, N.O.W. 2019) directed by Grace Kalai. Other selected performance credits include “Discord of Discourse” (UK), “Miss British” (Esplanade Studios), “Eloquence” (T:>Works, directed by Chilean director, Manuela Infante), “Merdeka” (Wild Rice), “Who’s There” (The Transit Ensemble), “The Coronalogues” (SRT), “Two Songs and a Story” (Checkpoint Theatre), “NDP 2020”, and “subtitled 1.0” (BTG).

As a singer, Sangeetha debuted her solo jazz concert “Sangeetha Sings Sinatra: Live at the Esplanade” in early 2019, and recently sang in “Edith Piaf - No Regrets” (Singtheatre). Her next concert, “Sangeetha and Simone”, is slated for 2022.

Janice’s mission is to help people #makelovetoyourself first before together let's #makelovegreatagain – 'know your body, own your pleasure'. As a firm believer of self-love and self-care, she sets out to promote sexual wellness as part of one’s total wellbeing. Professionally, she specialises in business development consultancy for sex-positive companies in the SexTech/FemTech space with a focus on SE Asian markets. She is also a sexual wellness advocate through her alter ego ‘Janicitaying’ whereby she creates a safe space for people to ask questions and open up healthy and authentic dialogues around Sex & Sexuality in Asia.

Connect with her on
IG : @janicitaying
FB : https://m.facebook.com/janicitaying/

Yvonne was a pre-school educator during her children's growing up years. She decided on a mid-life career switch to pursue her passion for food and went back to school at Sunrice Global Chef Academy to get her Diploma in Bakery and Pastry Arts. After interning at TWG Tea production kitchen, she worked in F&B in Singapore and later as a pastry chef in Bangkok.

Now retired, Yvonne enjoys hiking, which she picked up in July 2018. She's completely hooked onto the sport having completed unprecedented hikes of 30-50km. Hiking calms her mind and body while privileging her to the sights and sounds of nature. She has learnt to navigate muddy, slippery dirt, hidden obstacles and wild animals crossing her path. Yvonne hopes to continue this form of exercise as long as she can.

Saudah, 66, retired 4 years ago after a fulfilling and meaningful teaching career for 38 years. Though she loved teaching, she had very little time for herself then. With much research and planning, she is determined to have an enjoyable and enriching retirement focusing on herself and the community around her.

Currently, Saudah's priority is keeping herself physically and mentally healthy. She believes with good health she can better enjoy her retirement journey. Gardening works wonders for her as it gives her a connection to nature besides allowing her to transform spaces, waste material and many other things to good use.

Nabilah works closely with students to create the maps that point them towards their goals. She enables students to navigate the foreign terrain of developing in soft-skills and self. With the ability to carry out important but difficult conversations our youth have in today’s society, she traces the necessary routes for students, accompanying them with the right curriculum to fulfil their aspirations. She also facilitates difficult conversations in her work with Crit Talk by creating and holding space for alternative views in the Muslim community.

In her free time Nabilah is a multi-disciplinary artist and aspires to be an art therapist one day.

Evelyn, 64, is Catholic Eurasian. At 19, she left Singapore for a brief stint as an au pair (nanny) in Germany. She ended up staying for forty years, during which she married a German man, had two sons and became a single mum after 10 years of marriage. Evelyn then returned to Singapore and became legal guardian to her infant grandniece, who is now 12. Her sons and ward are her everything. Having lived in two different worlds, she has built more intimacy with Germany.

Evelyn's hobbies are reading, listening to classical music, and going to the theatre especially to watch ballet.

Grace, an Intercultural Theatre Institute graduate, is a freelance theatre practitioner and educator. Her works include “Amma’s Sarees” for The Esplanade’s PLAYtime, “Angry Indian Woman-The Trial” (Singapore Writer’s Festival), “Angry Indian Women” (Textures) & “Touch Me Not”, part of Goddesses of Words series with The Arts House, “Crocodiles in Kurtas and The Old Fogies” for The Esplanade’s OctoBurst and her own “Mother I” series. Acting works include “a line could be crossed…” & “Precise Purpose of Being Broken” (M1 Singapore Fringe Festival), “Four Horse Road” (The Theatre Practice), “Ms British” (Esplanade’s Studio Series), and “0600” (SIFA). She has also directed “Three Fat Virgins Unassembled” (T:>Works, N.O.W. 2021) & “The Good Farmer” for T:>Works.

Grace initiated and is a member of Brown Voices, a playwriting collective. Grace hopes to create more works representing the suppressed and minorities.

Catherine graduated from the Intercultural Theatre Institute (ITI, formerly known as TTRP) in 2016. She is focused on devising original works primarily as a bilingual theatre practitioner. She was last seen in Pathay Nimidam 2020’s Athey Athey and River Hongbao 2021’s Bring On The Bull. She has also directed a laboratory piece under Pink Gajah’s Magic Lab, Alter Egos and then helmed the actor’s training wing for the following cycle of the lab.

Catherine brought her solo, “Recurrence” to Bangkok Theatre Festival 2018 and was nominated for “Best Performance by International Artist”. She is now incubating her work, “Because I’m Me!”, at The Artground, under the initiative “GroundBreakers”. Catherine believes strongly in using theatre to engage and provoke people’s minds.

Jevon (he/they) is an artist and art worker. Taking on the forms of installations and time and context-bound interventions, his projects estimate the interplays between doubt and belief, as present in acts of caring, meaning-making, and holding faith. Working across disciplines, he has presented at platforms such as SIFA (2021), Singapore Art Week (2021), Fujinoyama Biennale (2020), and Esplanade Flipside Festival (2019). In the performing arts, his recent works include sound design for “Hot Pot Talk: The Measure of a Meal” (2021) led by Chong Gua Khee and Kokila Annamalai, being artist co-lead in “PASSAGE” (2021) with the Random Disturbances collective, and multimedia design for “Who’s There?” (2020), a digital theatre piece for New Ohio Theatre’s Ice Factory Festival.

Presently, Jevon is an active member of art collective Brack and transnational performance collective ROOM, and is working on conceiving practice as a long-term endeavour sustained by collaboration, decency, and patience.