The Necessary Stage - Main Season

Main Season

For its main season, The Necessary Stage produces an average of four plays a year at its Black Box and at other venues. These include plays for the Singapore Arts Festival. The plays are original, mostly devised pieces created in a collaborative process that is based on research, improvisation before scripting, and input from all members of the production. This process has produced many important works which were not only popular successes but also critically acclaimed, including:

• Boxing Day: The Tsunami Project (2005),
• Top Or Bottom (2004),
• Sing Song (2004),
• koan (2003),
• BOTE: The Beginning Of the End (2002),
• godeatgod (2002 & 2004),
• Close – in my face (2002),
• ABUSE SUXXX!!! (2001),
• Completely With/Out Character (1999),
• Pillars (1998),
• Rosnah (1995, 1996, 1997 & 2006),
• Off Centre (1993 & 2007)
• Fundamentally Happy (2006 & 2007),
• Still Building (1993)
• Good People (2007)
• Gemuk Girls (2008)
• "_____ Can Change" (2010)
• "Model Citizens" (2010)
• "Balek Kampong" (2011)

The Necessary Stage's international collaboration, Separation 40, was produced with Malaysian theatre company Dramalab, and was staged at the Esplanade as part of its Theatre Studio Season, and at Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre.

In June 2006, The Necessary Stage presented Mobile, a creative collaboration involving talents from Japan, The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, as part of the Singapore Arts Festival. Mobile also toured to Kuala Lumpur following its world premiere in Singapore for a 3-day run at The Actors Studio in Bangsar, as well at to Setagaya Public Theatres in Tokyo in March 2007.

2007 sees The Necessary Stage celebrating its 20th anniversary. As part of its celebration, the company will be staging two works - one, a seminal piece first staged in 1993 and reprised in 2007; and another, a brand new work to be premiered in November at The Necessary Stage Black Box.

The Necessary Stage's production, Off Centre was presented at Esplanade Theatre Studio as part of The Studios Season in May 2007 and received accolades and warm responses from the audience and press. The play has been selected by the Ministry of Education (Singapore) as part of the GCE 'O' and 'N' level literature syllabus from 2007 onwards.

In November 2007, The Necessary Stage presented another a brand new play that dealt with the issue of living, dying and the pain in between. Good People looks at the relationship between 3 people - Miguel, the new Medical Director trying to run a tight ship; Yati, a jaded nurse making the best of a ‘dead-end’ job; and Radha, the terminally-ill patient addicted to marijuana to relieve her pain. Moving, humorous and evocative, Good People looks at urgent contemporary issues through the test of personal relationships. The play received critical acclaim and popular acclaim in Singapore, and traveled to Kuala Lumpur in May 2008. It was nominated in 7 categories of the 2008 Life! Theatre Awards and won the Best Original Script award.

In October/November 2008, The Necessary Stage staged Gemuk Girls, a bold and darkly humorous look at family politics and the politics of the day. Gemuk Girls was a three-hander, featuring a mother-daughter duo Kartini (a loud and overbearing hippie mother) and Juliana (a straitlaced young woman on the threshold of entering politics). One day, they receive shocking news about Kartini's father who had been arrested and detained in the 1960s. The play dealt with the controversial issue of ex-political detainees and detention without trial, but went beyond the political realm to look at how it impacted personal and family life and history. It received critical acclaim from various presses, and toured to Kuala Lumpur in December 2008. "Gemuk Girls" also swept the Best Script, Production of the Year and Best Actor (for Najib Soiman's portrayal of the ex-political detainee) at the 2009 Life! Theatre Awards.

The Necessary Stage's most recent works include _____ Can Change (part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2010), Model Citizens (as part of our main season in 2010 and which was restaged in the 2011 M1 Singapore Fringe Festival), Those Who Can't, Teach (staged as part of the Singapore Arts Festival 2010), as well as Balek Kampong (part of our main season in 2011)