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By now, many in the performing arts scene would have known of the name Ridhwan Saidi. He had staged 3 of his Teater Modular series (the final one I reviewed here), and recently staged his second Teater Normcore, “Stereo Genmai”. If you have known him as a novelist previously, Stereo Genmai was one of his novels. He adapted it into a two act play for Teater Normcore, and it was staged in Kotak, Five Arts Centre last week.
If you haven’t heard of Teater Modular, you must have not been around the theatre scene this past year. If you haven’t catch any of the three Teater Modular, then you have been missing out on the most neoteric entry to the Malay theatre scene, and to contemporary theatre as a whole – Ridhwan Saidi and his playlets.
When I heard that Ian Nathaniel’s I’M ENTERTAINMENT was doing an exhibit style production on mental health, I thought, “That sounds like a Duality ripoff.” Not that I didn’t like Duality – it had an interesting take on sexuality with a rather interesting concept, and I’m all for more newer forms of theatre- it’s just that i just did not trust this production to be able to pull it off well by giving justice to the content it was presenting.
And I was right!