Content advisories: This story is about a character who is dealing with depression and contains strong images and language associated with suicidal thoughts and actions. There are non-photographic depictions of injured animals in distress.

“Inventive and impactful. Django in Pain serves as an important remainder of the powers of connection and accountability.” — The Unforgettable Line

“A day will come when you might need to kill a wolf; a mad wolf out there, or a wolf inside of you...”

A playwright wants to write a happy play, but he can't because his main character is so depressed that he wants to end his life. Hopefully the playwright will find a way to give Django’s journey a happy ending. Or is it the other way around?

Django in Pain is an astonishing, exquisitely detailed and healing piece about depression, creativity and love. Made and staged within the isolation of the early days of the pandemic in New York City, using only hand-made puppets and scrap materials found around their home, this feature-length table-top puppet show filmed on a cellphone chronicles the often-humorous with razor edges of grief misfortunes and adventures of Django—a puppet loosely inspired by Django Reinhardt, and a stray dog that keeps getting in his way. A deeply personal and at the same time universal, multi-layered tale of despair, loyalty and hope.

Django in Pain premiered in New York City in October 2021 to rave reviews. The Spanish version, Django con la Soga al Cuello, has been presented in Mexico and Argentina, where it received more than 6000 views in just three days.

“In a world that seems to give us lots of reasons to give up, Django in Pain is a cry of hope.” — Juan Carlos Araujo, Entretenia.com (translated from Spanish)

Artist Statement

The way that the piece was created is in itself an exploration of the timeless questions about creativity and collaboration within the constraints of isolation and the healing powers of art in times of inner turmoil.

Django in Pain is an uplifting tabletop puppet show that deals with depression and suicide ideation in a way that is at the same time deeply personal and universal. The main characters, a Playwright and Django—a puppet loosely inspired by musician Django Reinhardt—are both struggling with different levels of depression. Hopefully the playwright will find a way to give Django’s journey a happy ending. Or is it the other way around?

By stripping the theme of depression and suicidal thoughts from the shame and prejudice that still surrounds it, we hope to offer both complexity and understanding of the issue in a responsible and respectful way.

The unusual creating process and the hybrid “theatrical-cinema” digital result is our creative response to the challenges we face as theatre artist in unexpected difficult times.

Our aim is that Django’s journey brings hope, happiness, and life to those in despair.

“The fact that it’s actually more relevant today than when it was written 100 years ago suggests that the world we currently live in has some serious problems.” — Heather Taylor Johnson, InDaily

“The audience is left both dumbfounded and in awe at the end of this hour of theatre. It has been a mighty trip into a hideous hypothetical. It has been a display of masterful acting, it has been a graphic lesson in humanity and an unforgettable experience.” — Samela Harris, The Barefoot Review

An adaptation of Franz Kafka’s A Report to an Academy, Kafka’s Ape is a solo performance about a primate’s struggle to overcome the confines of captivity. The hard-hitting play presents a metaphorical view on South African society, highlighting the complexities of identity in post-apartheid South Africa as well as in the human race.

An ape named Red Peter is captured. In his quest to break out of his confinement, he learns to imitate humanity and contests identity based on outward appearance. Through his journey, Kafka’s Ape questions the understanding of otherness.

Miyambo has received multiple accolades for this powerful performance, including Winner of Outstanding Performance award at Prague Fringe Festival 2019, Best Satire Award at New York’s United Solo Festival 2019, and the Graham F. Smith Peace Foundation Award at the Adelaide Fringe Festival 2021, among others.

Open captions in English for all shows.
Post-show dialogue on 13 January 2023, with speech to text interpretation available upon request. Please email your request to info@singaporefringe.com before 22 December 2022.

Artist Statement

The play explores, through the animal gaze, the tension between self and other. The borderland between human and animal presents the ape’s insatiable desire to become human, despite a world laden with racism, sexism, chauvinism, tribalism, etc.

Kafka’s Ape opens up the reality that there exists something outside of and in addition to our “normal,” “typical,” “wholesome” world—and that is “the other”. For Red Peter, a feeling of being trapped becomes determinative for existential truth. The play compels one to identify with and to meditate on their response to otherness, to interrogate how external sociological constructs and internal psychological constructs define the existential condition of the self and the other.

Set in an imagined, futuristic world, Sama Wholeness Centre believes in the country’s mandate that all human lives are Whole.

Citizens who do not conform to the status of Whole are put through a rigorous training programme that will help them achieve the desired status before gaining admission to the country. Citizens who fail the programme are ousted and lost forever. Given the high stakes, the recruits soon discover that they must work both individually and collectively. Uncertainty ensues.

What have these recruits really signed up for? Will these recruits choose to conform to the demands of the programme, or will they stick to their roots and embrace what makes them “less than half”?

Directed by Adib Kosnan and Yarra Ileto, and written by Aswani Aswath, Less Than Half is devised and performed by students from the BA (Hons) in Performance Making programme at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Co-presented with Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

Open captions in English for all shows.
Post-show dialogue on 6 January 2023, with speech to text interpretation available upon request. Please email your request to info@singaporefringe.com before 22 December 2022.

Artist Statement

Less than Half is a devised performance that hopes to explore complex issues such as privilege and inequality using experiences from the performers as verbatim texts juxtaposed with a fictional world where Sama Wholeness Centre exists. We seek to explore stories told from the perspectives of those in the minority. How is life experienced by the ones who make up less than half of the whole. Where is the nuances of interactions between those in positions of privilege and those in the minority? What makes a group or individual a minority? How does this term affect them in society? In our local context where we are still searching for what it means to be who we are as we continue to develop as a post-colonial nation, what are some of the attitudes and mindsets that are still shaped by our past and how do we move on from them?

“Whimsical yet powerful, Mother of Compost, is a show with ecological advice that’s worth hearing and heeding” — Seesaw

“Mother of Compost tackles climate change and social responsibility through the lens of young artists as they contemplate nature and regeneration, what legacy we will leave on our children, and whether it is, indeed a good idea to birth at all. Equal parts love-letter to and manifesto on ecology, Mother of Compost is ground-breaking theatre that serves to enrich the mind.” — The Fourth Wall

“Noémie Huttner-Koros was a joyful, sometimes sad, brilliant presence in the room.” — Weekend Notes

Dearest compost, I am your mother and I am your child.

We live in an ecologically precarious time. Some of us don’t want to bring children into this world, others are worried their children won’t have a world to grow old into... but we’ve still got a whole lot of love to give. Rethink what it means to give birth and be birthed, and dance along with us in this gooey, camp and interactive subversion of family portraits, birthing classes, and evolutionary biology.

Over the course of the performance, the audience transforms from strangers to the beginnings of a family. Mother of Compost is a queer and unruly family gathering and a communal grieving for what is being lost and everything left to fight for.

From the minds of queer performance-makers Noémie Huttner-Koros and director Andrew Sutherland, Mother of Compost asks you to roll up your sleeves this Fringe Festival… Change only comes from getting your hands dirty.

With the support of the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, Government of Western Australia.

Open captions in English for all shows.
Post-show dialogue on 5 January 2023, with speech to text interpretation available upon request. Please email your request to info@singaporefringe.com before 22 December 2022.

Artist Statement

“Mother of Compost re-imagines nurturing and family-making by inviting an audience to grow and entangle. Amidst the climate crisis and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, when we are so tempted to feel doom and alienation… this work invites us to care, parent and nurture even when it seems impossible.”

“This work had its beginnings during the horrific Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20 that burned across large swathes of the Australian continent. Smoke covered my hometown for weeks and I wondered about what it would mean to bring a child into this world.” 

“Mother of Compost is grounded in my practices of activism and intergenerational conversations, and explores how the energy of care-giving can be harnessed as we go into this uncertain future.”
— Noémie Huttner-Koros