Less than Half

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?