ACTive Encounter 2024

ACT x ADN Session 1: Doing Dramaturgy in China and an Introduction to the Asian Dramaturgs' Network

This panel seeks to survey the practice of dramaturgy both within the context of China and in relation to the immediate history of the Asian Dramaturgs’ Network (est. 2016). The invited practitioners and respondents from China, Hong Kong and Singapore will offer summaries and reflections of the contemporary past and present of dramaturgical doing in the region, and identify both resonances and divergences in theory and practice.

MODERATOR: KOK HENG LEUN

SPEAKERS: LIM HOW NGEAN, JANICE POON, ZHAO ZHIYONG

RESPONDENTS: DR. SHI KE, GUO CHENZI

ACT x ADN Session 2: Dramaturgical Memory(ies): Case Studies from Southeast Asia

What - and how - do dramaturgs remember? This dialogue on the dramaturg-as-archive will explore the embodied histories, cultural memory, and thick relationships that emerge from long-term dramaturg-artist collaborations across Southeast Asia, and how these relationalities are shaped over time by the artist’s evolving body of work, as well as their personal histories and positionalities.

SPEAKERS: KOK HENG LEUN, NIA AGUSTINA, LIM HOW NGEAN

MODERATOR: CORRIE TAN

ACT x ADN Session 3: Am I A Dramaturg? - Embodied Experiences and Practices

This dialogue and sharing session invites emerging artists and practitioners with an interest in dramaturgy to discuss their collaborative practices and relationships, and how they might begin to cultivate their own dramaturgical thinking and toolkits based on their specific contexts. Following an introduction to the work of the Asian Dramaturgs’ Network, we will think together and exchange knowledge about how dramaturgy might be practised in different ways, and with different methodologies and vocabularies.

CO-FACILITATORS: CORRIE TAN, NIA AGUSTINA

ACT x ADN Session 4: Roundtable: Dramaturgies of Expanded Festival-Making

What have we come to expect of festivals, and what elements of festival-building do we take for granted? Beyond the conventional boundaries of the festival as a live performance event, how does the curation of community-building and place-making enter these conversations? This panel explores the often invisible dramaturgy of festival-making and communal creative gatherings, and how approaches to artistic directorship of these platforms, whether national or niche, large or small, shape the festival’s final form and role.

OPENING SPEAKER: CHIAKI SOMA

MODERATORS: OPHELIA HUANG, CORRIE TAN