Nothing by Natalie Hennedige

And with Natalie Hennedige's Nothing, the first season of Open Roads comes to a close!


Thank you for all your support ... and see you for season 2 in 2011!

Mergers and Accusations by Eleanor Wong

Nine of us gathered this afternoon to talk about Eleanor Wong's Mergers and Accusations. Closing the session was the playwright herself.

Up next for Open Roads is our last session of the year. On Sat, 27 Nov, 2pm - 4pm, Substation Classroom 1, we'll be looking at Natalie Hennedige's Nothing which won the Life! Theatre Award for Best Play in 2008 when it was staged by Hennedige's company, Cake Theatrical Productions.

Hennedige's unique imagination and theatrical sensibility manifests itself powerfully in this meditation on life and death and this is an opportunity not only to catch video clips of the 2007 production but also to talk to Hennedige who will be our special guest for the afternoon.

A review of the play is available here:
http://inkpot.com/theatre/07reviews/0428,noth,at.html

To register for the session, email us at admin@inkpotreviews.com. The fee is $5 which you can pay on the day itself.


Note: The play is not available in the form of a published script but Hennedige has kindly given us permission to email copies of the script to participants in advance of the meeting.

Mergers and Accusations by Eleanor Wong

The next play that the Open Roads book club will be talking about is Mergers and Accusations by Eleanor Wong. The session will be held on Sat 13 Nov, 2pm - 4pm, Substation Classroom 1, and the playwright herself will be joining us for a Q&A to close the session.

In addition, TheatreWorks and W!ld Rice have kindly lent us videos of the 1993 and 2003 productions of Mergers and Accusations and we will be watching excerpts during the session as well.

To register for the session, email us at admin@inkpotreviews.com. The fee is $5 which you can pay on the day itself.

(Advisory: Please note that due to the adult themes of the play, the session is open only to those 18 and above.)

"To label her trilogy as lesbian plays is to be reductive. These plays succeed primarily because they are textured, weaving ruminations on personal identity, love and friendship, family and kinship, religious faith, the inextricable connection between the personal and political, the dialectics of centre and margin." - Dr K. K. Seet on Invitation to Treat

First staged in 1993, the play about Ellen Toh, a closeted lawyer who falls in love with a woman after committing to a marriage of convenience with a man, went on to win the 1996 National Book Development Council of Singapore Award - Drama. It also spawned the sequels Wills and Secession (1995) and Jointly and Severably (2003). The play is available in the TheatreWorks collection Dirty Laundry, Mergers & Undercover: Plays from Theatreworks` Writers' Lab and Wong's collection of her trilogy, Invitation to Treat. Both collections are available at the national library.

Reviews of the play can be found here:
1. The Flying Inkpot: http://www.inkpot.com/theatre/03reviews/03revinvitreamergaccuwillsece.html
2. The Flying Inkpot: http://www.inkpot.com/theatre/01reviews/01revmergaccuwillsece1.html