Cynthia Lee McQuarrie and Cheryl Miles in "Gone Shopping"

Just figured that while I'm still getting hits for this site, I might as well advertise the fact that 251 cast members Cynthia and Cheryl have (extremely funny) supporting roles in Wee Li Lin's "Gone Shopping", which I just saw on Friday. Try and catch it leh! Support local film! (Li Lin says she'd work with either of them in a heartbeat).

(Btw that's Cheryl on the far right of this pic - Cynthia wasn't at the press conference. Amusingly, Cheryl plays a tai-tai and Cynthia plays the Malaysian shopgirl who serves her.)

Where they are nowish

I'm in NYC now, but I figure I oughta take this op to tell everyone what we're doing after the run!

LORETTA CHEN and I are both involved in Short and Sweet Singapore, a festival of 10-minute plays. Loretta's directing Ian Grody's "The Critics" and Andrew Lua's directing me "Frostbite". They're both going up in the last week of April:

Week 2
25 April to 29 April 2007, 8pm
Studio Theatre, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts
$25
Tickets here.

CYNTHIA LEE MACQUARRIE will be next acting in the chorus of Singapore Repertory Theatre's A Midsummer Night's Dream:

04 May to 27 May 2007 , 7.30pm
Fort Canning Park
Standard - S$43
Advance Ticket - S$33
VIP Package - S$78
Tickets here.

UPDATE: They didn't cast her in the end... and really, it wasn't that great a show to begin with.

CHERYL MILES will be singing regularly at Oosh, an alfresco bar in Tanglin Village.

AMY CHENG will be acting in Georgette, an upcoming musical I've written under Musical Theatre Limited - and it's another biographical play, this time on the Singapore painter Georgette Chen.

09 June and 10 June 2007, 3pm and 7:30pm
Esplanade Recital Studio
$25
Tickets here.

UPDATE: meh, she dropped out.

LEE WENG KEE and PAUL LUCAS don't have anything concrete lined up, but Paul should be directing more student shows with LaSalle shortly.

STANLEY NG will be stage managing for Little Red Shop's Between Woman and Man: The Erasure of Verena Tay.

20 April and 21 April 2007, 8pm
The Substation
$20 ($30 for both shows, which are actually different)
Tickets here.

O Fortuna

Also known as a reason to condemn us for witchcraft as well as smut. :)


At the retreat we held two months ago before rehearsals began, we ended up reading each other's fortunes on Tarot cards. As Loretta had already read my fortune following the second draft, I got Cheryl Miles to do a reading based on the question, "How will 251 go?"

Here is what she said:

1. 7 of Pentacles. Patience. There's a lot of love, a lot of effort from many different people going into this play.

2. The World. Growth and potential, honesty, influencing ideas through the play, creating a new world.

3. Ace of Pentacles, influencing the heart. Contentment of soil.

4. 10 of Pentacles, influencing the head. Wealth of ideas.

5. 10 of Cups, describing the recent past. A very enlightened project of great harmony.

6. The Magician, describing the near future. Male genius principle. ;)

7. The High Priestess, describing myself. I am the one who looks inward.

8. 6 of Cups, influencing events. Nostalgia.

9, 9 of Swords, hopes and fears. Radical change.

10. The Fool, outcome. The young one, revelling into the beauty of life, stepping into the unknown.

Cheap Thrill

I was out with Joyce Yao, one of my ex-schoolmates last week - she works for The Theatre Practice, which is committed not only to theatre research but also to community arts intitiative, such as their recent youth storytelling competition and their Poor Theatre Series, which provides emerging theatre practitioners with rehearsal space and an opportunity to perform their work to a non-paying audience. I wanted to know how come I'd never heard about this free theatre series - and realised that cheap and free theatre generally gets less publicity and media coverage than its more commercial counterparts - even in the case of DramaBox's Sing Your Way Home in last year's Singapore Theatre Festival, or Theatreworks's recent multimedia dance performance, Drift Net.

So, as an antidote to the capitalist sensationalism of 251, I'm proud to announce the launch of a listings page for theatre and dance costing $15 and under:

Cheap Thrill
http://cheap-thrill.blogspot.com

Feel free to write to me if you want your production listed. Any performance event may be listed.

Digital music

I think this might be interesting to forward to our sound designer. -YS

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kiat Han
Date: Mar 21, 2007 1:50 AM
Subject: 251 & ii-V-I
To: Ng Yi-Sheng

Dear Yi-Sheng,

This is Kiat Han. I spoke to you a coupla hours ago at the Theatre Idols show.

251 isn't merely the Annabel Chong number. Like I said, 251 is also ii-V-I, the very common musical progression in Jazz music.

Wikipedia has everything. Check this out- II-V-I - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. How incredible!

have fun,

Kiat Han