Inaugural Peer Pleasure youth fest kicks off next week

SINGAPORE — A theatre festival by the youth? That is what a new annual initiative called Peer Pleasure is setting its sights on.

Organised by arts company ArtsWok Collaborative, the inaugural edition will be held at the Esplanade over three days beginning Tuesday. It will feature five plays performed by students, and drama workshops and talks. All in all, some 80 students from Catholic Junior College, National Junior College, Raffles Institution, Nanyang Junior College and Hwa Chong Institution (College) are taking part in various capacities, from performing to being part of the festival’s production team.

“It’s a festival by youth, but it’s not just for youths. We want to get the dialogue going between young people and adults, but springboarding from young people’s voices,” said Ngiam Su-Lin, who co-founded ArtsWork Collaborative together with Ko Siew Huey.

If the festival’s name sounds familiar, it grew from the similar-themed eponymous mini-festival a decade ago under The Necessary Stage’s (TNS) M1 Youth Connection, which was eventually replaced by the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, which dropped the youth component. Peer Pleasure made a brief comeback as a student showcase at last year’s edition of the Fringe Festival but this new version will be on a bigger scale, with TNS artistic director Alvin Tan stepping in as Peer Pleasure artistic director for the first three editions.

The five productions are: Chong Tze Chien’s Poop, Sakinah Insari’s Nonya Macbeth, Alex Broun’s 10,000 Cigarettes, Verena Tay’s The Car and Wang Meiyin’s The Female Of The Species. Among workshops and talks is Chatabout Theatre, which is open to the public, and where the youth and adults are encouraged to discuss what it takes to create a youth theatre festival. “We want the ownership of the festival to be had by a larger arts community,” said Ngiam.

Despite the presence of a few youth-related theatre platforms and events — such as the Esplanade’s own Yfest, for instance, or the Singapore Youth Festival (SYF) or even the youth wings of various theatre companies — Peer Pleasure will be offering something different, said its organisers.

“We have lots of professional adults creating work for youths, but we don’t have national platforms celebrating youths creating works for youths. This fills a gap in the current landscape,” said Tan, who also pointed out that it will be unlike the school-based, competition-driven ideals of an event such as the Singapore Youth Festival.

Indeed, prior to next week’s festival proper, there had already been a mentorship programme where 10 students were taught the rudiments of production and stage management by stage manager Jason Ng. They are subsequently stage managing the five plays.

While Peer Pleasure might seem like a school-centric festival, Ngiam emphasised that won’t be the case for subsequent editions. “We don’t want it to be a school thing. We don’t want to replicate (what the schools do),” she said, adding that they envision commissioning works from young people or working with community-based youth groups, but at the same time not discounting inviting worthy works staged by a school’s drama club or for the SYF.

Recognising the importance of the festival, a few institutions — including the Esplanade, National Arts Council, Arts Fund and National Youth Council as well as the NIE-UNESCO CARE — have chipped in and next up, the festival is looking for more partners. “At this point, we’re looking for corporate sponsors. We’re really hoping it could be sustained,” said Ngiam.

MAYO MARTIN

Peer Pleasure runs from July 28 to Aug 1, at various times and venues at the Esplanade. For more details, visit http://www.peerpleasure.org or http://www.facebook.com/ppfestival. Tickets for the plays as well as the drama workshop are available on SISTIC. For enquiries, email enquiries [at] artswork.org. The Chatabout Theatre event will be held on Aug 1, 11am, at the library@esplanade and is free to the public.