Steph's thoughts on directing hungry

Ideas that I like from previous productions

- In destinies of flowers, there were 2 stories unfolding within the performance space, segregated only by different levels. This might take time, but I thought it would be good to have one space used for time-of-death scenes and the other for purgatory. Or we could do certain scenes together, reconstruct the play to be more interesting? For example, the mui choo and baby death scene could be done on the same stage. The water effect of the womb and the drowning will be the theme of lights/shadow puppetry for the scene. We could show how baby was disappointed and in pain during the abortion alongside Muichoo's thoughts of losing her baby during drowning.

- In R0meo and Woyzeck, there was a recurring symbol. Maybe we could think of an object that best represents hungry/greed in an asian concept. Booboo can think of some chinese idiom about greed that has an object in it.

- For POOP, I thought their use of sidelights was interesting. We could do the "please do not cross the yellow line" thing at the mrt. Make sarah die in the railway tracks so we adapt hungry to Singapore today. However, we will still keep the toilet scene cus shit is important in this play (lol).

- In Madwoman's Diary, I felt that their use of shadow puppetry was interesting. Like what I suggested before, I felt that the "humans" could be a shadow of the ghost world. Shadow puppetry could tell parts of the story too, like the garden of Eden.

- Seven boards of tricks used a simple set design to show different shapes and scenes. I felt that boxes could be turned to chairs, tables and toilet bowls that open up to give you things like shit.

- SRT's Midsummer's in 2007 had an interesting stage that looked like |++| The lines represent the elevated performance space and the spaces in between are where the audience sit.

Styles which I think would suit Hungry best

The episodic nature of expressionism, the simple concept of realism (realism in selective naturalism) and shadow puppetry (and other forms of puppetry where needed).

Reasons

There is no way the play is going to be naturalistic, it is definitely episodic.
We want realism so that the audience still can relate to the characters who are from a different dimension.
The play if in a different world. We need puppetry to show elements of that dimension that is not present in real life. Furthermore, the use of shadows is apt as our world is a shadow of theirs and their world a shadow of ours. Shadows connect our dimensions together.

Elements which I think Hungry should have

I picked most of the elements out from the plays I have watched already.
However, in addition to that, I felt that we should include more elements of movement and puppetry. scramble the script and pick out only important lines. I felt that a well made play structure would make it so much more interesting. We could improv certain scenes during workshopping. Find objectives of certain scenes and show, using movements and puppetry, those objectives without lines. Then we insert certain important lines/ repeat those lines so that the audience will get it. It is no use saying an important line once because the audience will forget it. Unless there are very little lines or many actions that lead up to that one line, chances are, the audience will forget that line because there are so many other lines.

Also, I agree with Melvyn on a very very simple set. boxes can be used to create tables or chairs. The scene could be shown through the shadow puppetry backdrop. The boxes can be aligned to be the round canteen table or the straght bio lab table. they can even be drawn on to show the actual shape of the object. Different sides can be used/covered. We draw lines on the boxes and when they come together they form a shape.