BoD Episode 23: Natalie Hennedige

Natalie Hennedige is the founder and artistic director of CAKE, a Singapore-based performance company creating interdisciplinary works across diverse spaces. At the core of CAKE’s methodology is a commitment to interdisciplinarity and collaboration. The company works across theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film, and multimedia to generate hybrid forms that resist categorisation. This is embodied in long-running platforms such as Jamming Space and Running with Strippers, which function as exploratory frameworks for artistic exchange, experimentation, and the development of new performance vocabularies.

A director and writer, Natalie works with performers and artists across disciplines and cultural contexts, shaping highly constructed, heightened worlds that interrogate complex states. She is the recipient of the National Arts Council Young Artist Award and the JCCI Singapore Foundation Culture Award. Most recently, she served as Festival Director of the Singapore International Festival of Arts (2022–2025).

 https://www.caketheatre.co/

This monthly gathering invites directors and other theatre makers to come together, share experiences, and seek advice in a supportive community. There is often an isolating nature to directing, and this new space aims to foster connection and collaboration. The Board of Directors is an opportunity to set aside time each month to be alongside members of the Directing community all over the world. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:42

There are artists whose work immediately invites you in, and there are artists whose work asks something more difficult of you. Natalie Hinedekay has always been that second kind for me. When I lived and worked in Singapore, Natalie was making some of the most singular and experimental work in the country. In a culture often perceived as orderly, pragmatic, and cautious, her work felt wild, imaginative, and deeply unconcerned with pleasing everyone in the room. I didn't always understand it. Sometimes I resisted it. Sometimes I wasn't even sure I liked it. But I always respected it, because it was unmistakably hers. And I also saw how many people were profoundly moved by it. Over the years, I invited Natalie to work with my students, not because I wanted them to imitate her, but because I knew she would offer a fundamentally different way of thinking about theater, about process, about imagination itself. She challenged assumptions, she complicated certainty, she expanded what performance could be. In this conversation, we talk about artistic evolution, about founding cake theatrical productions, about influences that range from European modernism to ritual and contemporary performance. We talk about fear, authorship, experimentation, and what it means to build a creative life inside a country, negotiating tradition and transformation at the same time. What emerged was a conversation not just about theater, but about permission. Permission to follow an imagination wherever it insists on going. This is my conversation with Natalie Hennedigan. Natalie, thanks for joining me on a Saturday morning and being here after an email out of the blue after many, many years. I first saw your work on like day three of being in Singapore, and I remember being challenged by it. Um, and I and I I'm gonna say something, and I hope you take it with the respect that I intend it. Your work wasn't always to my taste, but I could never ignore it. It didn't feel like anything else being done in Singapore, and I truly appreciated that and wanted to seek you out to direct work with our students and form that pipeline with the school. And um, I would go and see everything that Cake did, just like I would go and see everything that Richard Foreman did, because it challenged me and made me think of theater in a very, very different way that I always appreciated. When did you realize that your imagination wasn't going to fit neatly into the conventional theater of Singapore?

SPEAKER_03 3:20

Well, Adam, thank you for that comment.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Said with the most respect, honestly, honestly, honestly.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

No, I can, I can see, I can see it, I can see your sincerity, and that means a great deal to me. It took a while to recognize that I was a polarizing type of maker. And as you can imagine, in the in your earlier days, um, and I was making, uh, I started to make work in, I would say, in junior college. So when I was at uh junior college, we were one of the few colleges at the time that offered theater studies as an A-level subject. And I made work then as a teenager that was wildly popular. So more on the more in the vein of what might be considered popular anywhere, anywhere in the world. So you people, so I I would do work in like sort of lecture theaters. And as a teenager, it was, you know, I made sort of like, I did sort of mockumentaries on Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, which was what was the TV station of the time. So in a lot of farces, I turned, I took what I learned in restoration comedy and gave it sort of a local twist. I had characters like um, you know, lotus flower, big boobs. And you can imagine that these things were wildly popular. I had students were sort of lining up and and the and I remember, I mean, this was this was in uh Victoria Junior College because we'd always have a showing before we had the assessors coming in from UK to assess us for our A levels, but we had showings for the entire school. I did stuff like that. Then as I and then when I decided that I was that this was my path, and when I started to make, I found that each time I made, I could not make, I did not want to make, I grew out of that. I grew out of I grew out of making that way, and and I needed to find, well, I don't not that I even needed to find, I just evolved. Like the my imagination was taking me into other places. And if you think about it, I was messing with form and format, but in a sort of a in a in a graspable manner. Like if I am sort of making a mockumentary or I'm spoofing local television, or I am taking sort of restoration comedy and giving it a spin, where my imagination took me as I went on, sort of I it couldn't remain that way. It was kind of pushing me. And so I found myself continually, that's where my that's where the rehearsal room and what was going on the rehearsal room um needed to be true to um where these creative impulses were were were taking me. I I found it difficult to repeat, but sort of it didn't make sense, sort of it didn't, it didn't strategy didn't play out in that way that that that worked, and therefore I can find different ways of doing that. And honestly, I was I was so in the early in the early in the formative, I think once I was out of school and once I started to work professionally I was so single-minded on what was happening on what was happening in the rehearsal room and and I just did I I just tried to make the the rehearsal room what I was bringing into the rehearsal room as true to what the exploration was, paying as much attention to the people who were in that space and how the work evolved and what it how it projects itself and it continues to evolve today. I wasn't making so what you saw um that uh was not to your taste three days into your initiation to Singapore theater hasn't is in a different place. So I'm making it continues to shape, it continues to shift and shape and in a way, but I'd say that the essence, the thing that was driving the mockumentaries and the spoofs, that core, that inner sanctum, that inner creative, those impulses, where it comes from, um uh that's part of who I am, but the way it comes through, how I want to engage with actors or artists or the scene at large, Singaporean, sort of the way I look at the scene, contemporary performance making sort of beyond that, it has continues to shift.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Do you recognize like phases or is it is it a sense of like, well, no, every project is an evolution on the thing that has come before?

SPEAKER_03 8:57

Well, it's definitely phases because it takes time to for something to evolve. It evolves very organically. So I was making when I was when I was in school, when I was it took on theater studies at VJC, I would say the the theater studies VJC and LaSalle, when I was in LaSalle School of the Arts as a student, that was one phase. And then I was when I graduated, I was part of, I was freelancing, and then I was part of the necessary stage for five years, and that was a a different phase. I would say that that phase was different too because I was applying myself, I was part of a company.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

So there was a certain vision, there was a kind of way of making, and I was always and sorry, did you were you thinking of yourself as a director at that point, or were you a performer in necessary stage?

SPEAKER_03 9:54

I think I was always, I think my impulses were always directorial, even while I was at, even before I knew what directing was. Because in primary school, I realized I was putting together things.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:06

You know, even in primary school, I was putting together things and acting in them, but the way I was projecting myself, the way I was bringing people together, the way I was writing scripts and talking about what we can take from our parents' closets, I feel like my instinct was always a director. While I was performing in the necessary stage, I think I was coming at it with a directorial lens always, even without knowing what that was. I'm the sort of person that I dive into, you know, whatever the project is, in my younger days of like when I was emerging, I I just do it. If you I can function as an actor, I would contribute fully, and I can I have an have a an acting quality, but my interest and the way I looked at making was, I think, from the lens of a, I think my core was as a theater and then performance maker. That's who I am at at at at as an essence, as a sort of like a vocational essence.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah. Um and we had Alvin on the podcast early on, and uh he's somebody that uh I found obviously is is a real kind of conduit for a lot of artists coming out, a lot of directors coming out, performing their own companies, and having that kind of essence that he instilled, but also kind of said, No, this you you can't do this. This is my model. You have to go and find your model. You have to go out from here. Um, and he he talked he talked about you and he talked about Sichen, who I said at the podcast, as lovingly, not as not as children, but as but his sense of like theater makers that he got to kind of shepherd along the way and then kick out of the nest a little bit. Leaving Necessary Stage, you said you were there for five years. Did you form Cake immediately after that? Were you freelance for a little while? Were you in the wilds of of Singapore theater? Can you talk about the you can talk about the transition away to making your own work and making your own company?

SPEAKER_03 12:14

It was a while I was acting and then resident director at the necessary stage, my approach to theater making, my sort of my recurring themes, the ways in which I was thinking about the world through the lens of theatre was shifting. It was I could see that, I could see that it was shifting, and truth be told, I'm sort of uh I wouldn't have left, but there was a certain context in my personal life that was starting to shape too, and there were there was um people and that were in sort of my life, um friends who were saying at the time you should start a theater company. I was like, there is no way I can start a theater company. I don't know how to do a theater company is much more than what you do in a rehearsal room. And I said, This is I am a I am happiest, you know, making and creating to put me in any environment. I can be under the sun. I'm not confined to a black box or a or a proscenium stage. I can make, but what does that mean? You know, I'd have to sort of apply for things. And I have to understand how forms work and how form-filling, you know, how you apply for stuff, which which is the hardest thing for me in life. Um, but there were people in my life then that sort of were looking at how I was making, who kind of understood me, who were close and said, you can do this, we know how to do it, do it. We'll take care of that. And so in some ways, I went with it. You know, honestly, had that not happened, I would not have left. I'm sort of the kind of person that in some ways I can stay. You know, I can stay in a place and I can Harish and Alvin were so dear, they still are very dear to me. They were uh still, they have this, I have so much, I have such soft and tender feelings towards them till till today. Um that's never gonna change. But there were things externally, there were these external forces, and then also these energies that were surrounding me, and tangible things. Tangible words were said, look, you can do this. We know how to do it. You need to start your own thing. Go for it. So it was painful. It was it was painful for me to to leave it. It was painful for me to and there was a definitely a a line that was blood, you know. It wasn't just my bread and butter, it wasn't TNS the necessary stage, wasn't just a a professional relationship. There was there were times I yeah, I remember, you know, Elven cooking for us.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

I always wanted a home, you know, I always longed for a a home and and belonging. It was that's so so I shifted because these things were without, you know, sort of breaking going into that, because it's a whole whole chapter, and I think it's not important except that I have to be true to to to to this, to my response to you, and that concrete, concrete, tangible things were saying to me, we know how to make this happen, make it. We believe that your work is needs to be in a different place. And so I I took a plunge, and that's how Cake happened.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

And where does the name Cake come from? I've always wanted to know about that because it is such a it is such a very different it's such a different company, but it's such a different name. Cake Theatrical Productions.

SPEAKER_03 16:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Cake Theater.

SPEAKER_03 16:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Where did that name come from?

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Well, there's a story behind it too. But um, there's always a long story that leads up to it. But it's a, there's a, there is this now the definition would continue. If I had to kind of talk about it now, I could elaborate on how it shifts. But then a cake represented a milestone in life. There was a wedding cake, there was a birthday cake. You don't bake a cake for yourself, there is an artifice. You slap together a sandwich. You don't think about it when you make sort of instant noodles, but there is something that you that that a cake requires a kind of a gathering. It's there is a something that's commemorative and it signifies serious milestones. So apart from the celebratory ones like a birthday or a wedding, if we kind of pull it back to an essence of wafer or bread, it was also something that you partook. And there was something about the ritual of theater that was that, like I said, when I was making the fun stuff and the popular stuff as a teenager, I did not didn't surface until I deepened my cra. And something that was in, and nothing for me happens in my brain before it. So K came from this kind of like, so the easier meaning or the the the simpler meaning, which was sort of valid and a valid meaning about this gathering. I could articulate even then, in my early 30s, right? Mid-late 20s, early 30s. But later on, as I continued to make and I started to tap into in the rehearsal room, something that was, I was tapping because it didn't come, like I said, nothing comes intellectually, although it is intellectual, but something in my core, even as I was making, was what was ritual about theater. That there was a time, certainly when stories were being passed down and you didn't, and it was just, and someone with around a candle or a fire was knew how to do this, and it was probably more closely related to maybe a monk or a nun or a priest. And so that cake was also a kind of a a holy biscuit or a wafer or a or or something or an offering, more an offering, right? Began to to see that that was what it encompassed as well. The gathering, energies in a space, and how you and and therefore there was a time when I started to become uncomfortable with the word drama, and then there was a time when I also went through this phase when I became uncomfortable with the term theater. Although I will tell you that at my very heart and core, if I had to confess, you can't take the theater out of me. But but how theater projects itself, what who how it is named and what it looks like, um, I started to find sort of like I wanted to move from it, and then I started to use the word performance, but even that I think is gonna limit me at some point. You know, those labels, the labels I think um bother me because I think I see how people fix labels and how I see things being projected, and then I become uncomfortable with it. Not to be different, but just if I'm true to myself, then then I sort of like, then I slowly quietly, I don't make a scene about it, but I slowly kind of find myself doing, you know, sort of breaking away or disassociating myself from from labels, even if I carry things within me.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

No, I I totally get that. And I I love that explanation of the name. I see that in the work now. I appreciate that even more about the work. And we had we had someone on the podcast who talked about them also not wanting to use the word theater as well because of the burden that comes with that name of you know, people who don't go see theater because they think of theater, quote unquote theater, as something else. Here in America, you know, a lot of theater is in a marble building downtown with an old white guy's name on it. And so the kid from, you know, the city who is an underprivileged youth or something else, doesn't have the arts funding in their schools, doesn't want to go see theater because theater is perceived as this other thing. So I totally understand and and I get that.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

I loved the old white guys, right? When I encountered Beckett and Brett, and and the and the old white women too. Um uh Ariane Manishkin um and Bogart, but early on, and then Aeschylus and Euripides. I love those guys, those people. I still do. Shakespeare. I have to, I'm really quite an honest type of person, and I I will say things that can make me uncool, even in. But can I say that I will never disavow those people? I won't evolve. A brown woman. Always been fluid, fluid from since childhood. And I embrace that. I'm, you know, I can be angry at times. I was angry as a teenager. So anyone who's angry has a part of them that 100% rails against all white. But I'm not also going to, I'm not going to condemn it. I not I from Samuel Beckett was life-changing for me. Life-changing. A streetcar named Desire performed by Marlon Brando and Vivian Lee. Was Vivian Lee. That was mad and that came from they were conduits of some. So one was words on a page. It was, what is is I got it. It did not. I remember it being in a in a room full of sort of maybe classmates, right? Who were like sometimes angry with this. Not streetcar, because streetcar I think is easily loved, but not I. People were like, but then I think, wow, that that immediately I was like, that was life-changing. And then Vivian Lee's performance. In I I we saw we saw a recording of streetcar named Desire in junior college. So as a teenager in a theater class. That, so quite different, but the Tetsanatai, Vivian Lee, and then Antigone. And to me, this young girl against this patriarch.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:28

Look, all this came from white people. And they changed my life, you know, in different ways. I didn't even think they they saved my life. They saved the work. So to me, it's beyond white because I think there is a white or there is a black or there is a whatever that is common. And I think that we come from a same place. You might be, you might sort of, I have to believe that because I I can't also go through life. Part of for me making is embracing all the things and that all these lineages. And my lineage, I would say, goes beyond just this lineage. I think it's there are lineages that I can see from sort of or influences from the West, but I there must be sort of these influences that are beyond, right? Decades later, I'm doing things very differently. I make original stuff, I adapt things always. I you know, I think these things shaped me and still do. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

And when you when you when you find a piece that you want to, as you say, adapt, or you're writing original works, where does the initial idea come from? Like, I mean, we get ideas from everywhere, of course. It may be a song, it may be a news story, it may be something that you've read. What's the initial spark of that idea? Does it start with an image? Does it start with story? What's the kind of what's your in to a project?

SPEAKER_03 25:59

I think theatre, before I knew what it was, was a way to navigate life. So for me, all I knew, and this may be a roundabout way of answering this, this is the best answer I can, it's instinctively coming to me. In primary school, so 11-12, I remember turning myself up to enjoy sort of like kind of, because I had friends. I was really funny in school. So, and I loved making people laugh. And in primary school, I drove the teachers nuts, but I was so lively, and I was always, I always kind of like was part of that group because I was very, I was funny, but I was also kind of allowed people to come in and and it wasn't, I was funny, but not dominating, you know. Um, and I always wanted to be, I wanted to have friends, and I wanted to be a group. And so school camp and getting a chance to be away from a very, very strict family upbringing was always highly strict family upbringing. These I always looked for that. So, school camp, you would imagine, two nights out of the family home and being with friends should have made me should have been the most wonderful thing. And I projected that it was the most wonderful thing. I sang even louder during school camp, but I was totally depressed. And I and I would not show it. So I lost my voice singing during campfire. I participated in this, you know, in the school drama competitions. But I was, I found that I was, I couldn't make sense of that, but I I was totally depressed. I could not get a night of so so the thing that you would imagine gave me this kind of belonging and freedom outside of a really strict home also plunged me into a kind of a dark place as an 11-year-old. And I realized that, whoa, you know, life is gonna be a little bit, how am I gonna deal with life? And I remember also being in in primary school and in art class, I I always colored within the lines. So in coloring, I was always coloring. I was one of those kids that I was coloring within the lines because wanting to sort of please my teacher was important to me. But then being surprised because I was was scolded for coloring coloring a table purple. It never left me. I colored within the lines, but it was purple.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

That's oh my God, that's a be that is, I mean, as you say that it's a beautiful description of your work. Because I would never say that the work was messy, but I also would say that the work was never as expected. And that's a that's a beautiful description. You make purple tables. Yes, absolutely. And that and shame on that teacher for scolding you for that, but also for making you the artist that you are, probably.

SPEAKER_03 29:07

I mean, I think a lot of things. I think it was the family environment that did not sort of understand the arts. It was science and medicine, you know, that it had to be. I was the first of five girls, and and and and the you know, and I and so I think it was not understood. So my path had to be medicine. My path had to be uh academic achievement, and I think I was a very different developer. So I did not I mean now I can articulate it, but I I think I I did not know how to live. And I thought I was so as a so it was my sort of younger days, my childhood I mean, I think in many ways, you know, we were provided for, you know, I was not lacking means, but but in terms of it was just difficult being the first child when there are certain expectations to the towards the path and sort of really not being able to deliver on those thoughts. Um and then so so I think I think those were the things. So I think when I was so I found myself wandering a lot as a as a child, I would, I would wander. I would spend time alone talking to talking to myself. So I there were these large drains in Singapore. And it was at a time when, when I mean, I I come from an age where you you're not sort of like there's that digital spaces, you don't kind of lose yourself there. So I found myself sort of like wandering a lot. I would go into drains and spend time in dark places and and and be in the garden and and and and and my grandma's garden and um and just spending a lot of time talking and and making things up, having these, a lot of the conversations were how to deal with getting out of things. So I had these monologues of how I was gonna talk to my teacher or talk to my to a parent figure, and they were elaborate. And then of course, at that moment, it when the moment arrived, it was just look, I'm I'm really sorry. Please don't make me have to sign, please don't make my parents have to sign this, right? But it was elaborate.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

I was uh so and I think that's what has always driven me to how to be in this world. And and so I always told if if in my earlier days that I was always drawn to transgressive characters. So I think that whether it was Electra or or or or or or Antigone, or the characters that I created, you know, I, you know, I had characters and also characters that um had names like Rabbit, right? I couldn't even place like the gender construct, all these things, everything was flew flew out the window for me. I was just, again, nothing had nothing could be obvious because there was a part of me that colored within the lines and wanted to, my survival was also pleasing the maternal and paternal figures. It was in me to be, but at the same time, being sort of innately transgressive or like wearing transgression from the inside out. So if you ask me, the theater was always this, there was nothing I wanted to prove. I just wanted to belong. I wanted to be a place, I want a place where I could survive. And then I was living in Singapore where there were, you've got to be a certain way. You can only be, you know, people are gonna have only a certain amount of tolerance for for your charm, you know, and I wanted to be charming because like wanting people to, I loved having people in my audience, I love making stuff for people. Like I wanted a lot of people to come. I wanted my, I was so happy that oh, and it was never boastful, but like, oh, people want to see my work, you know, in junior class. Oh, it's a people are lining up around the block. So that mattered to me. But then also then as I grew, finding that, oh my God, I'm polarizing. And I could never be the person that said, oh, screw them, they don't get me. I was like, I'd go home and and be and cry. Because I'm like, people always leaving, you know, that when I was getting sort of like when I was accepted, you know, and people always, there's always people, there's all trends, right? So for a while you're you do strange stuff and and people sort of like are rewarding that. But, you know, when I was really making my stuff, there would there would always be, it's just it's not a cake show unless there were a couple of walkouts, and I might get a great review, I might win an award, but it's not a cake show. And and you would think I would have to project this thing, like at school camp. I would sing louder and because I want my friends to feel comfortable. But it wounded me because to me, I understood that theater was also about, I was never interested. It seems like I am being sort of like esoteric or because I think that I'm above it, but I'm not. That you enjoy my work matters to me. If you cough, I'm so sensitive. If you cough in my work, I think you hate it. It is troubling. And not even in my work, when I was festival director and I programmed a work and someone coughed or walked out or was bored, it wounded me. I have to confess to this, and it's now that I know it's out, you know, and it's hard because you know, you you I'm again, I have to be true to this conversation that we're having, but that matters to me. So it can be, so I have to I've had to learn to be to be tough and and yet accept that this is who I am till till now. And so I I find coping mechanism, I find ways of of of of building um, of being strong in this world. But but the 11-year-old depression, before I knew what depression was, darkness, deep, deep, deep sadness, you know, that's also something I daily kind of, you know, I daily, you know, consciously let the light in. Daily. That's part of ritual for me too, you know. And that to me is, I think it's not a negative thing, but learning how to how to acknowledge it, but at the same time saying, look, you're not going to, you, you won't get the best of me at all, also allows me then to create platforms and to channel positive energy and to encourage people to create platforms, not only in at cake, in the platforms that we create, but also for me to like be a be a guide to to young practic, to emerging practitioners. The teacher part of me has always been, has moved in tandem with the artist part of me. And I don't think they're inextricably linked. And I think that that is also this idea that I'm in this world to kind of like, I can detect dark and I can detect light, and I'm not going to diminish anything. If it's bright, if I see something that's bright, I'm gonna try and make it brighter in a student or in an actor. Or if I see something that's dark, I'm going to also, I'm also not going to, I'm gonna try and find a way to accept that. But having said that, I I it can be misinterpreted because I'm tough in the rehearsal room. I'll stop there. I've gone all over the place, Adam.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

No, no, no. I I I so appreciate it, especially bringing it into the teaching part because that is something that I I talk with the students all the time about of saying, well, look, I'm not an acting teacher first and foremost. I I teach theater making. I'm teaching directors now. Like that is that's my uh that's my reason for being. I really want to make people make the work that they want to make. I don't want to make little me's or little anybody else's. I want them to be the best version of them that they can be, which means elevating what is already there, which is which is recognizing what they are doing and saying, yes, go and do that. Which is why I started the conversation of saying, like, it's not my cup of tea, but I will show up every single time for it because maybe it will finally break me open, and I then it will be my cup of tea, that I'm that I'm gonna see something there and go, I finally get it. My God, I'm I'm broken open. I'm the one that's that's different because of this now. It's it's the thing of I want theater to be as varied and weird and unique and traditional and conservative and progressive and all over the place because it just makes everything better. It just makes the world more the world is full of multitudes, and it should it should feel that way in the theater as well. And so for me as well, when when I get that that same kind of people don't get my work or don't don't like my work or whatever, um I show up, I continue to show up for it, and I and I appreciate those who do continue to show up for it as well, of saying, like, cool, what else you got? Cool, what else you got? Um, and I and I feel that as a teacher, and I've heard, I've heard you're tough in the rehearsal room. Um in a good way, in a very good way, and I and I and I want to talk about that rehearsal room because um but um the performances you're able to bring out of them, the spaces you're able to create for them. Can you talk about what it is to lead that room, how you lead that room differently, say, than other directors you have seen or have worked with lead rooms?

SPEAKER_03 38:55

The first thing that I do is I feel like the first thing I need to do is I need to charge the room with a certain energy without saying a word. When I so once we're in that space, the minute I need the rehearsal to feel when we begin, the entire energy of the room has to be different than when we were first coming into the room. So when actors come into the room, they come in with their star, they come in with a kind of an energy, I call it the you know, the bus, the on the bus energy, which is daily life, right? Which we all have, which we need to have, right? We come in with our stuff, like water bottles and bags and handphones, and we come in with an energy that's also more casual. If I can't when we begin to work, if I can't see a shift, then I have to construct that shift. They've got it has to be palpable and it has to come from the tone. And I it it mustn't be I mustn't say we're gonna shift it. I have to I have to I have to I have to summon the energy from myself first and shift the energy. And to me that is that is the first thing that I figure out that I that I that I've I guess known how to do or understood how to do that that in order to work we can't be so I I mean I've learned to loosen up because I I I didn't initially that meant in my younger days, and like I said, even when I was uh in my early 20s, uh before being able to articulate what that was, I demanded that of I demanded that within myself. Again, I don't like explaining things, I don't like talking about things in direct terms, so I just need to shift it. And I think people get that idea. So if you're kind of like, I prefer, like, like to me, then how we laugh. Now you can laugh at something that's funny in the rehearsal, but how you get out of that laughter. Now, if that kind of when you're in that normal daily life space, we can laugh and then we're like, I I'm very could kind of I get in a very toilet humor and I'm very lame in my humor, really lame. Um, and I could go on and on. I am super, you know, yeah. But the way one laughs, the way one to me, there has to be different. Like there has to be, okay, we can laugh. I'm not saying that we we we're all not gonna laugh or I'm not gonna laugh, but the way we get back to it. So to me, rehearsal space is, I guess, now I won't say, because I'm again one of these people that I it's again, it's not like I'm not gonna say, oh, it's sacred. I won't say it, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:07

And it's it's a ritual, but it's not sacred.

SPEAKER_03 42:09

Right, but like I'm not gonna say this is a sacred space. I will never do that bullshit. I will never go on into a theater and say, like, this is a sacred space. Now I have I respect people who do that, but I won't do it. I believe it on the inside, but I'm not going, that's not what I think is maybe because I think something, what is how we make what we're channeling, what we're doing, what to me, there is something that is coming through work, a work that is beyond what the work says or means. But if your bodies and your states, if all of us collectively, if I can get so if I have to transmit that through, if the actors have to have a certain kind of state and a way of being, if they're doing an adapted version of, I don't know, a Carol Churchill play in school or like an adapted version of whatever, or an original work and and cake uh main season work. I need the state. To me, like if the state is right, the way they, if the state is right, something is gonna go through the work and touch the audience. Now, this is where it gets a little bit, it's not tangible, but there's something, something in the soul of the work collectively is going to touch someone's soul in a very different way. Because, like I said, meaning is not, I'm not interested in sort of like making a meaning of the work. And therefore, because I don't choose work that makes meaning in the conventional sense, all the more, and I'm making contemporary work, so I'm not making work from you know, uh that is obviously from culture or from tradition. So if I'm making contemporary work, whatever that means, in this way, then bodies, um tone, the way the elements work need to be deeply connected, so that these, so that something I feel need to be connected and charged in a supernatural way. And that's the only way I believe that for me, who doesn't make meaning in a normal way and yet wants to do good in the world, that wants to save people from dark places by being meaningful. To then say that I am contributing something, but something in the spirit of this work, something in the spirit, the collective energies that are going as well, is something in the soul of this world is gonna touch your soul in a way that I can't predict. That's gonna do something for you. And that is the only thing I can give, because I want to give um in life, and that is within my scope of human abilities. And and and and my great fear of my inability to fill films or to navigate an XL sheet. I tell you, it scares me, Adam, because my the fallback, the fallback means you need to be able to navigate an XL sheet. And I've had a fallback since teenage life. You know, I'm like, how am I gonna do this? I'm strange, I'm weird. The inability to navigate auto signatures is not an easy way to live when you make work that is hard to consume. It's terrifying, Adam.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

There are certain skills in my life that I have actively tried not to learn as well. It's one of those things of like, I never want to learn how to format an Excel spreadsheet. You're absolutely right. That's just not a skill that I need to know. There are people out there to do that, and I don't need to know that. So I I totally understand that. I totally get that.

SPEAKER_03 46:16

I I wish I knew how to do it. I want that skill.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

No, you don't.

SPEAKER_03 46:22

I want how to do this, but I can't. So it sounds like I'm not like I'm saying, I wish I knew how to fill a fall. I'm learning, I think it's part of life.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

I don't know. I think if you learn how to do that thing, people are gonna ask you to do that thing. I don't want to do that thing.

SPEAKER_03 46:42

Gosh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:44

And then you find yourself the festival director for CIFA, the Singapore International Festival of the Arts, for three years.

SPEAKER_02 46:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

The festival director leading not just not only directing shows in the festival and still having the company, but leading the festival and speaking for what the arts mean in Singapore internationally. And I would love to hear about the difference between curating your work, curating your company's work, and then what it means to curate a festival for a c for a country. And not only once for one year, but over the course of a tenure of that. How did becoming the festival director change how you see artists and art in that way?

SPEAKER_03 47:33

I'll have to tell you this. I came in this is how I approach uh new assignments, okay? When first of all, I knew that there was that you can't take on something like the festival by being something new. You've got to take it on by exercising your the thing that you've been nurturing, which is how you so the theater director, artistic director, teacher, uh, educator, um, part of me, which has been, which I've been working on 20 uh professionally for decades, for like maybe I don't know, I guess 20 years before I got this assignment, got the the like there is no way I could contribute to festival making if I didn't use that. I just needed to use that in a different way. And there's no way I can be anything else except who I am, right? Who I, what my uh core abilities or my impulses are. So the first thing that I did was where I where I found myself uh when I when I when I discovered theater, kind of reading everything, watching everything, studying everything about every director, local and from the Western world, and and and devouring, you know, plays and theater and watching actors and teaching and doing everything. I studied the ideas that drove festivals. So the first thing I did for a whole year, and it happened, I mean, this is life the way life happens, but I also was a pandemic festival director. So the the circumstances around me also, not that I wouldn't have done it, I would, I just wouldn't have done it outside of sleeping time, right? I I studied festivals. I studied not just what was programmed. So I I dug into the archives of like, like, what is this of the mother festivals? Like sort of I I read everything, like what was what was Edinburgh Festival there for? What was Avignon there for? And I I looked at stuff that was coming from, I needed to know what festivals were made for, why they were made, and what was the kind of work. And I understood, and then I looked at the festivals that were being made in the region. I studied all that, and I studied why they were there for and what was driving the intent. And apart from, yes, I understand this idea of yes, we needed this kind of post this World War II unity, that was not, that didn't entirely, that wasn't as interesting to me as the idea that art was that interesting, boundary pushing, art made by in vocabularies that were interesting were being presented at early festivals, but at low cost. So that was what it was. That was it was accessible. Accessibility was a low ticket price, but it accessibility was not making something sort of popular, or that was not because I saw the formats that were being, I looked at the formats, I looked at the art that was being made. There was a lot of like strange opera and music theater stuff, and like, and and and the artists were thinking and talking, and I read interviews, uh, you know, artistic directors were not dissimilar. Like I understood them, they were strange. If I can understand something, I question it. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna read some what at someone else, how someone else looks. And I found that that that was for me what those early festivals were about. They were about these, they were about interesting vocabulary artistic vocabularies and interesting ways of making, but the ticket price was low. And that was accessibility. And I ran with that. I said, that's what I know what this is. Okay, I know now for myself at four in the morning, right? Because I'm in that mode of understanding what it means to apply myself, that I get, right? I want it to be accessible, it needs to be accessible, but how do you get back? Because I understand, like the first thing they tell you when you're when you're when you're being uh interviewed for the job is you know that this needs to be balanced programming. So I just, you know, like again, I'm like, I get it. And then I need to figure out what that means to me, right? Me, I need to understand what balanced programming means to me. So what I did was because I found that I could push vocabulary, I could be, I could make, I could embrace original making, which for me, then for festival speak, that's commission, right? Commission of work. So original making or reinvention, which is this sort of like the the the speak before festival. I then I understood that. Then how do I make things? Then I then in order to make it work for I kind of made these other compartments. So like at the right time, we we did this thing called Little CIFA. So within that compartment, then I could do programming that was for young audiences and families, and I could totally, but it wasn't going to. So those compartments, so if you understand what we're doing here, if you look at the progress of sort of in the progression from 2022, 23, 24, you would find these spaces where then I could create spaces where then we could be, then I could complete, I couldn't come, I could go full-hearted, like, okay, if we're doing little CIFA, let's do a theater piece and then let's do something that's for families and like a in a public space, or like once I could, and that for me was, and I said, okay, I will do, and if, and then, and then, okay, so I got more, so that was in maybe year three when I said it was a progress, right? But that then there was like this other space where I said, um, okay, I'll do. So I remember in the second year or the third year of the festival, um, I I knew that we I needed to find a way. I got a note. I got a note saying that you need we need to bring the schools back into the the the schools need to come back to the festival. And I mean, not not just the the free or fringe stuff, but they need to be watching. So I I took that note again. I never challenge a note, I just took it back and then I thought, okay, how do I do this? So then that's when I said, okay, I'm gonna find the work that still plays with form. And so I found Moby Dick by um by plexus polare or polare plexus. I get it mixed up. But and I knew that Moby Dick was sort of like this, it was gonna be, it was gonna be, it's still, I felt like their puppetry was still messing with form. I knew a lot of people, I knew it was not gonna be a hit. When I watched it, I watched it at a, I watched it for the first time in a theater in New York. And I could tell from the audience that it was polarizing. And I knew that then I could do this work because it was still a full house. It was made out of families and young people, and I could feel the art or artistic audience was around me, and I could feel a lot of grumbling coming from a little bit of the artistic audience. But I said, yep, no, this is this has enough polarization, but I know that the schools would gain something from the making. I needed the students just to come in and still be pushed. So the puppetry, but there was this blending of their version of puppetry, their version of dense, crazy, dense texts. And I said, okay, I can live with this. So I didn't have to, things didn't have to be of my taste. I could still program local artists and international artists that I felt, okay, this is where I'm pushing and I'm kind of doing what I can. But but here, we we also have like say, or physical theater or circus, but through a really specific lens. I have to, I have to understand what the makers are thinking, you see. And that was, and then so so before Little Little Cifa became a thing, right? And then in my last year, it was also coincided with Singapore's sixth year. And so then I created a whole format, but it was still, I was blending, I was putting, you know, it was ballet and orchestra in a public square. And that's strange, and that's weird, and that can be, you know, the music is, you know, I I, you know, I I worked with composers and music that was still, it was not, you know, easy consumption, but it the people came and it worked, you see. So I still found that I could do these things, and people, and I didn't, I ignored it because over the course of every year I had critics from different places. So the the interesting thing about the way I was programming in my first year, I think a lot of my critics were from my community. From the artistic from the theater community, maybe, because there was a lot of interdisciplinary work and stuff like that. And it did it did hurt me, but I was like, okay, I I I understand what I'm gonna do, but I'm not going to explain myself yet. I if I keep doing this, maybe you'll understand me as we go on, right? And then I had critics from different places. When when one area starts to get what I'm doing, then I might get have to take care of something else. But I'm always taking care of things because I am not the kind of person that says, I'm better than you, and I you don't get it. I'm always like, I get where you're coming from. Let me try and get there in a way that I I can I can live with. I can say I've done this to the best of my abilities, and I know why I'm doing this. And you can think either I'm selling out or I'm doing like, you know, what are they doing in a public square? What is CIFA doing? I can understand and I can I can tell you how I'm still doing interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and doing things that are, and yet I've met what you need. Okay, which is you do something in a public space on I made the choices and I I took on the ideas that that brought in a mass public sphere, the neighborhood, and I we did it. So to me, I did what I was tasked to do. And you can then, and and yet I'll I'll I'll there'll be different views every year. Every year it was, you know, I had to deal with different points of view. But but but yeah, in in that way, I kept doing my thing. I kept doing what I needed to do and and kind of absorbed criticism. I didn't act out, I didn't try, I didn't try to explain myself out of it. I didn't argue. I I didn't argue it. Um I kept my my arguments within very small spaces, like within um, you know, rooms with maybe the with the festival producers. That's where I kind of let off some of my anxieties or worries or or or and stuff. But then outwardly I just said, okay, I'm gonna solve it in a way that I can live with. So I guess it was still coloring within the lines and still coloring purple, I guess. But but but then still having the teacher see by then that, yeah, you know, this works still. I can't deny that that the public came out in droves.

SPEAKER_02 59:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 59:42

Um and and it was still purple and it was still whatever. That's what I that's what I hope I I I think I can walk away from the festival saying that that's that I I stayed true to myself and just took on one or two people, you know, the polarizing comments and and people's, you know, maybe leaving the the theater, which is constant, right? Ever since I but overall, you know, doing what I what the festival needed, uh, because I if I can't do something within the frame, I would have to move on. And I think in some ways, I think the forces that were moving me out of the necessary stage, those were the forces, I guess, that were supernaturally maybe taking care of me or or seeing something. And if not, I'll I'll I'll I won't I won't, I'll do what you need me to do and I'll I'll stay there. So I think in some ways I'm really thankful for things that are larger than myself that sort of put the people in my life or or steer me in ways that allow me to then that remove or take me out of places or take things out of me, uh away from me so that I can continue to be, because I think my my impulses are true. You know, I I want to reach, I want to connect, I want to make this better for people. I want the light to shine on me as it does on other people. I want people to live another day. I want the same for people that I want for myself.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:16

And and post-festival now, the the come down from that, you're not having to do this year. What still scares you artistically? What's still driving you, what's still pulling you along?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

I have a very different relationship with fear and anxiety. Because it's something that I've um had to it was my it is it it was the it was the Goliath that I've been dealing with uh since childhood. So my my relationship to fear is is different where I'm at now. Um I see, I see, I I I I know um that there have been many Goliaths that I've kind of overcome overcome. So to me, it's sort of looking at I I learned a whole bunch of ways to navigate and the ways to create communion and the ways to allow gathering that can go beyond the rehearsal room. So there was a life before C Pan, and I think that was very much also connected to my relationship to anxiety and fear, which is like I I don't think I can take on beyond the rehearsal room, but now I I see that there are spaces where I can apply myself and I can, you know, being a festival director is a lot about about what I could do for actors, I was doing for artists. Right? In a different way. And I found that, whoa, you know, yeah, you know, artists have different vulnerabilities. I mean, I I see actors, right? But what I was applying that skill or that that ability or that desire to charge actors in a certain way to kind of have them kind of feel like they're going through something that's meaningful and that they're striving through something hard that I know is is still generous, it's tough, but generous. I was able to do for artists, and therefore it shifted the scene and it created platforms. And because I realized I was able to reach artists, you've got to be able to reach good actors. Actors are not gonna take it from you if you're not strong. Actors are not gonna take it from you, and I respect that. And I'm interested in people who are at core who will have, you know, the actors that that are wonderful will challenge you just by the look, just by the way they breathe in your way. You know, you know that they're not gonna take it from you. And I really admire and respect that, right? But I find that you're gonna be able to work with others, you're gonna invite them into your platform, you're gonna ask them to, you're going to invite them to create work that is specific to the festival. You're gonna have to meet the festival. You're gonna ask, every time you connect with a festival, you're going outside of there is your own trajectory. And every time you connect with a platform like a festival, you are actually doing something that's slightly, it's a, you've got to meet with a festival's trajectory. It's that's just the way it is. So I kind of, it's always a project. It's not your own trajectory, it's your own trajectory. Of course, it can, it is part of your trajectory, but you're meeting with a commissioner, right? Which I understand as an artist and as a maker, you've got to work with that different context. What's the Singapore context? What can, if I want to get an artist that does work, that's gonna be, you know, their work is gonna, uh, if I want to program an artist that that does work in in sort of like um in Europe, and if I do want to program them, I've got to help them understand the Singapore context. And I I just don't I don't want, I don't want them to, I want them to come and do work here, but how do you navigate that conversation? And so I was applying all those skills and applying that kind of ways of of supporting and fighting and and never being top down. You if you come in because look, I'm we're the commissioner, the festival is commissioning. If I try to take the that part of it, and you by doing that, you really have to just be gentle. You have to be, you have to talk to the child and everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:41

Wounded child, all of us have this kind of yeah. When I say wounded child, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to mean that you have to have a certain kind of obvious trauma. But we're all we're all trying to find our way in the world and and creative people or or makers, we have there is a way that we that we occupy the world. And so for me, understanding that I was applying it in a different way than how I was. So speaking to artists and creating platforms for artists, independent artists, artists that didn't have the structure of a company, and companies who have certain support systems. So that was how I did the festival. That was how I navigated the festival. That's how I defended the artists that I was programming for when I was like sort of trying to explain to other parties why I was programming the way I was, I was trying to defend myself. Said, let us do this. You know, that yeah, this artist might, you know, ticket sales might we might have a different, but look, here we have this show. I feel like this show is going to get us the ticket sales, but let this artist. I mean, this isn't possible about the artistic um um credibility of the festival. Let it go. Let's do this. Don't worry, we're gonna hit our targets. And this is me not just talking to the commissioners of the festival, but also me talking to people who market the festival. Don't worry, you know, they've got their targets right. So that's how I navigated the festival. It was how you work with artists. And moving forward, I guess, what my life is in and through cake is what are these platforms sort of like beyond actors? And I I will still be in spaces where I'm connecting with actors, but working with artists, creating um defining frames for other directors or other makers or other creators and you know, actors, so on and so forth. Like they're different ways. So this is what I'm keeping myself open to, you know, different ways of curating and being in the rehearsal room. And and now I think I embrace these things more freely, and I and I and I see that in in sort of like the kinds of works and projects that cake is is open and taking, open to taking on. And I find that that's true to who we are and can be as well. That's what the festival journey did. And that's and I feel like it doesn't betray my inner core, which is still making space and creating frames and still creating, allowing the energy. Maybe the the space is not a rehearsal room, but now it's maybe in a non-conventional space. Maybe it's in a it's in multiple spaces. But I still approach every conversation and then when we get together, change shift the energy and then shift the experience when it happens, when an audience encounters it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:34

Like this new phase. I can't wait to see what this new phase is gonna be like. This is gonna be a dangerous question or difficult question because uh I'm gonna ask the question of who are you interested in artistically right now? And what I what I don't mean is who are your favorites? And that's that's why it's a difficult question because oh, if I mention this person, I have to mention that person and I'm leaving somebody out. But what I mean is you were a festival director, you are a director of your own, you have your own company, you are supporting artists. If I were to come back to Singapore right now and I were to say, Natalie, who should I go, whose work should I go watch? Who who has come up that I've not I haven't seen, I haven't known about, or you've gone to Europe and America and seen these artists that you brought in? This is an international podcast. And if I were in the country of origin of these artists and they were playing, who would you recommend? Who would you want to elevate? Who would you support and say, like, go see their work? They're doing some really amazing things. This is an artist, as you said, this is an artist that maybe is not going to sell the tickets, but for their artistic journey and for the art as a artist general, they their work needs to be done. Who would be people that you would tell all of the listeners to say, go see them, go support them. They're doing some really cool stuff. Ultimately, who can I who else can I ask on the podcast?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:56

Sure. Um, I have it's it's it's easy for me. Um, um, and it's recent because I'm now looking at, so I'm I'm looking at this as people who I know can make work. And to me, may not they may who can who can command a space who can create performance. Okay. So the three, two, three people that I'm gonna um name are not traditional theater makers. They may not call themselves theater directors, but I am interested and I and I and I see how they've made. Also, and and it was, and these were some people that I gave platforms to during uh the festival too. I'm really interested in in Waish and how she makes. That's just her name. It's small w e-i-s-h Waish. And I think that she is someone to look forward to how she is going to make work and how she's going to command spaces. She's a music artist or an experimental, multi-sort of a multidisciplinary maker, but how she is going to command space. I feel that she traverses theater, performance making, and music. Her voice to me, she's a Meredith Monk. And I want to see in the way that now Meredith Monk was also uh along with she she she transcended the white guys. To me, she was the white guy. She was a white guy and the eternal, you know, the mother above and beyond everything. When I saw video, so okay, long story short, Meredith Monk. I kind of I don't believe I didn't mention her right at the top. She's everything beyond not I, beyond Antigone, it was Meredith. Meredith Monk, okay, okay, the eternal father or mother, okay, parent, uh, whatever. To me, she that that's to me that's the potential. I'm not interested in, I that's how I see where she's gonna take it. If she remains true to who she is, that's the kind of work she's gonna be making, and that's the kind of work I want to see. I mean, she's going through a lot of things. If she goes, if she stays true to that, and that was the kind of work I programmed for her to make, and I saw it, and I'm like, whoa, right? This is, you know, yes, this is a Meredith monk coming out from Singapore. Goodness gracious, there is a spirit that lives. Um, and uh, another person is another group is an entity. So the observatory as an entity, they're a trio. So the observatory, and they're also, and I also program them to make performance. So they they come from they're sort of like this post-rock company, but they are able to, but they go into research about uh you'll find it. It's just amazing. Their research into ecology and the natural world. You know, when I program them for CIFA, they spent like 10 months in caves in Sarala. And that's what they did. And you need a festival director that gets that, right? So to me, they're spending sort of the the commissioning, the commission, right? This is a commission work, but they told me we're spending the next, we're going, we're spending X amount of months in caves. I got it. I understood. This is commission money well spent. And the work presented itself well, you know. I I I I'm responsible about, you know, what the festival is and and and it's how it's funded and and it delivered. And the third person that I'm really interested to to see come up and make uh contemporary work is Safwan Jihari. So with Safwan Jihari, what I did with him was he is he makes work again from the vantage point of music. But when I was as a festival director, I met I meet different artists and I met a Maori choreography, a contemporary Maori choreographer named Eddie Elliott. And he he came from he was totally contemporary, but he was using these, there was a way in which he was using indigenous bodies. And Safwan also comes from like there is a sense that that the music also there is, he doesn't define himself, but but there are I I felt like there are ways, sometimes his very his contemporary music was also drawing from something that was culturally his, and he's also big on not defining himself, so I'm not gonna, you know, but I would say, like, forgive me, Safwan, but there was something about from the Malay archipelago too, that that I perceived, and he wouldn't define, he wouldn't stay. And I saw that so when I wanted to program him, I thought, yeah, I've seen his work as a music maker, how he maybe applies musicians as performers. I said, that's when I kind of bridged, I said, it'd be interesting to like say maybe what would you do with moving bodies that what that was drawing that were drawing from the sign of ancient tradition that was separate? How is a blending of what does a meeting of culture is culture? And it's not easily defined. What is culture? And because I knew it's impossible to unearth the riches of culture in three months, that makes it even more interesting. So, how where can you go and what can you make that makes sense within a limited period of time? So, Safa and Jahari, so these three makers, so so you can see where I'm headed in terms of my making as a performance maker and who I and that is not, I haven't abandoned the theater maker in me. I think I've deepened the theater maker in me. It's the theater artist in me that is arriving at these places. I haven't abandoned them. They're there, they never left. And I think I'm protecting the theater child in me, the theater person in me by doing these things. Because I feel to me, these are people that are still creating for the gathering. They are building new vocabularies, like the vocabulary I saw in The Education of Girl Child on a really bad video on YouTube, that I saw in Beckett's Not Eye, that I saw in in early works as a young artist, that that I feel this is the new language of that I want to, that I feel is going to connect us to the past and to the future. I feel like it's the thing that will make us, that brings the performing arts to a kind of a spiritual realm, which is the only realm that will, that is going to endure into way into the future, that's going to make us, if we can't tap into what's spiritual, we are not going. Because what's spiritual, you can't, you can't win. You can't take away what's spiritual because we're all living, we're breathing. There's something, it's spiritual means different things to all of us, but we're either dead or we're not, right? So to me, with all the anxiety that that um that's in the current conversation, technology does not phase me. Because if you have the artists that know how to to understand that it is a kind of that we're still tapping into like technology or advancement does not mean, does not cancel out what is spiritual. I feel like these people are super, they're forward-thinking, the people that I'm then they work with kind of tech. I mean, music people always work with a kind of um, and then I feel like that for me, then our art form, and I wish it for all of us, not just in Singapore. To me, I'm not limited to Singapore, to all of us, all of us who are making and and teaching, educating, who are in this path. These are my people, these are my brothers and sisters, and and that even that is gendered, but these are my folk, these are my beings. You know, I care that you're doing as okay as somebody else and that I've met from, I don't know, Thailand, who's making. So yeah, that's where I'm going. And these are the people uh alongside the traditional makers. Do do be true to yourself, be true to thyself. And there's a place for all of us.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:13

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:15

Absolutely. That's how I'm I'm I'm super excited for where that's going because one of my favorite parts of not just theater in Singapore, but also just the arts in general in Singapore was its interdisciplinarity. And I was growing as an artist when I was there and finding the interdisciplinarity, the fertile ground to play in as well. And I know it expanded me, I know it made me uh a better human being, a better artist, even if I go back to more traditional methods and things like that. It still pushed the boundaries of that so much. And I think it's exciting where you're going. I've looked up these artists, I've got them now. I'm I'm gonna listen to their music after this.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:56

Check out their work as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:58

Some of it was in the festival, you know, so so it it's there online and you can see what they've been what they made for well, my festival, yeah. So it's easy to to look it up. It's recent, so it's not lost in the I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:12

The ether.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:12

Yeah, in the ether. So so you can find out what they're making beyond their music. Because I I asked them to make performance, not music. Yeah. So I asked them, I I provide platform, I said make performance. It was I go beyond sort of just music making. So uh and work with other sort of things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:31

And now you're gonna be going beyond theater making. And I can't wait when I when I come back to see what else is there, what else is gonna challenge me and and make me sit up and and confront it. Natalie, thank you so much for joining uh the board of directors. It's been great to see you and catch up with you, and exciting to find out where you're going and learn so much more that makes me contextualize you as an artist and a person in the work that I've seen, and appreciate it more as it expands me out. Thank you very much for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:02

Thank you, Adam.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:08

If this episode gave you any insight, inspiration, or even just made you smile, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts for more conversations like this. And if you're looking for guidance with a creative challenge, or want to advance a dream of your own, we'd love to help. Visit Board of Directors.world. The Board of Directors is a global constellation of theater directors dedicated to building community, sharing knowledge, and transforming the role of the director in the 21st century. We convene and curate a fellowship that fosters mentorship, artistic inquiry, and collective care, transcending borders and institutions and traditions. Until then, take care of yourself and take care of each other.