What’s the one thing you have to do before you go on stage?
Some kind of physical warm-up. For The Importance of Being Earnest, I’m doing stretches, because we do a lot of haughty posing in this play! I think it’s meant to reflect the repressed Victorian society the characters come from. So I get quite sore if I don’t stretch!
It’s not usually part of my ritual, but for this play, I also do vocal warm-ups. Oscar Wilde’s lines are brilliantly constructed, but are often also quite long and convoluted. So I go on stage before each show, and speak the more difficult sections out loud. Just so the actual performance isn’t the first time I’ve said them in the theatre each day!
What keeps you up at night?
The Facebook post I have just read on my tablet, even though I promised myself I would put it down and go to sleep.
Also, how capitalism will kill us all.
You’re throwing a dinner party for five guests – dead or alive, real or fictional. Whom would you invite?
Patrick Stewart, Dr. Lindsey Doe, Ewan McGregor, Daisy Ridley and Optimus Prime!
What is one of your pet peeves?
A lack of empathy, consideration, or respect for people as fellow human beings.
Especially if it’s due to kiasuism.
Especially if I catch myself doing it ?
© Smith Street Taps
If you are entertaining a visitor from overseas, what’s the one place in Singapore you would take them to?
Smith Street Taps. Craft beer in a hawker centre – the very pinnacle of the Singaporean dining experience, imho!
Tell us about the theatrical experience that changed your life.
Theatre is such an involved art form, that I feel it’s rare to be part of something that doesn’t change me in some way.
But I’ll share one that has some resonance at the moment: watching Ivan Heng and Daniel York Loh in Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1998, and thinking: “Asian actors, as leads, working in Singapore, in English. It’s possible.”
(L-R) Lim Kay Siu, Hossan Leong, Brendon, Gavin Yap, Daniel York Loh, Crispian Chan, Chua Enlai & Ivan Heng
What is one thing you’ve done in the past five years that you’ve never done before?
Too many!
But I guess the highlight would be: got married, bought a flat (or leased it for 99 years, depending on who you ask).
#adulting
If you could import something that you can’t get in Singapore, what would it be?
An Australian beach! ?
