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Stop by our home on 54 Waterloo Street and you can’t miss the bright pink neon sign in front of Practice Tuckshop, a tiny café and arts space within The Theatre Practice (Practice).
Helmed by the Tuckshop Guniangs, a group of young programmers and arts managers, Practice Tuckshop was envisioned as a creative playground where diverse communities converged. Six years after its inception, Practice Tuckshop has become fertile ground for new formats and ideas, and an example of the progressive and fearlessly experimental spirit of Practice.
Directed by our Associate Artist and Practice Tuckshop’s lead programmer Ang Xiao Ting, Extinction Feast synthesises the team’s exploration across eco-scenography, non-traditional forms, food storytelling and multidisciplinary art-making into an ambitious black box production.
First presented during the pandemic as part of Singapore Writers’ Festival 2021, this second staging of Extinction Feast is both the culmination of one journey, and the start of another. I hope you will join me in supporting the Guniangs, as they just keep swimming, swimming, swimming…
Kuo Jian Hong Artistic Director of The Theatre Practice
Jeff wants to do the right thing. So does his brother. And his mother. And his sister-in-law. So an important discussion over family dinner should go smoothly… right?
Inspired by Eating Chilli Crab in the Anthropocene, Extinction Feast is a playful black comedy about Asian culture, fish consumption and our pesky conscience.
Director Ang Xiao Ting assembles an international team of collaborators to create a multidisciplinary theatrical feast combining performance, multimedia and live foley. Blending storytelling and dining, the production also features canapés by Ah Hua Kelong.
Extinction Feast is a Practice Tuckshop production, and was first staged to a sold-out run at Singapore Writers’ Festival 2021.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pqrx0hNaio
How do we decide what — or who — to eat?
This was a question that prompted our deep-dive into fish consumption — its place in Chinese culture and its impact on the environment. Thus began our exploration of thematically prioritising Jeff’s climate anxiety and his journey of “Doing Good” while navigating this impossibly complex phenomenon called: The Climate Crisis.
All stories are framed in response to context, and in this case, we felt like we could no longer downplay the alarming spread of ecopsychology and its effects. And precisely because we are “running out of time” as Jeff puts it, the heart of this story sits in the intersection, the troublesome in-between of Jeff’s personal morals, family values, climate justice and constellation of emotions such as anger, grief, guilt, shame and hope.
With Extinction Feast, however, the goal was never to offer solutions, but to offer urgent reminders and perspectives that can fundamentally alter our relationship with the world around us. For example: what if the knowledge of an animal’s sentience wasn’t used to instil fear but gratitude?
My hope is that a story with mythic components is a reminder that posits The Human as one who still has the capacity for love. What happens if we move forward with that thought instead?
Ang Xiao Ting Director
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Director Xiao Ting and the team share their background stories and perspectives on the creation process of Extinction Feast.
“Rather than seeing sustainability-driven decisions in the creative process as constraints, it can open up creative possibilities we wouldn’t have considered before. For me, creating Eco-Theatre begins at the source of decision-making. Other than working with collaborators experienced in making these ecologically-conscious decisions within their fields, we prioritise how these decisions affect how the story is told. In other words, we wanted to explore how to apply eco dramaturgy in this story.”
Ang Xiao Ting Director