The Future Show
Jo Tan
17 & 18 Mar | 7.30 & 9pm pm | Secret location within NUS Campus
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Deborah Pearson
Concept & Score
There’s something a bit funny about saying that a show about the future is an old show. Maybe there’s something comforting about it too.
When I first started working on this show, I was 29 years old. I was living with flatmates and my boyfriend, recently turned fiance, in Shoreditch, London. The first time I performed a work-in-progess, I’d just had a haircut I really didn’t like, and I was wearing a vintage shirt that I continued to love until I was about 34. I would definitely consider it too busy to wear now. I was about to go to Canada for five months, and then I was about to start a PhD, and then I was about to move into a one bedroom flat with my husband, and get a cat, and spend four years pitching and gathering funding for my next solo show, and then spend three years touring it. A lot of life was about to happen.
I bring up these events because one of the most long term effects of what for me is a now-old-show, is that it asks the performer and audience to take stock of their lives. Of what’s already happened, of what they expect to happen, and of what they have no idea will happen. The minutely detailed stock taking that The Future Show required of me in the years I toured it and rewrote it sometimes felt like taking snapshots of my own expectations, anxieties and hopes, and of the many times I was wrong. The act of rewriting the show was very difficult for me. Had it been a fictional character it wouldn’t have bothered me in the least, but with a fictional character both me and the audience would know that there was just not as much at stake.
Since I published some past scripts and the score with Oberon Books in 2015, several performers have taken up the challenge to write and perform their own versions of The Future Show. There have been two versions in Hong Kong, one that travelled to Prince Edward Island and Vancouver, several versions in Portugal, and versions with groups of students and young people, including an audio piece in Coventry during the pandemic that we made with 12 different young writers. Every time an artist takes up the mantle I am moved by their courage, because I know that as simple as the show seems, writing down your real projection for your real future and reading it out with witnesses takes a lot of courage.
I’ve read one version of Jo’s script, and it’s been kind of quietly revelatory for me. She’s engaged so deeply and intelligently with the core themes of the concept and worked so elegantly and inventively with the score, that it’s like looking in a mirror and seeing someone else reflected, marvelling at the different details of their face. I’ve not only seen Jo reflected in that mirror, but Singapore itself. I have a vision of the metro system, of the university campus, of this place I’ve never visited before.
The Future Show would sometimes be described in reviews as a “miniature” and that always bugged me. I worried it was dismissive somehow. But now, reading Jo’s piece, I realise that the term miniature was referring to the accumulation of details that makes up a life, and to the choice the viewer has to really peer closely at what's in front of them. When I do this with Jo’s script I feel wonder. I feel wonder at how our lives are both small and immense, and I feel wonder at her care, attention and skill, in painting us a snapshot of what’s at stake for her now.
Photo credit Tania El Khoury
Jo Tan
Text and Performance
I fell in love with The Future Show when CFA sent me a grainy video of Deborah performing it. I remember I was struck by how frills-free it was - just one performer, sharing those words that so clearly demonstrated the everyday madness and magic of being human.
The performance showed that to each of us living out our existence, a lifetime might be over in a breath, while a single moment can contain all the exquisite agonies and delights and realisations of a lifetime. It's a concept that is so honest and simple and yet so gorgeous, and I consider myself extremely privileged to make a version of The Future Show in Singapore. Or rather, four versions, since every 7.30pm or 9pm show will warrant its own script - the play begins with describing what happens after each specific performance after all. It isn't the easiest thing to write so many variations, but it has allowed me to reconnect quite personally with my alma mater NUS, as I find myself revisiting different areas of the campus so as to best predict the different possible thoughts and happenings that would arise after someone leaves our performance space and passes through the university grounds.
I hope people who come to see this version of The Future Show will see themselves very clearly in it, and leave sharing the feeling that while our futures are finite, they are - without question - full of wonder.
Chong Tze Chien
Director
Reading Deborah’s original text felt as though I was poring over someone’s diary. The anecdotes, even though fictional and at points fantastical, felt true to life, speaking to me with its attention to detail.
The premise of The Future Show is an intriguing and meditative treatise that delves into the question of “what-if” in a matter of fact way, blurring the line between reality and fiction.
Having Jo as a writer to recompose the text based on Deborah’s narrative score/template was another draw to the project for me. The work’s unique approach invites reinterpretation and rewrites in accordance with the performer’s perspective and nationality. The integrity of the work, despite these rewrites, stays “alive” and “personal” in that way, crossing boundaries both geographical and culturally.
Ultimately, this work is a confluence of Deborah’s narrative score and Jo’s input, framed by myself as a director. We have deliberately situate the work physically in an unconventional space to evoke both intimacy and immediacy for the audience and performer. The text is informed by the site. You will find specific references to the site and its surroundings as the story unfolds, and each performance is different based on the audience profile in each show.
Bring an open mind to experience the work in an unusual space, which subverts expectations and preconceived notions; you might be pleasantly surprised by the “spaces between” which this work offers both thematically and metaphorically.
The Future Show tells the “true story” of the rest of one performer’s life, starting from the end of the performance and ending on the day they die. Join Jo Tan as she brings us on an unexpected journey of expectations... starting with a hint of the location of the show venue only on the day you will meet her...
SYNOPSIS
The Future Show tells the “true story” of the rest of one performer’s life, starting from the end of the performance and ending on the day they die. Written specifically for each show within NUS Arts Festival, The Future Show brings together an award-winning team who play with our sense of time, uncertainty, anxiety and hope, using the lens of the future to connect with our constantly shifting present.
The Future Show is an original concept by performance artist Deborah Pearson and has been performed internationally. This version will be written and performed by actress and writer Jo Tan and directed by Chong Tze Chien.
CREATIVE TEAM
Deborah Pearson
Concept and Score
Jo Tan
Text and Performance
Chong Tze Chien
Director
production CREW
Hoh Hao Yin
Production Stage Manager
Chang Le Shuen
Assistant Stage Manager
other credits
Co-Producers:
Jobina Tan & River Chua
