Friday, December 15, 2006

Texts consumed Nov 16- Dec 15, 2006

I wonder if these lists will ever be used as a criminal alibi? They really are one of those little compulsive rituals, though. It's got to the point that I try and read shorter books so as to prove to myself that I've read more - you'll notice I overdid the poetry and the graphic texts (i.e. comic books and children's books) this month.

Ooh - new policy! I'm going to bold the stuff I really liked.

*POETRY*
Eddie Tay's "Remnants"
Charles Bukowski's "Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until Your Fingers Start to Bleed a Little"
Hedwig Anuar's "Under the Apple Tree: Political Parodies of the 1950s"
Paul Tan's "First Meeting of Hands"
Maya Angelou's "Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem"
Mani Rao's "Echolocation"
Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet"

*FICTION*
Max Brooks's "World War Z"
Zai Kuning's "Bluemonkish"

*DRAMA*
Bertolt Brecht's "Life of Galileo"
Euripides' "Medea", "The Trojan Women ", "Hecuba" and "Andromache"

*NON-FICTION*
Margaret Chan's "Ritual As Theatre, Theatre As Ritual"
Ian Blyth and Susan Sellers's "Live Theory: Hélène Cixous"
Gretchen Liu and Angelina Phillips's "Wayang: A History of Chinese Opera in Singapore"

*GRAPHIC TEXTS*
Andy Riley's "Loads More Lies to Tell Small Kids"
Popjustice and David Whittle's "A Girl Called Madonna" and "A Boy Called Marshall"
Allan Ahlberg's "The Little Cat Baby"
Edward Monkton's "Life", "The Wonderful Man", "The Lady and the Chocolate", "The Pig of Happiness" and "The Shoes of Salvation"
Guy Delisle's "Shenzhen"

*PERFORMANCES*
Alex Wang's "Believe"
Agni Kootthu's "O$P$"
Cake Theatre's "Divine Soap"
W!ld Rice's "Jack and the Beansprout"
Adrian Tan and Ng How Wee's "Pulau"
The Theatre Practice's "Mama Looking for her Cat"

*MOVIES*
Tony Scott's "Deja Vu"
Stephen Frears' "The Queen"
Lots of "QI" (ok lar, this was on Youtube)

9 comments:

Cody Hess said...

Like the new policy, but bold is a little tough to perceive with your font. Maybe if you preceded them with a plus instead.

Ng Yi-Sheng said...

Yeah, it's not a very nice font, is it? Maybe I should make a permanent change.

Great to hear from you! Merry Christmas to you in Christendom!

Mezzo said...

I'm a curatorpal, hip hip hooray!

Your reading list looks great - I've highlighted a couple things that I should go through. Regretfully, the last thing I read seems to have been the lower secondary history textbook.

Ng Yi-Sheng said...

Trust me, things could be worse. My sis is reading Primary 5 Chinese textbooks to brush up her muyu.

Anonymous said...

hi yi-sheng
are u now a regular theatre critic with st?

i wish i had seen most of the plays in your performance list, especially pulau. darn i missed it!

but i managed to catch mama.. the ensemble acting was superb and i like the video close-ups of the actors during the key scenes, especially the moving monologue by the impatient daughter. we don't get enough of such plays with a social message anymore, do we?

Ng Yi-Sheng said...

Yeah, they're letting me freelance as a reviewer there... see my careerblog, http://lastboy.blogspot.com. Unfortunately that means I'll have to stop contributing commentaries to Today.

Who're you, btw?

Ng Yi-Sheng said...

And I'm not sure if it's true that we're lacking social message plays. Look at Fundamentally Happy and 7-Month Itch and Mobile and Trash and even Divine Soap and Jack and the Beansprout, to a certain extent...

Anonymous said...

i'm referring more specifically to multi-layered plays that employ metaphors to reflect changes in our society. kuo pao kun was a master at that.

we're not acquainted. just passing by :)

btw who will play annabel chong in your upcoming play?

Ng Yi-Sheng said...

Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie. There's a photo of her here:

http://www.human-e-tour.org/who/team.htm