Meanderings – Tan Shou Chen

Essentially, a letter of no importance

June 15, 2020June 15, 2020

My Love, my heart, my home,

My art does not speak to you, I have failed.

I seek some empathy for today is the 82nd day since the theatres have gone dark, and many more days of darkness are ahead of us, even as the rest of you begin to step out into a new normal. The time remains dark for us, and we’re desperate for light. But instead of thinking about that, I have sent out the horsemen to fight a battle of opinion, using truth as the weapon.

I am sorry that I have pushed us into a dead end in my response, by ignoring your blindness, by insisting that by a uni-dimensional standard, I am worthy.

And, so, now, I ask, what if, what you say is true?

Day 0. Standing By.

March 25, 2020March 26, 2020

I had the luck and privilege to attend the last full dress rehearsal of Theatre Practice’s Four Horse Road last night, March 24, 2020. I was free. Literally, freed, released, cut, or retrenched. There’s no other way to call it such when your entire industry goes dark. My rehearsals had been cancelled, because the show […]

An Essay about Southernmost Festival 2019

January 29, 2020January 29, 2020

As an observer of Southernmost and writing this response essay, I found myself asking a nagging question – Why should a handful of international artists gather, spending our carbon footprint, to verbalize and analyse the experience of meeting the Other?

I propose two frames in this essay to help deepen the analysis of my question: 1) Tranculturalism; and the more cynical sounding 2) clash of civilisations.

On Interculturalism and Transculturalism

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019

Excerpted from Svetlana Klimenko (2003) Shakespeare, Chekhov and the Emergence of the Transcultured Self in Denmark, Language and Intercultural Communication, 3:2, 151-157, DOI: 10.1080/14708470308668099 ” I use the term transculture as it was put forward by Russian scholar Mikhail Epstein, who introduces it in the following way: The quality and merit of culture is its capacity […]

Lisbon, 2019: Wandering

July 15, 2019July 24, 2019

I’ve been wanting to connect with other art and theatremakers in my time here in Lisbon and staying indoors, one does not. So I wandered, and wandering can lead you exactly where you want to be. On my second day here, on my way down from Hangar in Graça, I wandered into an open gate. […]

Category: Meanderings