A note from Merlynn Tong
The hungry ghost festival in Singapore is a boisterous time. Loud, colourful live stage performances called GeTai ( 歌台 or ‘song stages’) would pop up across every suburb. Performers would wear glittery, out of this world costumes, they would sing and dance – all to entertain the hungry ghosts, back for the month to visit the living. In fact, the front row of seats were always left empty for the spirits. As a child, I always tried to get as close to the stage as I could. These performances of outrageous worship and entertainment for the underworld mesmerised me. It feels unreal that as an adult, through LEGENDS , I now get to re-encounter and reimagine GeTai, the afterlife and subsequently re-examine my own deep- seated evolving beliefs around my own culture and its traditions. There is no one I would rather go on this journey with than Joe Paradise Lui. Our incredible rehearsal director Marcel Dorney introduced us years ago for the development of a new work. On our long walks to and from work each day, we uncovered many uncanny similarities, including our Singaporean background, being artists, going to the same
Image: Liv Morison
university, our grandfather’s history and, crucially, our similar obsession for delicious food. What entailed was years of eating much deliciousness across the country, hours upon hours of conversation, many moments of mending broken hearts and swapping joys and ultimately the formation of a deep friendship that I treasure endlessly. In LEGENDS we harness our friendship – our similarities, our differences, our triumphs and our heartaches – to bring you with us into a kaleidoscopic version of our underworld. We have gathered an astonishing team of artists for this work, and I cannot wait to share their genius with you. Hopefully, a few of our ancestors and past loved ones will also join us in the front row.
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