“One Day We’ll Understand” theatre performance – “world premiere” 30 August 2024

Thrilled to announce the world premiere season of “One Day We’ll Understand” 《有那么一天》, a new multimedia performance I’ve been making from my long project on the anti-colonial war in Malaya.

This production is a commission by the Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, for Esplanade Presents: The Studios, and will be presented at Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade in Singapore 30 August – 1 September, 2024.

It’s produced by CultureLink Sg, in partnership with Chamber Made (Australia).

Tickets available at: https://www.esplanade.com/…/events/one-day-well-understand

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This new multimedia performance explores memory, inheritance and the family history of visual artist Sim Chi Yin against the setting of the “Malayan Emergency”.

Part documentary and part a speculative look at how we might deal with the past, “One Day We’ll Understand” excavates hidden histories, Chinese diasporic experiences and the long legacies of colonialism. Through the lens of Sim’s life and camera, we time-travel into her family archive, recovering traces left in the wake of the anti-colonial war in British Malaya and beyond.

Drawing on Sim’s large body of evocative photographic and filmic work, probing questions both personal and universal, One Day We’ll Understand transcends the autobiographical to a larger canvas that speaks to memory, loss, trauma, restitution and repair.

Led by a Singaporean-Australian creative team, “One Day We’ll Understand” combines haunting imagery with narration, archival footage, and a driving live score by percussionist Cheryl Ong, giving voice to Sim’s multiple personas as artist, historian, writer, mother and granddaughter, opening up ways to think about our pasts and futures.

(1hr, no intermission)

Performed in English with some Mandarin and Hakka dialect, with English and Chinese surtitles.