The Finger Players

A drag queen, a filmmaker and a movement artist walk into… ONE-TWO-SIX Cairnhill Arts Centre.Home to The Finger Players, and home to puppets that the company has amassed since 1999, three artists give these puppets new lives, enriching their histories and extending their lifespans beyond what they were made for.Puppet Origin Stories @ ONE-TWO-SIX is a night of site-responsive performances + an exhibition of the company’s tangible histories + an easter egg hunting-esque/lucky draw-esque… thing.Come join us l

Puppet Origin Stories @ ONE-TWO-SIX (2022)

Video Archival

The Necessary Stage

It’s International Friendship Day at MPSS but friendship seems to be the last thing on the students’ minds.

While the foreign students Adi, Anton and Liqin are questioning what to showcase at their booths and why there isn’t one for the local students, the Drama Club boys are unhappy about them not putting any effort towards the much anticipated Singapore Youth Festival (SYF).

Meanwhile, Carys is facing pressure at home for losing her spot as the school’s top Maths student.

Will she lose her top sp

International Friendship Day (2021)

Videographer

A man stabs an MP at a Meet the People Session. But this is not their story.

It is the story of the man’s girlfriend, an Indonesian maid who wants to get married and become a Singapore citizen. It is the story of the MP’s wife, who tries to cope with her husband’s injury and the media spotlight. It is the story of the maid’s employer, who is also struggling with her own tragedy.

These three women may mean nothing to each other, but they need one another to survive.

The maid, the employer and the MP

Model Citizens (2021)

Director of Photography

Cake Theatrical Productions

Urban legend has it that Sophocles, the Granddaddy of Tragedy, died from holding his breath while reciting a particularly long line from Antigone, the story of a young woman from Thebes, who had the cheek to defy her uncle-ruler Creon to bury her brother Polyneices. Receiving a proper burial was a big deal then. The deceased without an appropriate send-off would be denied entry into the Underworld and forced to roam the shores of River Styx as a restless ghost forever. Antigone wasn’t about to let that happ

Rubber Girl on the loose (2019)

Photographer

Temple sees the invention of a mythological universe where all the quarters of the world are at odds. A sports hall, once the diplomatic meeting arena of the now opposing sides, stands desolate.

7 people, assailed, stand at the entrance of the great hall. Quickly, they enter and bolt the doors. Some nights they hear pounding on the doors but they keep very still and do nothing. Within the inner sanctum, they create their own rules, find their own order. They wait.

One day, they awake to find the doors

Temple (2018)

Itsy Bitsy Spider has galvanised his eight-legged army to terrorise the characters in the nursery rhyme world. In comes an unlikely hero, a grandfather who’s looking for his grandson. In his search, Grandpa is reacquainted with familiar and colourful friends from the nursery rhymes that he used to sing to his grandson. Unwittingly, he ends up being their hero, the chosen one against the spiders. To save his newfound friends from the eight-legged terror, an epic war ensues between the spiders, and his assemb

ITSY - The Musical (2017)

After Ophelia, Electra becomes the second creation in Cake’s series of classical re-imaginings where tragic figures are given a striking awakening on Cake’s contemporary stage.

Electra is an immense character borne of tradition and myth, the lady of perpetual lamentation, the embodiment of personal and public grief. This mother of a tragedy centers on Electra, a daughter who ceaselessly and undividedly grieves for her slaughtered father. The perpetrators of the murder are Electra’s own mother and her mot

Electra (2016)

A multi-disciplinary site-specific production featuring international puppeteers and designers from Hong Kong, China and Singapore! Traditions and modernity meet in this site-specific production that takes audience through a corridor of memories and stories performed by Master Puppeteers from China, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as Sound and Visual Artists. This eclectic mix of artists is specially picked for this project to create an immersive multi-disciplinary theatrical journey that articulates the n

The Collectors (2016)

She captures the imagination with her madness, her drowning. A tragic character set eternally in a pool of water, eyes dead, and full of secrets. So little is known about Ophelia. What does she tell us beyond the limits she faced in her short life?

Inspired by Shakespeare’s character, this work delves into the workings of a mind, intricate and complex, encompassing too the landscape of a soul inextricably linked to that of a prominent other, Hamlet.

Beyond the politics of sex and gender and the cycles

Ophelia (2016)

Natalie Hennedige

Born from the desire to chart humanity’s passage from&nbsp;the beginning to its present state, Versus is a ferocious&nbsp;performance about our existence amidst all the wars&nbsp;we wage.

This allegorical journey takes place in the most contentious zones of conflict&nbsp;we know - the world’s innumerable battlefields, the volatile intersections&nbsp;of faith, the deep trenches of the heart - spinning it all like some renegade&nbsp;turntable, ricocheting from flesh domain to spirit state, meshing personal

Versus (2015)

No words heard written spoken can fix what is broken but
damn if we don’t try try try harder faster to be stronger better
than our yesterday selves so all eyes ears fists fingers we delve
into territory unknown how time has flown now we are standing
scared in the sacred soul-searching whilst naked wondering
wandering about this machine is there a place any space to pin
some
spare
hope

If a body seeks a home, it must either find or build one. Decimal Points [infinity] is a journey into an amusemen

Decimal Points [Infinity] (2015)

Presented by Cake Theatrical Productions in partnership with The Substation and curated by Natalie Hennedige,&nbsp;Decimal Points&nbsp;is a series of art experiments that fuel artistic creation through process and exploration. Over the course of two years (2011 — 2012), four artistic experiments are made, each helmed by an individual artist — Brian Gothong Tan, David Lee, Philip Tan and Rizman Putra. Each artist is encouraged to create from a personal place, finding entry points via the varying disciplines 

Decimal Points First Station (2013)

Surround sound artist and music director Philip Tan takes it to the floor, tearing up notions of conventionality and turning it up several notches in an installation experiment with performance at specified timings. It's just what happens when the beats from his head let loose and possess a silver screen, kick a** speakers and whatever else is in the room. Okay, you get it, here's something in a performance space that really shouldn't be measured or defined except to say it's what happens when a brilliant m

Decimal Points 7.7 (2012)

Three of Singapore's most exciting creative talents, hailing from different backgrounds and writers themselves, will curate and direct Singapore literary content in three nights of dramatised readings in&nbsp;Utter&nbsp;from 17 June to 19 June 2011.

Held at Drama Centre Black Box at the National Library, this pre-festival event to the Singapore Writers Festival will see Natalie Hennedige&nbsp;(Nothing,&nbsp;Cuckoo Birds) from theatre, Ken Kwek (Kidnapper,&nbsp;It's A Great, Great World) from film and Lee

Utter: Thirteen Ways of Looking and Other Observations (2011)

The art of living in the in-between&nbsp;is a collaborative art project featuring installation, film, performance, workshops and gigs that uncover the inspirations and fantasies that have catalyzed 5 years of works by Cake.

Over 5 days, a shophouse is transformed into a hotbed of images, words, sound, strange movement, magnetic encounters and unexpected happenings sometimes way into the night! Wander through the rooms, each flowing and ebbing with exquisite strangeness or come especially for the performa

The Art of Living in the In-Between (2010)

First performed in Kuala Lumpur in 2009 as part of leading Malaysian arts collective Five Arts Centre’s 25th Anniversary Celebrations,&nbsp;Cuckoo Birds&nbsp;is a kaleidoscopic collision of personal and collective stories, connected and disconnected characters, real and imagined events all played out within a plastic container, sealed for extra protection! Boldly encountering things violent, random and absurd,&nbsp;Cuckoo Birds&nbsp;is a contemporary theatrical experiment exploring the search for serenity i

Cuckoo Birds (2010)

Pinocchio's Complex: A mental state in which everything imagined is deemed real.

A lonely old man longs for a child so much he constructs him out of wood. The 'child' however tries to convince his make that he's not real. Fearing that his child has been tainted by logic, the old man tries to rescue his child from objective reality by summoning an UFO to take them to fairyland.


Pinocchio's Complex (2008)

Publicity Photographer

This is a story about a loser in a loser family caught in a table between love and duty.

The Finger Players' full-time artist Oliver Chong directs, writes and designs this multi-layered production, featuring an all-female cast in gender-bending roles, luscious music arrangements by celebrated sound designer Darren Ng and an atmospheric lighting design by award-winning designer Lim Woan Wen.

Performed in Mandarin, English, Cantonese, and Hokkien with English surtitles.


I'm Just a Piano Teacher (2006)

Fairy takes are real. Elves, fairies and demons still lurk out there in the mordern world, only they are hidden from our view.

Our eyes are so blinded by science and technology, we cease to believe in miracles and legends anymore.

Unable to survive this cynical world, a demoness grieves; it is a grief so great it casts a dark shadow over the world.

Actor/musician Lim Kay Siu together with a troupe of actors/puppeteers Koh Wan Ching, Oliver Chong, Ong Kian Sin and Ang Hui Bin reopen the door of imag

Enchanted Tales (2007)

A Kungfu parody in English, Mandarin and Cantonese with surtitles.

First there was the Yang Generals.&nbsp;

Now there is the First Family!

7 maidens try to protect the emperor from his assassins. But they soon find themselves in peril when the tables are turned on them.&nbsp;

First Family parodies the patriotic tale of the female generals and campy 70s' Hong Kong kungfu cinema.

Expect irreverntly funny kungfu sequences and an amazing use of shadow puppetry incorporated into the action. Funny 

First Family (2006)

Inspired by Gavin Menzies' 1421 -&nbsp;The year China discovered America, Furthest North, Deepest South&nbsp;dramatizes legendary sea-navigator Eunuch Cheng Ho's emotional discovery of the new world and his fate.

Using actors, mime, puppets and live music, this dramatic story unfolds through the perspective of the legendary sea-navigator Eunuch Cheng Ho and his emperor, Zhu Di.

The production charmed and dazzled audiences with its fusion of puppetry and human actors when it was first staged in 2004.


Furthest North, Deepest South (2006)

A grandmother is dying.
Her grandson is in New York and she’s in Singapore. He refuses to come home and she puts her foot down. She buys him a flat and he buys her a coffin.

A woman and a man are in love.
A third party buys a bed but gets nothing else. Three’s a crowd but no one wants to budge. Does love know no boundaries or is there just too much greed?

A criminal is on the loose.
His father is going berserk. His mother has bought breakfast but no one wants to eat.The Devil pays all three familie

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (2005)

A eunuch discovers a new world but cripples a dynasty.

He helps his emperor ascend the throne but loses his country.

He is his emperor’s favourite eunuch but also his downfall.

Many borders crossed and battles fought later,

The Eunuch wins the world, but loses himself.


Furthest North, Deepest South (2004)

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Tuckys Photography

WORKS DOCUMENTED IN THE ARCHIVE

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