DREAM COUNTRY — A LOST MONOLOGUE WAS ORIGINALLY CALLED THE URN PIECE, CREATED FOR 3 PERFORMERS IN 1988 BY MARION D'CRUZ & DANCERS, PRODUCED BY FIVE ARTS CENTRE. URN PIECE WAS INSPIRED BY DREAM COUNTRY, A MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY MALAYSIAN PLAYWRIGHT LEOW PUAY TIN.
24 years later, DREAM COUNTRY was commissioned by the Singapore Arts Festival 2012 where Marion worked with 5 collaborators - Anne James, Charlene Rajendran, Claire Wong, Natalie Hennedige and Zizi Azah along with 35 performers and 35 urns in an outdoor installation-performance.
The dance is about birth, life and death. While the monologue is not lost, it lives on in the dance. With 35 performers and 35 urns, they were engaged in their own process of discovery, finding their own monologue, their stories and journeys. In their remarkable monologue performance in the outdoors at the Esplanade Park, with the beautiful Singapore’s modern skyline as a backdrop, we were brought into the performers world together to dream and discover our own stories, journeys and monologue. The performance in monologue was rich and invoking, mesmerising and intriguing. The thoughts, feelings and emotions inside us watching them in action, in search of of our own.
Directed by Marion D'Cruz along with Anne James, Charlene Rajendran, Claire Wong, Natalie Hennedige and Zizi Azah for Singapore Arts Festival 2012. Pictures taken by Darren Chin, Jeannie Ho.