TNS Associate Artists 2023/2024
"My personal artistic philosophy is to make meaningful art. And as a Singaporean artist, I interpret that to mean creating works that not just reflect Singaporean issues, but also challenge Singaporean mindsets. I am an advocate for including more minority voices in mainstream English-language theatre – this means creating works about and for typically underrepresented or misrepresented communities. In that respect, I feel like my values are very much aligned with TNS’s."
Sindhura Kalidas is a theatre practitioner and educator. She is currently an Associate Artist with The Necessary Stage (TNS) and a core team member of The Finger Players (TFP).
Sindhu’s recent performance credits include Wild Rice’s Psychobitch, Deonn Yang’s Why Be Good When You Can Be The Best? (2023), presented as part of the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, Singapore Repertory Theatre’s The Coronalogues (2020), and TNS’s Off Centre (2019).
Her recent dramaturgical credits include the Singapore Youth Theatre’s double bill Every Student Is A Good Student/In My Head (2023),TFP’s Puppet Origin Stories (2022),as well as TNS’s Acting Mad (2022).
She is also the writer of TNS’s Happy Indian Women (2023), a verbatim theatre production which questions the assumptions we make about the diverse South Asian diaspora in Singapore today, which she co-directed with Haresh Sharma.
Sindhu is a recipient of the NAC Postgraduate Arts Scholarship and holds an MA (Distinction) in Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London. She hopes to continue exploring themes of race,gender, and community in future works and shed light on underrepresented and misrepresented groups in Singapore.
She is deeply grateful to be learning from and growing with TNS.
"I think the works created by TNS thus far has always been honest, truthful and sincere, balanced with humour, wit and vulnerability. This is also something I strive for in the works I create. I am interested in creating socially engaged works that gives a voice to the everyday people. I think there is a lot of beauty and magic in these stories that may often get overlooked or sidelined. So I do feel like a complementary fit to the company and I look forward to sharing in our common vision and expanding my horizons in my time as an Associate Artist of TNS."
Deonn is an actor, theatre-maker and teacher. She graduated from LASALLE College of Arts in 2016 with a BA (First Class Hons) in Acting. Deonn is currently an Associate Artist of The Necessary Stage (TNS), and a core member of Playwrights’ Commune, an independent playwriting collective.
As an actor, Deonn has been a part of Esplanade’s PLAYtime! and Huayi Chinese Festival of Arts, M1 Singapore Fringe Festivals, and the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA). Her notable theatre credits include Tanah•Air 水•土. by Drama Box, and Straight Acting produced by Wild Rice, which earned her a Best Actress nomination at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards 2022.
As a theatre-maker, Deonn made her professional debut as a playwright-director at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2023. She also recently directed a successful run of Survivor Singapore as part of Esplanade’s Feed Your Imagination (F.Y.I) 2023 programme. Deonn has collaborated with TNS and Haresh Sharma since 2017 and was recently assistant director to Haresh for Acting Mad (2022) and Three Years in the Life and Death of Land (2023).
Deonn is grateful and excited for the opportunity to continue working with TNS as an Associate Artist for 2024/2025, and looks forward to growing, learning and developing further as an artist. She is interested in people and their stories, and always having a good laugh.