



Pickle Party
11 - 14 September 2025
An Esplanade Co-Production
By The Theatre Practice
Co-Directed by Ang Xiao Ting & Kuo Jian Hong
“My grandfather was a durian farmer, back when they lived in a kampung. But in those 10 years, most Singaporeans were forced to relocate to public housing. Even after he moved, my grandfather was still trying to grow everything he could from a sixth floor concrete corridor. Everything he knew about growing durians was made obsolete so that knowledge was never passed down.”
A show disguised as a pickling workshop, Pickle Party is a multidisciplinary, multi-species performance. Set against the backdrop of Singapore’s rapid development from farmland to modern city, it dives into how humans, microbes and food security are connected—where does our food come from? What will we be eating next?
Led by directors Ang Xiao Ting (Extinction Feast, ECOncert) and Kuo Jian Hong (All The World’s A Sea, Four Horse Road), Pickle Party features live VJ-ing, live performance and community pickling. The production will be staged within a Singapore version of Tanja Beer’s critically-acclaimed The Living Stage, which combines stage design, permaculture and community engagement to create a recyclable, biodegradable and edible performance space.
Photo Credits: Tuckys Photography
Press
“The play’s camp sensibilities are established from the beginning […] [a] standout example is when 19th-century coolie Ah Seng (played by the endlessly versatile and consistently hilarious Izzul Irfan) expresses his heartbreak by declaiming the lyrics to gay anthem I Will Survive, with accompanying Chinese opera choreography.”
- Azura Farid, Critics Circle Blog
“Izzul Irfan plays beyond his age and carries a spiritual weight to him as an older male figure in a bar, while also finding sympathy as a chubby man who can’t find a single date, lest they are blackout drunk.”
- Bakchormeeboy