ANG Gey Pin
Theatre practitioner / Pedagogue

In a seemingly paradoxical trajectory, Singapore artist Ang Gey Pin works away from home country while discovers the roots of her Chinese heritage.

Early on, Ang participated in Grotowski’s final Objective Drama session at the University of California-Irvine. Later in Singapore, she co-founded Theatre OX with research into Chinese performative elements and performances in unconventional spaces.

Ang was a member of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards, Italy (1994 and 1998-2006), touring across Europe and Asia with its Project The Bridge: developing theatre arts. She performed lead roles in the Workcenter’s One breath left (UBU Special Award, Italy) and Dies Irae:  My Preposterous Theatrum Interioris Show.

Ang teaches and performs internationally.  Among the institutions are: Grotowski Institute (Poland), Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and LASALLE College of the Arts (Singapore), the University of Kent at Canterbury (United Kingdom), Wesleyan University, Yale University (United States) and University of Ottawa (Canada).

Some phases of her earlier works are featured in scholarly journals and books dedicated to intercultural theatre, including Lisa Wolford’s Grotowski’s Objective Drama Research (University Press of Mississippi, 1996), Paul Allain’s After Grotowski: The New Generation (New Theatre Quarterly 18.1, 2002), Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento’s Crossing Cultural Borders Through the Actor’s Work: Foreign Bodies of Knowledge (Routledge, 2008), The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards’ Opere E Sentieri (Volume I, Bulzoni Editore, 2007).

Ang founded Sourcing Within in 2006 and on a regular basis, she conducts work sessions with interdisciplinary and intercultural performing artists and scholars. Works that she has created, performed and directed include: By the Way (2006), Winter Never Come Spring Already Arrived (2007), Feast of You Shen (2008-2009), Wandering.Birds (2011). Her latest work Wandering Sounds (2013-present) is a solo performance in collaboration (music/visual) with Nickolai D. Nickolov (Bulgaria/Italy).

A recipient of theatre awards granted by the Singapore National Arts Council (1999), Ang holds a Bachelor of Arts (Distinction) from the University of Hawaii-Manoa (1992) and a PhD: Drama by Practice-as-Research from the University of Kent (2017).

—–

photo credit: Angela Botta / Tan Ngiap Heng