SINGAPORE - Tickets to the first two theatre productions with a commercial run since venues were closed on March 26 are sold out.
Singapore Repertory Theatre's (SRT) Tuesdays With Morrie sold out in four days while Wild Rice's An Actress Prepares sold out in a day.
Tuesdays With Morrie, which previews on Nov 1 and premieres on Nov 4, sold out 49 performances. Actors Ramesh Panicker and Benjamin Chow star in this stage adaptation of journalist Mitch Albom's best-selling 1997 memoir.
The latest Government advisory released on Tuesday (Oct 20) said that live performances can be resumed on Nov 1 at designated venues with up to two zones of 50 audience members. But SRT's audience for each show is capped at 50 people, as per the National Arts Council's pilot trials and pending NAC approval.
SRT's managing director Charlotte Nors, 53, said the company is exploring extending the production's run, adding: "We are thrilled that our audience has missed us as much as we have missed them.
She said that staff have been busy preparing the theatre space, which will be coated with an anti-microbial shield and have its seats taken out and reconfigured with a cafe-style seating arrangement.
Siti Khalijah Zainal's one-woman show An Actress Prepares, on from Nov 4 to 22, has met with a similarly rapturous response, selling out 23 performances in two hours. About 200 tickets were sold in advance sales to Wild Rice donors while some 900 were snapped up by the general public.
Wild Rice's founding artistic director Ivan Heng said of the sales: "It's a demonstration of the pent-up hunger for live performances."
Seating is similarly limited to 50 people per show at Wild Rice's Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre. There are no plans to extend the run for the play, written by Alfian Sa'at and directed by Aidli "Alin" Mosbit, because Wild Rice already has other shows in the pipeline. These include offerings from its director's residency and Young & Wild programmes.
"This is very encouraging and gives us the confidence that audiences will come back when we resume," added Heng.
