FEATURES: ENTERTAINMENT
Going with the grain
Richard Lawn visits Wild Rice, a new venue in Singapore designed and built by a crack team of theatrical specialists
The Spectrum AV team pose outside the main entrance lobby
The Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre Stage
Stage rigging and rolling beams were designed and installed by Siong Ann Engineering
HAVING CHAMPIONED HOME-GROWN THEATRE FOR OVER 20 years, theatre company Wild Rice finally laid down roots in Funan in 2019. Located in the heart of Singapore’s civic and cultural district, Wild Rice’s performing arts complex has been two years in the making. It now stands in testimony to those who played starring roles in creating this unique and intimate theatrical wonder. The company’s founding artistic director, Ivan Heng, commented that it took more than 20 years for Wild Rice to secure its own venue. Seven attempts at finding a home later, the company managed to complete construction on its 1,883m2 complex at last – thanks to the generous support of property developer CapitaLand and the Ngee Ann Kongsi charitable foundation. Spanning three floors of the new Funan mall, the performing arts complex comprises the
58 PRO AVL ASIA July–August 2020
Spectrum AV added a concentric ring of d&b audiotechnik 8S speakers to all three levels of the theatre
main 358-seat Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre as well as a 60-seat performance studio, rehearsal rooms and offices. The task of realising the vision that Heng and executive director Tony Trickett harboured for Wild Rice @ Funan fell to Singaporean architecture studio Zarch Collaboratives, international theatre design consultancy Charcoalblue and acoustic design firm Radian Acoustics. Taking inspiration from the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon, the Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre is Singapore’s only dedicated thrust stage, its design extending the performance space into the auditorium with audience seating on three sides of the stage. “In designing this theatre, we had two main considerations,” explains Heng. “Firstly, to create the optimum condition for audiences to experience a theatre
per formance. Secondly, to enable Singapore’s theatre practitioners to achieve the fullest expression of their craft. We want all these elements to create an electrifying live experience.” From the star t, constructing the theatre was a mammoth under taking. “A theatre like this can often take 5–10 years to plan, design and build, but rarely two years,” explains Charcoalblue’s James Nowell, whose main task was to oversee the technical specifications of the venue. “Ever y element of the theatre, from fixings to light fixtures and sprinklers, needed to be of a precise measurement to create the per fect playground for Wild Rice to hold its productions. It was a major challenge for us, and one of the reasons why this theatre is ver y special.”