Residency @ ITI: Dinah’s Tea — Open Sessions

Dinah’s Tea is a musical-in-incubation integrating original music, text, and physical theatre. The project was selected for Centre 42’s Engage-a-Dramaturg programme and Theatre No Theatre’s Across-Asia Project.

The play follows a young woman who has built her life around cleanliness and control, until she finds herself undone by the things she cannot scrub away. Through music, text, and physical theatre, Dinah’s Tea explores the body, memory, and the messy contradictions of becoming whole.

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ITI Artist-in-Residence: Joy Koh Jia En

Joy Koh Jia En is an interdisciplinary creator-performer working across singing, movement, writing and facilitation. Her practice explores what lies beyond words, using voice and embodiment to surface personal and societal insight. Drawing from musical theatre, physical theatre, playwriting, songwriting, vocal improvisation, contact improvisation, somatics and depth psychology, she creates through the relationship between text, body and voice.

Joy is currently developing her voice in longer-form work as a playwright and musical theatre maker. She is drawn to forms where text works alongside rhythm, melody, movement and theatrical composition, with a particular interest in how performance can hold contradiction, tension and truth through subtext, dissonance, and the interplay between voice, body and language.

Her past performances include the original monologue One Moment, performed at The Stage Club and Scratch Night; Meditations on the Body, a contact improvisation work with written poetry; vocal improvisation with world instruments in Ultrasound; and musical theatre performances at Sing’theatre’s Spotlighters showcase.

Alongside her creative practice, Joy founded Vocal Improv SG, Somasound and Musical Book Club, communities that support collective learning, experimentation and creative exchange.

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Open Sessions:

1. Character Mixer — Come as Your Character
4 Jul, Sat | 3:00 PM – 5:00PM
Open to public

A playful, facilitated session where participants arrive as a character they wish to explore or develop.

Through a series of short activities, participants will get to explore, showcase, and test their character in action, placing them in conversation with other weird and wonderful characters in the room.

Suitable for performance-makers, actors, drag performers, dancers, writers, improvisers, roleplayers, and anyone curious about developing or embodying a different part of themselves.

2. Work-in-Progress Reading
25 Jul, Sat | 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM
Invite-only

A work-in-progress reading of Joy’s play, currently titled Dinah’s Tea: A movement-musical play.

The play follows a young woman who has built her life around cleanliness and control, until she finds herself undone by the things she cannot scrub away. Through music, text, and physical theatre, Dinah’s Tea explores the body, memory, and the messy contradictions of becoming whole.

The sharing will be followed by questions and open feedback to support the development of the play. This session is invite-only, and is suitable for theatre practitioners, as well as ITI students, teachers, and alumni.

3. Contact Improv + Vocal Improv Jam
29 Jul, Wed | 7:30 PM – 10:00 PM
Open to public

An open jam for contact improvisers, movement improvisers, dancers, vocal improvisers, and anyone curious to play with body and voice. This session will also mark the end of Joy’s residency and serve as a small celebration.

REGISTER HERE