Director: Rhiannon Frazier

Playwright: Katie Farmin

Institution: College of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico, the USA

Venue: Thrust Stage Theatre, CAD Changping Campus

Time: 15:30, May 20, 2024

Event: The 7th Asian Theatre Schools Festival

Director's Notes

I love making theatre because of plays like Sink.

Sometimes our darkest moments are the most mundane aspects of our lives. How weird is that? Sometimes reality is the farthest thing from what feels real. Why?

What an adventure to bring to life the impossible. What a joy to work with a script that offers so many opportunities for the uncanny and the bizarre. What a necessary thing to embrace just how weird life can get. And how wonderful and rare to get the opportunity to do it with a script as honest and playful as this one.

When you start a chainsaw, you know something is getting cut down.

Thank you for your trust, Katie.

Synopsis

Paul and Molly have just moved in together, but their domestic bliss is cut short when Paul invites Annie, his best friend from college, to come live with them. Annie is going through a crisis, though the nature of it remains mysterious… The couple struggle to maintain their routines while making a place in their home for Annie, but things soon grow strange, as Annie’s true intentions are revealed… A comedy of menace and a science fiction nightmare, SINK is a play about warped time, false memories, and the ways in which everything we believe to be true can be shattered in a moment.

The production draws on diverse acting and movements styles, include several rooted in traditional and contemporary Asian performance (Butoh, Noh, classical Korean techniques). The script borrows its structure from the form of traditional Japanese horror fiction, or kishōtenketsu, a narrative form that eschews traditional conflict in favor of amplification and elaboration.