Agam Theatre Lab marks milestone as major company with new black box space

Agam Theatre Lab will mark two achievements in April.

- Srinidhi Ragavendran

The Tamil theatre group will be recognised as a major company under the National Arts Council's (NAC) scheme and it will open a 110-seat black box space at Tanjong Pagar Distripark on April 13.

Named The Theatre Lab, the 3,111 sq ft venue is located above the Singapore Art Museum. The seven-year-old group signed a three-year lease with Mapletree for the space, which will cost about half a million dollars.

Mr Subramanian Ganesh, 40, Agam's founder and managing director, says of the major company status: "It is a milestone, not just for Agam but for the industry. We also believe that when you are onboarded as a major company, there are more responsibilities, not just for us, but also for the industry as a whole."

Major company status comes with additional funding that supports up to 70 per cent of an arts group's operational costs and it is timely for Agam, which has been operating from a rented studio at Goodman Arts Centre for five years.