Waiting For Audience: A Playful Valentine to Theatre

Nine Years Theatre's co-founders Nelson Chia and Mia Chee carry this work with their performances

- Ong Sor Fern

Nine Years Theatre's production for the Singapore International Festival of Arts 2025 is miles away from Home Kitchen, its work for the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre's Cultural Extravaganza in early May.

The latter was a heartwarming mass-appeal domestic drama packed with a busy cast on an elaborate set.

Waiting For Audience is a stripped-down two-hander on a deceptively "bare" stage with a clever script that taps theatre insider references for a layered meditation on art, artists and audiences.

The show is carried by the dynamic duo of Nelson Chia and Mia Chee, co-founders of Nine Years. The pair have an easy chemistry and the absurdist nature of some of the scenes allows the usually serious actors to loosen up—literally—with some limber knockabout physical comedy.

While the title of the play nods at Irish writer Samuel Beckett's seminal 1953 play Waiting For Godot, its premise references Chinese theatre doyen Stan Lai.