Session Zero
As an estranged couple attempts to reconnect over a game of Dungeons & Dragons, the conflicts of daily life are inevitably carried onto the battlefield. Given the mess created by the years of history together, can fantasy storytelling help them rediscover the connection they need?
With masterful strokes, playwright Jo Tan paints a nuanced portrait of the gulf between two that devours what is left unsaid and renders the familiar, strange. With the syllables of the forgotten language that they once shared now echoing through their lives, they must rediscover the words that brought them together in the first place.
Directed and with dramaturgy by Huzir Sulaiman, this intimate two-hander delicately examines matters of the heart, in a bid to heal together. Featuring Jo Tan and Brendon Fernandez, Session Zero bravely navigates and illuminates the complexities that run through the deepest human relationships.
Session Zero first premiered at 42 Waterloo Street and ran from 02 — 19 December 2021.
Creative Team
- Playwright
Jo Tan
- Director-Dramaturge
Huzir Sulaiman
Reviews
- Press
Actress-playwright Jo Tan is proving quite the adept parser of marital dynamics... Her scripts share a warm empathy for the difficulties of navigating the tangled thickets of relationships, as well as a fine sense of the ridiculous that makes for some very funny moments.
As the wife struggling to learn the game her husband loves, she is both hilarious and heartbreaking... The duo shine in the D&D scenes, where the husband [Brendon Fernandez] loses his temper with his wife's blithe remaking of his world. The systematic and funny dismantling of D&D tropes can only come from a deep and nerdy love of the game.
Director and dramaturg Huzir Sulaiman has staged this in brutally stripped-down fashion... trusting Tan's dense script and the actors to carry the day.
This bare staging is a nod to the analog roots of D&D, which depends purely on the players' imagination and words to build a world.
As the play winds down to its denouement, the muted gasps and sniffles from those watching are testament to the power of theatre reduced to its simplest components of a playwright's words, actors on a stage, and an audience's willing and active collusion in a collaborative act of imagination.
The Straits Times, SG