[Audition Notice] Square Moon

Audition Call for Square Moon

Function 8 would like to invite you to come to an audition of a play directed by Lim Siauw Chong, a co-founder of Theatreworks, and written by Wong Souk Yee, formerly from Third Stage. 

Date: Sat. 14 Jan, 2012
Time: 2 to 4 p.m.
Place: The Muse gallery, 22 Marshall Road (off East Coast Road, near Katong Shopping Centre)

Title of Play: Square Moon
Genre: Political Farce
Presenter: Function 8 
Dates of performance: second half of August 2012
Venue: To be confirmed
Cast: 8 Actors 

Synopsis

The play is inspired by the incident of an alleged terrorist’s escape from prison in Singapore in 2008. In the following year, the escapee, Mas Selamat, was caught by the Malaysian Special Branch in a village in Johor, Malaysia. Except for these two events, the rest of the plot, characters and setting of the play are fictional.

After Sid Fajardo has escaped from prison, the Homeland Security Department attempts to cover up their security faux pas. But when Fajardo’s lawyer, Kristina Allende, comes calling to take instruction from her client about his habeas corpus writ, the deputy director of the department threatens and coerces one of his detainees, Borgie Xavier, to stand in for Fajardo. To disguise Borgie as Fajardo, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Solo injects Borgie with a potent drug such that Borgie breaks out in a disfiguring rash and would therefore be unrecognisable.

At her meeting with her “client”, Allende falls for the disguise but, given the horrible rashes, also believes that Fajardo has been tortured. Her suspicion is confirmed when Borgie, in disguise as Fajardo, tells her that he wants to withdraw his writ of habeas corpus and to discharge her as his lawyer.

That night, Allende talks on the phone with a foreign journalist in her home about her plan to bring the detention conditions of Fajardo to the International Court of Jurists (ICJ). Before Allende could finish the conversation, police from the Homeland Security Department comes to arrest her in order to stop her from sabotaging the country’s application to the International Monetary Fund for a $5-billion loan to bail out the economy.

In the midst of Allende’s interrogation by the deputy director of the Homeland Security Department, the director comes into the room, takes his deputy aside and tells him that Fajardo has been caught by the Thikaka Special Branch, their political rival from across the border. In their desperate attempt to save their red faces and to excuse their blunders, they hatch a plot to put all the blame on Allende and the “loopholes” in the Homeland Security Act. Under the harsh conditions of interrogation, the deputy director succeeds in forcing Allende to write statements to incriminate herself. 

Six months later, the Liberal Socialist Party, with which Borgie is associated, wins the general election and Borgie is about to be released. Before he leaves the prison, he promises Allende that he would fight for her release. But Allende is sceptical knowing that parties in power rarely deliver on the promises they make when in opposition. 


Characters

Borgie Xavier: a 30-something male, any physical type and ethnicity, a realist in party 
u 2politics with some idealistic pretension 

Kristina Allende: a human rights woman lawyer, any age and built, feisty but buckle under pressure

Minister for Homeland Security: any gender, age and ethnicity, the stereotypical bullying, conniving, self-serving politician.

Director of Homeland Security Department: A clueless, self-important yet sycophantic bureaucrat.

Deputy Director of Homeland Security: a wily, hardened rogue police officer who hatches all the hare-brained plots for his director of homeland security. Also the hatchet man of the Homeland Security Department.

Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Solo: Male, in his late 40s to 50s. Having seen many political detainees come and go (or perish), he sometimes reveals his more humane side, but then, he could be just playing the good guy in the good-guy-bad-guy charade.

Woman Police Constable (WPC) & Reporter (on video)} possible doubling as the reporter. Any age, built and ethnicity.

Sergeant Labad: a sometimes-robotic, sometimes-human lackey of the system.

We are also looking for technical crew and volunteers in:

Lighting 
Sound 
Stage design 
Stage management
House management

Function 8 is a non-profit social enterprise incorporated late 2010. Due to budget constraints, we can pay only a token fee to each cast and crew member.

For further information, please contact Wong Souk Yee at soukyee@hotmail.com
or Lim Siauw Chong at freurmine@yahoo.com.sg