Watching “The Pitch” made me miss theatre – like, a lot

The Pitch, a short film co-produced by Pangdemonium, Singapore Repertory Theatre and WILD RICE, premiered about three weeks ago now. It follows the three companies pitching for a fictional COVID-19 friendly show. The cast all play themselves (Adrian Pang, Gaurav Kripalani, and Ivan Heng), and poke fun at their own male egos. But boy, watching The Pitch make me miss Singapore theatre so, so much.

For the past couple of years, I have a rolling Google doc entitled “Theatre schedule”, where I will list all the plays I wanted to catch every month, ticket price, whether I’ve booked it and whether I’ve written a review for this blog. It was last updated March 9.

The Pitch features the Wild Rice stage, “non-essential” workers, an Alfian S’aat reference and some inside jokes that I’ve probably missed. It felt like a gentle, funny homage to a distant past through today’s weird COVID-19 lens, when it was only just six months ago. I do feel every play I have watched is ultimately a love letter to theatre, and The Pitch definitely alludes to this. It’s a fun little skit that just reminded me, “Wow, we really had it good, didn’t we?”

I am not an arts practitioner (more of a loving viewer/critic of theatre) so for those whose livelihoods are dependent on theatre and whose jobs have been disrupted or halted by the ongoing pandemic, it must be excruciating to be going through this. I can only hope that it will get better (perhaps naive to think so, but what else do we have besides hope?).

I look forward to updating my Google doc sometime in 2022.

watch the pitch here. Donations of any amount can be made here. All proceeds will be split equally between the three companies (Pangdemonium, SRT and Wild Rice).