Produced by Impromptu Meetings
Lotus Root Support Group (2024)
28th August 2024 - 1st September 2024
Centre 42 Blackbox
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Creators and Performers: Shannen Tan and Miriam Cheong
Producers: Adeeb Fazah and Miriam Cheong
Sound Designer: Mark Benedict Cheong
Dramaturg: Sonia Kwek
Stage Manager: Genevieve Tan
Assistant Stage Manager: Jasmine Khaliesah
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Miriam and Shannen are two broke theatre-makers with many things in common: A love of anime? Check. Went to the same primary school, secondary school AND junior college? Check. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome? Double check.
With ovaries that have more holes in them than Swiss cheese, insurance companies rejecting them for being “too high risk”, and existential crises about womanhood, Miriam and Shannen are banding together to deal with it the only way they know how: making theatre about it. But what if the differences they face through this are irreconcilable? What if their cyst-erhood is not as strong as they initially thought? And what does a Potato Rap have to do with all of this?
Candidly discussing the struggles of living with under-researched and misunderstood chronic illness, Lotus Root Support Group affirms the importance of human connections in times of struggle, as rocky and tumultuous as they may be. Because we can’t make it through life alone.
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★★★★
After the initial flurry of jokes, Lotus Root Support Group hits you with a sucker punch of vulnerability that makes you root for our two creators. Lotus Root Support Group then becomes more than just a personal story of suffering from PCOS. It is fundamentally a universal underdog story, of two individuals who are trying their hardest to get by in a world that makes them feel they don’t fit in, who learn to get by through finding fellow misfits and discovering that they are not alone... A veritable showcase of skillsets each performer possesses, and a scream into the void (or to its audiences) to be perceived beyond stereotype, this is a show not just for PCOS sufferers, but for anyone who’s ever felt alone in the world.