Just how essential is the space we step into when watching a piece of theatre? In their contrasting ways, two consecutive and highly engaging shows — Re:Looking At Re:Gina and IN:dex — just hammered the point in.

One of them with an actual hammer, too.

That would be the former show by Elizabeth de Roza and Melissa Quek. The “performance map of structure reactions” — or, as I put it, a site-specific-y dance-y performance — divided The Substation Theatre into a series of rooms via cardboard box walls that constantly kept being reconfigured.

From a narrow corridor, you’re ushered through the backstage area and re-enter the theatre space where you’re urged to find out what happened to a woman, murder mystery-style (or at least that’s how I take it).

At the start, De Roza implores you to “remember”, offering you a notebook and pencil to jot down notes before entering the room(s). In black, she’s a kind of solid phantom presence in a show where the rest (Quek and four other dancers) assume a more fluid ghostly presence in their red dresses.

It apparently has another layer of commentary about Singapore history, but it mostly works for me on a purely visceral level. Even if you can’t quite pin down the factual bits, it pulsates with violence, dread and despair — in Quek struggling as she dances in a red dress hooked up to the rafters (and later on, some screaming), De Roza entering the room clenching a hammer in her mouth, which she eventually uses. Images of bowls full of nails, dolls. Other dancers going into paroxysms or imploring audiences to read a diary entry.

All these, mind you, happen as audiences negotiate the ever-shifting space. As the walls move, we also constantly have to, at times unavoidable (unless you want to be run over or squished by the walls, courtesy of actual girl power). It’s invasive and manipulative in a way that echoes the victim of the story.

And the amazing thing is, once the space opens up in the end, you realise that the constant shrinking and narrowing has actually made the space bigger than it actually is.

In contrast to the strategy of disorientation in Re:Looking At Re:Gina was the steady and literal emphasis on orientation of space in IN:dex (what’s with all these colons?). That and no performers!

The manipulation of Substation’s black box space served the specific purpose of pushing the (sort of) narrative. Theatre collective INDEX’s site-specific production IN:dex (which was part of The Esplanade’s Raw programme under The Studios) is all about the room.

And, yes, the sight of people sitting in a relatively empty theatre black box just listening and looking at walls for an hour was rather amusing. But the idea behind it is quite ingenious.

The Esplanade’s Theatre Studio has been a regular working space for designers Lim Woan Wen (light), Darren Ng (sound) and Lim Wei Ling (set/space) — for productions they’ve done together or separately, for The Finger Players (the group they’re affiliated with) or others — and so it was fitting they get a chance to play around with the space unencumbered by, well, a play.

They did so with a keen sense of respect. Partly jam, partly structured (they didn’t know what each of them were doing until opening day), it was all in service of the room-as-room.

Bands of and sharp focus of light, soundscapes from different speakers, spools of tape hanging from the ceiling, and, my favourite, a white piece of rope seemingly moving along the walls, light and shadow, sound and echo, all work to focus our eyes and ears on every nook and cranny of the space.

Compared to the gung-ho approach at The Substation, this one might be seen as having been a tad too respectful of the space (instead of challenging its authority, they work to shape our experience of the space on more or less its own terms).

But then I doubt they had any plans of going beyond the idea of inhabiting it. They do so mostly as an exercise in pure abstraction, but also sneaking in moments that hint at narrative — the eerie light focusing on one of the doors in upper console room and the bare ceiling, coupled with sounds reminding us of footsteps, point to a noir-ish mystery that wouldn’t be out of place at the other show.

(IN:dex ended yesterday but you can check out other shows at http://www.thestudios.com.sg. Meanwhile, Re:Looking At Re:Gina runs until May 18, 7pm and 8.30pm, The Substation Theatre. Tickets at S$20 from the box office, 6337 7800, boxoffice [at] substation.org.)