This Friday marks International Women’s Day — but the celebration of the fairer sex is set to continue at the theatre throughout the month. From marriage to sisterhood and murder most dastardly, here are four productions by, for and about women.

DIVINE SISTERHOOD

For her latest work, playwright Jean Tay closely observed the relationship between her six- and nine-year-old daughters.

“I see them interacting all the time. They have a close, love-hate relationship,” she shared.

The exchanges between Tay’s daughters inspired some of the scenes in Sisters: The Untold Stories Of The Sisters Islands, but the play itself grew from a much larger context. The Boom! playwright’s fascination with history led to her research the myth behind the Sisters Islands. She also discovered Alex Josey’s book Cold-Blooded Murders, which contained the trial of Sunny Ang over an infamous murder that took place in the area in the ’70s.

The parallels were uncanny: The myth involved two sisters who took their lives by jumping into the sea, forming the two islands; while Ang’s female victim, who mysteriously disappeared during a scuba diving excursion, had a half-sister.

“One is also an indigenous myth and the other a forgotten historical story which could be a modern myth, in a sense,” explained Tay.

The piece is being staged as part of The Arts House’s 9th anniversary celebrations. Directed by Jeffrey Tan, it sees actors Amanda Tee and Cassandra Spykerman play both pairs of sisters.

Coincidentally, the play itself has a “brother” of sorts. Tay is also working on Senang, a work that deals with the historical events of another island, Pulau Senang, notorious for being a penal settlement where a riot broke out in the ’60s. A reading was held last January and the all-male show is slated to open next year.

MARRIAGE PLANS

Actress Jean Ng may have no plans to tie the knot in real life, but her latest role has her thinking about the idea of marriage all the same.

In Checkpoint Theatre’s For Better Or For Worse, written by Faith Ng and directed by Claire Wong, she plays Swen, a housewife who has been with Gerald (Julius Foo) for 30 years in a marriage with ups and downs and everything in-between. It’s a life that the actress often finds hard to understand.

“Rationally, you can find a lot of reasons why people stay together. But, personally, it would be very, very difficult for me,” said Ng. “I spoke to a friend of mine a year after he got married and he said that all the love and passion disappears after a few months, and a lot of it is making it work.”

Despite her personal scepticism, Ng thinks the play will undoubtedly be familiar to many. “Most of us know people like that in our lives, and I think Faith really has a grasp on that pulse of these Singaporean characters and situations.”

Perhaps it also helps that Foo, her partner in this two-hander, is a close friend of over 20 years.

“There are similarities between long-term friendship and marriage — a lot of love and care, and a lot of accepting who the other person is. But you don’t have to go home together,” Ng pointed out. “In marriage, you stay together day in, day out. Plus, there’s sex,” she quipped.

WOMEN ALLOWED INSIDE

In The Bride Always Knocks Twice, The Theatre Practice’s latest production directed by Kuo Jian Hong, eight women converge in an unnamed space. There’s a policewoman, a high-flying executive, a nun, a Javanese concubine, a samsui woman, a masseuse from China, a movie star, and the aforementioned bride, whose presence shakes things up.

Actress Karen Tan, who plays the banker, described it as “a space of escape that a lot of us have whenever there’s a crisis”.

But she also stops short of describing this as a “female space” — or the play as a “women’s play”, for that matter.

“While it upsets me that women’s rights are very second, third rung right up to this day, there are just as many men who need a space to go into as well, and just as many men who are not spoken up for,” pointed out Tan.

That said, the piece — written by two men, Jonathan Lim and Liu Xiaoyi — does point to a sense of female empowerment. Tan’s own executive character is “at the top of a male-dominated area, and they give as good as they get”, she said, while pointing out the pivotal role of samsui women in nation building.

Tan, herself, has been walking in the shoes of one of Singapore’s most important female artistes. Performing in the recently-concluded Goh Lay Kuan & Kuo Pao Kun, which intermittently ran for six months, she had a glimpse of the theatre and dance doyenne’s dedication and strength.

“Persistence and consistency are important as a performer — you cannot totally switch off and you need to have the discipline. I think that’s Madame Goh. She’s in her 70s and she’s still at it. She meditates, teaches ballet, talks about teaching children as she always did. It’s always at the back of her mind.”

FEMMES FATALE

The thought of directing an all-female cast scares Samantha Scott-Blackhall. “From Lord Of The Flies to Das Experiment, I’ve mostly directed men. I can handle men but when women come into the space, it’s not just business — women are so passionate. I’m thinking of how to lead the pack,” she laughed.

It’s an impressive pack, too. Sing Theatre’s staging of 8 Women consists of a powerhouse cast led by Neo Swee Lin, Tan Kheng Hua and Daisy Irani — all “familiar faces who have held their own in the industry for many years”, she said.

Set in France in the ’50s, the whodunit comedy by Robert Thomas, which was adapted into a 2002 movie starring Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve, sees everyone as a possible suspect in the murder of a man.

Interestingly, it wasn’t the all-women bit that convinced the director to take on this project — it was the murder mystery. “That kind of appeals to my taste. I was compelled by the CSI fan in me,” quipped Scott-Blackhall.

There’s a trace of the femme fatale appeal in 8 Women, but having an all-female cast also adds another dimension, said Scott-Blackhall. “All the women are sophisticated and you don’t expect any to plunge the knife into the man’s back. But the other thing is that there’s something about women that makes them more jealous or manipulative, so the play goes beyond why someone kills someone. All the skeletons come out and you realise every single woman has a secret, and they’re all not innocent.”

Sisters: The Untold Stories Of The Sisters Islands, from March 13 to 19, 8pm, Play Den, The Arts House. With 3pm weekend matinees. Tickets at S$25 from Bytes.sg

For Better Or For Worse, from March 20 to 24, 8pm, Drama Centre Black Box. With 3pm weekend matinees. Tickets at S$35 from Sistic.

The Bride Always Knocks Twice, from March 22 to April 6, 8pm, Drama Centre Theatre. With 3pm weekend matinees. Tickets from S$36 to $56 at Sistic. Multi-lingual with English and Chinese surtitles.

8 Women, from March 29 to April 7, 8pm, Sota Drama Theatre. With 3pm weekend matinees. Tickets from S$50 to S$60 at Sistic.