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Verena's Story
 A
theatre practitioner for over two decades, Verena Tay is an Associate
Artist with The Substation since 2002 and has been concentrating on solo
performance for the last ten years, most of which have been featured at
The Substation with its support. As a playwright, Verena won ACTION
Theatre's 2005 Theatre Idols contest with her play, The Car,
which was staged in July 2006.
In
2008, her 10-minute play, Imperfect Family Recipes, reached the
finals of the Short+Sweet Singapore 2008 festival, and her short play,
The Lunar Interviews, was featured in Magdalena (Singapore)’s
production of Blood Binds, that was part of W!ld Rice’s OCBC
Singapore Theatre Festival 2008. As an Honorary Fellow at the renowned
International Writing Program, University of Iowa (Aug–Nov 2007), she
gained much insight on the craft of writing from her peers around the
world.
Since 2003, Verena has
been using
all of her theatrical background to bring stories vocally
and physically alive in a unique fashion.
She chooses her stories carefully, adapting
folktales with strong characters or creating original tales with a
twist. Where possible, she invests her quirky brand of humour,
especially in her stories for adults, to titillate and tantalise...
Together with Kamini
Ramachandran as MoonShadow Stories from November 2004, Verena has been
delighting adults and children with stories at The Substation, museums
and other venues.
In
addition, she has been telling stories in her own right
and through ASN, Talespin, Storytelling Association (Singapore), the
Storytelling Circle and other groups. She has also conducted
storytelling-related workshops during the annual Asian Congress of
Storytellers (2005 & 2006) and with various community groups. During
the fall of 2007, she had the pleasure of telling stories for the first
time beyond Singapore, thrilling both children and adults in upstate New
York and New Orleans.
Outside of
theatre and storytelling, Verena gained an MA in English Literature
(National University of Singapore, 1993) and pursued a career in public
affairs, marketing, editing and teaching. From 1998 to 2003, she worked
as a Publications Officer at the Centre for Development of Teaching and
Learning, National University of Singapore, where she edited newsletters
and books on teaching and learning issues in higher education.
With the moral
support of The Substation, she pursued a second masters degree, an MA in
Voice Studies (2005) at the Central School of Speech and Drama, London,
during 2003-04. She now earns part of her living teaching voice, speech
and/or presentation skills at the National Institute of Education,
Nanyang Technological University and other
local institutions.
For more information about Verena, please
visit
http://www.verenatay.com.
Verena's Storytelling
Resume Click here for Verena Tay's full storytelling resume (as of 4 January 2010)
Some Reviews About
Verena as a Storyteller
“Verena
Tay started the evening off with a story about
The Little-Man-With-Hair-All-Over.
Describing the exciting adventures of this little man (he fought ugly
monsters, rescued four damsels in distress and married them), this story
proved that size and appearance are not as significant as true courage
and determination, which always triumph in the end. Tay was an amusing
storyteller, aware of some men's preoccupation with "size" and making
use of this to tickle the audience by adjusting her pants to give an
impression of a "big" man. The ease with which she changed her voice,
deepening it or making it high-pitched to suit the character she was
playing was commendable and one could imagine each character's
appearance and mannerisms just from her descriptions.”
~ Nadia
Binte Ibrahim, ‘Once Upon a Time…’, Review of The Male Instinct,
Storytelling for Adults by MoonShadow Stories, 9 July 2005, The
Flying Inkpot Theatre Reviews,
http://inkpot.com/theatre/05reviews/0709,maleinst,ni.html (last
accessed: 29 January 2007)
“Verena’s
retelling of The Gravedigger and her eerie singing whisper, “Di
mana hatiku? (Where is my heart?)”, by a corpse whose body parts are
stolen, still lingered in my ears long after the session was over. Such
was the potency of the tales that night which teased and tantalised the
sense and made them dance to the tune of each beautiful tale recited by
a compelling storyteller.”
~ Chand,
‘Spooks up their Sleeves. Supernatural Weaves’, Review of The
Unnatural,
Storytelling for Adults by MoonShadow Stories, Oct 2005, The Ridge,
2005 Holiday Issue, p. 18
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