[COMMA] New Year, New Scripts

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[COMMA] New Year, New Scripts

Creative Arts

25 Jan 2026 | Various Timings (below)

*SCAPE Gallery, L5

The inaugural New Year, New Scripts features dramatised readings of three plays by three independent playwrights: vestige by Alia Alkaff, Beans by Benedict Lim, and Future-proof by Melizarani T. Selva.

Over a 4 month journey leading up to the reading, these three playwrights have developed their drafts alongside a roundtable of peers, journeying together to see their drafts come to life from conception to fruition. Each reading is followed by a roundtable to discuss the work, and explore the further potential for collaboration and development.

Join us in welcoming the new year, with new scripts!

Timings (on 25 Jan):

1:30PM – 3:00PM
4:00PM – 5:30PM
7:30PM – 9:00PM

Grab Your Tickets! Grab Your Tickets! Grab Your Tickets!

Ticket Price

Free With Registration

Join us in welcoming the new year, with new scripts!

Timings (on 25 Jan):

1:30PM – 3:00PM
4:00PM – 5:30PM
7:30PM – 9:00PM

Ticket Price

Free With Registration

Grab Your Tickets! Grab Your Tickets! Grab Your Tickets!

Alia Alkaff

Alia Alkaff is a writer-director and performer for both stage and screen. Her work explores identity and culture in both film and theatre. In the past, Alia has worked full-time as a storywriter for one of Singapore’s longest running English dramas, ‘Tanglin’.

Previous acting credits include independent plays such as ‘parthenogenesis’ (2021/2020) and ‘Single Mothers’ (2019). Recently, her work has been showcased in the Women Voices Now Film Festival 2021. She also recently completed The Necessary Stage’s Playwrights’ Cove and Wild Rice’s Young and Wild actor training programme (2024).

Alia hopes to continue collaborating and crafting inclusive heartfelt stories, which also challenge yet entertain the audience. Her passion lies in crafting accessible narratives exploring identity, loss, and hope with a dash of humour.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alianothalia/

Benedict Lim

Benedict Lim was born and raised in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, and has been based in Singapore since 2013. Their work spans fiction, theatre, film and live performance, moving between Singapore and the U.K. They hold space for the liminal. They also hold space equally for fried chicken and black coffee, which he thinks cancel each other out.

As a performer, they’ve been in productions such as Park Life (2025, short film), The Critic (2023, play), Brain Things (2023, play). Also, their producing credits include: The Asian Comedy Showcase (Edinburgh Fringe 2024-2025), Off With Your Head (Edinburgh Fringe 2024-2025.

As a dramaturg, he has worked with Sam See on And I Can’t Feel At Home In This World Any More (Edinburgh Fringe 2024).

As a writer, their short fiction has appeared in What We Burn For (2024), The Second Link (2023), and Call and Response 2: A Singapore Migrant Anthology (2021). In 2021, their trilogy, thenational.api, was commissioned for the inaugural Southeast Asian Queer Cultural Festival by ASEAN SOGIE Caucus.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_benedictlim/

Melizarani T. Selva

Melizarani T. Selva is a Malaysian spoken word poet, writer and playwright, with stories published by Penguin Random House, Mekong Review and PR&TA, and showcased at Singapore Art Museum.

Her first book, Taboo, is a poetic interrogation of the Malaysian Indian identity. She is the co-editor of The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian & Singaporean Writing by Marshall Cavendish.

Her playlet Sandcastles, in response to K.S. Maniam’s play The Sandpit, debuted in Kuala Lumpur and Penang this year.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melizarani

Adeeb Fazah

Adeeb Fazah is a theatre director and drama educator. As Artistic Director of The Second Breakfast Company, he directed works like Family (2016), Performing Malay Sketches (2019), The Singapore Trilogy (2021) and The Essential Playlist (2022).

Adeeb has also directed works under Toy Factory, Bhumi Collective, Gateway Theatre, NUS Centre for the Arts, The Arts House and so on. He is one half of Adeeb & Shai, a founding member of Impromptu Meetings, a co-organiser of STRIKE! Theatre Festival and co-founder of In the Round, a network of early-career theatre directors in Singapore.

Adeeb also works with young people as a freelance educator for drama-in-curriculum and co-curricular activity programmes in various secondary schools and tertiary institutions. He currently serves as a Committee Member of Singapore Drama Educators Association.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adeebfazah/

Mark Benedict Cheong

Mark Benedict Cheong (he/him) is a producer, theatre-maker, writer, designer, photographer, and arts manager.

He is the producer for Sunday School of Hard Knocks (Miriam Cheong, Melbourne Fringe Festival 2023), Mystical Tales in Tampines (The Second Breakfast Company, Our Tampines Hub), The Octopus at Beng Wan Road (Headline Acts, SIFA 2024).

Mark has written Random Access Memory (Toy Factory Productions, 2019) and White Moth (The Necessary Stage, 2020), was designer for The Singapore Trilogy (Sound Design, The Second Breakfast Company, 2021), Perfecting Pratas (Sound Design, Sightlines Entertainment, 2024), The Lobby (Set Design, Impromptu Meetings, 2021) and others, and created Hey, I Moved! (ATTEMPTS and Spacebar Theatre, 2020) and Map For A Younger Me (Transient Tribe, 2024).

In 2024, Mark co-produced a short-term residency titled Transient Tribe, where emerging performing arts artists were given a shared space to collaborate and develop new works in response to the theme of transience.

He was a founding member of The Second Breakfast Company and wishes to create opportunities for young practitioners in Singapore, and empower the creation and development of new work.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/markybc/