Salty

Two-time Melbourne Fringe award-winner Shannan Lim and his spook buddies Jayde Harding and Tye Norman vomit three short, interconnected plays—contemporary slants on the lurid demons of Singaporean-Malay mythology.

Accompanied by neat video projections, Salty features a curious stillborn fetus, a slippery oily man nobody can catch, and a smouldering sex vampire looking for somebody to impregnate her.

Each story places a ghost of Singapore in a modern Australian context and deconstructs contrasting ideas about culture, masculinity and self that exist between Asia and Australia.

Southeast Asian ghosts are frequently people who died in agonising circumstances, and whose motives are therefore recognisable as base human desires, only so pure and singular to the point of terror.

In Singaporean folklore, salt is the currency of the afterlife.

Salty—together with acclaimed Asian Ghost-ery Store and upcoming The Yonder—are part of a series that looks at cultural identity with absurdity and play.

WINNER Melbourne Fringe 2016 — Innovation in Culturally Diverse Practice
FINALIST Fringe World 2017 — Theatre Award

ONE. Toyol. A curious stillborn baby who sleeps in a jar, kept by a lonely widower to do his bidding. It is just Toyol and Daddy, until the widower desires a breathing child of his own.

TWO. Orang Minyak. Literally ‘Oily Man’, a slippery character nobody can catch because he is covered in oil. A young man runs into the same woman on the train each night. He is tired of being ignored.

THREE. Pontianak. Virile men must watch out for the Pontianak, a vampiric succubus that haunts the city. She wants somebody to impregnate her. Then she will devour his organs. No strings attached.

“Lim is a very physical performer whose sense of humour and timing catches us off guard.”
Perth Arts Live

“Intelligent, witty and challenging in turns…an excellent piece of theatre.” ★★★★
The Age (Asian Ghost-ery Store)