Theatre

  • Fringe Festival

Lotus Root Support Group

Powerpoints, Potato Raps and a Performance about Chronic Illness.

Miriam and Shannen stand side by side, a white wall in the background. They are surrounded by multiple circles of various sizes in cyan blue and hot pink. Miriam is a Chinese woman with long black hair and is wearing heart shaped sunglasses, a backwards cap, a hot pink crop top and black pants while holding a baguette loaf erect. Shannen is a Chinese woman with short brown hair and is wearing a white tube top, a blue jacket, grey-blue bicycle shorts and bright blue boxing gloves.
Miriam and Shannen are posed side by side, a white wall in the background. Miriam is standing upright while Shannen crouches. They are surrounded by multiple circles of various sizes in cyan blue and hot pink. Miriam is a Chinese woman with long black hair and is wearing heart shaped sunglasses, a backwards cap, a hot pink crop top and black pants while holding a baguette loaf horizontally. Shannen is a Chinese woman with short brown hair and is wearing a white tube top, a blue jacket, grey-blue bicycle shorts and bright blue boxing gloves.
Past Event

Image Credit: Adeeb Fazah and Mark Benedict Cheong

Miriam and Shannen stand side by side, a white wall in the background. They are surrounded by multiple circles of various sizes in cyan blue and hot pink. Miriam is a Chinese woman with long black hair and is wearing heart shaped sunglasses, a backwards cap, a hot pink crop top and black pants while holding a baguette loaf erect. Shannen is a Chinese woman with short brown hair and is wearing a white tube top, a blue jacket, grey-blue bicycle shorts and bright blue boxing gloves.
Miriam and Shannen are posed side by side, a white wall in the background. Miriam is standing upright while Shannen crouches. They are surrounded by multiple circles of various sizes in cyan blue and hot pink. Miriam is a Chinese woman with long black hair and is wearing heart shaped sunglasses, a backwards cap, a hot pink crop top and black pants while holding a baguette loaf horizontally. Shannen is a Chinese woman with short brown hair and is wearing a white tube top, a blue jacket, grey-blue bicycle shorts and bright blue boxing gloves.

  • Created and Performed by: Miriam Cheong and Shannen Tan

  • Produced by: Adeeb Fazah

  • Sound Design: Mark Benedict Cheong

Miriam and Shannen are two broke theatre-makers with many things in common: A love of anime? Check. Went to the same primary school, secondary school AND junior college? Check. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome? Double check.

With ovaries that have more holes in them than Swiss cheese, insurance companies rejecting them for being “too high risk”, and existential crises about womanhood, Miriam and Shannen are banding together to deal with it the only way they know how: making theatre about it. But what if the differences they face through this are irreconcilable? What if their cyst-erhood is not as strong as they initially thought? And what does a Potato Rap have to do with all of this?

Candidly discussing the struggles of living with under-researched and misunderstood chronic illness, Lotus Root Support Group affirms the importance of human connections in times of struggle, as rocky and tumultuous as they may be. Because we can’t make it through life alone.