Connecting Contours
15 to 19 May 2026

The region of Southeast Asia is a colourful and diverse mix of peoples, practices, and geographies. Our diverse practices in the arts reflect this. From traditional art forms developed over centuries, to the contemporary practices of today, from the cities of Bangkok, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur, to the many islands that dot the archipelago. There is a need for us to better understand what it means to be in this vibrant landscape as producers and arts practitioners, and through learning from and with one another, find our voice.

Connecting Contours brings together a community of early career arts producers and practitioners from Southeast Asia for a week of dialogue and exchange. Over one week, we will share our own respective practices and perspectives of our arts ecosystems in our contexts, exploring deeply where we overlap and align, and where we differ and diversify.

Through public engagement sessions, discussions, participant led activations, and mixers, we will explore and better understand each other’s strengths, barriers to entry, modes of organising, and opportunities for future collaboration.

Engagement Session - Working With/In The Region

Saturday, 16 May 2026
6.30pm – 8pm (reception from 5.30pm)

This engagement session focuses on the efforts of independent practitioners and organisations working with and within the Southeast Asian region from multiple perspectives. Whether it is efforts to connect practitioners, decolonising our ways of training, or exploring and building ways of practice and thinking that are specifically Southeast Asian, these independent practitioners and organisations are finding ways to exist not just locally, but regionally.

What efforts have they made to connect the region? What drives them to work with and embody a regional practice? What challenges exist as an independent organisation / practitioner? What resources do we tap on? How else can we grow together as independent practitioners and organisations?

On the panel:
Intercultural Theatre Institute
The Substation

Engagement Session - Programming With/In The Region

Sunday, 17 May 2026
6.30pm – 8pm (reception from 5.30pm)

This engagement session engages organisations who operate with and within the region to programme and curate Southeast Asian projects, works, and connections. From studio festivals, to research projects, to collaborations outside the region with regional partners. This session aims to explore the wider picture of our regional ecosystems and how they interact.

How do institutions connect with a Southeast Asia with disparate means of access and resources? What considerations arise in programming a Southeast Asia-based project? What trends or patterns exist that SEA-based practitioners can look out for?

The session will be followed by a community gathering from 8pm, during which participants and members of the public can come together over light refreshments.

On the panel:
Kuik Swee Boon - THE Dance Company, Contact Dance Festival
Japan Foundation

Morasum Network Night

Monday, 18 May 2026
6.30pm – 10pm (reception from 5.30pm)

Hear from the early-career practitioners of Connecting Contours on their discoveries over the last week, and spend the night getting to know each other in this potluck mixer! What connections have been made? How can we come together more often, and where next? Come for the sharing, stay on after and get to know the next generation of producers and practitioners in the region!

Supported by:
Producers SG
 

Morasum Network

Morasum Network was founded by a group of emerging arts practitioners and producers in 2025. As a new network focused on Southeast Asia, it aims to bring together producers and artists from the region to share with each other ways of doing and being in their respective contexts. Morasum Network aims to address the barriers of entry for emerging practitioners to engage in deeper cultural exchange and collaboration within the region.

Connecting Contours – Organising Members

Mark Benedict Cheong
Independent Producer and Theatremaker, SG
Co-Founder and Member – Das Morasum Network

Mark is an independent producer, and theatre-maker empowering new voices and audiences and creating a conducive environment for regional collaboration between emerging practitioners. He is interested in unearthing histories, interrogating memory, and telling stories that reframe our way of being in an ever-changing world.

Mark has worked with companies including Bahri & Co., Sight Lines, The Necessary Stage, Toy Factory Productions, and The Second Breakfast Company of which he was a founding member and second artistic director.

He is a founding member of Morasum Network, a network of producers and artists in Southeast Asia focused on growing bridges between SEA arts ecosystems and increasing accessibility for practitioner exchanges and resource-sharing. He is also an associate producer with Bahri & Co. and part of the secretariat for the Singapore Drama Educators Association.

He has recently created Here In ___ (Hin-Between Festival Penang, 2025).
 

Micah Pinto
Co-Founder & Artistic Director, Para Sa Sining
Organising Team Member – Philippine Producers Network, PH
Co-Founder and Member – Das Morasum Network

Micah Sofia Pinto is the Artistic Director and co-founder of Para Sa Sining (For the Arts) Collaboratory, a Manila-based non-profit that builds collaborative platforms for artistic development and community engagement. She has worked with institutions such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, Department of Foreign Affairs – Manila, Salzburg Global Seminar, UN Women, UNDP, EU Delegation to the Philippines, Goethe Institut, Japan Foundation, and the Philippine Embassy to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
 

136 GOETHE LAB is a new project space at the Goethe-Institut Singapore. Housed in the former library and reading room, the space is intended as a response to the need for physical spaces for the arts, and an ongoing conversation with the public and arts community in Singapore.

FFIGS is supported as part of the open call for 136 GOETHE LAB, which invited applicants to activate the space with a group proposal.