Transcript

Hi there, I'm Dylan from the class of 2025, Yale-NUS. And today I've been given the pleasure to talk about the Yale-NUS Black Box Theatre. The heart of Yale-NUS' performing arts scene has always been its Kingfishers and its community. But the Black Box is where much of that magic comes to life. The community has held dance performances, poetries, plays, improvised comedy shows, and even entire musicals. Any student-initiated the performance that happened in the College, you can be fairly certain it manifested at some point in time within this acoustic box of four black walls that we call the Black Box. It's also frequently used to host other events like lectures, talks and even occasionally, social events. 

I've been a long and proud member of the Yale-NUS Improv troupe, one of the many StuOrgs [student organisations] that Yale-NUS has since my first year of college. We've performed all over campus, in the wider Singapore, and even travelling around the world to participate in festivals. But I think that the Black Box will forever be our spiritual home, like many other StuOrgs, since we spend so much time here practising and performing. I still remember my first scene that I ever performed for our biannual end-of-semester show in the Black Box. I was an oblivious landlord with a secret craving for dairy. And by the end of the scene, I was drinking milk straight from a cow. Lots of random scenes like this, which I think really helped to make the Black Box that much more memorable for all the performing art events that happened there.

In terms of equipment and things that make the Black Box special, the Black Box actually has a pretty impressive range of light and sound equipment. This allows for a staggering number of effects for all sorts of performances. I really enjoy watching shows by sYNCd, or the Society of YNC Dancers, because they always impress with the dance repertoire that gets always paired with accompanying light effects that are just really, really impressive to see. Special shout out to the MICE team as well, that has always worked extremely professionally and skilfully to liaise and assist the YNC community in making their shows come to life. Another fun fact about the Black Box: the bleachers can actually be folded and compressed, so this effectively doubles the standing space in the Black Box, which is perfect for certain types of events like live music performances or even mixer parties with live DJs.

The Black Box is unique to me because it's really a place of empowerment. Virtually all of our performances here are student directed and run, and they've always ended up delivering, exceeding all expectations from both the community and even the performers themselves. The freedom for students to use such a wonderful space for their own projects is something really difficult to find elsewhere in Singapore.

I think I've been transformed quite radically by the Black Box as well. I came to this college with zero acting experience, but within two years I've gone from having stage fright to performing theatre and improvised comedy shows with full enthusiasm. And I think having these opportunities to perform in a space that can be so intimate and yet awe-inspiring really contributed to this growth in confidence. In that regard, the Black Box really is a place where the YNC community makes magic happen.