Nursery Rhymes For Rediscovered Stories In ITSY – The Musical

After a brilliant run of three original back-to-back plays as well as a rerun of Starring Hitler As Jekyll And Hyde in 2016, The Finger Players are back with a brand new work ITSY – The Musical. Think nursery rhymes told to us as children, now inviting us to revisit them in a newer and darker perspective.

In this musical, writer and director Chong Tze Chien created a world where all our beloved nursery rhyme characters come together. Alternating between dreams and reality for a pair of grandson and grandfather, this is a tale ultimately about familial bond and its strength.

The concept of this musical prompts us to question if tales told to our younger selves still hold value even as we become adults and leave this world of imagination behind us.

Actress Ann Lek shares, “Stories, regardless of when we first come across them or what age they are supposedly meant for, are important in helping us make sense of our lives. Fiction is one way of making sense of our complex, often mysterious world, and stories exist in every part of that world at any given time. Storytelling is one of the most useful tools we have for achieving meaning and childhood stories are not any lesser than stories we hear as adults. I will never forget many of the stories I heard during childhood – how many of them have shaped the way I think of and look at the world!”

Do you think, then, children can be seen as wiser than adults?

“I’ve always felt that children know more than what they let on. Adults have forgotten the secrets of being a child. They remind us of a freer time when our minds were more fearless and brave, and the world was ours to conquer,” said actress Rachel Tay.

Actress and puppetry designer Tan Beng Tian added, “To have wisdom, we need to accumulate vast knowledge, experiences and have an ability to apply good judgements. That takes years or maybe decades to do so and children have not lived through those years yet. However, children sometimes come across being wiser than adults because they do things based not on judgement but by pure impulse and that impulse is usually right. As a person grows into adulthood, that impulse is often suppressed by over thinking and that slows down or even hinders that person’s growth towards gaining wisdom.”

With these reflections in our minds, ITSY – The Musical may serve as a surprise and a rekindling of what we might have forgotten through the years.

Through their signature puppetry style married with live action, ITSY – The Musical promises good fun with exploding colours and enchanting music. Who knows? Perhaps we might even take away a thing or two from Humpty Dumpty and the Three Blind Mice once again.