About Liu Xiaoyi

Liu Xiaoyi is the Artistic Director of Emergency Stairs.

A committed practitioner with a desire to push artistic boundaries, he is regarded as one of the most promising figures at the forefront of the experimental theatre scene in Asia. In 2016, Xiaoyi received the Young Artist Award, Singapore’s highest honor for young artists, presented by the National Arts Council.

Xiaoyi was Artist-in-Residence at The Theatre Practice (Singapore) from 2004-2007 and Director of the Practice Lab from 2012-2016. He has been invited to be the artist-in-residence at Zuni Icosahedron (Hong Kong) from 2021-2023. Since 2022, he has also been invited to be an artist-in-residence and cultural policy advisor for the Linjiang New District in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, China.

Experimental Arts

A multi-faceted and multi-talented artist, Xiaoyi has been involved in over 70 theater productions as a director, playwright and/or actor over the past two decades. On stage, he is considered one of the most acclaimed male actors in Singapore’s theater scene; as a playwright, he has written more than 40 plays and is one of the country’s most prolific playwrights. 

As a director, the cornerstones of Xiaoyi’s oft lauded but controversial work are unsurprisingly experimentation, introspection, and poetry. Between 2017 and 2019, he created three new works under his Postdramatic Series at the Esplanade that challenged the often-sacred theatre traditions here by introducing a new exploratory theatre format to the discomfort of his audiences. Xiaoyi’s work often polarize, drawing both praise and debate. An example of his much-discussed works, Journey to Nowhere was a creative response to the then-newly unveiled government’s cultural policy paper – Our SG Arts Plan 2018-2022.

Starting with Einstein in the Carpark in 2018, Xiaoyi began to explore the relationship between art and science, expanding theatre space to other fields. In 2019, he started a new project, No More Theatre, to develop collaboration between digital technology and arts, including AI, AR, VR and More. He devotes himself to seeking the development and breakthrough of theatre forms.

Cultural Exchanges

A strong proponent of artistic exchanges across artforms, Xiaoyi has been actively promoting dialogues and creation across cultural and geographical lines for many years, particularly the exchange between tradition and contemporary art forms. 

As the Artistic Director, Xiaoyi has curated the Southernmost Project, an annual, first-of-its-kind “arts festival for the future” in Singapore since 2017. The inter-cultural festival has regularly brought prominent artists across the region to Singapore for exchange with local artistic community. This inadvertently supports a new network of artists interested to work collaboratively across diverse artforms in Asia. 

Xiaoyi is also often invited to prominent cultural exchanges as a speaker, a curator and/or as an artist to collaborate with other established artists from Asia and Europe. To date, his body of works has been staged in many major cities including Singapore, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Yokohama, Yogyakarta, Bali, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, London, Zurich, Brussels, Toronto and more.

Talents Incubation

An educator at heart, Xiaoyi keeps a keen eye on the development of art talents in Singapore and the Asia Pacific region. Over the years, he has started and helmed several talent development platforms in Singapore- the Practice Lab (The Theatre Practice), Emergency Shelter and most recently, the Emergency Academy. The Academy is designed as an incubation programme for promising young cultural leaders and has attracted a total of 40 artists from 16 cities in its two editions.

In a response to the dearth of critical writing in Singapore, he founded the first Chinese theatre review platform, the Re-Viewers 众观 (http://www.re-viewers.org/) and has served as both its editor and a mentor since its inception. 

Xiaoyi is highly regarded as a mentor and has served on several international artist training/ development programmes, that include The Wharf Workshop (Yokohama), Zurich University of the Arts (Zurich), Silence | Satire by Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City), National Taiwan College of Performing Arts (Taipei), HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity (Hong Kong) and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Singapore).