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Nominated for Best Original Script, Life Theatre Awards 2017

Five people, staff and customers, are stuck in one of an infinite number of hip Singapore cafés while, outside, an unexplained horror wracks the world. Over five short acts, a madness sets in. The cafe and all reality are eaten away by a nightmare of banality and tedium, leaving only a well of deep ennui, paralysing apathy, and horrifying cruelty familiar to anyone living in the city-state.
“Over the course of an hour and forty-five minutes, I was gripping the edge of my seat, watching the actions five characters holed up in a hipster café while the world outside them goes to hell.”
—The Online Citizen

“You wouldn't think it from the humdrum title, but Joel Tan's Café is possibly the creepiest, canniest, most cunning play of the year…. Slowly and subtly, the scares creep in. The terror builds up. When the finale arrives, it is unexpected, implosive and profound.”
—The Business Times
Joel Tan (b.1987) is a Singaporean playwright based between London and Singapore. Described as one of the most exciting Singapore playwrights of his generation, his plays have received acclaim for their lyrical and incisive interrogation of his home city’s politics and society. His plays include Tango, Mosaic, The Way We Go, and Family Outing. Several are collected in Joel Tan Plays Volume 1, published by Checkpoint Theatre. In Singapore, his work has been produced by WILD RICE, Pangdemonium, and Checkpoint Theatre, among others. Joel also works in the UK, where he has developed work with the Royal Court Theatre, Theatre 503, the Orange Tree Theatre, Headlong Theatre, and Chinese Arts Now.

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