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THEATRE director Oliver Chong may be a grown man but he can't bear to be left home alone.
The 30-year-old hears voices in his head and they start whenever he is alone.
He says: 'I've been hearing voices in my head since I was in my teens. When I got older, I decided to face them head-on. Now, I just listen to them, relax and concentrate on what I'm doing. They go away after a while.'
Struck by his own profound fear of loneliness, he began work on a script which tells of a lonely old man who carves a son for himself out of wood, echoing the well-loved 19th-century children's tale of Pinocchio by Italian writer Carlo Callodi.
He even added an alien into the narrative as the protagonist ends up feeling that 'a puppet's not enough for him'.
The result is a piece on loneliness and the bitter clash between imagination and reality.
Called Pinocchio's Complex, the production fuses puppetry with live theatre and will be performed at Drama Centre Black Box from Thursday until Saturday.
The production marks Chong's second stab at directing with local theatre company The Finger Players.
Read the full story in Thursday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!
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