Play Time
Esplanade’s annual The Studios experimental theater season (Apr 17-Jul 19, www.thestudios.com.sg) is back, this time with a more tightly-curated selection of boundary-pushing pieces. Highlights include filmmaker Ho Tzu Nyen’s arty, trippy Ten Thousand Tigers (Apr 17-19)—a continuation of last year’s Song of the Brokenhearted Tiger—and Blank Space Theatre’s Mark Rothko bio Red (Jul 10-13). True theater buffs should definitely go for the insider-y Rant & Rave (May 1-4) a “documentary” of the local theater scene all the way back to the ‘80s. Also don’t miss free performances like Edith Podesta’s dark prison drama Dark Room x8 (Jul 5).

Sir Mix-a-lot
You’ve heard of open mic nights—now there are “open bar” nights every Thursday at 28 HongKong Street. If you fancy yourself a pretty good amateur mixologist, go up to the bar and ask to show off your skills. But be warned: You’ll have to fight off quite a few established local bartenders around town, too. Another place to share the love with other cocktail fanatics is newly-public bar Manor Cocktail Room, previously an invite-only whisky tasting room, now spearheaded by local bartender Din Hassan of Bitters & Love. It’s not just a run-of-the-mill bar—here’s where the alcohol industry-types congregate, dream up new concoctions and get collectively plastered.

Beach, Please
We don’t like to play Chinese whispers, but the rumors of Bali beach club and restaurant group Potato Head (www.ptthead.com) opening something along Keong Saik Road are getting pretty hard to ignore. Is it going to be a bar? A bistro, maybe? The Potato Head website says that they have a boutique hotel in the works, so it could be that. In other sexy beach club news, we caught up with the newly-opened Nikki Beach in Phuket and they’re saying that they really, really want to bring Nikki Beach to Singapore’s East Coast. We have our fingers crossed.