It really doesn’t matter how smart or talented you are. If you can’t be on time, won’t learn your lines, are mean to the crew, and are self-centred, believe me, it shows in your work. I’ve had to speak to 2 different young actresses about their behaviour – one made an effort to change, the other hasn’t had work in theatre since. Not because of me, I don’t have that kind of clout, but simply because she had the personality of a cockroach.

The word ‘archive’ is not one that people would usually connotate with fun. Perhaps the first association that might come to mind are the various functions to archive posts and messages on Instagram and Whatsapp. Material that people feel are no longer relevant to them now and best deemed as a relic of the past. A more traditional association might be the idea of the archive as a musty collection locked in a basement somewhere, perhaps something like the Vatican Secret Archive. In both cases, the archive is a place with limited access to artefacts that are not really particularly relevant to our day and age.

In 2018, ila and Sonia Kwek embarked on a spontaneous collaboration for an open call by Rebel Daughters in 2018, as part of International Women’s Day with the aim of “filling up the public sphere, physical and virtual, with works of art done by female creatives from or based in the region”. Using red thread as a departure point, a metaphor for predestined connections for kindred spirits to find each other through different lifetimes. Over the years, both ila and Sonia have collaborated in three different iterations of this project, examining the politics of the body in society. Through email exchanges, they ruminate their experiences in working collaboratively and the kinship that has blossomed and grown over the years.