Centre 42 » The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng https://centre42.sg Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:08:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.30 The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng 龍牙門 https://centre42.sg/the-vault-leng-geh-mng-%e9%be%8d%e7%89%99%e9%96%80/ https://centre42.sg/the-vault-leng-geh-mng-%e9%be%8d%e7%89%99%e9%96%80/#comments Mon, 23 Apr 2018 07:20:30 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=9595

Under the direction of theatre practitioner Zelda Tatiana Ng, the reading of Leng-Geh-Mng was presented in the format of a radio play. Performing the reading were some of the original cast members from the 1998 production. Following the reading, Zelda had a dialogue with Lee Shyh Jih, one of the playwrights of Leng-Geh-Mng, as well as introduced some materials from the original staging. Here is video recording of the 90-minute Performance-Presentation in 2 parts.
SynopsisThe PlaysResourcesVideosPhotos

VA Leng Geh Mng_Article Banner

Leng-Geh-Mng (“Dragon’s Tooth Gate”) is a comedy which spoofs the conventions of pugilistic films set in ancient China. This play was written by playwrights Lee Shyh Jih and Lim Poh Poh and was first staged in 1998.

After nearly two decades, Zelda Tatiana Ng revisits Leng-Geh-Mng in this Vault instalment, alongside some of the original cast members. Under Zelda’s direction and treatment, Leng-Geh-Mng will be retold in the format of a radio play. The actors will read the original Mandarin text, with selected portions refreshed with translations into other Chinese dialects in an experiment with language.

Don’t miss this one-night only performance-presentation. Performed in Mandarin and other Chinese dialects, with English surtitles.

《龍牙門》是仿嘲当代武侠电影的一部古装武侠舞台喜剧。此剧也凑巧地反映了当时许多头条及社会现状,让观众留下深刻的印象。此剧在1998首演,编剧为李世炬和林宝宝。

让颜橦带你重访‘龙牙门客栈’,‘听一听’当年的这部耗资八万元的制作。演读将以多种方言及‘广播剧’的形式呈献。

千万别错过这‘仅此一晚’的演读!呈献付英文字幕。

REGISTRATION

Saturday, 16 July 2016
8pm @ Centre 42 Black Box
Admission is free.
The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng is supported by the ARTS FUND.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

About 龍牙門 (“Dragon’s Tooth Gate”)

Yue-Liang-Hong is a sneaky character who sells cosmetics to the concubines in the imperial court. He was framed by the Emperor and has to escape from the Imperial Officials ordered to terminate his life. Yue-Liang-Hong ends up at an inn full of highly-skilled martial artists, each harboring vicious and selfish intentions. He then becomes the focus of everyone’s villainous desires.

Part 1: Leng-Geh-Mng

Directed and narrated by Zelda Tatiana Ng, the reading of “Leng-Geh-Mng” was performed by a cast of nine actors, some of whom were in the original 1998 production.

Part 2: Leng-Geh-Mng

Following the reading, Zelda sat down with one of the “Leng-Geh-Mng” playwrights, Lee Shyh Jih, to chat about how the play created back in 1998. Zelda then shared some materials from the original production and led a discussion on language.

Theatre practitioner Zelda Tatiana revisits “Leng-Geh-Mng” – a comedy written by Lee Shyh Jih and Lim Poh Poh that was first staged by Drama Box in 1998 – in this instalment of Centre 42’s Vault programme. The presentation on 16th July 2016 takes the form of a radio play, where a cast of ten – including some of the original members from the first staging – is invited to read out the script, with selected parts refreshed and translated into other Chinese dialects in an experiment with language.

Source: Centre 42 Facebook 

Vault Event Logo

.
The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng is a revisit of the first martial arts production in Singapore theatre of the same title by theatre-maker Zelda Tatiana Ng. Under her direction and alongside some of the original cast members, Leng-Geh-Mng is retold in the format of a radio play refreshed with the use of Chinese dialects.
.

]]>
https://centre42.sg/the-vault-leng-geh-mng-%e9%be%8d%e7%89%99%e9%96%80/feed/ 0
Video – The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng https://centre42.sg/video-the-vault-leng-geh-mng/ https://centre42.sg/video-the-vault-leng-geh-mng/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2016 05:15:57 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=5980 The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng  龍牙門 was presented in the company of an audience on 16 July 2016.

Leng-Geh-Mng (“Dragon’s Tooth Gate”) is a comedy which spoofs the conventions of pugilistic films set in ancient China. This play was written by playwrights Lee Shyh Jih and Lim Poh Poh and was first staged in 1998.

Under the direction of theatre practitioner Zelda Tatiana Ng, the reading of Leng-Geh-Mng was presented in the format of a radio play. Performing the reading were some of the original cast members from the 1998 production. Following the reading, Zelda had a dialogue with Lee Shyh Jih, one of the playwrights of Leng-Geh-Mng, as well as introduced some materials from the original staging.

Here is video recording of the 90-minute Performance-Presentation in 2 parts:

Part 1: Directed and narrated by Zelda Tatiana Ng, the reading of “Leng-Geh-Mng” was performed by a cast of nine actors, some of whom were in the original 1998 production.

Part 2: Following the reading, Zelda sat down with one of the “Leng-Geh-Mng” playwrights, Lee Shyh Jih, to chat about how the play created back in 1998. Zelda then shared some materials from the original production and led a discussion on language.

 

Vault Event Logo

The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng is a revisit of the first martial arts production in Singapore theatre of the same title by theatre-maker Zelda Tatiana Ng. Under her direction and alongside some of the original cast members, Leng-Geh-Mng is retold in the format of a radio play refreshed with the use of Chinese dialects. Find out more here.


 

 

]]>
https://centre42.sg/video-the-vault-leng-geh-mng/feed/ 0
The Bilingual Policy https://centre42.sg/the-bilingual-policy/ https://centre42.sg/the-bilingual-policy/#comments Fri, 15 Jul 2016 08:26:04 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=5505 A lot of factors go into the decline of languages in a country, but here are some events in Singapore history that led to the diminished use of Chinese dialects among the Chinese population.

When Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, the various racial groups were unsure of their standing in the newly-minted nation. The Chinese Chamber of Commerce, in particular, campaigned for Mandarin to be declared an official language:

Moving the resolution to submit the memorandum, the Chamber’s treasurer, Mr. Kheng Chin Hock, stressed the fact that Chinese was being used by more than 80 per cent of the population in Singapore.

Source: Chinese as one of the official languages. In Straits Times (1 October 1965), http://tinyurl.com/zg52pju

To defuse racial tensions, then-Prime Minster Lee Kuan Yew was quick to respond by declaring all four major languages – Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English – as official and equal.

Mr. Lee ruled out all possibilities of changing the language positions. The new Constitution would simply re-state the status quo of the four official languages, with Malay as the common and national language.

Any attempt by a few people to exaggerate the Chinese majority to justify their agitation would jeopardise the struggle of the Chinese in Malaysia for a fair place for their language, Mr. Lee warned.

Source: Lee’s warning to language agitators. In Straits Times (2 October 1965), http://tinyurl.com/h8x4zu6

And so it was written in the Singapore Constitution.

But there was more for the languages in Singapore. PM Lee envisioned Singaporeans speaking two languages – English, and their ‘mother tongue’.

A people fluent in English thus in step with the world of science and technology – but also steeped in Asian values of thrift, discipline and industry that come with knowledge of their mother tongue.

Source: Lee’s Ideal Singaporean by Leslie Fong, Ngiam Tong Hai & Lee Kim Chew. In The Straits Times (12 February 1978), http://tinyurl.com/zbjhswm

PM Lee was adamant that the Chinese population be bilingual in English and Mandarin, as envinced by his impassioned words:

From my observation, the monolingualist is more likely to be a language chauvinist and a bigot.

He only sees the world through one eye. He does not have binocular vision to see the world in depth, to realise that there are as rich, if not richer, worlds of human experience and knowledge, all expressed in beautiful words, elegantly, vividly and fluently in other languages.

Bilingualism gives a more balanced and rounded view of the world. The Chinese who reads and speaks Chinese has only a sketchy view of the reals history of the world outside China.

[…]

If we are to modernise and industrialise, we must be bilingual.

Source: Bilingual policy will be fairly and equally implemented by Lee Kuan Yew. In The Straits Times (2 June 1978), http://tinyurl.com/zlm3h3v

The new government revamped the education system, introducing mandatory bilingual education for students in Singapore. Students had to learn English, as well as a ‘mother tongue’, a policy which is still in place today.

Our Mother Tongue Language (MTL) policy requires all students who are Singaporeans or Singapore Permanent Residents to study their respective official MTL: Chinese, Malay and Tamil.

Source: Mother Tongue Language Policy. Ministry of Education Singapore (18 April 2016), http://tinyurl.com/zsvj54a

For schooling children from the various Chinese dialect groups in Singapore, this meant that they all had to take up Mandarin.

But for the first two decades, the bilingual education policy saw little success as Chinese students struggled to learn two new languages. In a 1979 Report on the Ministry of Education, the study team, chaired by then-Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee, found that English and Mandarin were not used at home by 85% of schooling children, who continued to use dialect to communicate with family members.

In addition to revisions to the education system to help Chinese students learn Mandarin at various proficiencies, Mandarin was actively promoted among the Chinese population. In 1979, PM Lee launched the “Promote the Use of Mandarin” campaign.

[The campaign] is in response to recent government statements that the use of dialects, instead of Mandarin, is hampering the Republic’s bilingual educational policy for the Chinese, and overburdens the learning process of the young.

[…]

Some of the slogans include “Make Mandarin the Common Tongue of Our Chinese Community” and “Speak Mandarin Instead of Dialects”.

Source: Lee to launch use Mandarin campaign. In Straits Times (7 September 1979), http://tinyurl.com/gnzvv4o

The Speak Mandarin campaign continues till this day as an annual event.

In over three decades of campaigning, and five decades since the introduction of bilingual education, dialect use among the Singapore Chinese population has fallen from 81.4% in 1980, to 12.2% in 2015.

Language Spoken at Home Among Chinese Resident Population in Singapore
Predominant Household Language 1957 (%) 1980 (%) 2000 (%) 2010 (%)
English 1.8 11.6 23 33
Mandarin 0.1 10.2 35 47
Other Chinese Dialects 97 81.4 30.7 19.2
(Source: Singapore Department of Statistics)

 

By Daniel Teo
Published on 15 July 2016

Vault Event Logo


The Vault: Dialects and Dialectics
revisits two monologues by the late local theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun: No Parking On Odd Days and The Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole. Nine Years Theatre’s artistic director Nelson Chia explores the cultural sentiments and grassroots sensibilities of these plays by staging them in Cantonese and Teochew respectively. Find out more here.

 

The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng is a revisit of the first martial arts production in Singapore theatre of the same title by theatre-maker Zelda Tatiana Ng. Under her direction and alongside some of the original cast members, Leng-Geh-Mng is retold in the format of a radio play refreshed with the use of Chinese dialects. Find out more here.

 

]]>
https://centre42.sg/the-bilingual-policy/feed/ 0
Five Facts About Leng-Geh-Mng https://centre42.sg/five-facts-about-leng-geh-mng/ https://centre42.sg/five-facts-about-leng-geh-mng/#comments Fri, 08 Jul 2016 04:20:04 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=5377

《龍牙門》 or Leng-Geh-Mng is a Mandarin martial arts comedy written by Lee Shyh Jih and Lim Poh Poh. Set in ancient China, the play follows Yue-Liang-Hong, a palace cosmetics salesman on the run from the Imperial Court. He winds up at the Leng-Geh-Mng Inn where he meets an assortment of villainous characters. Leng-Geh-Mng was staged in 1998 by Drama Box, directed by Kok Heng Leun. The play also has the distinction of being Singapore’s first martial arts theatre production. On top of that, here are five other facts about this unique play and its 1998 premiere.

 

#1: Leng-Geh-Mng was inspired by the classic Chinese martial arts film Dragon Gate Inn.

Dragon Gate Inn is a martial arts film directed by King Hu. Set in the Ming dynasty, the Emperor’s chief eunuch Cao Shaoqin has executed his enemy, a noble minister, and sent his children into exile. On their way to the border, the children reach the Dragon Gate Inn. Unbeknownst to them, Cao has sent his men to murder them. However, three swordsmen, and the innkeeper, intervene to save the children.

Premiered in 1967, the film was a box-office success in Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines, and is credited with spawning an entire genre of martial arts films, even inspiring Hollywood smash-hits like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and House of Flying Daggers (2004).

Besides loosely borrowing the title and setting from Dragon Gate Inn, Leng-Geh-Mng also spoofs the conventions of the Chinese martial arts film genre, which include gravity-defying fight choreography and a wailing Chinese instrumental soundtrack.

 

#2: Leng-Geh-Mng has no good guys.

Everyone in Leng-Geh-Mng, from the many supporting characters, to even the protagonist Yue-Liang-Hong, is a villain. There is no hero in the conventional sense. But in most stories, the audience expects the hero to win in the end. So what happens if the baddie wins? Director Kok explained their intentions for the absence of heroes in Leng-Geh-Mng:

We hope that this unusual plot will start the audience thinking about their own lives and to examine if such similar endings where the bad and not necessarily the good are rewarded, happen in their everyday life.

Thus, all the vices portrayed here must not be seen separately on their own but as means to an end … it is an amoral play about morality.Sex and violence? Yes, but it's R(A) or Really Artistic by Lee Shu Hui. In The Straits Times (10 November 1998).

In the programme notes*, Kok likened Leng-Geh-Mng to the late 19th-century French play Ubu Roi written by Alfred Jarry. Ubu Roi (meaning “King Ubu”), a parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is also filled with villanous characters. The play was so wild and bizarre that it reportedly incited a riot among the audience at the end of the first performance.

Perhaps Kok had hoped Leng-Geh-Mng‘s anti-hero narrative would also stir its audience’s emotions, but maybe with less violent outcomes.

 

#3: Drama Box gave Leng-Geh-Mng an R(A) rating.

Although Leng-Geh-Mng and its 1998 staging did not contain any nudity or gore, Drama Box, on their own accord, decided to impose an R(A) rating on the production. This meant that anyone below the age of 21 was discouraged from attending the production.

According to playwright Lee, the creative team felt that “this play [was] more suitable for mature audiences”* because of the dubious morals of the play’s characters.

 

#4: The production cost a whopping $80,000.

Leng-Geh-Mng was Drama Box’s first outing as a professional theatre company, and they marked the occasion by staging an ambitious production which cost twice as much as typical theatre productions. And they had huge plans for Leng-Geh-Mng:

The $ 80,000 production took more than half a year to put together and involved a production crew and cast of more than 30 people.

To transport the audience back into the era, coloured flags and bamboo fire torches will line the sides of the road leading to the entrance of the Drama Centre.

The foyer will also be done up in the style of an ancient living room, complete with a 1.2-m antique oil lamp.

The audience can also expect a spectacular, adrenaline-pumping performance, with special visual effects. Actors will leap up a 2-m wooden plank, hang like a bat, upside-down, on a 7.6cm diameter rod, make a series of cart-wheel turns and jump and roll over tables.Sex and violence? Yes, but it's R(A) or Really Artistic by Lee Shu Hui. In The Straits Times (10 November 1998).

 

#5: The cast had to undergo five months of martial arts training.

Part of Drama Box’s ambitious plans for Leng-Geh-Mng was for the actors to be convincing martial artists onstage. They had to perform their own fight choreography and stunts. This meant hours upon hours of gruelling physical training months before the production.

[Kok Heng Leun] ensured that all nine actors bought their insurance policies and put them through rigorous wushu training under Mr Low Ee Chiang, a martial arts and gymnastics exponent, for five months or so.Former wushu star to act in a play by Chin Soo Fang. In The Straits Times (16 October 1998).

However, one member of the cast was exempted from all the martial arts training – Chiew Hui Yan, a former national wushu athlete who won two gold medals at the South East Asian games.

 

Leng-Geh-Mng 龍牙門 (1998)

Image of the programme package.
(Source: The Repository)

Date:
 11 – 15 November 1998
Venue:
Drama Centre Theatre (Fort Canning Park)
Playwright:
Lee Shyh Jie & Lim Poh Poh
Director:
Kok Heng Leun

*Interview with the Playwrights & Director

Taken from the Leng-Geh-Mng programme, translated by Zelda Taitiana Ng.

[SJ = Lee Shyh Jih / PP = Lim Poh Poh / HL = Kok Heng Leun]
为什么做武打剧?Why produce a martial art production?
世炬 我们是为了要做一齣武打剧。。。
SJ We wanted to do a martial arts production…
庆亮 所以就敢敢做了。因为我很喜欢看武打片。。。
HL So we just did it. And because I like martial art films…
世炬 其实我们是先构思人物,大家分头去想要写怎么样的人物。。。
SJ We first thought of the characters together, then individually thought of how to write for each character…
庆亮 我告诉他们我读了一个剧本《UBU ROI》里头的人物全部都是邪人,而且颠覆了《MACBETH》。这齣剧在1896年2月11日于法国上演的时候,引起了很多回响。。。
HL I told them I had read the play Ubu Roi and all the characters in that story were bad guys. It was a spoof of Macbeth. When this play was staged in France on 11 Feb 1896, it caused a huge uproar.
世炬 至于我们的戏呢,我们好像没有很认真地去想过观众是不是能接受。。。
SJ As for our show, we haven’t considered whether the audience is able to accept it…
庆亮 我只是担心观众会拿我们的戏跟电影或电视武打片比较,舞台上的武打场面有许多限制,现场的武打场面。。。
HL I’m only worried that the audience will compare our production with martial art films or TV shows. There are many limitations when it comes to staging a ‘live’ martial arts production on stage…
为什么都是坏人?Why are they all bad guys?
世炬 我很想看一看观众会有什么反应,因为不是每一部戏都像《龙牙门》,一个好人都没有。。。
SJ I want to­ see how the audience will respond, because not every play is like Leng-Geh-Mng, where there isn’t a single good person in the play…
庆亮 一般上,观众会将剧中的好人当作洗涤心灵的对象。。。
HL Normally, audiences will use the good person (character) in the play as a way to ‘cleanse their souls’…
世炬 这齣戏却没有好人。观众找不到一个角色可以成为自己感情的代言人。。。
SJ And this play does not have any good characters. The audience will not be able to find a character that can speak to their beliefs and emotions…
庆亮 在权力斗争的游戏里,道德标准是没办法立足的,每个人都在为达到自己的目的而争,你看政治人物,还有 office politics。。。
HL In a power struggle, one can’t have any moral standards. Everyone is fighting for themselves, just look at the politicians, office politics…
世炬 我在写这个剧本的时候,想到了这么一句话:在权力斗争的环境,人性的善良面很难浮现,局内人认为自己只不过在追求基本的生存条件,局外人却觉得前者很不道德,觉得人性被扭曲了。。。
SJ I thought of this when I was writing this script: in a power struggle, it’s hard to see the kindness. The persons involved will think that they are merely trying to survive, whereas people observing from the outside will find them immoral. They will feel that these people are twisted…
宝宝 我没有这么伟大的想法,我只是想写一个剧本而已,越写越觉得人是肮脏的。。。
PP I don’t have such profound thoughts. I just wanted to write a script. But the more I wrote, the more I feel the human soul is despicable…
So the moral of the story is。。。?故事的主题思想是。。。?
世炬 有一朋友说我们的戏难以被东方观众接受,他说本地观众不会愿意认同剧中人物,他们会很排斥。
SJ A friend told me that it would be difficult for Eastern audiences to accept this play. He felt that local audiences will not be willing to empathise with the characters; they will probably reject them.
庆亮 我们不是在教你如何做坏人。
HL We are not teaching you how to be a bad guy.
世炬 我们的目的是不让观众在剧里找个好人角色逃避人性。
SJ Our objective is to not let the audience evade human nature by hiding behind a good character in the play.
庆亮 其实本地的英语剧场曾经做过呀。
HL Actually, local English theatre has already done something like this before.
世炬 华语剧场的观众好像不太一样。
SJ The Chinese theatre audience seems a bit different…
庆亮 现在的观众很聪明的,他们知道虽然你呈献的剧情很负面,但你其实是为了激起更深刻的正面意义。
HL Audiences are very intelligent nowadays… They know when you present a very negative plot, your intention is to evoke greater positivity.
世炬 基本上,虽然我们写的人物都是坏人,他们的品行恶劣,但我对人性的看法还是乐观的。
SJ Even though we have created a bunch of bad guys with awful characters and personalities, I am still very optimistic about our human nature.
宝宝 我不一样,我是悲观的,人的劣根性从来没有改变,因为有规则才被迫光亮。
PP I’m not. I am pessimistic. The evil in human nature will never change. It is only through regulation that we are forced to be good.
庆亮 我觉得人有一种毁坏再建的倾向。
HL I think it is human nature to destroy and rebuild.
如果有观众觉得这是一个笑话,没有意义只有狂笑?What if audiences were to think that this play is only a parody, a joke with no particular value?
庆亮 对了,他们笑得好,政治本来就是一场闹剧。最滑稽的是,一场腥风血雨的政治角力后,最后的胜利者往往出乎人的意料之外。剧里,最无能的竟然是胜利者。你能接受这个结局吗?但是生活中有太多这样的例子,你看那个。。。
HL That’s ok, they can laugh. Politics has always been a farce. The funniest thing is, the winners of a power struggle are often the ones we least expected. In this play, the most incapable character will be ultimate winner! Can you accept this ending? But that’s what happens over and over again in reality… Just look at that…
世炬 可能有些观众会以为我们在讲最近那件。。。
SJ Maybe the audience will speculate that we are referring to a recent incident…
庆亮 我们没有洞察天机的能力,我们早在四月就开始谈剧本。。。
HL We didn’t predict it. We’ve been working on the script since April…
世炬 有些人不明白我们的戏为什么要 R(A)。。。
SJ Some people won’t understand why the play is rated R(A)…
庆亮 这部戏不是关于性,而是提到性被利用为工具,politics 充满 sex, lies and lust。。。
HL This play is not about sex, but sex is used as a tool. Politics is full of sex, lies and lust…
世炬 我们觉得这部戏比较适合心机较成熟的观众。。。
SJ We believe that this play is more suitable for mature audiences…
庆亮 下一次,我想尝试做只有好人的武侠剧。。。
HL Next time, I will try to do a martial arts play with only good characters…
请形容这齣戏。Please describe this production.
世炬 龙蛇混杂,天摇地动。
SJ A perfect storm of evil and corruption.
宝宝 贱人传说。
PP The Legend of the ‘Despicables’
庆亮 高处不胜寒。
HL It gets cold in high places.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 8 July 2016

Vault Event Logo

The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng is a revisit of the first martial arts production in Singapore theatre of the same title by theatre-maker Zelda Tatiana Ng. Under her direction and alongside some of the original cast members, Leng-Geh-Mng is retold in the format of a radio play refreshed with the use of Chinese dialects.

 

 

]]>
https://centre42.sg/five-facts-about-leng-geh-mng/feed/ 0
Five Times Drama Box Broke New Ground https://centre42.sg/drama-box-broke-new-ground/ https://centre42.sg/drama-box-broke-new-ground/#comments Fri, 01 Jul 2016 06:10:52 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=5235 drblogo

 

 

Established in 1990 by Kok Heng Leun, the founding artistic director, Drama Box is a theatre company that is best known for staging socially-engaging works in both English and Mandarin. Over the last 26 years, it has collected many “firsts” in its quest to push boundaries and experiment with new forms. We take a look at some of the most notable ones here.

 


#1: (1992) The first Mandarin gay play to be staged in Singapore

Written by Otto Fong and directed by Kok Heng Leun, Another Tribe tells the stories of homosexual youths and became the first play that explores gay issues to be staged in Singapore. After some negotiations with the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit (PELU) of the Singapore Police Force – who was then in charge of giving out permits for performances – the show was allowed to go ahead. However, it’s the first Chinese-language production here to be given an R21 rating.

Source: http://dramabox.org/eng/productions-anothertribe.html

 


#2: (1998) The first local martial arts theatre production

The first production Drama Box staged after becoming a full time company, Leng-Geh-Mng – which means Dragon Tooth Gate in English – pokes fun at the conventions that are found in gongfu movies. Written by Lee Shyh Jih and Lim Poh Poh, the comedy uniquely comprises only baddies, with nary a pure, noble hero in sight. To get in shape for sky-high kicks and to land those ultra-powerful punches, the cast of 11 went through actual pugilistic training for five months before the production.

Source: http://dramabox.org/eng/productions-lenggehmng.html


#3: (2001) The first outdoor forum theatre performance in Singapore

Before founding Drama Box, artistic director Kok Heng Leun used to work for The Necessary Stage, which had a history of staging forum theatre performances. Also known as theatre of the oppressed, this genre of performance invites audience members to watch a short play that contains some kind of conflict, and they’re free to intervene at any point to change the action of the characters if they disagree with them. It is an art form that Kok is passionate about, and he continued to work with it through Drama Box despite the fact that he received no state funding due to a ban that lasted from 1994 to 2003.

In 2000, Kok pushed the boundaries by presenting short audio plays on UFM 100.3 with DJ Danny Yeo in a forum theatre format, where listeners could call in and participate. One year later, he applied for a permit to stage a forum theatre show outdoors – which he knew was the only way to really reach the wider public. Have You Eaten?, a play about retrenchment, was given the go-ahead, and became the forum theatre piece to be staged outside the conventional indoors performance space.

Source: http://dramabox.org/eng/productions-haveyoueaten.html

 


#4: (2005) The first series of satirical plays based on headline news

While this claim to fame may sound a little specific, Dua Dai Ji (News Buster!) was indeed the first piece of mockumentary theatre to be performed here. Staged two years before popular satirical TV show The Noose aired, the play was conceptualised by Li Xie and co-devised by Tay Long Hui, Koh Hui Ling and Epin Chia, and caricaturises current affairs that Singaporeans can easily relate to with a generous dose of humour.

Source: http://dramabox.org/eng/productions-duadaiji.html

 


#5: (2015) The first inflatable pop-up theatre in Singapore

Having established a reputation for being champions of community theatre, Drama Box decided to reach out further by bringing art to the people. And so the idea to build a mobile performance space that can be transported around Singapore was born. The fundraising campaign for a pair of inflatable domes – affectionately named GoLi after the childhood game of marbles – began in 2013, and they were completed in 2015. A week-long festival called SCENES: Forum Theatre took place near NEX Shopping Mall in Serangoon that year to mark GoLi’s official opening, as well as Drama Box’s 25th anniversary.

Source: http://dramabox.org/eng/about_goli.html

Other Drama Box’s milestones: http://dramabox.org/eng/about_milestones.html
Drama Box’s online archive of past productions: http://dramabox.org/eng/about_milestones.html

 

By Daniel Teo
Published on 1 July 2016

Vault Event Logo

The Vault: Leng-Geh-Mng is a revisit of the first martial arts production in Singapore theatre of the same title by theatre-maker Zelda Tatiana Ng. Under her direction and alongside some of the original cast members, Leng-Geh-Mng is retold in the format of a radio play refreshed with the use of Chinese dialects.

 

 

]]>
https://centre42.sg/drama-box-broke-new-ground/feed/ 0