SLEEPING NAKED | by Beverly Yuen

The play Sleeping Naked is inspired by a lesser-known aspect of the spiritual leader Mahatma Gandhi— his sex experiments in which he shared his bed with young girls to master his sexual drive. Gandhi explained that he was putting himself in sexually arousing situations in order to test his ability to resist sexual temptation. Sleeping Naked is set in a dysfunctional family, where the father Stony models himself after Gandhi in pursuit of spirituality. Stony takes a vow of celibacy after having his first child, and starts sleeping naked with his daughter when she turns 10. Stony’s wife Mei Man doubts her attractiveness when her husband stops having sex with her. While she is forgiving towards her husband, she is jealous of her daughter who has the “privilege” of sleeping with her husband naked.

Sleeping Naked looks into the conflicts between spirituality and physical indulgence; control and freedom; acceptance and denial, through three characters in the household. These are issues that are highly relevant to today’s society as every urban person is seeking spirituality and inner peace in each unique way, but at the same time pursuing material comforts, wants and needs. While many people in the society desire for freedom and transformation, they are also fearful of drastic change and call for control. This is thus, a play that anyone living in a city can relate to.

The play was supported under the Centre’s Guest Room programme earlier in 2015 where the text was presented in a dramatised read to an invited group of audience members. The detailed creation process can be found here.

Playwright – Beverly Yuen (aka Low Yuen Wei)
Beverly obtained her Bachelor of Arts (Theatre Studies) from National University of Singapore, a Masters in Mass Communication and a PhD in Communication Studies from Nanyang Technological University. She co-founded Theatre OX and was a full-time performer with the troupe from 1995 to 1999. She trained for a year at Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in 1998. In 2001, Beverly founded In Source Theatre and was its Artistic Director from 2001 to 2013. She has directed and performed in more than 20 works with the company. She penned four full-length plays, namely D-evil of Light (English, 2001), I Dance I Wander I Wonder (English, 2004), Cage (Chinese, 2004), and Glowing Woods (2003), an English musical for a primary school’s opening. Beverly also performed in productions directed by various directors/choreographers. Among them were Bun & Stone (2010) directed by Lim Chin Huat and Tan How Choon, The Painted House II (2000) and The Painted House III (2000) directed by the late William Teo, Mr Beng (2000) directed by Kok Heng Leun, and Exodus (1999) directed by Jean Ng. From 2005 to 2007, Beverly spearheaded the practice-oriented research project Defining “Spiritual Theatre”: a Cross-cultural Study of Rituals and Traditional Body Forms in Singapore funded by a Research and Development Grant awarded by the National Arts Council.

Creative Team
Director- Sanjay Gautam
Performers – Eng Kai Er, Michael Cheng, Eleanor Tan
Set & Lighting Designer – Hay Teow Kwang
Music/Sound Designer – Yong Kailin
Multimedia artist – Terence Lau