It took playwright Nabilah Said more than three years to get her play from conception to staging.

Sitting across from me at the café outside the National Library, Nabilah Said is relaxed, confident, and slightly giddy from the excitement and exhaustion of back-to-back rehearsals.

“Rehearsals are great! They have been sooooo fun!” she gushes. “It’s funny because I’m sure this kind of ‘I love rehearsals!’ feeling is something that everyone else in theatre had already gone through when they were quite young. But I think as a playwright, if you’re not doing it full time, there are so many things that allow you to build walls. But now those walls are no longer there.”

Three years ago, however, she was in a very different place. “My heart squeezes and I feel terrible,” she wrote in a reflection piece dated 15 June 2016.

Back then, she had spent a year trying to write a play called State Land under Boiler Room, Centre 42’s script development programme, about people who used to live on Singapore’s offshore islands before being forced to move to the mainland. At the same time, as an associate artist in residence at Teater Ekamatra, she was also working on another piece called Angkat, about the common and informal practice of adoption in Malay families. (Anak angkat means “adopted children” in Malay.)

For various reasons, however, she just couldn’t bend or twist either of those projects into the shape and form that she wanted. That was when Robin Loon and Casey Lim – Boiler Room’s resident dramaturg and director respectively – suggested that she should take a six-month break before returning to it with more focus. She understood where they were coming from and gratefully accepted their offer, but nonetheless felt frustrated that it had come to that.

“It is a strange sort of heartbreak,” she wrote in another reflection piece on 1 July 2016 as she began her hiatus.

It turns out that the break was exactly what she needed. By January 2017, she was ready to pick up her Boiler Room journey where she left off, having decided to incorporate her ideas for State Land into Angkat.

A test read of “Angkat” was held at Centre 42 in September 2017 to conclude Nabilah’s Boiler Room journey.

“I want to look at both adoption, and the relationship between the former islanders and mainland Singapore. Because to me there is a parallel journey of how you started from one place and moved to another,” she says. “Even if you feel like you’re okay with the new place, there must be some feelings still tied to the former place. So I felt that the two journeys could be looked at in the same play.”

She finished her new draft of Angkat in September 2017, and held a test read at Centre 42 to conclude her Boiler Room journey.

Meanwhile, Teater Ekamatra had informed Nabilah that they would like to stage the piece in December 2017, but felt that the script still wasn’t quite ready. They came to a mutual agreement to allow the director of the production, Irfan Kasban, to devise new scenes together with the cast, taking the production in a different direction.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I totally understand some of the concerns they had, and some of the weaknesses of the script at that point in time, and why they wanted to simplify it. It’s fine that they [devised the play that way],” she says. “But I also felt that this story that I had initially wanted to tell – I still wanted to tell it.”

And so in January 2018, Nabilah reached out to director Noor Effendy Ibrahim, whose work she really admires, and asked if he would like work with her to further develop her original idea for Angkat. He said yes, and together, they submitted the piece to the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival open call shortly after. To their delight, Angkat was accepted for the 2019 festival.

Since November 2018, Nabilah has been back at Centre 42 together with Effendy, her dramaturg Zulfadli Rashid (aka “Big”), and the rest of her production team to further develop and fine-tune her play under our Basement Workshop residency programme. She has also extended the title of the piece to better reflect her story. It’s now called ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native.

“I always felt that the title Angkat by itself didn’t fully capture the ambition of the play. It would have made people think that the play was only about the adoption story. Plus, I want to find a way to give people a sense that this play is going to be a bit siao siao one (Singlish for “crazy”)!” she smirks. “I did not want a boring title.”

Which brings us to the “I love rehearsals!” phase that Nabilah is enjoying these days.

The cast and creative team of “ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native” are currently in residence at Centre 42.

“The thing about the play is that there are a lot of funny moments. Like, a lot. So sometimes in rehearsals we can’t actually finish reading it, because we’re too busy laughing!” she shares. At the same time, she’s also feeling more assured, knowing that she is well-supported.

“It feels really nice that even now, when it’s no longer about the script anymore – rather it’s about the production – that we can still work with Centre 42 to develop it. And it’s cool that Ekamatra is still a part of my journey as well; they’ve been very supportive. To me it signals that there’s confidence about the piece, which I really need as a playwright,” she says. She pauses, and bursts out laughing. “It sounds so terrible! I sound so needy! But for me, it’s really important that the people I’m working with believe in it.”

On top of working out the story that she wanted to tell with ANGKAT, Nabilah also spent the last three years trying to find her voice and place as a playwright. And now, she has not just one, but three plays that will all be debuting in January 2019: ANGKAT and yesterday it rained salt will  both be staged at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival, while Inside Voices will be performed at London’s Vault  Festival. It may have taken her a while to get to where she is today, but the journey from idea to production was never meant to be straightforward.

“I started out being unsure, but now it’s a complete 180-degree change, you know. I’m like very, very, very sure,” she says. “And I feel like it did require those three years of work for me to figure out what it is that I’m trying to say.”

By Gwen Pew
Published on 11 January 2019

ANGKAT: A Definitive, Alternative, Reclaimed Narrative of a Native will be performed at NAFA Studio Theatre from 24 to 26 January. Tickets are available here.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #8.

Loo Zihan hopes to explore the relationship between objects, memories, and identity in “Catamite”. Photo: Tom Giebel

Multidisciplinary artist Loo Zihan is no stranger to our blue house. He was one of our first ever Basement Workshop artists in residence, and developed and staged With/Out here for the 2015 M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. Four years later, he has returned to create a one-man show called Catamite for the 2019 edition of the same festival, to be performed at Centre 42 from 25 to 27 January.

The idea for this new work came about when he was writing the thesis for his Performance Studies Master’s degree in New York recently, and used the opportunity to reflect on his own artistic practice.

“I was looking at works that I’ve done in the past through a critical lens, and I kept coming back to this installation that I did at the Institute of Contemporary Arts at Lasalle in 2016, called Queer Objects: an archive for the future,” he shares. “It was still very fresh, and it was something I haven’t really worked through, unlike With/Out [which I revisited at Esplanade in 2017]. So I wanted to come back to it.”

He explains that in a way, he had unfinished business with Queer Objects. The piece imagines that in the year 2065, Section 377A of the Penal Code in Singapore – which criminalises sex between men – has been repealed, and objects from a time capsule are unearthed and displayed. The exhibition actually comprised items loaned to him by members from the local queer community that they associated with their identity. It got a lot of attention, but not really of the sort that Zihan was hoping for: a few items from the collection were deemed too offensive, and removed just before the show opened.

Zihan has been working on “Catamite” under Basement Workshop, and has been conducting trial runs here recently.

There was one such seemingly mundane object from that exhibition that he’s especially keen to re-examine: a watch whose face and strap look like they came from different eras. Zihan is fascinated by the lovely story behind it, which led him to consider the kind of narratives that objects can contain.

“I am drawn to objects that hold a symbolic weight in archives, especially narratives that have been historically suppressed or proscribed. I am also trying to understand why some objects have been tethered to memories, while others have been disconnected and neglected,” he muses. “Through the tracking of what memories and objects have been given significance, we can measure what society’s, or an individual’s, values are, and how they evolve over time.”

Incidentally, a watch also cropped up in a separate story when he was researching the history behind how Section 377A came about. Through newspaper archives and his conversations with legal scholar George Baylon Radics, Zihan discovered the case of Captain Douglas Marr and a male prostitute – also known as a catamite – called Sudin bin Daud. They were two of the first people in Singapore to be charged with Section 377A back in the early 1940s, and the main piece of evidence that was used to prove their alleged relationship was a timepiece that Sudin had stolen from the captain.

Both Zihan’s Queer Objects exhibition and his research on Section 377A will form the basis of Catamite, with the humble watch linking the two threads, and serving as a metaphor for the passing and verification of time.

The performance will be divided into five parts, comprising a series of participatory exercises as well as lecture-performances. But even though the work traces Section 377A all the way from the 1940s well into the future, Zihan is clear that it is not a history lesson.

One object that inspired Zihan in the creation of “Catamite” is a watch loaned to him for an earlier installation work.

“If you’re coming in expecting a lecture, that’s not really going to be the case,” he emphasises. “That said, my practice has been about providing people with knowledge and information, to understand that there are multiple historical narratives. So for me, the biggest responsibility of Catamite is to help people understand where 377A came from. Whether they are for repeal or not is up to them, and I don’t think that’s something I can possibly change through one performance. It’s just to give them information so that they can make an informed decision on the eventual position that they would like to adopt.”

The work will be performed in our Black Box, which happens to be where part of his 2015 production of With/Out took place as well.

“It’s nice that in Catamite, when I talk about the candle from Paddy [Chew]’s performance [of Completely With/Out Character, on which With/Out was based] – which was also one of the objects in the Queer Objects archive – then I can talk about the moment when I lit it in that very same space in the Black Box,” he says. “When I first did With/Out here, it was a new space and it was exciting. But now, coming back, there’s a certain complexity and richness that accumulates over time, by coming to the same space and working in the same space over and over again. It’s a different relationship, and adds layers of complexity to the work itself.”

Catamite is also an open invitation for audiences to explore the relationship between objects, memories, and identity. And in that sense, it’s also been a rather nice way to resurface Zihan’s own memories and relationship with the space, as well as the objects associated with it.

By Gwen Pew
Published on 11 January 2019

Catamite will be performed at Centre 42 from 25 to 27 January. Tickets are available here.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #8.

A nightview of the Causeway from Johor Bahru.
Photo: Fauziah Shariff, Flickr (Used with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License. Some modifications made to the original image.)

From the birthright of cendol to maritime disputes, the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia can go from testy to downright tense. But our expulsion from the Federation in 1965 not only created two separate nations, it also gave rise to two English-language theatre scenes. Looking back on the history of Singapore theatre, the relationship between us and our northern neighbour plays a significant role, with works emerging from cross-Causeway competition and collaboration, as well as from the historical significance of the 1965 Separation.

Sibling rivalry

Inevitably, with two neighbouring entities with such close ties and shared cultures and history, there is bound to be an element of competition. One play whose production history perhaps best embodies the competitiveness between the two scenes is Stella Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill. Kon wrote the monodrama in 1982, and with it, won the Singapore National Playwriting Competition the following year. Despite her win, and others in previous years, she had difficulty getting her work staged in Singapore.

Programme cover featuring Leow Puay Tin as Emily in Emily of Emerald Hill (1984).
(Image: MY Art Memory Project)

Emily was first produced by Malaysian theatre company Five Arts Centre in 1984 in Seremban and Kuala Lumpur (KL). Malaysian playwright Leow Puay Tin was the first to play the titular Nonya matriarch. Straits Times theatre critic Kate James later penned a response scathingly titled Come on Singapore, stand up for your own plays in which she berated Singapore theatre practitioners’ lack of interest in local work, and particularly for overlooking Kon’s plays. (She calls these theatre practitioners “pussycats”.) Emily was only staged on its homeground in 1985, performed by Margaret Chan.

Yet, Malaysia’s love affair with Emily knows no bounds, with actress Pearlly Chua playing the matriarch a whopping 200 times between the years 1990 and 2017. (To be fair, her debut as Emily was in Singapore.)

This competitiveness extended beyond the two nations’ theatre scenes. In 2002, Malaysian writer Karim Raslan attended the opening festival of Singapore’s Esplanade. Reflecting on the new facility, he wrote, “Interestingly, at least for a KL-ite, the Esplanade also marks an important attempt by the Singapore government to play catch-up with Malaysia. Maybe it’s a reflection of the changing times and the altered nature of bilateral relations, because in the past, Malaysians used to spend most of our energy ‘catching up’ with them.”

In theatre, Business Times arts writer Helmi Yusof observed in 2016 that more and more Malaysian practitioners have built successful stage careers south of the Causeway. Some, like Huzir Sulaiman and Claire Wong, even helm theatre companies based in Singapore. Malaysian actor-director Jo Kukathas credits the National Arts Council and the Esplanade for the growth of Singapore English-Language Theatre in the last three decades, creating many more opportunities for both local and Malaysian practitioners. But she also recalls that the flow of talent between the two countries was more comparable back in the 1980s: “…there was more parity between the Malaysian and Singapore theatre scene. Malaysians would come here to perform, and Singaporeans would go to Malaysia.”

Creative collaborations

The cross-pollination of stage talent and ideas between the two countries in the 1980s was the backdrop for more formal creative exchanges, such as the one between Singapore’s TheatreWorks and KL-based Five Arts Centre. In 1988, TheatreWorks presented Three Children in Singapore, co-directed by its artistic director Ong Keng Sen and Five Arts Centre’s Krishen Jit. The play was penned by the very same Leow Puay Tin who first played Emily. In 1989, Ong directed Peter’s Passionate Pursuit, written by Singaporean playwright Eleanor Wong, for Five Arts Centre in Kuala Lumpur. The emphasis on this exchange was on formal training of performers – Krishen worked with the Singapore cast, and Ong with the Malaysian cast, for several months before their respective productions, focusing on performance skills and devising.

Programme cover for Second Link (2005).
(Image: Wild Rice, The Repository. Used with permission.)

A more recent cross-Causeway exchange project would be Wild Rice’s Second Link, staged during the 2005 Singapore Writer’s Festival, as well as its follow-up Another Country at the 2015 Singapore Theatre Festival. The two works commemorated the 40^th and 50^th anniversary of the Separation respectively. In both productions, a team of actors and a director from one country would perform a curated selection of works from the other.

According to Wild Rice’s artistic director Ivan Heng, these Singapore-Malaysian collaborations served a greater purpose beyond creative development: “If we can take the time to understand, to interpret and then express each other’s concerns and aspirations, you begin to have this idea of empathy and go into this idea of what it means to have peace between neighbours.” Krishen echoed these sentiments in the programme of the 1992 restaging of Three Children: “The theatre world is getting to be truly international and it is no longer a one-way theatre traffic… [Three Children] has not been immune of friction, little and sometimes, large ripple of cultural conflict. But the love of theatre by one and all has proved to be the great leveler of cultural bumps and grinds.”

Separation stories

While theatremaking can help mend the rifts caused when one country became two, theatremakers are also inspired by the Separation and the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia theatreafter. In 1998, Singaporean playwright Alfian Sa’at penned his first full-length play in Malay titled Causeway, a series of eight vignettes inspired by the bridge that joins the two countries. The work was staged by Singapore company Teater Ekamatra. In anticipation of the work, Straits Times theatre critic Elizabeth Kaiden wrote, “Causeway has been crying out for its story to be told all these years since Separation, but especially so since last year, when the jams on it became a visual metaphor for the clogged relations between Singapore and Malaysia.”

Programme cover for the second staging on Causeway in 2002.
(Image: Teater Ekamatra, The Repository. Used with permission.)

Alfian revised Causeway in 2002 for the Singapore Arts Festival, following the events of 9/11. This restaging involved a cast comprising performers from Teater Ekamatra and The Actors Studio in Malaysia.

Separation 40 in 2005 shared a similar episodic structure, with five humour-laden scenes exploring the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia. It was a joint project by Singapore’s The Necessary Stage and Malaysia’s Dramalab, written by the companies’ resident playwrights Haresh Sharma and Jit Murad, and directed by Alvin Tan and Zahim Albakri. Reflecting on the collaboration, Zahim said, “The relationship between Malaysia and Singapore is more like sibling rivalry, one-upmanship between families. It’s not acrimonious and we enjoy having a dig at them as they do us. That’s probably why the writers chose very human stories to depict this relationship.”

Siblings, collaborators and competitors – our relationship with Malaysia is complex to say the least. The above productions are just a few examples of work emerging from and/or spurred on by ties with our closest neighbour. The line dividing us isn’t as clear as the straits that separate island from peninsula, and our intertwined past, present and future make for fertile ground for theatre and art.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 11 January 2019

In March 2019, in our own cross-Causeway collaboration, Centre 42 and KL’s Five Arts Centre will present two original works created in response to Leow Puay Tin’s play Three Children. Stay tuned for more details!

References

James, K. (1984, December 30). Come on Singapore, stand up for your own plays. In Straits Times. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.
Kaiden, E. (1998, April 16). Malay theatre travels along the Causeway. In Straits Times. Retrieved from LexisNexist database.
Loke, P. L. (2005, September 24). Separation issues. In New Straits Times. Retrieved from LexisNexis database.
Star2.com (2017, October 4). Role of a lifetime: Actress Pearlly Chua talks ‘Emily Of Emerald Hill’. Retrieved from www.star2.com.
Raslan, K. (2002, October 29). Why the Esplanade deserves to succeed. In Business Times. Retrieved from LexisNexis database.
Tan, C. (2015, February 3). Theatre company Wild Rice presenting five politically-themed plays for SG50. In Straits Times. Retrieved from straitstimes.com.
Three Children. (1992). House programme.
Yusof, H. (2016, April 8). Enter stage right: The Malaysian actor. In Business Times. Retrieved from businesstimes.com.sg.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #8.

Attendees to “Year in Reviews 2018″ were invited to join one of four groups of reviewers to continue discussions in a more intimate setting.

Over 163 local theatre productions took place in Singapore in 2018, and there was often little time – and space – to pause and reflect on the shows we watched, especially within the context of the wider landscape. With that in mind, Centre 42 and ArtsEquator.com conceptualised the second edition of In the Living Room: Year in Reviews as a platform for the theatre practitioners and enthusiasts to come together, and engage in critical discourse with reviewers from both organisations. The event was held at our Black Box on 4 December 2018, and well attended by old friends and new faces from the theatre community.

Prior to that evening, Centre 42 and ArtsEquator.com worked with our 10 reviewers to identify four topics based on their trends they observed in Singapore theatre last year. They were:

1. New writings for the Singapore stage this year: quantity over quality.
2. The term “site-specific” has been misused in Singapore theatre this year.
3. Emerging theatre groups have been creating exciting works.
4. This year’s monodramas have been effective in representing marginalised voices.

These statements were designed to be the starting point for discussions and debate. To encourage more open conversations, we experimented with hosting it in a small-group discussion format, as opposed to a panel. So after reviewers from each of the four groups presented a brief overview of their topics, attendees were invited to join them at various spaces around the house to continue chatting.

This is a summary of what each group went on to discuss, written by the reviewers from Citizens’ Reviews (CR) and ArtsEquator.com (AE).

“New writings for the Singapore stage this year: quantity over quality.”
Facilitated and written by: Christian W. Huber (CR) and Naeem Kapadia (AE)

Local theatre companies have invested time and money in nurturing in new voices through initiatives such as The Wright Stuff by Toy Factory, The Orange Production by The Necessary Stage, and the Playwright Mentorship Programme by Teater Ekamatra. This has resulted in a plethora of original works – some good, some rather dire. The key question is whether companies are putting on shows to meet certain KPIs, or if they truly believe in the work. It’s important for plays to go through a developmental journey before being staged, as there may be a risk of negative feedback if a new, untested play does not fare well. This could turn audiences off and discourage playwrights from writing more. To that end, how does one balance quantity with quality?

Our group interrogated the idea of “quality” as a benchmark of a good play. It was noted that younger audience members have a wide choice and tend to watch plays whose themes resonate with them, rather than purely based on whether it is good or not according to tastemakers or critics. Others argued that the very idea that a play should undergo a ‘process’ to achieve its final potential was somewhat myopic – this formal structure does not work for all plays and ultimately, a raw piece of writing should speak for itself. Some group members also suggested that full-blown stagings should not always be regarded as the end goal for plays. Dramatised readings and showcases that highlight shorter pieces of writing, like Centre 42’s Late-Night Texting and Teater Ekamatra’s Projek Suitcase should also be encouraged.

Some of the original plays of 2018 that resonated positively with the group were Tiger of Malaya, Supervision and Citizen Dog, while those which proved disappointing include 13.13.13 and Press Gang.

“The term “site-specific” has been misused in Singapore theatre this year.”
Facilitated and written by: Isaac Tan (CR) and Jocelyn Chng (CR)

Rather than focusing on specific productions, the conversation in this group broadly centred on three main areas: definitions of “site-specific”, the idea of different players in the field, and how labels and terminology can be problematic. Most people felt that for it to be “site-specific”, a production must take the history, location, and general environment of the performance space into consideration. Another term that came up in the discussion was “site-related”, which perhaps better describes some performances that might be less focused on interrogating the site per se.

The discussion then turned towards questioning the idea of “misuse” – who is misusing the term. We realised that the term “site-specific” has been and can be used by many different sectors involved in the arts ecosystem – artists, audiences, writers, academics, and marketing personnel – all of whom have different perspectives and intentions.

Some practitioners felt that the term limits both artists and audience. It was pointed out that as meanings and practices change over time, such labels do not necessarily represent creative aims adequately. We recognised that the use of labels can be dangerous, especially if writers and critics use terms that can be interpreted differently by different people. It was a good reminder for writers to be more careful in their choices and diligent in their research, as arts writing inevitably performs an educational function for the general reader.

“Emerging theatre groups have been creating more exciting works.”
Facilitated and written by: Cordelia Lee (CR) and Lee Shu Yu (CR)

The session garnered insightful and heart-warming reactions from a diverse group consisting of producers, reviewers, emerging and seasoned artists. We agreed that it was not the age of the group members, but relative experience in their respective collectives/roles that defined “emerging”.

We discussed how emerging groups tend to fill a gap in the theatre landscape, either by pursuing a niche genre/topic, or by responding to prevailing and dominant products in the market. Works created by young, new, and/or independent artists can also be more exciting because they are still in the early stages of searching for an identity. They have lower stakes and more freedom to pursue diverse creative paths, and they often find innovative ways to circumvent production limitations.

Plays by emerging groups that we especially enjoyed include Stupid Cupid (Patch and Punnet) for its hilarious use of cardboard set, and The Taste of Water (Bound Theatre) for its well-executed choreography.

However, the discussants also felt that some productions by emerging groups have disappointed them by attempting to do too much with too little. One example given was an unnamed production at the Drama Centre, which tried too hard to replicate a full-scale performance – complete with a proper set and a few veteran actors – and ended up creating an unbalanced audience experience.

The session concluded with the view that theatre-makers should find and hold on to the high energy and sense of play exemplified by the emerging theatre groups from this year, to continue creating works that excite.

“This year’s monodramas have been effective in representing marginalised voices.”
Facilitated and written by: Akanksha Raja (AE), Liana Gurung (CR), and Patricia Tobin (AE)

With its deliberately emphatic phrasing, this topic drew a group of roughly 15 theatre makers and goers, and catalysed a discussion that proved the innate power of the monodrama in inviting profound personal and emotional engagement. We discussed the politics of production, and how the monodrama form allows stories that are usually excluded from mainstream narratives to be heard.

Our conversations also ventured into the ethics of representation. What kinds of stories should be told? Who are these stories being told to or for? An observed trend was succinctly summed up by a member of the group: the rise of the “brown girl voice”, which we followed with an examination of how the power and potential of a piece might be undercut by co-creators (director, scriptwriter, actor) who do not share common backgrounds and experiences. Among the handful of performances from 2018 that surfaced during the discussion were Building a Character and An Actress Prepares (both from the Singapore Theatre Festival), and the presentation of queer issues in I am trying to say something true (from the Esplanade’s The Studios series).

Of the statement itself, we did not come to a consensus. Indeed, most of the group was split on the shows we felt were compelling and effective or not, possibly due to our own diversity in background and experiences. Yet all recognised the potential of the monodrama as disruptor and as space held for lesser-heard stories, leading perhaps to heightened expectations that seem to have yet to be fully met.

Published on 10 January 2019

In the Living Room: Year in Reviews 2018 took place at Centre 42’s Black Box on 4 December 2018. Find out more about the event and watch the video recording of it here.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #8.

Wonder Gelato was founded based on Karen Cheng’s deep love for ice cream. Photo: Wonder Gelato

Karen Cheng was a property agent when fate decided to intervene and make her the owner of a brand new gelateria right here on Waterloo Street. “Wonder Gelato” only opened on 18 October last year but it’s quickly become a go-to spot for ice-cream lovers. Karen makes her gelato onsite from her very own recipes, with classic flavours like Vanilla and Strawberry, to the exotic-sounding Black Hawaii, an inky-black ice cream combining coconut and charcoal.

Read on to find out how Karen stumbled into the world of gelato-making.

Why did you call your shop “Wonder Gelato”?
Aiyoh, the name – I took a very, very long time to think about it! I watched the movie Wonder on the plane to the US, and I thought ‘wonder’ sounds interesting. Even in the dictionary, ‘wonder’ means fabulous, good! A lot of things come unplanned for my business. I don’t plan anything. Everything just comes on its own!

How did you get into the gelato business then?
I was in real estate all along. It’s all because of the display case. I went to the FHA (Food & Hotel Asia) show last year on a friend’s invitation. Then, there’s this Italian guy that told me if I bought the case, I would be the first one in Singapore to own it. Because there are only two tubs in each compartment, so the flavours don’t contaminate each other. In conventional cases, all the ice cream is in one place. So I might eat strawberry and I’ll taste something else. I don’t like that. And my display case is also quite short. Good for short people like me! You can see me!

When I bought this case, I hadn’t even found a shop yet. Then after that the [case seller] told me I could store it in the warehouse. I kept it there for about four months.

How did you end up setting up shop at Waterloo Centre?
My dad’s office is at Fortune Centre, so I’ve been around the area for many years. I’m very familiar with this place. I’m a property agent, so I recced many places. But when I saw the listing for this location, I knew it was the right place. Immediately I came down and put down a deposit for it. This place caters to many different crowds. Upstairs, there are the residents. And the offices. You get SMU and NAFA students. And the hotels – sometimes we get tourists here.

Where did your love for gelato come from?
During the weekends I would drive my two younger sisters around to eat ice cream and waffles, like Creamier and Salted Caramel. We would drive around to try all the ice cream stalls.

Where did you learn to make gelato?
Carpigiani Gelato University. The university has a partnership with At-Sunrice Global Chef Academy. It was a short course. They just teach you the fundamentals of gelato-making. After that, you have to go back and formulate your own recipes.

How did you develop your gelato recipes?
I spent around six months formulating my recipes. Italians have a sweet tooth, so normal gelato has around 23% sugar. My gelato is only 17% sugar. I also had to play around with different sugars. It’s very tricky – I really had to spend a lot of time balancing the ingredients. And I like my ice cream to be thick.

Which is your favourite flavour?
Coconut. I love coconut flavours, fruity flavours. I don’t see those very often in ice cream shops; it’s always Earl Grey Lavender and all the other classic ones. So I thought, maybe I should go and learn how to make it for myself. I’ll go to the market to get fresh coconut milk. You can’t keep it overnight because it will turn sour. So when I make the gelato, I have to buy the milk in the morning and churn it immediately.

Do you think you’ll fall out of love with gelato now that it’s your business?
I still love ice cream. I still eat them – just now I just had the Mao Shan Wang Durian gelato. I won’t get sick of ice cream!

Published on 11 January 2019

Visit Wonder Gelato at 261 Waterloo Street, 01-30 Waterloo Centre, 180261, and follow its Facebook page here.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #8.