These are some of the many characters the audience will meet in The Theatre Practice’s ambitious work, Four Horse Road. Photo: The Theatre Practice

When The Theatre Practice (TTP) moved into 54 Waterloo Street in 2016, it meant so much more to Kuo Jian Hong than just moving offices. For in that newly renovated blue and white shophouse, the 53-year-old bilingual theatre company finally found a place to call their own.

Prior to the move, TTP had been based at Stamford Arts Centre since 1986. Jian Hong took over as the company’s artistic director from her parents, Kuo Pao Kun and Goh Lay Kuan, when her father passed away in 2002. But to her, their old headquarters always felt very transitional.

“Back then, we renewed our lease every year, so we never knew when we’re going to move. We were there for 30 years, but we never felt like it’s ours because we had no performing space,” she explains. “Whereas here [at 54 Waterloo Street], we’re under the [National Arts Council’s] Arts Housing Scheme, with a longer lease period. We have our own performing space, and a sense of ownership.” The new space is outfitted with a black box theatre, a rehearsal studio, and the Practice Tuckshop.

With that sense of ownership comes the desire to find out exactly what they’re owning. After all, by itself, the shophouse is just a shell. To begin giving the space meaning, the team started looking back at the history of this area.

“You can’t be truly connected to a place unless you start digging and see what has been before you,” says Jian Hong.

The result is Four Horse Road, an ambitious performance that will be staged from 4 to 28 April 2018. It comprises ten stories inspired by events that took place over the last 150 years, and features 46 colourful characters. They include a French nun, a Japanese soldier, a Hokkien man who thinks that he is the resurrected Jesus Christ, a Jewish family, a Malay waiter working for a Chinese restaurant, among others.

“There are many considerations when you’re representing different eras, different perspectives, different languages, and different religions,” says Jian Hong. “All the actors are helping with the research, and we have a WhatsApp group where they all share [new information they find]. It’s a daunting task, but it’s fun because you’re really learning something new every day. The amount of material we have is astronomical, but of course you need to think about the experience for the audience as well.”

As part of their research, The Theatre Practice team found an old photo of 42 Waterloo Street when it was still home to ACTION Theatre. Photo: The Theatre Practice

Playwright Jonathan Lim was brought in to curate the research into a cohesive experience. Jian Hong invited him to come on board as she knows he has a personal connection to the area: he was a former student of Catholic High School, which used to be located on Queen Street (where SAM @ 8Q is today). He had also created another work, titled People Say Got Ghost, for ACTION Theatre’s double bill, Waterloo Stories, in 2003. ACTION Theatre was located at 42 Waterloo Street, where Centre 42 now stands.

The straightforward way to perform this work would have been in a theatre setting. Instead, Jian Hong has opted to play with a larger canvas, and stage it across three neighbouring heritage houses: the homes of TTP, Chinese Calligraphy Society, and Centre 42.

“We started looking at how we connect to our neighbours, now that we have sparring partners like you guys around,” says Jian Hong.

Up to 180 audience members can attend Four Horse Road each night. They will be split into six groups, and led to the various locations by a guide. Which means that at any given time, six scenes are happening in different spaces – no mean feat to pull off.

“The challenge of this piece is not just the content, but also the logistics,” says Jian Hong as she opens up a mind-bogglingly detailed spreadsheet showing the various spaces and timings, planned out down to the minute.

The cast of Four Horse Road have been rehearsing nightly over the past couple of weeks. Photo: Ma Yanling

As Centre 42 is one of the Waterloo Precinct Partners for Four Horse Road, we’ve seen first-hand just how much work has gone into creating this piece. The idea of a multi-property site-specific work was first mentioned to us more than a year ago. And over the last few weeks, we witnessed the TTP team bringing that vision to life in our spaces: constructing a new entry way at the back of the building, recreating a restaurant in the front (complete with tzechar-style tables and a stage), and transforming all the rooms in our blue house into different worlds. The set-making happens by day, rehearsals by night. Four scenes will be taking place here, including an unlikely encounter in a jailhouse in 1870, and a visit to an old folk’s home in 1952.

It’s an exciting project, but Jian Hong is quick to point out that doing an immersive, site-specific piece like this is nothing new.

“It’s been done before. I’m not trying to prove anything, and I’m not really reinventing the wheels here,” she declares. “I just want to try doing something from a different perspective, by anchoring certain subjects in permutations that may not have been done before. And as an institution, TTP has reached a point where there’s enough accumulated history to start putting down roots.”

After three decades here, the company’s love affair with Waterloo Street continues with Four Horse Road. But more than that, the show is a public declaration that TTP is, indeed, home.

By Gwen Pew
Published on 3 April 2018

Find out more about Four Horse Road here, and catch the show at The Theatre Practice from 4 – 28 April 2018. Tickets are available from Sistic.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #5.

Framed, by Adolf, the second play in Chong Tze Chien’s “Hitler trilogy”, will make its public debut in June 2018. Photo: The Finger Players

Chong Tze Chien arrived at Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland on a cold, rainy morning in October 2015. He was there on a research trip that was funded in part by Centre 42’s Fellowship grant. By then, he had already written and staged Starring Hitler as Jekyll and Hyde – the first play of his planned “Hitler trilogy” – based on what he learnt about the period from books, films, and videos. But that did little to prepare him for the horrific stories that he would encounter at Auschwitz, which now stands as a memorial and museum dedicated to the victims who were murdered there.

The detail that he found most harrowing during his visit was realising that ordinary German people knew what was going on in the concentration camps back then. And that many of those who worked at the camps had no qualms about it, because it was safer to go along with the masses than to confront the inconvenient truth.

“You can imagine them [carrying out the killings] on a daily basis and being able to sleep every night because to them, it was like killing pests – it’s the natural thing to do,” says Tze Chien. “It’s easier to throw morality out of the picture, so you can claim innocence. But there are no innocent bystanders.”

When Tze Chien came back to Singapore, he wrote the second play in his trilogy, Framed, by Adolf (then titled The Fuhrer’s Work), in three days. While Starring Hitler examines the dictator’s rise to power and the Holocaust that ensued, Framed takes place in a contemporary setting where truths can be easily constructed, sold, and bought. The story follows a woman who inherited a rare painting by Hitler from her Jewish grandfather, who had escaped the Holocaust by posing as a Nazi. She tries to sell the artwork to an academic, an auctioneer, and a businessman, with each character attempting to outwit the others by presenting their own version of the truth.

Looking back, Tze Chien sees that he has always been intrigued by the idea of truth. His very first play, Pan Island Expressway (PIE) (1999), is about a playwright who is arrested and interrogated when the scripted deaths of his actors become real. The interrogator then twists and misinterprets the playwright’s truths, and uses his own words against him.

The test read for Framed, by Adolf (then titled The Fuhrer’s Work), was held at Centre 42 in September 2016.

Arthur Kok, who reviewed the original production of PIE for The Flying Inkpot, wrote that “[h]ow the interpretation of one (the interrogator) is capable of reframing ‘truth’ (as James [the playwright] conceives it to be) is thus deftly addressed in PIE. How this interpretation and (re)presentation of ‘truth’ invents intentionality and responsibility are also powerfully foregrounded.”

That same tactic of reframing truths allowed Hitler and the Nazis to relabel racism as patriotism. And in today’s world, where truths have become easier to invent and construct than ever before, history seems to be repeating itself.

“We are now living in the Trump era, and these works [about Hitler] can’t be more relevant. Everyone has a platform to say what they want these days. They can do so without responsibility and without any consideration of others, by hiding behind an online avatar,” says Tze Chien. “What fascinates me is how uncanny the similarities are between 1930s Germany and what is happening in the world today. We are not living in a world that necessarily values objectivity. It’s about being a populist.”

He believes that we’re never able to really learn from the past because we lack self-reflexivity, and because we’re unable to envision the extent of tyranny that our fellow humans are capable of. Instead, we choose to see only what we want to see.

“What disturbs me is that when you push forth your own opinions as the objective and absolute truth, that’s where bullying becomes the status quo. And when everyone insists that they are right, there can be no more room for conversation after that,” he says.

And yet, he also admits to feeling a personal connection to the fact that Hitler was, like himself, an aspiring artist in real life.

“You know how artists can be egomaniacs. We’re all Type A personalities who are obsessed with creating our own vision, and presenting it to the world,” he says. “There is always this tension between the artist’s ego and his/her predilection for truth; when the former trumps over the latter, vanity is the result.”

There are always many sides to a story, and Framed is Tze Chien’s attempt to look at that particularly dark period of history from another perspective. It’s apt that he does so through theatre, where different characters can present various realities to the same group of people.

So what would you, as an audience member and an individual, choose to believe?

By Gwen Pew
Published on 3 April 2018

Find out more about Framed, by Adolf in our earlier interview with Tze Chien here, and by following The Finger Players’ Facebook page here, and catch the show at Victoria Theatre from 15 – 17 June 2018.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #5.

See a collection of past national arts festival programmes at the Singapore International Festival of Arts’ Four Decades exhibition from 26 April 2018. Photo: Gwen Pew. Programmes used with permission from Arts House Limited.

The Singapore International Festival of Arts 2018 celebrates its four-decade heritage as the premier arts and cultural event in independent Singapore. In this essay, we look back even further in our history to see how our national arts festival came about.

Within the social sciences, festivals are viewed as sites for the production (and consumption) of culture. Waterman (1998) takes this notion a step further by asserting that:

… festivals provide a means whereby groups may attempt to maintain themselves culturally, while presenting opportunities to others to join that group. Festival is also an occasion for outsiders (sponsors, subsidizers) to endeavour to force or lead the group towards an acceptable course for the continuity of its culture. (p.55)

It is through this culture-making frame that we look back at Singapore’s history with the national arts festival. It is arguable that because of its culture-making function, some arts festivals are referred to as ‘cultural festivals’ in historical records. This is why in this essay some events identified as cultural festivals will also be included.

The main consideration for inclusion of these cultural festivals would be if they had been intended to bring together many different cultures, much as arts festivals are events aggregating more than one art form (hence ‘arts’ as opposed to ‘art’). This speaks to the nature of art as both a byproduct of a culture as well as involved in cultural production as well. There was also consideration for the scale of the festival event, which should be cited as somewhat large, although regrettably there is no quantitative indicator for this criteria.

Seeding the idea of a Singapore arts festival

The idea that Singapore needed a city-wide arts event first emerged on public record in 1949, while the island was still part of the British Colony. On July 17, 1949, a Straits Times (ST) article reported that several unidentified cultural organisations were in support of an annual festival of arts, specifically as a money-making venture to raise funds for local arts groups.

The proposed plan was for a festival based on traditional regional music, arts and crafts, drama, and dance; revenue would come mainly from the engagement of a prestigious foreign act such as an Australian symphony orchestra. A supporter of the plan was quoted as saying: “I’m sure we could make profit enough to subsidise our own symphony orchestra, and to make grants to the University of Malaya and cultural organisations in Singapore” (para. 4).

The call for an arts festival emerged again in the news in 1951, from Mr. T. P. F. McNeice, the president of the Singapore City Council, a colonial administrative body in charge of the city’s utilities and infrastructure. At the opening of an arts exhibition, McNeice declared that a Singapore Festival of Arts would be a showcase of the city’s multiracial harmony, putting Singapore in the position to be “a cultural centre not only for South East Asia but for the whole world” (ST, 1951, para. 4).

The idea began gathering traction in the latter half of the ’50s following the formation of the Singapore Arts Council in 1955. In his book Making the invisible visible: Three decades of the Singapore Arts Festival, Purushothaman (2007) writes that the first Singapore Arts Council meeting to mention plans for a festival was held in 1956. Subsequent ST articles in 1957 and 1958 make mention of a pesta or festival in Malay to be organised by a committee appointed by the Singapore Arts Council. The festival was mooted by Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Education Mr Lee Siow, who said that it “would be mainly a Singapore affair, its international character coming from the different races in the Colony” (ST, 1957, para. 3).

Singapore Arts Festival 1959: Culture-making for colonial Singapore

The first Singapore Arts Festival took place in April 1959. It was an ambitious undertaking, spanning eight consecutive days in April and across multiple venues, including Victoria Theatre and Memorial Hall, the Cultural Centre, Beatty School, and the Padang, the open lawn in front of City Hall. A ST (1959a) article reporting on Festival listed participating groups such as the Chinese theatre troupes, the Singapore Musical Society and Chamber Ensemble, the Indian Fine Arts Society, amateur theatre group Stage Club, and school clubs. According to Dr. Michael Sullivan, chairman of the Singapore Arts Council: “The festival will mark the biggest concentration of the Arts Singapore has ever know. It will be a people’s festival in the broadest sense of the word” (Morgan, 1959). The festival was supported by a $20,000 grant from the colonial government (ST, 1958).

In the programme guide for the 1959 Festival, Sullivan writes that, through the festival, the Singapore Arts Council aims “to bring the arts of Singapore to the people of Singapore; to stimulate new ventures in the arts; and to lay the foundation for making Singapore an international cultural centre for South East Asia” (as cited in Purushothaman, 2007, p. 31).

In the aftermath, local news outlets praised the inaugural festival for drawing large crowds, with the Singapore Free Press (SFP) reporting that an estimated 12,000 people watched the shows in the indoor venues (Wee, 1959). ST (1959c) claimed over 500 people watched an outdoor concert in the Padang despite poor weather.

With the success of the first festival, a spokesperson for the Singapore Arts Council later said that there was a high possibility the festival would become an annual occurrence (Wee, 1959). On the 1959 Festival’s culture-making function, Purushothaman (2007) observed that its organisation was “to find a common ground for a nation comprised of a diasporic generation seeking to locate and produce a culture of their own” (p. 32).

However, with the end of colonialism in sight and Singapore achieving full self-governance in 1959, the purpose of an arts festival was to grow far more nationalistic. As one ST reporter writes: “The [first] Festival comes just as Singapore is moving into an era of self-awareness… It is a fitting prelude to the larger drama that is about to begin (ST, 1959c).

Cultural Festival: Consolidating a Malayan culture and identity

The new decade saw fervent interest in constructing a new postcolonial Malayan culture and identity for the colonies seeking their independence. With Singapore’s newly-elected government formed by the People’s Action Party in 1959 came the Ministry of Culture, set up in the same year to “engineer social and cultural integration” (Purushothaman, 2007, p.32). In service of that function, news records speak of an annual Cultural Festival or Pesta Kebudayaan, organised by the Ministry of Culture annually from 1960 to 1962. These yearly large-scale events appear separate from the frequent but much smaller Aneka Ragam Ra’aya or People’s Cultural Concerts, also organised by the Ministry of Culture during the period.

The first Cultural Festival was a week-long affair held at the Victoria Theatre in September 1960. According to ST (1960a), “the [festival] presentations would have a “Malayan bias,” and would depict the harmonious blending of the various communities in Malaya” (para. 4). The festival programme included plays “set in the local background with Malayan themes” (para. 7), dance items which featured “classical and folk dances of the four cultural streams” (para. 11), as well as a concert by the Singapore Chamber ensemble. Chia (1960) reports that the festival involved some 300 local artists from 15 cultural organisations.

The purpose of the Cultural Festival was laid out clearly by Inche Yusok Ishak, then Head of State:

…with the political changes in the Federation and Singapore, the concept of a Malayan culture had become an essential part of building a Malayan nation.

He stressed that, seen in this light, all the work of the Ministry of Culture, as well as various arts and cultural organisations to bring the arts to the masses was “clear proof” of their seriousness and determination to lay the foundations for a Malayan culture.
(ST, 1960b, para. 7)

Acting Prime Minister Dr. Toh Chin Chye, who opened the second Cultural Festival in 1961, echoed these sentiments: “The arts form an important instrument for the task of nation-building […] This Cultural Festival brings together the arts of our different communities and in doing so, it also brings the communities together” (ST, 1961, para. 8-9). Over 3,000 adults and 800 school children were reported to have taken part in the second edition (SFP, 1961; ST, 1961a).

In 1963, construction for the new National Theatre had been completed. To celebrate the opening of the theatre, a greatly expanded South-East Asian Cultural Festival was planned, involving 1,500 artists from 11 countries in the Asia region in a one-week performing arts programme in August (ST, 1963b). Billed “the greatest show in the East”, the main festival programme was staged at the National Theatre and Victoria Theatre, as well as free outdoor shows outside City Hall, at Hong Lim Green and at the Bukit Timah Community Centre (ST, 1963d).

The South-East Asian Cultural Festival was primarily organised as an opportunity to strengthen cultural relations between Singapore and its neighbours in the region, especially with the withdrawal of the British. Mr. K. C. Lee, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education, had “made clear to [the cultural leaders of the invited countries] that this festival was a nonpolitical gathering, mainly designed to deepen understanding and forge stronger cultural links among peoples of Asian countries” (ST, 1963a, para. 5). In a message published in ST (1963c), Minister for Culture Mr. S. Rajaratnam reiterated the making of a united South-East Asian culture through the 1963 Festival:

This festival would not have been possible when the countries of South-East Asia languished under colonial domination…

All the countries which are participating in this Festival have three common golden thread [sic] running through the rich tapestries of their cultural life.

These common influences are the Malaysian, Chinese and Indian heritages.
(para. 5; 8-9)

But the years to follow the 1963 Festival were tumultuous, with Singapore’s merger with the Federation of Malaysia, in September of the same year, and its subsequent expulsion in 1965. This may be why no other large-scale arts or cultural festivals were planned for over a decade until 1977.

Singapore Festival of Arts 1977: A people’s festival

The Singapore Festival of Arts held in 1977 is widely accepted as the first national arts festival of independent Singapore. It was organised by the Ministry of Education through its youth arm, the Young Musicians Society (YMS).

Oddly, the Ministry of Culture was not involved with the planning of the inaugural arts festival. Purushothaman (2007) mentions the highly politicised, anti-establishment nature of the local art scene as well as the Ministry of Culture embarking on its own bevy of community-level arts and cultural programmes aimed at uniting the nation during the ’70s; these could be reasons for the glaring absence of Ministry of Culture in the 1977 Festival.

Another reason for the lack of public (and private) support for a national arts festival could be the anticipated poor returns on huge investments. The frequent point of comparison in news records of the decade was the annual Hong Kong Arts Festival, which began in 1973 and was conceived by the Hong Kong Tourist Association and British Airways to reach out to international audiences. It was the biggest arts festival in Asia and the third largest in the world, and soon became the premier cultural event in the region, drawing huge crowds in its month-long programme (Lee, 1976; ST, 1973, 1977).

A ST article cited lukewarm interest in the public and private sectors in supporting a Singapore arts festival (Lee, 1976). An unnamed local musician was quoted as saying:

It is not that the Hongkong [sic] people are better than Singaporeans in organising such a spectacular international festival. It is simply that they are never short of generous sponsorship from commercial houses and airlines and front line encouragement from the government.
(para. 4)

The same article mentions poor local audience numbers for arts events; additionally, a spokesperson for the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board (a precursor of today’s Singapore Tourism Board) said an arts festival in Singapore would not be commercially viable because it would not draw in tourists.

Nonetheless, a public call appeared in ST in 1976 for amateur artists – students and adults, individuals and groups – to participate in the first Singapore Festival of the Arts, slated to be held in April the following year. The main sponsor of the festival was multinational oil company Mobil, who pledged a total of $80,000 for the event. Public relations manager for Mobil, Mr. John Lim, is reported to have originated the idea for the festival, expanding the YMS’s initial proposal of a one-day concert into a six-day affair held at Victoria Theatre. Mr. Lim said:

Unlike the Hongkong [sic] Arts Festival, that is, which brings in top performers from all over the world, it becomes really a showcase of world talent assembled in Hongkong [sic]. A good thing in its own way, Yes, but it does nothing to encourage a lot of local participation – which is precisely what we are wanting to do.
(CKT, 1977, para. 24)

The 1977 Festival’s purpose was to build a cohesive Singaporean culture. Mr. Alex Abishegenaden, vice-chairman of the Young Musicians Society, said: “This [Festival] will be essentially Singaporean. So a Singaporean identity and culture will be evolved” (ST, 1976, para. 5). To that end, the open call was met with huge public interest – more than 1,300 participants were selected to perform in the programme; the participants also received cash prizes totalling $14,000 (CKT, 1977).

The high uptake of the festival was enough to spur the planning of the next festival in 1978, with Mobil almost-doubling its sponsorship to $150,000 (ST, 1978). The Ministry of Culture joined in the organisation of the 1978 Festival. Public and private support also grew over the ensuing years with new sponsors such as the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board and Singapore Airlines coming on board in later editions of the festival. Ever since 1977, there has been a national arts festival held every one or two years.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 3 April 2018

To find out how the story continues, visit Four Decades, an exhibition of ephemera from Singapore’s past national arts festivals, presented by Singapore International Festival of Arts 2018. The exhibition, which is supported by Centre 42’s Repository, includes a collection of past national arts festival programmes on display. Four Decades takes place on the 2nd Floor Corridor of The Arts House from 26 April to 12 May 2018. Admission is free.

References

Chia, H. (1960, September 6). 300 local artists for States pesta. In Singapore Free Press. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
CKT. (1977, April 25). A cultural reservoir?. In Business Times. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Lee, P. (1976, September 15). Not enough support for festival of the Arts. In Straits Times. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Morgan, L. (1959, March 30). Panorama of the cultures of the East. In Straits Times. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Purushothaman, V. (2007). Making the invisible visible: Three decades of the Singapore Arts Festival. Singapore: National Arts Council.
Singapore Free Press. (1961, August 18). All set for States big cultural festival. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1949, July 17). Plan for annual arts Festival. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1951, December 13). Spore urged: ‘Form Festival of Arts’. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1957, November 27). Now a Singapore pesta. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1958, November 25). Arts Council plans pesta for S’pore. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1959a, March 7). Eight-day festival of drama, dance. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1959b, March 30). Arts festival. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1959c, April 6). Big crowds at festival concerts. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1960a, August 22). Week-long cultural festival. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1960b, September 13). Culture festival is opened. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1961a, May 12). Singapore plans a super art show. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1961b, August 20). Role of the Cultural Festival in nation building. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1963a, July 11). Singapore the big, big show. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1963b, August 7). 1,500 from 11 countries to perform from tomorrow. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1963c, August 8). A historic event, milestone of an era says Rajaratnam. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1963d, August 8). Greatest show in the East open in Singapore today. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1973, February 28). HK Arts Festival opens to near capacity houses. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1976, October 13). Arts Festival in April to evolve local art-form. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1977, March 31). Lesson Spore can learn from the HK arts festival. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Straits Times. (1978, June 10). Arts Festival to be made event of world standing. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.
Waterman, S. (1998). Carnival for elites? The cultural politics of arts festivals. In Progress in Human Geography, 22(1), 54-74.
Wee, E. (1959, April 9). Arts Festival to be permanent annual fixture. In Singapore Free Press. Downloaded from NewspaperSG archive.

Update (10 April 2018): “Pesta Kenudayaan” in paragraph 14 was spelt incorrectly. It has been amended as “Pesta Kebudayaan”.
Update (30 April 2018): Introduction paragraph rewritten to better contextualise the article within SIFA 2018’s celebration of its four-decade heritage.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #5.

The Book of Living and Dying by Antonio Ianniello, Chong Tze Chien, Nambi E. Kelley, and Oliver Chong. Photo: Gillian Ong

We challenged our intern, Gillian Ong – a Sociology and Arts and Cultural Management student from the Singapore Management University – to read a play script from our Book Den, and write an article about it. She bravely accepted the challenge, and picked The Book of Living and Dying by Antonio Ianniello, Chong Tze Chien, Nambi E. Kelley, and Oliver Chong to delve into. She shares her thoughts about the work below.

“A Digestible Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism Philosophy.”

Anchored in Tibetan Buddhism, The Book of Living and Dying is set in New York and follows the story of Martina, an Italian transvestite, and her adopted African-American daughter, Eve. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the pair’s fates have been entwined through several reincarnations.

Their connection began in ancient Tibet where a thief (Martina) steals an oil lamp from the monastery, and his wife’s unborn child (Eve) dies shortly after. The thief’s crime sets into motion a series of events as he reincarnates into the likes of an Ox and a Japanese soldier, while Eve becomes a prisoner-of-war carried by the Ox, and a Japanese soldier’s comfort woman.

Even though I have never seen the staged production of this play, the annotated directions, photos from the premiere, as well as the descriptive language gives the sense of a fantastical performance. It would be a treat to watch the story play out. But without the visual cues, big ideas such as karma and reincarnation can be confusing to understand. This is compounded by the non-linear style of storytelling, which brings the reader into both the past and the future, until the whole element of time deteriorates at the end.

Likewise, it can be challenging to follow Martina and Eve as they take on different characters through their past lives. And even though the mother-and-daughter relationship is by no means the main crux of the story, those end up being the parts that I find most relatable: the way Martina gives roundabout replies to Eve’s questions reminds me of my interactions with my own parents.

I also find the language in the play to be inconsistent at times. In one instance, after Martina reveals to Eve the truth about her adoption, Eve responds using black slang and refers to a “Master”. Perhaps it is an attempt to portray the collision of memories of Eve’s multiple lives as a result of her anger, but the one-time occasion is out of place and jarring.

There is certainly a lot to take in in this work. That said, I appreciate the way the plot draws parallels between the theories of science and Tibetan Buddhism. It makes the work more convincing for me – as a sceptic of religion – to take in, as it does not delve into the preaching of religion, but rather explains how everything is connected using Newton’s third law of motion: “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Energy never disappears.”

Even though Tibetan Buddhism is the basis on which the work is built, the religion has been incorporated in a manner that does not distract or overpower the story. While Buddhism, or religion for that matter, has never been a huge part of my life, this play script has succeeded in piquing my interest in learning more about the nuances of the religion’s philosophy.

By Gillian Ong
Published on 3 April 2018

Gillian is a third-year Sociology and Arts and Cultural Management double major student from Singapore Management University. She’s a slave to the stage and spends her spare time (and money) either running around backstage or watching local theatre plays.

A browsing copy of The Book of Living and Dying is available at Centre 42’s Book Den.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #5.

Japanese bakery Asanoya opened its first overseas branch on Queen Street in Singapore in 2014. The Singapore team is led by head baker, Goto Tatsuya.

When did you first start baking and do you remember what the first thing you ever baked was?
I started baking at 17 years old and the first thing I baked was the butter roll.

When did you join Asanoya, and what drew you to the company?
I joined Asanoya in 2004 and I was introduced into Asanoya by my instructor in the baking school.

What is the biggest challenge of being a baker?
The biggest challenge is to constantly think of new creations.

What is your favourite kind of bread to make, and to eat?
I like to make baguettes as it takes a lot of skills to make it correctly. I like to eat our Golden Loaf bread as it is very fluffy and rich in taste.

Goto Tatsuya joined Asanoya  in Japan in 2004, and now leads the Singapore team as head baker.

Where do you get your inspirations for new creations for Asanoya from?
I get my inspirations from eating the bread from other bakeries, and from reading magazines on bread, pastries and even other cuisines. I try to imagine and integrate the different elements together to come up with a final product.

What are the differences between Asanoya in Japan and in Singapore?
The main difference is that the customers’ preference in Japan and Singapore is very different. Japanese prefer hard bread like the baguette and campagne, while Singaporeans prefer soft bread.

Is it very different for you to work in Singapore, compared to Japan?
Due to cultural differences, the mentality of Singaporeans and Japanese is very different. There are both advantages and disadvantages of the two working cultures.

Can you tell us what a typical day at work is like for you?
I work the night shift, so my work starts at 12am and I will be busy baking and supervising the other bakers until 9am. However, sometimes I am required to attend meetings, so I may end work at 12pm or even later.

Where do you like to go for lunch around the Bras Basah area?
I like to go to the coffeeshop just opposite our Queen Street bakery as the economic rice is cheap and tasty and the lime juice sold there is very delicious too!

By Gwen Pew
Published on 3 April 2018

Visit Asanoya Boulangerie @ Queen Street at 15 Queen Street, #01-03, Singapore 188537. Find out more on their website here.

This article was published in Blueprint Issue #5.