Writer Ng Yi-Sheng has taken on a rather ambitious project – to write a history of queer Singaporean theatre in The Vault: Desert Blooms. But it’s not the first time he’s done something like this.

In 2006, Yi-Sheng wrote the non-fiction work SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century, a collection of stories based on interviews with LGBTQ Singaporeans. The book broke new ground by featuring real names and real stories. His foray into marginalised histories also resulted in 2018’s Ayer Hitam, a lecture-performance about the lesser-known history of Black people in Singapore, which premiered at the M1 Fringe Festival that year and has since been restaged twice.

We chat with Yi-Sheng to find out more about Desert Blooms.

Why is a project like Desert Blooms needed?

It’s weird how so many of us are going back to the archive and embracing documentary theatre. This year especially, there’s a greater, top down-stimulated interest in history.

For queer people in Singapore, we don’t have enough of a historical narrative. I think a certain one exists among some queer intellectuals, but it hasn’t been mythologised the way, say, Stonewall has. A myth is any narrative that becomes important to the origins of a community, whether it’s King Arthur, or Gilgamesh or LKY.

There is a certain mythologisation of moments, like in the films Tanjong Rhu and Bugis Street. But what I realised as soon as I said I wanted to look at queer theatre from 1985 to 1995, is that this period has got a lot in it. We have the redevelopment of Bugis Street. We have the Marxist Conspiracy. We have Josef Ng. We have the Tanjong Rhu and Rascals incidents.

What I want to show is that the artistic revolution during this period is part of the shift in the national queer consciousness. It’s not just what queer people think of themselves, but it’s the way people in Singapore regard the queer community, waking up to the fact that they exist, developing feelings about them, whether it’s paranoia, disgust, or otherwise. For example, when Mergers and Accusations was advertised, it wasn’t advertised as a queer play. People just turned up and were surprised. The small number of people who could be called a mainstream audience then were suddenly confronted with queerness and given the opportunity to empathise. And it was happening in all four official languages.

I would like there to be a sense of heritage. If you’re queer and if you choose to see yourself as part of the queer community, you should have a Singaporean heritage to look back on. And literature and drama is a part of how this heritage emerged.

Why are you so interested in queer history?

I did my undergraduate studies at Columbia University, very close to the birthplace of the modern queer rights movement. And we had talks by people involved in Stonewall. Columbia also has Barnard next door, which is a women’s [liberal arts] college, so what we ended up with was a very diverse queer activist community in terms of ethnicity, gender and sexual identity.

And so, when I come back to Singapore, I was thinking in those terms already. Like when I was asked to do SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century [a collection of real-life Singaporean LGBTQ stories which was published in 2006], most of the interviewees initially suggested were Chinese Christian men. And when we had early editions of ContraDiction [an annual LGBTQ literary event], it was mostly Chinese men performing. But there have been attempts to cultivate a culture of diversity and the queer literature scene in Singapore did end up being very inclusive. With GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singapore Poetry & Prose [published in 2010], we were trying to include a diverse set of writers, trying to show people there were all these queer writers.

So you can see that this is the kind of narrative I’m interested in constructing, based on how queer history involves narratives of diversity.

Who is Desert Blooms intended for?

I have a desire to teach everyone that there is a queer history. In the literary sphere, I very often interact with younger people, sometimes, younger queer people. I realised that many don’t know anything about our local queer history. I mean, Singlit wasn’t taught in schools until very recently.

A couple years ago, this NS boy on the SingPoWriMo [Singapore Poetry Writing Month] Facebook said there aren’t a lot of queer writers in Singapore. And I was like… [Yi-Sheng makes a face].

Before the Internet, you do grow up queer and alone. It’s unlike a culture that your family already belongs to. But given what a socially connected, wired society we are now, and how well documented Singapore is online, it’s ridiculous for someone today to grow up thinking that there is a paucity of queer writers.

What would you like audiences to get out of Desert Blooms?

One thing I mentioned in the script quite a bit is how young people were when they were doing all of this. There’s this headiness, this excitement to this whole period.

Tan Kheng Hua produced the Twenty-Something Festival a few years back, and I remember someone commenting to her, “Oh, when we were in our twenties, we were doing much more fearless things.”

Also, it’s about how one play connects to another, because these people were hanging out, they were seeing each other’s plays. They had friends in common, they had parallel experiences. It’s like reading the poems of the Romantic period, but also gossiping about what Shelley and Byron were up to.

That is this thing that I want to communicate to the audience. I want to show people that this was an extraordinary time in Singaporean cultural history, where arts, politics and society were undergoing a profound transformation. And queerness is at the centre of it.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 21 Nov 2019

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The Vault: Desert Blooms is a lecture-performance tracing the history of Singapore theatre from 1985 to 1995 through a queer lens. Desert Blooms was created by Ng Yi-Sheng, directed by Tan Shou Chen, and performed by Rebekah Sangeetha Dorai, Yap Yi Kai and Izzul Irfan . Find our more here.

Tan Tarn How (1960-) has, at various points in his life, been a teacher, a journalist, a scriptwriter and a research fellow. However, he is best known as one of Singapore’s landmark playwrights with his bold, award-winning works which have certainly pushed boundaries over the years.

The timeline below charts Tan’s life through the plays he penned and some selected milestones. Click on each tab to find out what happened during the year.

This timeline is not meant to be a complete record of Tan’s life — for more information, please consult the additional sources listed below.

Tan Tarn How
(Credit: Singapore Theatre Memories)

Watch Tan Tarn How and Dr. Robin Loon chat about Tan’s entire playwriting career in the Living Room:

Additional Sources:

• Tan Tarn How Too – About
• Tan Tarn How’s works are available for browsing in the Book Den.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 13 May 2016

The Vault: Project Understudy revisits Tan Tarn How’s Undercover and reimagines its sequel set in 2016 through a collaborative writing creation process. Conceived and edited by Dr Robin Loon and organised by NUS Thespis. Presented on 23 May 2016, 8pm at Centre 42 Black Box. Admission is free. Find out more here.

Even before joining The Necessary Stage (TNS) in 1987, Haresh Sharma knew he wanted to be a writer. The problem was that he wasn’t sure what sort of writer he wanted to be. In a 2002 interview published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), Sharma admitted that his early attempts at poetry and prose did not feel “magical”. But in playwriting, he discovered the freedom to say whatever he wanted, however he wanted:

When I started writing plays, no one could tell me what was right or wrong. Certain rules I made up.Source: That man’s a Sharma (Interview) by Ruby Pan. In QLRS, Vol. 1(4), 4 July 2002, http://tinyurl.com/o2jtf4s

When I started writing, I was watching plays such as The Silly Little Girl And The Funny Old Tree (1987) and Mama Looking For Her Cat (1988). I felt a sense of freedom then, that I didn’t have to write only “conventional” plays with three or four acts. Source: Writing plays with heart (Interview) by Clarissa Oon. In The Straits Times (17 Oct 2015)

Spurred on by The Necessary Stage’s (TNS) Artistic Director and long-time collaborator Alvin Tan, Sharma has gone on to write over 100 plays, several of which have become landmark works in the Singapore dramatic canon. Off Centre, which once drew the ire of the authorities for its true-to-life portrayal of mental illness patients, became the first local play to be offered as literary text in school curricula.

Sharma prefers to create his plays through research and collaboration. He spends time in the field observing real people in real situations, and also workshops with cast members to help hone his writing. As a result, Sharma is able to craft characters which have authenticity and depth, both on paper and on stage.

At the same time, there are aspects of the play, both in its creative process and in the final product, that belie this simplistic description of Good People. For example, the three actors were cast early this year before a single line of the play had been written. They then worked with playwright Haresh Sharma on devising the script through improvisations which were informed by visits to a hospice and interviews with hospice personnel. After Sharma had crafted a working script, this was further redrafted over a few months based on feedback from the cast and director as well as a preview audience. As a result, the play appears before the audience fully formed. At 80 minutes, it is tight and focused with little fat.Sinning Saints by Kenneth Kwok. In The Flying Inkpot (7 Nov 2008), http://tinyurl.com/pqu5zrm

…none of us had any training in theatre. So we thought that the best way to create a play would be for everyone involved to contribute, then whoever was more interested in writing would go off and write the scenes, etc. That’s how our “devising” started. But we decided to continue working that way a lot because there’s a lot of positiveness that comes from that method of working.Source: That man’s a Sharma (Interview) by Ruby Pan. In QLRS, Vol. 1(4), 4 July 2002, http://tinyurl.com/o2jtf4s

There is a timeless quality to Sharma’s plays, thanks in part to their enduring social relevance. Many of his works tackle perennial issues like national identity, mental health, political rights and sexuality, with exacting wit and unflinching honesty. As such, Sharma’s plays always manage to strike a chord whenever they are (re)staged:

Haresh Sharma’s critically-acclaimed play [Gemuk Girls] about political detention under the Internal Security Act first premiered in 2008, presenting us with an image of a Singapore where citizens believed in standing up for their beliefs and being true to their ideals. Just three years on, Sharma’s script is revealed to be not only powerful but indeed prescient. We have just witnessed a landmark general election where, more than ever before, ordinary citizens have unambiguously voiced their feelings against the ruling party and campaigned for change. Furthermore, Malaysia has just passed a law to abolish its own ISA, recognizing the unfairness of incarceration without trial. A revival could not be better timed.Source: Size Matters by Naeem Kapadia. In The Flying Inkpot (10 Nov 2011), http://tinyurl.com/nr68gub

…at the end of the day Sharma is not a complex playwright. There is a simplicity, and clarity, running through all his work that handles a particular theme or set of issues with a social and political awareness designed NOT to say to audiences how clever Sharma is in his observations but for those audiences themselves to leave the theatre with some questions in their minds about their own lives and situations; about their own abilities or inabilities to control their lives and to ponder some of the injustices and untalked about topics that still course through contemporary Singapore – either in the corridors of power in downtown Singapore, or in the heartlands where the majority of Singaporeans live and work.Source: Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, Vol. 6: Haresh Sharma by David Birch. Ethos Books (2007).

Sharma’s writing has won multiple accolades. In 1993, Still Building was awarded the Singapore Literature Prize (Merit). Sharma has also received the NAC Young Artist Award in 1997 and the S.E.A. Write Award in 2014. Most recently, he was conferred the Cultural Medallion, Singapore’s highest award for artistic excellence.

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Haresh Sharma, Resident Playwright of The Necessary Stage since 1990. (Credit: The Necessary Stage.)

Selected Plays

*Artefacts from past stagings of Haresh Sharma’s plays are available in The Repository. Artefacts to selected plays have been linked below.

 2015 – Pioneer (Girls) Generation

2014 – Gitanjali [I feel the earth move]

2010 – Model Citizens

2008 – Gemuk Girls

2007 – Good People

2006 – Fundamentally Happy

2002 – godeatgod

1999 – Completely With/Out Character

1993 – Off Centre

1992 – Still Building

1990 – Those Who Can’t, Teach

 

Additional Sources:

Haresh Sharma wins this year’s S.E.A. Write Award (Singapore) by Clarissa Oon and Corrie Tan. In The Straits Times (13 Nov 2014).

 The Necessary Stage [Website].

Selected Works of Haresh Sharma. The Studios: fifty [Website].

By Daniel Teo
Published on 16 November 2015

The Vault: 汐/Sea revisits Haresh Sharma’s Sea and refreshes it with a Chinese translation and memories of the 1997 production. Performed by Serene Chen and Zelda Tatiana Ng, in collaboration with Robin Loon and Casey Lim, on 23 November 2015, 8pm at Centre 42 Black Box. Admission is free. Find out more here.

The timeline below presents selected events from Kuo Pao Kun’s life. Click on each tab to find out what happened during the year.

This timeline is not meant to be a complete record of Kuo Pao Kun’s life — for more information, please consult the additional sources listed below.

Additional Sources:

• Images at the Margins: A collection of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays. (2000). Singapore: Times Media.
• Two Play by Kuo Pao Kun. (2003). Singapore: SNP Editions.
• Tribute.sg – Kuo Pao Kun
• The Theatre Practice – Milestones

By Daniel Teo
Published on 8 October 2015

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: Big Bird and the Cat revisits Kuo Pao Kun’s plays in Margaret Chan’s exploration into the metaphors of Big Bird and the Cat, on 12 October 2015, 8pm at Centre 42 Black Box. Admission is free. Find out more here.

Credit: Nanyang Technological University

Quah Sy Ren is an associate professor in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Chinese division at Nanyang Technical University. His main research interests are in Chinese Literature and the history of Singapore Theatre. Quah also sits on the board of directors for Practice Performing Arts Centre (renamed The Theatre Practice Limited as of 2010) and The Finger Players.

In addition to Invisibility (1996), Quah has also authored other plays as well as written and edited several books.

About the Play:

• Published synopsis:
  “Invisibility is a poignant tale about alienation and the search for meaning in modern urban society—various people on the margins of society seeking to connect with others in juxtaposition with the tale of a man searching for the secret to make himself invisible. … Drawing from diverse sources of Chinese literary classics and graffiti as modern social commentary, this critically-acclaimed play by Quah Sy Ren takes you on a voyeuristic ride towards urban myth.” ~ Source: Publisher Ethos BookA browsing copy of the published play is available in Centre 42’s Book Den. View it here.

• Quah Sy Ren’s message to audiences of the play (1996):
  “Perhaps many in the audience would not understand this play. Don’t worry, sometimes I don’t understand all of it myself. A play is not a thesis. I wrote it based upon my feelings and I hope the audience will watch it with their feelings. Feelings are immediate and direct, yet most of the time, they are also very ambiguous. In these times, we are often too logical and too serious. Perhaps this is precisely why I sometimes want to write plays. To part ways with reason; to uncover the feelings of man.” ~ Source: Invisibility [1996] Programme, Centre 42 The Repository

• A review of the English translation of the manuscript:
  “Invisibility is translated from a Chinese play written by Quah Sy Ren. A more literal translation of the original Chinese title, Cheng Shi Yin Zhe, will be: The Invisible Hermit In The City…The play is filled with an insidious sense of loneliness and estrangement. The only way to resist being engulfed by the invisible force that makes everyone faceless and invisible, as the play seems to propose, is to retreat into one’s own private world. Retreating into private spaces is the only way to salvage some sense of self in this engulfing invisibility. These private spaces can take the physical form of a toilet cubicle (a recurring imagery in the play), or the mental space of thinking alone. By adopting this paradoxical strategy, however, one is actually surrendering one’s own visibility…

  In terms of language, despite the occasional slipping in and out of local expressions, the Chinese original, which at times reads like a cross-talk script, is coherent and fluid. In the English translation, however, the translator occasionally loses his invisibility as he struggles to bring forth the writer’s humour in his language play.

  Invisible thoughts, invisible survival, invisible rule. At the end of the day, the writer, the translator and the reviewer find themselves failing in their attempt and struggle to be invisible.” ~ Source: “Now you see it, now you don’t” by Lee Chee Keng (The Straits Times, 2 December, 2000)

By Daniel Teo
Published on 13 May 2015

The Vault: #3 three revisits Invisibility, refreshes and retells the stories in them through the eyes of theatre design collective INDEX. #3.1 In/Visibility by lighting designer Lim Woan Wen is the first of three installations.

Find out more about The Vault programme here.