Centre 42 » VA: The Playwrights https://centre42.sg Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:08:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.30 Interview with Ng Yi-Sheng https://centre42.sg/interview-with-ng-yi-sheng/ https://centre42.sg/interview-with-ng-yi-sheng/#comments Thu, 21 Nov 2019 11:16:10 +0000 https://centre42.sg/?p=12867 ngyi-sheng

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.

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Tan Tarn How – Life Events https://centre42.sg/tan-tarn-how-life-events/ https://centre42.sg/tan-tarn-how-life-events/#comments Fri, 13 May 2016 06:37:55 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=4827

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)

Tan Tarn How
(Credit: Singapore Theatre Memories)

 

Before 1986

Tan Tarn How was born in 1960, and graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Bachelor of Arts in Natural Science Tripos in 1982. He returned to Singapore shortly after, and obtained a Diploma in Education from the National Institute of Education two years later.

1986

Co-wrote In Praise of the Dentist with his wife Cheam Li Chang, who is a dentist. The play was awarded a Merit prize at the 1986 NUS-Shell Short Play Competition and staged by the Singapore Theatre American Repertory Showcase (ST*ARS) in 1986.

1987

Joined The Straits Times and held a number of positions over the years, including political reporter, arts deputy editor, and foreign correspondent in Hong Kong and Beijing. Also wrote Two Men, Three Struggles, which once again won a Merit prize at the NUS-Shell Short Play Competition.

1989

Became a member of the Theatreworks’ Writers’ Laboratory, where he developed his next few plays.

For young and rising playwrights, TheatreWorks has played a significant role in providing a launching plan. This was done via the Writers’ laboratory, launched in 1991 and sponsored by the Singapore Press Holdings, to encourage the writing and production of Singapore plays.
Robin Loon, dramaturge for [the SPH Young Playwrights’ Series III] says: ‘I felt that it provided a good situation for writers to experiment and to write about things.’Source: A launching pad for playwrights. In The Straits Times (17 Feb 1995).
1990

His first full-length play, Home – which is about the residents in an old folks’ home – was staged by Theatreworks.

The other aspects of the drama are derived from the following: one, the discovery of how the characters have come to be in the home (Tang has been placed here by his son, Alex has elected to receive care in the light of his impending demise from illness, and Mrs Goh is widowed but determined to be financially independent for the sake of her daughters); two, the humorous ways in which Alex turns Tang’s rules against him; three, the duo’s knowledge that neither are aware of when their time on earth will run out, and lastly, the nascent friendship that emerges from the tension among the three elderly folk.Source: Six of the Best: Compilation revives veteran playwright's greatest hits by Laremy Lee. In QLRS, Vol. 10(3), (2011), http://tinyurl.com/gp7fytx
In Praise of the Dentist is a deceptive piece of work appearing rather slight at first reading. With careful workshopping, however, it is a theatrical piece capable of being played successfully either as a farce, or as an unsettling depiction of a protagonist on the edge of breakdown.Source: Introduction to NUS-Shell Short Plays Series: Prize Winning Plays. Vol. 1 edited by Max Le Blond. The Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore (1987).
In 1992, when the police’s Public Entertainment Licensing Unit (Pelu) received for vetting Tan Tarn How’s rollicking satirical script about a government agency’s carefully calibrated attempts to inject culture into a nation, they were not particularly amused by its contents.
The script included civil servants breaking into raucous vaudeville acts, a blow-up sex doll, a side-splitting number of committees and subcommittees dealing with bureaucratic minutiae, and a past romantic relationship between a minister of state and a committee chairman, both male.
The script came back from the police – then the body responsible for arts licensing, a task that now falls on the Media Development Authority – with objections to material in 36 of its 67 pagesSource: Classic Singapore Plays: The Lady of Soul And her Ultimate 'S' Machine heralded change by Corrie Tan. In The Straits Times (25 Nov 2014), http://tinyurl.com/gppoej2
1992

Wrote The Lady of Soul and her Ultimate “S” Machine, a play that revolves around an unnamed nation’s search for soul. When the script was submitted to Public Entertainment Licensing Unit for review, the department came back with many suggested changes. However, when Tan appealed and resubmitted it to the newly-formed Censorship Review Committee, it came back clean. The play was staged by Theatreworks in 1993.

1993

Attended Boston University on a three-month Fulbright Scholarship.

1994

His play, Undercover, was staged by Theatreworks. See here for more details.

1996

His play, Six of the Best, was staged by Theatreworks. It is centred on the controversial caning of American teenager Michael Fay.

Instead of focusing on the issues raised by the press with respect to the incident, Tan Tarn How’s Six of the Best was offered as a play about racism in Singapore. however, for all the play’s efforts to get to the heart of a taboo subject, its real success is in re-inscribing the values of the state with regard to ethnic and cultural difference, a trope repeatedly used by Singapore’s leaders to justify policies of social and state control.Source: Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore by William Peterson. Wesleyan University Press (2001).
1997

Left The Straits Times and joined the Singapore Television Corporation (now known as Mediacorp) as head scriptwriter for the English Drama unit, working on shows such as Growing Up and VR Man.

1998

His play, The First Emperor’s Last Days, is staged by Theatreworks as part of the Singapore Arts Festival. It revolves around four writers who had to pen the official biography of the first emperor of China.

Although the play’s historical setting was clearly empathized, the use of contemporary props such as notebook computers and video projectors by director Ong Keng Sen introduced a discordant note and focused reference upon the present. Thus the notions of the representation of a nation through the ethnicization of a single man’s life, of disciplinary practices which centre on an individual body – never seen, always present – were repeatedly raised for examination.Source: Putting the Nation Back into the Transnational by Philip Holden. In Reading Chinese Transnationalisms: Society, Literature, Film. Hong Kong University Press (2006).
1999

Re-joined The Straits Times to hold positions including science and technology editor, political correspondent and deputy news editor.

2002

His play Machine, about two repairmen who end up fixing more than two single ladies’ washing machine, was staged by Theatreworks. It won Best Script at the Life! Theatre Awards the following year.

Tan’s sensitivity and genius is obvious throughout: The dialogue is light but loaded. In the exchanges, there are just the right doses of surprise to compliment, of feigned ignorance to encourage and of coyness to intrigue, as both the man and woman manoeuvre expertly towards their ultimate goal – the bed, after which the relationship ceases to be.Source: His ultimate Machine? by Suhaila Sulaiman. In The Straits Times (16 Mar 2002).
I was glad to have seen an intellectually impressive and thought-provoking play that refused to take the easy options of cheap emotions or abstract plotting, and succeeded in taking itself seriously, and taking the audience along for the ride.Source: Machine by Theatreworks by Matthew Lyon. In The Flying Inkpot (16 Mar 2002). http://tinyurl.com/js9374t
I pride myself in not being a racist, yet I found myself, and other people who professed they were not racist, reacting to the case in a visceral, sometimes rather unpleasant manner.Source: This man sparks off a play on Six Of The Best by Hsueh Yun. In The Straits Times (19 Apr 1996), http://tinyurl.com/hcj3azk
This play is about the complacency of the average Singaporean, of theatre audiences and practitioners because there is no danger, no real change enacted by our works. It is about the commercialization of theatre; hijacked as entertainment rather than being an engine of change. Can we find a real political theatre, where the audience goes in X and comes out Y? This is the difficulty in writing this kind of work in this day and age, hence the long gap between my last play and this one.Source: Fear of Writing: A commentary on political art and censorship by Jewel Philemon. In The Online Citizen (1 Sept 2011), http://tinyurl.com/jb2yk2c
2005

Left The Straits Times and joined the Institute of Policy Studies as a senior research fellow, a post that he continues to hold today.

2006

His play, Confessions of 300 Unmarried Men, was staged by ACTION Theatre.

2011

 

Wrote a new play called Fear of Writing, which was once again staged by TheatreWorks. In his words, it is about:

The play received positive reviews, and was selected as one of the “finest plays in 50 years” by The Business Times in 2015:

[Fear of Writing‘s] power lies not just in its share of barbed, probing one-liners, but also in how the language, video images and actors all work together to build a certain argument and create a mood of tension and paranoia.

With it, Tan, a former Straits Times journalist and now researcher at the Institute of Policy Studies, has produced the gravest and most compelling work of his 20-year playwriting career.

Source: A false awakening by Clarissa Oon. In The Straits Times (15 Sept 2011).

In the same year, Epigram Books published a collection of six of his plays.


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

 

Additional Sources:

 

By Daniel Teo
Published on 13 May 2016

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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.

 

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Haresh Sharma https://centre42.sg/haresh-sharma/ https://centre42.sg/haresh-sharma/#comments Mon, 16 Nov 2015 02:53:16 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=3953

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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hareshsharma

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

 

 

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

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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.

 

 

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Kuo Pao Kun – Life Events https://centre42.sg/kuo-pao-kun-life-events/ https://centre42.sg/kuo-pao-kun-life-events/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2015 06:16:11 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=3533 “Life has been exceedingly kind and generous to me.”Source: Foreward by Kuo Pao Kun. In Images at the Margins: A Collection of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays (p.8).

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.
1939
800px-LangYaShan5

Heibei Province, China. (Source: Wikipedia)

  • Born in Hebei Province, China.
1947
  • Moved to Beijing, China.
1949
  • Moved to Hong Kong, then to Singapore.
  • Enrolled in Catholic High School, Primary Section.
1955
redi_sing

Rediffusion Singapore building. (Source: rediffusion.info)

  • Joined Rediffusion’s Mandarin Drama Group as a broadcaster, writing and performing radio dramas and comedies.
  • Transferred to Chung Cheng High School (Kim Yam Road Branch).
1956
1957
  • Sent to Hong Kong to avoid political unrest among the Singapore Chinese students.
  • Returned to Singapore and attended Pasir Panjang Secondary School.
  • Met his future wife Goh Lay Kuan.
  • Attended a screen-acting workshop by Cathay Eris Studios.
1959
  • Moved to Melbourne and worked as a Chinese translator and announcer for Radio Australia.
1963
Village-Historical-Aerial-423ad022-d278-4451-9c5d-ba3a7b6dfdae-0-550x309

The Old Tote theatre building which formerly housed NIDA. (Source: UNSW Village)

1964
  • Worked several jobs in technical theatre around Melbourne.
  • Proposed to Goh Lay Kuan.
  • Graduated from NIDA with a Diploma in Production.
1965
  • Returned to Singapore.
“I was born in a poor village in Hebei and was taken to classical Peiping, then to cosmopolitan Hong Kong, then to multicultural Singapore, then to the massive Down Under, then back to Singapore, and for good. The different places have been enriching, the people inspiring, the diverse cultures exhilarating. But it was at the margins of all these individually brilliant experiences that I found the most enlightening of spaces and moments. They were so singularly beautiful that one had to invent vocabularies to describe them, these uncharted territories, unexperienced happenings, unfathomed depths, these images at the margins.”Source: Foreward by Kuo Pao Kun. In Images at the Margins: A Collection of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays (p.8).

“All these [early] works have such a deeply set brand of times that one could almost sense the strong feel of the period just by reading the titles. It was an exceptional phase in Singapore’s history. The struggle between the different political forced produced social unrest. The departure of the British forces and foreign investment led to an economic slump that made life very difficult for the working class. Ideologically, it stimulated the radical young people. The Cultural Revolution in China, which began in 1966, spilled over into Singapore in the 1970s, a country with an ethnic Chinese majority. Many arts enthusiasts were deeply affected by the trend of thought of the Cultural Revolution, view art, literature and drama as weapons of struggle and tools of social change.”

Source: The Soil of Life and the Tree of Art: A Study of Kuo Pao Kuns’ cultural individuality through his playwriting by Yu Yun, translated by Kuo Jian Hong. In Images at the Margins: A collection of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays (p.21).
1965 (cont’d)
  • Married Goh Lay Kuan.
  • Co-founded the Singapore Performing Arts School (later renamed Practice Performing Arts School) with Goh Lay Kuan.
1966
  • Translated and directed Bertoli Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. (It is the first Brecht play to be staged in Singapore.)
1967
  • First daughter, Koh Jian Hong, born.
1968
  • Wrote and directed first full-length Chinese play Hey, Wake Up!
1969
  • Wrote The Struggle – performance banned.
1970
  • Wrote Evergreen – performance banned.
1971
  • Wrote The Sparks of Youth and dance-drama Story of the Old Stonemason – both performances banned.
  • Returned to NIDA in Melbourne for the Advanced Course in Dramatic Art; returned to Singapore within the year.
  • Second daughter, Koh Jing Hong, born.
1976
1977
  • Citizenship revoked.
1980
  • Released from prison.
1984
  • Wrote first English play The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole.
1985
1986
  • Wrote and directed No Parking on Odd Days.
  • The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole is performed in Malaysia. (More details in The Repository.)
1988
  • Devised and directed Mama Looking for Her Cat, Singapore’s first multilingual play. (More details in The Repository.)
  • Wrote Day I Met the Prince.
  • Co-founded Practice Performing Arts Centre Ltd.
  • Translated Kapai Kapai from Malay to Chinese. (More details in The Repository.)
1989
  • Wrote and directed the English version of The Silly Little Girl and the Funny Old Tree. (More detail in The Repository.)
  • Organised the International Brecht Seminar with the Goethe Insitut.
  • Received the Cultural Medallion from the Singapore government.
1990
  • Wrote and directed The Eagle and the Cat.
  • Wrote and directed Lao Jiu.
813

The Substation opening ceremony, 16 September 1990. (Source/more images available at: The Substation Archive Project)

  • Founded The Substation, Singapore’s first arts centre.
  • Received the ASEAN Cultural Award.
“The prison years were unkind to him; in addition to mental pressures he also had to endure physical hardships, which he hardly spoke of publicly. However, a particular philosophical attitude towards life not only saw him through the experience but also led him to take on newer creative challenges – without the debilitating sense of bitterness and animosity that would understandably distort the personality of many a person emerging from such an ordeal.”Source: Remembering Kuo Pao Kun (1939-2002) by Kwow Kian-Woon. In Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Vol. 4(2), 2003.
“In order to get his actors to shed their personas and then to get them to the point when they would willingly bare their innermost selves to public scrutiny, Kuo Pao Kun had taken his cast [from 0Zero01] through a number of demanding exercises. For example, to wrench his actors from their dependence on creature comforts, their need for company and their reliance on the safety of a social system, Kuo brought them to a secondary forest bordering a sand quarry. In the deep of the night, just before midnight, the actors were asked to spread out. Each entered the forest to spend the night alone through to eight in the morning.”Source: Kuo Pao Kun: The Spirit of the Eagle by Margaret Chan. In Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 13(3), 2003.
1991
  • Devised and directed OZeroO1.
1992
  • Wrote and directed The Evening Climb. (More details in The Repository.)
  • Appointed advisor to the National Arts Council.
  • Advised the development of Theatre Studies courses at National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University.
  • Singapore citizenship reinstated.
1993
1994
  • Adapted and directed Fishing Eagles by Chen Zhihua (Hong Kong) (More details in The Repository.)
1995
  • Wrote Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral:
    • English version by TheatreWorks premiered at the Festival of Asian Performing Arts.
    • Directed the Chinese version by Practice Theatre Ensemble, premiered a few months after the TheatreWorks production. (More details in The Repository.)
    • China Tour cancelled due to disapproval from the Chinese authorities.
  • Resigned from The Substation as its Artistic Director.
  • Wrote the English version of The Eagle and the Cat.
  • Wrote The Evening Climb.
1996

Adapts and directs The Savage land. (More details in The Repository.)
Received the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government.

1997
  • Directed Mother Daughter Eagle Cat, an English double-bill of The Eagle and the Cat and Zhu Cai Zhen’s My Mother’s Chest. (More details in The Repository.)
  • Wrote Geylang People in the Net. (More details in The Repository.)
1998
  • Wrote The Spirits Play.
    • Directed by Stan Lai (More details in The Repository.)
    • Directed a re-written version at the Chinese Theatre Festival, Hong Kong.
1999
2000
2001
  • Co-wrote One Hundred Years in Waiting. (More details in The Repository.)
2002
  • Awarded the Excellence for Singapore Award.
  • Passed away from kidney cancer.
For those unfamiliar with Kuo Pao Kun’s works, one may be taken aback with the bare stage and zero props. The focus here is on the actor and so the actor carries the weight of the script upon his voice, movement and every subtle expression… Kuo’s poetic voice emerges with an evocative simplicity as the protagonist recalls his childhood of squatting in caves of his poor village. He remembers fondly how he used to watch the eagle spread out its wings and glide towards the sun., how the sky offered freedom and space.Source: Simply Good Theatre by Sherrie Lee. In The Flying Inkpot (1 May 1997)., http://tinyurl.com/q2t58md

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Additional Sources:

 

By Daniel Teo
Published on 8 October 2015

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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.

 

 

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INVISIBILITY written by Quah Sy Ren https://centre42.sg/invisibility-written-by-quah-sy-ren/ https://centre42.sg/invisibility-written-by-quah-sy-ren/#comments Wed, 13 May 2015 00:05:58 +0000 http://centre42.sg/?p=2827 About the Playwright:
Quah Sy Ren

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.

Selected Bibliography (Source: Literary Singapore, NAC):
Plays:

  • Ample Blues (1989, co-written with Tan Ing How)
  • The Assassin, the Medium and the Masseuse (1991, co-written with Tan Ing How)
  • Boner (2002)
  • A Stranger at Home (2006)
  • I am Queen (2008, co-written with Liu Xiaoyi)
Books:

  • Scenes: A Hundred Years of Singapore Chinese Language Theatre 1913-2013 (2013). Available for browsing here.
  • Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theater (2004)
  • The Complete Works of Kuo Pao Kun, 10 vols. (2005-2012; General Editor). Available for browsing here.

About the Play:

Invisibility Cover

  • 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

 

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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.

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