Tan Tarn How – Life Events

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 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

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

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