Haresh Sharma | Centre 42

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.