Apart from developing a theatrical response, the students are required to deliver documentation to self-reflect and consolidate their learning processes. They embarked on this documentation journey with an introductory workshop conducted by Daniel Teo (Centre 42) on 21 February 2020. The workshop covered broad principles and focused on two methods, namely auto-ethnography and interviewing.

These skills were put to practice throughout the semester via individual and group documentation assignments. Each student had to document their own journey by submitting monthly reflections, effectively testing their auto-ethnography skills. The two groups – “GEL” and “Old Lines New Meanings” – would concurrently document the other group’s processes and practices. Each group had to conceptualise and rationalise their approach to documenting theatre and practice, and produce a written and a video documentation of the other group’s process behind their performance response.

The documentation output listed below provide insights to the creators’ process, but it also reveals the students’ reflexivity, sensitivity to, and understanding of the practices of others.

Documentation about “GEL”

Produced by the team from “Old Lines New Meanings”

Written Documentation: “GEL Alumni Instagram Account” Click to view.

Documentation about “Old Lines New Meanings”

Produced by the team from “GEL”

Written Documentation: Meet The Actors of Old Lines New Meanings

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The Vault: Ties That Bind features two original short performances devised in response to Eleanor Wong’s Wills and Secession. The two performance responses are created by the graduating students of the NUS Theatre Studies TS3103 Theatre Lab, engaging with and responding to the text and context of Wills and Secession. Ties That Bind is presented by Centre 42 and NUS Theatre Studies, and supported by Teater Ekamatra. Click here to find out more.

The class, led and facilitated by Robin Loon and Nora Samosir, met on Wednesdays and Fridays, from Jan 2020 till the NUS campus closed due to the Circuit Breaker on 6 Apr. The original public presentation of Ties That Bind was supposed to have taken place on 18 Apr, but was cancelled. Instead, the students adapted their stage performances for the Zoom platform, and presented it in a private teleconferencing session on 17 Apr.

This timeline documents the students’ and Centre 42’s activities and the development of the students’ performance responses as the COVID-19 situation unfolded. Events that are highlighted in orange represent the key developments in the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore.

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The Vault: Ties That Bind features two original short performances devised in response to Eleanor Wong’s Wills and Secession. The two performance responses are created by the graduating students of the NUS Theatre Studies TS3103 Theatre Lab, engaging with and responding to the text and context of Wills and Secession. Ties That Bind is presented by Centre 42 and NUS Theatre Studies, and supported by Teater Ekamatra. Click here to find out more.

The creators of The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl (from left to right): Sarah Amalina, Brenda Tan, Lee Shu Yu, and Eugene Koh. Photo: Gwen Pew

Written in 1982, Stella Kon’s Emily of Emerald Hill is one of the most well-known and beloved plays in the Singapore English-Language Theatre canon. And now, 36 years after the monodrama was first written, a group of young theatre practitioners have decided to revisit the work and examine it in a new light through Centre 42’s Vault programme. Titled The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl, this new creation is written and co-directed by Eugene Koh, co-directed by Lee Shu Yu, performed by Brenda Tan, and stage managed and documented by Sarah Amalina. It mixes parts of the original play text with new writing and multi-media, and aims to explore what Emily might look like in the social media age through a new character called Elisabeth, who the team devised together.

The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl will be performed at Centre 42 on 29 and 30 June. In this interview, we chat with Eugene, Shu Yu, and Brenda to find out more about what we can expect.

How did the idea for The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl come about?
Eugene Koh (EK): We were taking the module ‘Singapore English-Language Theatre’ in NUS [National University of Singapore], and in one of the first lessons we were talking about Emily of Emerald Hill, and Dr. [Robin] Loon [lecturer and Centre 42’s co-founder] mentioned that you can never tell who Emily was addressing: the audience in the 1950s, or in the future, or in the past. It made me wonder why, then, is this play so recognized and remembered, if the audience are not sure where to place themselves? And I drew the parallel to YouTube videos, where everything seems like it’s happening in the present, even though you know it’s made in the past. So it started from that idea.

What are you hoping to explore through this work?
Lee Shu Yu (LSY): When you look at Emily as a character, there is a lot of debate about whether you should like her or hate her, so we wanted to capture that through Elisabeth as well. We wanted to represent a kind of performativity of identity through the lens of social media, because nowadays that’s what’s happening around us, so we wanted to represent that onstage.

Brenda Tan (BT): We also wanted to explore how Emily navigates with the space and interacts with different characters through Elisabeth. It’s interesting to see her as a sole character and focus on how her body and voice changes.

How did you go about exploring the characters of both Emily and Elisabeth in your upcoming work?
BT: Emily is a very established character who has been portrayed by a ton of really great actors over the years, and you see different people bringing out a different side of Emily – Margaret Chan was very motherly, Ivan Heng was more performative and funny, etc. So in drawing the parallel to Elisabeth being a millennial who uses the internet and navigates around the social media space, we wanted her to be someone who is approachable. She’s performative in a way, but still true to her own character.

Do you see The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl as an extension or an adaptation of Emily of Emerald Hill?
LSY: It’s a sequel, adaptation, and reinterpretation all at once. It is a sequel in terms of timeline and Elisabeth’s relationship to Emily; it’s an adaptation because we took our reference from the source material; but it’s also a reinterpretation because we took certain themes and moods of each scene but used them in our own way.

What was your process like in creating The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl?
EK: It was collaborative.

BT: We literally sat in Eugene’s room, and he had post-it notes of different scenes from Emily of Emerald Hill stuck on his wardrobe door. And we were like, “Hmm this one is nice. Okay, let’s move this here…” And we just kind of see how it fits and which scenes from the original text we wanted to keep.

EK: As for the voice of Elisabeth, most of it came from Brenda. She would improvise certain scenes.

BT: It can be difficult because I also make YouTube videos, so in many of these instances I am being me and I can relate, but at the same time I have to be very careful and remember that it’s also not me.

LSY: So every time Brenda comes up with something, we will take it apart and discuss what’s interesting about it, how it’s similar to Emily, or why it’s relevant to today’s life.

Brenda, you mentioned that you’re also a YouTuber in real life. What’s that like for you?
BT: I started making YouTube videos just as I entered university, so for two and a half years now. My videos are mostly about skincare, makeup, and fashion, but some people who follow me will request videos and I’ll do them. So it became about food, lifestyle, home, and other personal stuff. More recently, I started talking about social issues because not a lot of people are talking about them. It’s been such an adventure. I didn’t expect to have an audience, because I initially made the videos as a companion to my blog. I’ve always been a social media baby. I found that it’s the best way to make very quick, sincere interactions, and I never thought it’s fake because you know how Singaporeans are really shy, so when someone wants to reach out to me, they will write me an email or they’ll slide into my DMs [direct messages] [laughs]. It’s nice to be able to pour my heart out in front of the camera and find that there’s a group of people who feel the same way and actually want to have a sincere conversation about it.

There’s a multimedia element in The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl. Can you tell us more about that?
EK: Emily of Emerald Hill uses a lot of media that was fairly new at the time – things like voice recording or projector slides – to enhance the theatrical illusion of the play. And for us, we felt that we should pay homage to that by using social media in our performance as well.

LSY: I think one big thing that kept coming up as we were thinking about it was the staging of it. We have multimedia going on in the background, but we also have a live performer. So which is more ‘live’ and which is more ‘present’?

What were some of the challenges that you faced during the creation process?
LSY: Interestingly, the big challenges we had actually worked out pretty okay – in terms of when we were brainstorming about creative ideas, working out plot holes and things like that. The main roadblocks were things like looking for archive footages and going through the paperwork of obtaining them. Thankfully people like [producer] Jeremiah [Choy] and Centre 42 helped.

Who is your ideal audience for this work?
BT: People who are genuinely interested in seeing how Emily of Emerald Hill has evolved – people who are hopefully familiar with the play and the themes that it discusses. Hopefully, our piece will provide them with a platform for deeper conversation.

Do you feel like it’s more for the millennial generation – since you’re referencing the social media world so much – or is it for everyone else as well?
EK: I guess both. Those who are more familiar with the earlier stagings of Emily of Emerald Hill will pick up more on how things have changed. With the millennial generation, I guess they would recognize the environment that Elisabeth is in and, through that, understand what Emily of Emerald Hill is about. So, the net is fairly wide?

BT: Also, if it piques an interest in people who have never read or watched Emily of Emerald Hill to pick up the script to read it, you know, then that’s great!

By Gwen Pew
Published on 21 June 2018

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The Vault: @thisisemeraldgirl is an adaptation of Stella Kon’s much-loved play Emily of Emerald Hill. Created by Eugene Koh and Lee Shu Yu, and performed by Brenda Tan, @thisisemeraldgirl combines new writing, multimedia, and Stella Kon’s original text in a monologue exploring family and social life in a social media age. Find out more here.
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In 2015, independent theatre producer Neo Kim Seng presented a work titled My Grandfather’s Road as part of Cake Theatrical Productions’ 10th anniversary celebrations, Running with Strippers. It comprised a photo exhibition, a book launch, and an English-language monologue, which together form a montage of his childhood memories growing up on Neo Pee Teck Lane – a road in Pasir Panjang that’s named after his paternal grandfather.

Two years on, Kim Seng has decided to revisit the monologue as part of Centre 42’s Vault programme. This time, he is working with two actors to present the piece in Cantonese, the spoken language of his childhood. Two versions will be showcased – one in Singaporean Cantonese, and one in Malaysian Cantonese – so that he can explore the regional variations in the language.

We chat with Kim Seng to find out more about My Grandfather’s Road.

How did the original My Grandfather’s Road in 2015 come about?
Cake Theatrical Productions invited me to be part of their Decimal Points project, spread over two years. I presented Decimal Points 810 in 2014 which was inspired by my open-heart surgery in 2013. The second presentation eventually became part of Cake’s 10^th anniversary celebrations, Running With Strippers. I originally wanted to continue with the second part of a planned trilogy, but Cake suggested that I think of a project that can have a life after its first incarnation. So I decided on a three-part project, a photo-installation, a book and a monologue about growing up on a road named after my paternal grandfather Neo Pee Teck Lane. It was not a nostalgic research project but looked at reconnecting with things and people from my past and present.

Why did you decide to revisit it now, and why in Cantonese?
My mother sat through two of my theatre projects and her grasp of English is not that strong. My original intention was just to make a project that she could fully understand. She was very animated and excited when she saw her photos on display at the photo-installation in 2015.

I have received encouraging response to the book. Some suggested that the book could be translated into Mandarin to reach out to more people. Then I thought, why not do a Cantonese version?

I grew up speaking Cantonese. I recently found out that my paternal grandmother was a renegade ma cheh (domestic helper) and I am more Cantonese than I thought. I am less fluent and speak less Cantonese now than when I was younger but somehow a language that you learn orally never goes away and becomes embedded in you. There is a strong emotional attachment to the sound of Cantonese although I may not fully understand the words. The project is about reconnecting to a relegated language, sound and people.

I also like to surprise people and challenge myself because not many people know that I can speak Cantonese.

Neo Kim Seng (right) poses with relatives at the 2015 presentation of “Running with Strippers”.

The Vault monologue presentation will have two versions – one in Singaporean Cantonese, and one in Malaysian Cantonese. Why are you interested in exploring the regional differences of the language?
This is mainly to explore how languages evolve and adapt over time and space/location. The Cantonese that we speak here adopts other Chinese and non-Chinese words over time. Even Hong Kong Cantonese words have crept into Singaporean Cantonese. I thought it would be interesting to find out how pronunciation differed and also different words were used.

Let’s talk about the process of creating The Vault: My Grandfather’s Road. Firstly, how did your actors, Gary Tang and Tan Cher Kian, get involved?
In the many years working in the performing arts field, what I enjoy most is working with new people, because I get a lot of new ideas and energy interacting with them. I had an open audition in June this year. Some friends recommended more experienced actors to me. I was also on the lookout for non-Chinese female performers who could speak Cantonese, because they would approach the stories differently. The first version of My Grandfather’s Road in English in 2015 was performed by a young male actor and I deliberately created a version where on-stage I was this vulnerable person telling bittersweet stories.

Gary was introduced to me by our mutual friend. Gary is very passionate about Cantonese and was on the lookout for opportunities to work on Cantonese projects, something not so common here. He was also very keen to explore the authentic sound of Cantonese and how it evolved over time.

Cher Kian (CK) responded to the audition call and at first only wanted to help with the presentation. He has not acted before but he’s an avid arts lover and attends lots of performances. So we spoke and I found out he is keen to be on the other side of the stage as well. I was very taken by his enthusiasm and interest. The bonus was that he grew up in Sabah and spoke Cantonese fluently.

“This photo is the only photo I have of Neo Pee Teck Lane. The cart on the right is Thaatha’s mee goreng cart!” says Kim Seng

How did you and Gary work to come up with the Singaporean Cantonese version? Was the process very different when you worked with Cher Kian on the Malaysian Cantonese version?
My original plan was to have the English script translated into Mandarin and from there translate the Mandarin into Singaporean and Malaysian Cantonese, for the presentation. The content for both versions will be the same. So I had the script translated into Mandarin by Low Kok Wai.

Gary is born Cantonese and a fluent speaker. Gary decided to rework the original English text into a storyteller version. So he’s a storyteller telling the stories of people who lived on Neo Pee Teck Lane. He wrote the Cantonese text based only on the original English text. Gary’s version is a remixed, reconstructed and reimagined version of the English stories.

CK’s version will be adapted from Kok Wai’s Mandarin translation and the original English text. CK will be performing as me/the narrator telling the stories and is more similar in style to the English monologue and written text.

So the two versions are different variations of the same stories. Since the book was published, I found out some new information and some of this was updated in the Singaporean Cantonese version. I did not want to update the Malaysian Cantonese version. The original English text had a lot of details and fragments of stories and it was impossible to condense all of them. So I went through the original script separately with each actor and we picked the smaller stories that resonated for each of their versions. Their personal response to the original stories was also crucial in shaping their reinterpretations.

I told Gary and CK that, for their presentations, they must speak Cantonese in a way that they are familiar and comfortable with. Their personal language is important in capturing the essence and sound.

And finally, tell us about one of your fondest memories growing up on Neo Pee Teck Lane.
My father once built this imposing fortress-like rectangular structure below our huge rambutan tree from old timber planks, for us to play. I can’t remember where he got those timber from. It was in the shape of a lorry. It was huge, maybe longer than a 14-foot lorry. The neighbourhood children had such great fun playing in it. But I think after a heavy thunderstorm, it became unsafe and father took it down. When I grew up later and see those wooden fortresses and buildings in Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films, I always remember our own wooden fortress under the rambutan tree.

By Gwen Pew
Published on 14 October 2017

Find out more about The Vault: My Grandfather’s Road here, and join us at Centre 42 on 23 – 25 November 2017 by registering for a seat here.

(Credit: Dance Nucleus)

Born in Bangalore and based in Singapore, Kiran Kumar is an artist, researcher and writer who specialises in dance-centric projects. He first graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 2006 and began his career as an information technology analyst, but he was lured into the world of dance and movement through his practices of Odissi, a traditional Indian dance form, and Hatha Yoga.

Now armed with postgraduate degrees in Solo Dance Authorship from the University of Arts Berlin and in New Media Art from the City University of Hong Kong, Kumar takes a process-oriented, research-based approach to examine how dance can be presented. His past works took the form of performances and installations encompassing multimedia, text and archiving, which have been staged in countries such as Germany, Poland, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Kumar joined Dance Nucleus for a six-month artist residency at the start of this year, where his research has been centred on Odissi, Hatha Yoga, and traditional Javanese dance. His four-part presentation comprises an essay-performance, an audio installation, an exhibition, and a workshop, which will take place at Centre 42 and Dance Nucleus over the first weekend of July.

Dance & Text

Kumar has explored writing and text as extensions of his physical dance practice. Drawing from grounded theory and anthropological research techniques, he uses text to document movement and thoughts, to explore the development of a dance work both from the artist’s perspective and within its wider sociocultural context.

Ethnographic researchers in dance have used various forms of dance notation to, for example, record ceremonial dances that are on the verge of ‘extinction’ because the people who perform it are becoming integrated into another culture. Nevertheless the focus here is not on conventional dance notation (like Laban or Benesh). Instead the focus is on the notion of notation with relation to the process of development rather than the movement itself.
Source: Congruencies in Ethnography and Choreography by Kiran Kumar, http://expandingnotes.tumblr.com/post/23283134943

When the artist is also the ethnographer of one’s own practice, autoethnographic journaling, or “expanded writing”, becomes a way to capture the intent and processes embedded in the development of a work. These texts not only become the material remnants of transient artistic practices, they can also become sources of new work in themselves.

By Daniel Teo & Gwen Pew
Published on 24 Jun 2016

The Vault: Distilling the Dance is the first of three presentations focusing on local dance-makers’ responses to Singapore play-text. This is a part-research-part-presentation endeavour to investigate movement in space and the body through inspired by play-texts. In Distilling the Dance, dance artist Kiran Kumar works with spell #7’s audio archives. More information here.

The Project Understudy Writing Team: (L to R) Isaac Lim, Dr. Robin Loon, Fong Chun Ming, Gabriele Goh, Eugene Koh, Olivia Vong, Matthew Fam

Collaborative writing can be hugely challenging. Without a strategy, writing a play in a group would just be a matter of whoever has the strongest pair of lungs, as was the case with the seven men who collectively wrote the 1971 play Lay By at the Royal Court Theatre in London:

“They sat down in a room with a big, blank piece of paper and all shouted out,” she reports. “The person who shouted the loudest had their line written down.” To make matters worse, Gupta chips in: “They had a woman secretary who wrote everything down for them.”

Source: This could actually work by Maddy Costa. In The Guardian (29 Nov 2006), http://tinyurl.com/jbwyvu7

For the seven writers in Project Understudy, they wanted to craft a sequel to Tan Tarn How’s Undercover together in a slightly less raucous manner. Titling the sequel Understudy, the writing team began writing at the start of 2016, finding their own strategies for multiple dramatists working together on one script.

In using all these strategies, the writing team was able to create a complete draft for Understudy in a few short months. The script is still in its early stages, but continuing to work on it together means that the team can pursue testing out and refining other collaborative writing strategies.

• Strategy #1
• Strategy #2
• Strategy #3
• Strategy #4

• Write for only one character

  

  Each of the seven writers wrote for one character only.

  From the beginning, the writers each picked one character and wrote only for that character. Four writers assumed established characters from Tan’s plays – Jane, Qiang and the Deputy (now called KK) from Undercover, and Derek from The Lady of Soul and her Ultimate “S” Machine. The remaining three crafted new characters from scratch, the protégés Sophie, Albert and Vikram.

  By having to be responsible for only one character, each writer could explore his/her character in-depth. A character-centric writing process also allowed for the next few strategies to be employed.

   

• Write monologues for your character

  

  Monologue “assignments” for each writer/character.

  I decided that for us to get into the character itself, I gave them six to eight scenarios for them to choose from, so they write a monologue – and some of these monologues are really good, they clarify the characters. And then after they read it out for everybody else to hear, so everybody who’s writing the scene also knows where the character is at.

  Dr. Robin Loon, Project Understudy Writer/Chief Editor

  Each writer wrote monologues for their characters, which they would share with each other at writing sessions. Portions of the monologues were used in the first complete draft of Understudy.

  This strategy resembles parallel construction, as used by education researchers Onrubia and Engel in describing their observations of collaborative writing in a classroom setting. The parallel construction strategy involves each group member completing a writing task on their own before contributing it towards the completion of the overall project.

  For Onrubian and Engel, parallel construction is often employed in early stages of collaborative creative projects, in a phase they call initiation:

  During the phase of initiation, the group members make their ideas public, without questioning those presented by others. Nor do they get involved in explicit processes of negotiation of meanings, so that the joint activity gets more of a character of sum of monologues than a dialogue. The phase of initiation includes all those forms of participants’ joint action that result in a first level of intersubjectivity of the definition of the task and what procedure to follow to carry it out.

  Source: Strategies for collaborative writing and phases of knowledge construction in CSCL environments by Javier Onrubia & Anna Engel. In Computers & Education (2009), Vol. 53(4), pp. 1256-1265, http://tinyurl.com/hzz45bq

  For the writing team, the monologues not only allowed them to individually explore their character’s motivations and idiosyncrasies, but also, in sharing the monologues, they could begin to see how their characters might possibly interact with other characters in scenes.

   

• Take turns to write lines in a scene

  

  A screenshot of the Project Understudy Google Docs.

  There’re tables in the middle of the room and then we sit around the table. And instead of an improv session – there’s no acting – [we] just write.

  Matthew Fam, Project Understudy Writer

  The writers worked on each scene together. During their writing sessions at Centre 42, each writer was armed with a laptop logged on to Google Docs. Working on the same document, they took turns to create their character’s lines, akin to the improvisational work performed by actors in devised theatre.

  Onrubian and Engel use the term sequential summative construction to describe this strategy. For them, this strategy encouraged a group to explore a topic together – exchanges between group members tend to be “turns of presentations and acceptance” with few disagreements as the group constructs the work accumulatively.

  Business communication researchers Lowry, Curtis and Lowry call this strategy sequential writing: By taking turns to write, the researchers found sequential writing to be a simple and effective way for coordinating and distributing work between multiple writers.

  However, the researchers highlighted one major disadvantage of sequential writing:

  […] this approach is often problematic without effective version control; otherwise, subsequent writers can easily override the work of others by making new changes.

  Source: Building a taxonomy and nomenclature of collaborative writing to improve interdisciplinary research and practice by Paul Benjamin Lowry, Aaron Curtis, & Michelle Rene Lowry. In Journal of Business Communications (2004), Vol. 41(1), http://tinyurl.com/hw4s4ug

  To solve this issue, the writing team used the next strategy.

   

• Assign one member as the editor

  Dr Loon will start off by outlining the scene that we’re going to proceed on to do today, and tell us generally what we’re going to do, what our characters are supposed to be doing in the scene, what [their] function [is], how the dialogue’s going to go. Then we take it from there.

  Fong Chun Ming, Project Understudy Writer

  Dr. Robin Loon (who writes as KK), served as the Chief Editor of the project. In this capacity, Dr. Loon created the entire narrative arc for the sequel. At the beginning of each writing session, he laid out the objectives of the scene they were working on. He also edited the script generated by the writing team.

  Having an editor on the team can be very helpful as he or she makes the final decision on the work and ensures the writing process moves forward. One example of an editor moving a work forward is Ezra Pound who edited T. S. Eliot’s seminal poem The Wasteland:

  In short, Pound reduced the poem from over 1000 lines to its current 434. In the process, he focused and limited the poem’s message and eliminated a sarcastic tone. The critical view, with only the exception of a handful of scholars, is that Pound’s edited version is an undeniable improvement. Eliot, who was mentally infirm and hospitalized during the period of writing and revision of the poem, acquiesced to almost all of Pound’s revisions and suggestions. [Author of Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius, Jack] Stillinger brings attention not only the extent of Pound’s changes but connects the collaboration to an argument that the resulting text constitutes a co-authored work.

  Source: Collaborative Literary Creation and Control: A Socio-Historic, Technological and Legal Analysis, http://tinyurl.com/z2pg8ff

   

By Daniel Teo
Published on 20 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.

Looking through his body of works, you would think Chong Tze Chien has a morbid fascination with death. Indeed, he once admitted that death was a “pet theme” (Business Times [BT], 24 April 2009) that would re-emerge time and time again in his writing.

Here are a few examples: Chong’s hugely-successful debut play, Pan-Island Expressway [PIE], staged by TheatreWorks in 1999, is a multi-layered narrative revolving around a fatal traffic accident and a suicide. Spoilt (2001), written and staged while he was a full-time playwright with The Necessary Stage, follows a woman’s journey through mental instability, concluding in her suicide.

The critically-acclaimed, emotionally-charged Poop (2010), produced by puppetry company The Finger Players, explored death and loss from a child’s perspective. Charged (2010), which Chong wrote for Malay theatre company Teater Ekamatra, follows the investigations surrounding the deaths of a Malay and Chinese soldier in an army camp. The Book of Living and Dying (2012) was inspired by The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche and follows a transvestite coming to terms with her own impending death.

Look up Chong in the newspaper archives and it would seem the motif of death has certainly served the playwright well – his name is often attached to the adjective “award-winning”. Theatre academic Dr. K.K. Seet even pronounced Chong “one of the most critically lauded and garlanded thespians of his generation” (Four Plays, p. xi).

Chong won the Singapore Dramatist Award in the Amateur Category in 1998 for PIE. Dr. Seet revealed that the judges had thought PIE was “a far superior work – in what was an unprecedented phenomenon – to the awardee in the Open Category” (PIE to Spoilt, p.10). At its 1999 production, director Casey Lim pronounced Chong to be “in the same mould as Arthur Miller and Kuo Pao Kun” (Straits Times [ST], 27 April 1999).

On Poop, BT theatre reviewer Natalie Koh had nothing but high praise for Chong:

It is a dark play that doesn’t emphasise plot progression but rather, dives deep into the souls of the characters to describe their pain of losing a loved one and the agony of knowing that another tragedy is looming.

Playwright and director Chong Tze Chien creates characters so realistic and a script that rings so true that the play seems to stay with the audience long after the performance. He has created an abstract piece of work where the characters hardly speak to one another but more to the audience. Source: Moving play on suicide draws sniffles by Natalie Koh. In BT (10 Sep 2010).

Chong is also a regular fixture at the annual Life! Theatre Awards, often earning nominations in multiple categories. Charged won him Best Script in 2011 and had two sold-out runs.

Chong’s script [for Charged] is explosive and volatile yet sensitive and nuanced, not only in the way it deals with race but also with other topics such as family, class and meritocracy.Source: Paid in full by Kenneth Kwok. In The Flying Inkpot (18 Dec 2010), http://tinyurl.com/netyr7k

Charged pulls no punches with its strong (and sometimes politically incorrect) language as it takes a brutally honest look at ethnicity and religion in Singapore… It’s rare for local plays to be re-staged and it’s a pity no more tickets are available for the remaining shows. Teater Ekamatra (and anyone who misses it) should be guilty as Charged if this doesn’t return for a third run.Source: Charged pulls in the crowds by Dylan Tan. In BT (5 Aug 2011)

However, to pin down Chong as a one-trick pony with an obsession with the macabre would be wildly inaccurate and unfair. His explorations death are often only one side of the story. In discussing death, one cannot avoid its counterpart – life.

Perhaps this is why Chong said: “I would love to retire in three years’ time and die at 40. I think life is not about quantity but quality. And death to me, in that way, is a sort of release.”Source: The voyeur playwright by David Chew. In Today (28 Mar 2005).

After my fifth play, people pointed out how my characters always die at one point or another. I wasn’t conscious of the fact. For me, there’s something very serene about death. My attitude towards death-as-a-fact-of-life has always been one that gives me peace of mind.Source: Sweet Release by Mayo Martin. In Today (30 Aug 2010).

Indeed, Chong’s fascination seems to be with characters and their lives, in which death is but a single, unavoidable facet of their mortality. On Spoilt, Flying Inkpot reviewer Musa Fazal said Chong’s understanding of the human condition was “incredibly perceptive” (5 Dec 2001). Introducing a published collection Chong’s plays, Dr. Seet noted that while death is a common thread in the collection, it becomes of focal point around which a deeper exploration of humanity can take place:

Primarily, the dramatic arc in all these plays lies retrospectively, such that the plays examine the aftermath of a life-changing, character-altering event… Lest Chong be accused of possessing an agenda that is essentially jenseitig (privileging the other side of the grave), he should instead be read as expressing the dialectical relationship between two cultural paradigms… the culture of passion versus the culture of reason.”Source: Lives of quiet desperation: Chong Tze Chien and the petit recit by Dr. K. K. Seet. In Chong Tze Chien: Four plays (pp. xi-xvii).

In a way, Chong’s interest in the course of life lends itself well to historical research. In Rant & Rave (2012), a research-intensive docudrama commissioned for the Esplanade’s 10^th anniversary, Chong trawled through newspaper archives for reviews and features on Singapore theatre dating back to the 1960s. With the material, he cobbled together a play which traced the history of Singapore theatre. Rant & Rave was performed by Janice Koh and Siti Khalijah, who assumed multiple personalities in the theatre industry throughout the play’s chronological trajectory.

Rant & Rave turns out to be a remarkably clear-eyed look at the theatre scene as a whole. It is, no doubt, a whirlwind summary of events and topics, but it also does its best to be objective about how critical and social discourse works in Singapore…

Yet no matter how much The Straits Times has been and continues to be bedevilled in the eyes and words of many theatre practitioners, Chong quietly and diplomatically concludes that the Singapore media, whether loved or hated, is still the medium of record for all these tribulations and triumphs…

In the end, above all the ranting and raving, this play is a timely reminder that we need to remember where we have come from, and what has shaped who we are today…Source: Media-savvy theatre through the years by Corrie Tan. In The Straits Times (16 Oct 2012).

While NBC [National Broadway Company] celebrates the past in dazzling fashion and Casting Back casts a sardonic eye on it, Rant & Rave objectively takes stock of all our major highs and lows, our triumphs and tragedies, from Emily of Emerald Hill’s stage breakthrough to the government’s blanket ban of performance art.

The play shows that we have come some way, but we are still a long way from having the arts scene we want; we are learning from our mistakes, albeit very slowly.

As a work of theatre, Rant & Rave may be less flashy, glib and entertaining than the other two. But as a work of tribute and remembering, it is priceless.Source: Theatre looks back by Helmi Yusof. In The Straits Times (19 Oct 2012).

But perhaps Chong’s preoccupation with people’s lives is best summed up in his voyeuristic pastime of spying on his neighbours with binoculars:

I love the juxtaposition of families next to each other. It’s a collage, each flat with different lights, different characters in each house. This is real life to me…Source: The voyeur playwright by David Chew. In Today (28 Mar 2005).

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Chong Tze Chien has been the company director of The Finger Players since 2004. He was formerly a company playwright with The Necessary Stage. (Credit: 50 Years of Theatre Memories)

Selected Plays

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

2012 – The Book of Living and Dying

2012 – Rant & Rave

2011 – Turn by Turn We Turn

2010 – Charged

2010 – Poop

2005 – Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

2004 – Furthest North, Deepest South

2001 – Spoilt

2000 – Is This Our Stop?

1999 – Lift My Mind

1999 – PIE

Browsing copies of Chong Tze Chien’s plays are also available in the Book Den.

By Daniel Teo
Published on 30 November 2015

The Vault: How Did You Meet Tina? revisits the practice and legacy of late theatre practitioner Christina Sergeant (1955-2013) through archival footage and images as well as recreated interviews with her collaborators, friends, family and students. Created and directed by Chong Tze Chien and performed by Nora Samosir, Serene Chen and Tan Shou Chen, on 5 December 2015, 8pm at Centre 42 Black Box. Admission is free. Find out more here.

At 24, Robin Loon already had a clearer vision for his life than most in their twenties. Eschewing a career in medicine as his parents had envisioned, Loon, then an English Literature and History major at the National University of Singapore (NUS), was certain of a life in theatre.

…what would make [Loon] really happy are: “One, to do absolutely nothing, if I can afford such a lifestyle. Two, to be involved in theatre. Three, to travel. If I can’t do any one of them, I think I’ll teach. “Teaching would give me a chance to promote theatre in the schools, which is where we have to start, to cultivate an interest in theatre in Singapore.”Source: Serious Loon by Ricky Yeo. In The Straits Times (8 April 1992).

Loon’s flair for playwriting became evident in his undergraduate years. His first play, Solitaire, written in 1988, won the Shell Playwriting Competition and was staged at the university a few years later.

Loon then joined TheatreWork’s fruitful playwright incubation programme Writers’ Laboratory. At the Writers’ Lab, Loon was schooled alongside some of today’s most illustrious local playwrights, such as Eleanor Wong, Desmond Sim, Ovidia Yu, and Tan Tarn How.

One major work to emerge from the Writers’ Lab was Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder, a heart-rending drama about aging and filial piety. Absence premiered in 1992 and won praise from peers, audience members, and even Straits Times theatre critic Hannah Pandian.

It was during the opening night of Robin Loon’s Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder, and it was in the middle of the play that [an audience member] began to alternately sniffle and blow, rather too loudly, into a handkerchief.

And as the final act reached its climax, his weeping also attained a corresponding crescendo.

The rest of the audience did not seem to mind, for no one said so much as a “shh, shh”. They probably had their own tissues out. At one point I had trouble myself quelling the tears threatening to well up in my eyes.Source: It needn't be 'experimental' by Tan Tarn How. In The Straits Times (13 April 1992).

Naturalistic drama, while always guaranteeing a mainstream audience, is often in danger of settling into oversimplification, because of its lack of challenges in form. But perhaps, it is also Loon’s age (24 years) that has afforded him this two-dimensional view of human nature. Having said that, it is also surprising that Loon, with so little experience behind him, has mastered details of dramatic technique that 50-year-old playwrights in Singapore still have not. He hits on rare, genius moments of stage tension.Source: A Bill Cosby perspective by Hannah Pandian. In The Straits Times (10 April 1992).

Loon’s fascination with history surfaced in his subsequent works. For example, Watching the Clouds Go By (1994) is a romance set in the throes of the Cultural Revolution. Broken Birds: An Epic Longing (1995), which he co-wrote with Ong Keng Sen, tackled pre-war Japanese prostitution in Singapore.

I am constantly amazed at how fragile our reality is – how it disintegrates as we uncover events in our past that were hitherto hidden from us. This is my greatest realisation in Broken Birds. But the task now is not to lament the atrocities of history but to rebuild ourselves with this knowledge of the past. Being a student of literature and history, I found great satisfaction in merging the two seemingly disparate disciplines into one form – fact and fiction fusing in theatre.Source: Robin Loon's message, programme booklet from the 1995 production of Broken Birds (TheatreWorks), http://theatreworks.org.sg/archive/broken_birds/index.htm

More recently in 2012, Loon renewed his interest with memory and historical narratives in Casting Back, a collaboration with theatre veterans Nora Samosir and Christina Sergeant which traces the history of Singapore theatre through the recollections of the two actresses. Casey Lim directed Casting Back, which was commissioned for the Esplanade’s 10^th anniversary celebrations.

Casting Back feels like a performance tailored to fit the theatre in-crowd a little better, with its inside jokes about working with certain theatre practitioners.

“I guess you never forget a fight with OKS,” Samosir says in jest to knowing laughter from the audience, using the abbreviation for TheatreWorks’ Ong Keng Sen. The actresses also chafe at being called “veteran actresses”, cringing at the shorthand for actresses who have, well, been acting for a very long time.

But there are scenes that do work, especially when Sergeant and Samosir recall some genuinely heartfelt moments of their encounters in the theatre, whether it is when shaping some of their more or less memorable characters, admitting their “glorious failures” or describing the intimate times spent in the rehearsal rooms of the old Drama Centre at Fort Canning.Source: Actresses remember fights, critiques and venues by Corrie Tan. In The Straits Times (15 October 2012).

Loon is also effectively bilingual in English and Mandarin, and aspires to translate works between the two languages. He realised this ambition with Chay Yew’s A Language of Their Own, about the relationship between two Chinese-American gay men. For Loon, he saw an opportunity to up the ante on the play’s explorations of race and culture through language.

Loon translated A Language of Their Own into Chinese, deliberately retaining the setting and pop culture references of the original even though they were discordant in the translated work. Once again teamed up with Casey Lim (who also directed the 2006 staging by Checkpoint Theatre) the pair brought the re-titled 《男男自语》 to the stage at the 2012 Singapore Arts Festival.

This play just isn’t an obvious choice for translation. But if a production is judged by its effect on its audience, no matter its provenance, Loon’s version was a smash hit.

It made people laugh and cry. It was playful and lyrical, romantic and utterly devastating. It provided the sort of night one dreams of having in the theatre: a sense that the complications of the world, all its beauty and tragedy, have been illuminated and done justice to, if only for two hours.Source: Elegy in a new language by Adeline Chia. In The Straits Times (21 May 2012).

At the end of the day, my assessment is that this is a fine interpretation of A Language of Their Own. It’s definitely worthy of restaging, given that its initial run was a near-sold-out weekend of five shows, including two matinees. It’s also proof that Robin Loon’s translation works – this script should be performed in other countries, even if the production itself doesn’t travel. Congratulations to all, including the absent playwright. Chay, you’ve got to fly in to see this.Second language by Ng Yi-Sheng. In The Flying Inkpot (20 May 2012), http://tinyurl.com/o76af8j

While Loon these days has been described as a “practicising playwright”, he has not confined himself to the role of a scribe. He has also served as a dramaturg in productions, festivals and arts programmes. (And at Centre 42 as its Founding Board Member and Chief Consultant as well!)

To date, he has also dabbled in a variety of roles in theatre, which include being an actor, director, production assistant, stage manager, festival director, and designer. Loon was also the gamemaster of TheatreWork’s annual 24-hour Playwriting Challenge for several consecutive years, and returned to head the Writer’s Lab in 2006.

In the meantime, Loon pursued postgraduate studies, eventually receiving a PhD in Intercultural Theatre and Performance from Royal Holloway, University of London in 2004. And, as he declared back in 1992, Loon currently teaches Theatre Studies as a senior lecturer at NUS.

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Robin Loon. Credit: 50 Years of Theatre Memories

Selected Plays

2015 – 汐

 2014 – Nineteen Sixty-Four (collaborator)

2013 – LIFT: Love Is Flower The

2012 – Casting Back

2012 – 男男自语

2011 – Mata Hati

2011 – DNR

1997 – Destinies of Flower in the Mirror

1995 – Broken Birds: An Epic Longing (co-written)

1994 – Watching the Clouds Go By
(Text available in the Book Den)

1992 – Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Additional Sources:

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty Profile [Webpage]

By Daniel Teo
Published on 18 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.

Even as a child, Margaret Chan had a dramatic streak. The third child amongst four in a Peranakan family, young Margaret was often called to perform:

“My mother told me that the neighbours used to like to come and see how I play with my dolls. I would give each doll a name and a complex role.”
At home and in school, Chan would invariably be the child called upon to sing. “I didn’t enjoy it. When you are performing for adults you have a fixed repertoire. You have to be cute and polite. You cannot really express yourself,” she says with a laugh.”Chan merry Chan by Steven Lee. In The Straits Times (18 May 1992), http://tinyurl.com/neue7b6

In her twenties, Margaret began acting in a number of amateur theatre productions. In 1977, she played the maidservant Cicada in Li Lien Fung’s The Sword Has Two Edges, produced by the Experimental Theatre Club (founded by pioneering Singapore English-language playwright Lim Chor Pee).

“As Cicada, Margaret Chan has given what I consider her most inspired performance to date. But I do wish she would stand straight on stage.
She has overcome her tendency to overact and was able to lose herself in the role so that I was moved by Cicada’s plight.”Source: Breathes life into history… by Violet Oon. In New Nation (26 August 1977), http://tinyurl.com/qhy7pfe

But her breakthrough role was in 1985 as the titular Nonya matriarch in Stella Kon’s one-woman play Emily of Emerald Hill, directed by Max Le Blond. Even while heavily pregnant with her second child, Margaret’s solo performance as Emily was highly acclaimed:

“By the time Margaret Chan had taken her second curtain call, the tears hadn’t yet dried on some faces though they were wreathed in smiles…
But how Margaret brought Emily to life!
Dr Mark Kon [Stella Kon’s husband], who had seen last year’s staging of Emily of Emerald Hill in Kuala Lumpur, was equally enthusiastic not just about Margaret’s performance but also about her interpretation.
“While Leow Puay Tin who played the part of Emily in the KL production was more the nonya, Margaret plays Emily as the person who comes from the outside and controls the family,” agreed Robert Yeo, chairman of the Ministry of Community Develoment’s drama advisory committee, and the man who had approached both Max [Le Blond] and Margaret to do the play.”Source: Tears and smiles greet Emily by Rebecca Chua. In The Straits Times (6 September 1985)., http://tinyurl.com/qhy7pfe

Margaret’s stage career forged ahead with leading roles in productions such as Beauty World (1988), The Evening Climb (1992), Lao Jiu (1993) and No Parking on Odd Days (1994). In the 1990s, she also starred in television shows such as The Ra Ra Show (1993), Masters of the Seas (1994) and The Golden Pillow (1995), and played Malcolm’s mother in the 1996 feature film Army Daze based on the play by Michael Chiang.

Margaret also led a second life as a working journalist, holding editorial positions in New Nation (now defunct) and Wine & Dine magazine. A large chunk of her journalistic writing was devoted to food criticism – her adventurous palette and knowledge of food made her a natural at reviewing restaurants and food places. In 1992, she published a guide to Singapore restaurants called Foodstops – 1000 Places to Eat and Drink in Singapore.

“It was feeding time at the zoo. Last Saturday night, at the Okoh, it took all of my self-control to keep from sticking my tongue out at the seeming hundreds that gaped through the glass windows as we dined…
We enjoyed the meal though the rice was cold. Didn’t the Japanese invent rice cookers?
Incidentally, an enormous cockroach crawled up the wall next to me – you should have seen me jump.”Okoh’s OK but for gawkers and cold rice by Margaret Chan. In New Nation (19 July 1981), http://tinyurl.com/q7xn5tf

“Margaret is the kind of eating companion we would all love to have. She is game to try anything (remember her account of that strengthening soup made of bill’s penis and recently, of eating monkey flesh and other exotic meat?). Margaret has sought out dishes and delicacies in all kinds of places, from food palaces in Hong Kong to decrepit stalls hidden in back lanes.”Tasters range from cooks to gourmands. In New Nation (26 June 1981)., http://tinyurl.com/ow6c3p3

In 1996, she embarked on postgraduate studies at the University of London, earning a Certificate of Teaching in Higher Education (Distinction) and Master of Arts (Distinction) in performance studies in 1998. She then pursued a doctoral degree in theatre/performance studies and, in her 50s, was awarded a PhD in 2002.

Margaret returned to Singapore and joined the Singapore Management University (SMU) in 2003. She is now an Associate Professor Associate Professor of Theatre/Performance Studies (Practice) at the School of Social Sciences, where she teaches creative thinking, ethnography and postmodern theatre studies. As an academic, she has written, presented and published work on theatre and ritual in Chinese spirit medium worship.

(Source: Singapore Management University)

Margaret as Emily in 1985. (Source: youth.sg/National Arts Council)

Selected Theatre Lead Roles

2001 – Blithe Spirit by W!ld Rice (Available in The Repository.)
1994 – No Parking on Odd Days by Practice Theatre Ensemble
1994 – Lao Jiu  by TheatreWorks (Available in the TheatreWorks archive.)
1992 – The Evening Climb by Practice Theatre Ensemble (Available in The Repository.)
1988 – Beauty World by TheatreWorks
1985 – Emily of Emerald Hill
1977 – The Sword Has Two Edges by Experimental Theatre Club
1975 – Goa by University of Singapore Drama Society

Selected Academic Publications

2014 – Tangki War Magic: The Virtuality of Spirit Warfare and the Actuality of Peace. Social Analysis, Vo. 58 (1).
2012 – The Spirit-mediums of Singkawang: Performing ‘Peoplehood’. In Chinese Indonesians reassessed: History,religion and belonging. London and New York: Routledge.
2010 – Tan Ah Choon: The Singapore ‘King of Spirit Mediums’ (1928-2010). In South China Research Resource Station Newsletter, 60.
2009 – The Magic of Chinese Theatre: Theatre as a ritual of sacral transmogrification. In Change & Innovation in Chinese Opera. Singapore: The National Museum of Singapore and The Chinese Opera Institute.
2003 – Kuo Pao Kun: The Spirit of the Eagle. In Contemporary Theatre: The Director as Cultural Critic, Vol. 13 (3).

Margaret’s full CV is available here. [Click on “CV”.]

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By Daniel Teo
Published on 10 October 2015

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.

The Vault: #3 three revisits Quah Sy Ren’s Invisibility through the eyes of theatre design collective INDEX. We asked the three INDEX designers to reflect on the conceptualisation and development of their works in this design-centred series. A short summary video of the respective installation accompanies each designers’ reflections.
More on The Vault: #3 three series here.

| Reflections on #3.1 In/Visibility | Reflections on #3.2 For the Time Being | Reflections on #3.3 scale 1.333 333.333… |

May 21 – 23, 2015
THE VAULT: #3.1 IN/VISIBILITY
By Lim Woan Wen

July 22 – 24, 2015
THE VAULT: #3.2 FOR THE TIME BEING
By Darren Ng

September 30 – October 3, 2015
THE VAULT: #3.3 scale 1:333 333.333…
By Lim Wei Ling

If you attended any of The Vault: #3 three installations and would like to share your thoughts and/or personal reflections with us, please send us an email at info@centre42.sg. We would love to hear from you!