By Bernice Chauly My first WOMAD experience in Toronto, Canada in 1988 was a seminal experience – having hitch-hiked from Winnipeg, some 1500 km away where I was in university. A music-festival junkie by then, I had to get to WOMAD Toronto by whatever means possible as the man himself — Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan […]
By Zedeck Siew Fast becoming Singapore’s most important playwright, the strength of Alfian Sa’at oeuvre lies in the wit and verve with which he handles a variety of subjects: Singaporean gay culture in the Asian Boys trilogy – the recently concluded “Happy Endings: Asian Boys Vol 3” had audiences bawling in their seats; the SARS […]
By CH Loh Twenty years ago in a small basement room in a school in Singapore there was a piano, and on weekends a secret gathering took place around it. Young aspiring divas would convene and live out their dreams of stardom, emulating their favourite Broadway heroines belting out show tunes with attitude and imaginary […]
By CH Loh We learn something new everyday. I for example learnt that the new politically correct term for foreign workers — you know, the people who tend our kids and clean our homes 24 hours a day (if possible, if not then at least 18 hours), clean the streets, serve us drinks at the […]
By Benjamin McKay There will be some among you who believe that talking about problems, about crises and about rights is a passive act. All talk, no action. I disagree with those sentiments. Talk, conversation, dialogue, argument and general discourse ARE actions. Identifying problems and the responses to those problems are important diagnostic activities too. […]
By Jerome Kugan Recently, I attended the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) as an invited writer. Objectivity is very much suspect when one writes about something of which one was a part so you shall not find that here. Asia Truly Exotic In Malaysia, publishers, writers and readers of fictional works are, at best, fictitious. Whether […]
By Meng Yew Choong This is another whodunit for the big stage. Though it was presented to Singaporeans for the third time (in 1997 and 1998 at the Jubilee Hall of the Raffles Hotel), the difference this time was that it took place within the magnificent confines of the sophisticated Esplanade Theatre. Being my first […]
By Cyril Wong On a stage with only four scaffolding structures and two foldable screens, four actors come on to commemorate 50 years of the Islamic Republic of Malaya and Singapore’s National Day in 2007. This is a scenario dreamed up by two playwrights (Jit Murad from Malaysia and Haresh Sharma from Singapore) with two […]
By Benjamin McKay The Fifth Asian Film Symposium and Inaugural Forum on Asian Cinema took place at Singapore’s Substation from 9-18 Sep 2005 and a number of Malaysian filmmakers crossed the Causeway to join their Southeast Asian colleagues in a rigorous and engaging attempt to answer some key questions about the state of filmmaking in […]
By Pete Teo I played at the Esplanade (Jan 14 – 16, 2005). For those who are clueless, the Esplanade is Singapore’s shiny new national performing arts centre. And yes, I am aware that Malaysians tend to cart forth stories of chewing gum and blowjob every time Singapore is mentioned in conversation – but please […]
By Alfian Sa’at In the 80’s and early 90’s, both Malay as well as English programmes were screened on what was then known as Channel 5, and Mandarin and Tamil programmes on Channel 8. This was before both the Malay and Tamil programmes were later relocated to the channel Prime 12 in 1995. These media […]
By Alfian Sa’at Heard of the pink dollar? It’s the latest trans-national currency. It’s not actually pink in colour, and denominations don’t come in the form of queer three dollar bills, but the purported ability of the pink dollar to cross territorial borders makes the Euro seem like last century’s news. Some people consider the […]
By Pang Khee Teik Like prisoners of war, starved, feverish, I found myself drifting in and out of consciousness, beholding such strange visions I couldn’t tell which state of consciousness I was in. This was my experience watching the highly abstract and sleep-inducing Sandakan Threnody by Theatreworks, Singapore, a performance based on the events of […]
By Pang Khee Teik On a makeshift tent by the Singapore River, Stella Kon took her place behind the microphone. The 60-year-old playwright, looking as matriarchal as her creation, Emily of Emerald Hill, was about to do some serious poetry slam. Her theme this evening was inspired by the People’s Action Party’s early campaign speeches […]
By Alfian Sa’at It would be parochial to insist that Singaporean theatre companies only produce plays by indigenous playwrights, but one cannot deny that there are stricter expectations exerted by a local audience sensitive to post-colonial nuances. Globalisation’s double-edged sword: offering greater access to material texts from other countries and yet at the same time, […]
By Pang Khee Teik Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen is often accused of being wanky. As the founder of Theatreworks, one of the bigger companies in Singapore (meaning they get good funding from the government), he is known internationally for his cross-disciplinary works. In the recent Search Hamlet, staged in a castle in Denmark no […]
