A woman writer remembers and recreates a conversation which took place 20 years ago in a Singapore hotel room with her friend – a famous theatre director.
Beginning as a sort of memoir of two distinct characters and artistic collaborators, the text shifts to sketching the childhood, formal education, and social-cultural environment of the person who would go on to become that famous theatre director. A portrait of the artist as a young mortal man, in those liminal years when Malaya was not quite yet Malaysia.
Background
Leow Puay Tin – one of Southeast Asia's most original playwrights –
has written several new plays between 2019 and 2022. Five Arts Centre has been supporting their
development by producing rehearsed readings of the plays.
This is part of a strategy by the playwright to spend time on performance making with a younger generation of actors and directors – to cultivate a less hierarchical and more collaborative approach to performance making – and to find a more sustainable alternative in developing new performance texts.
The first of Puay Tin's new plays, The Carer's Monologue & Chorus, was staged as a rehearsed reading to a full house in November 2019. The second, Oppy & Professor Communitas, was presented as a critically acclaimed online performance in April 2021 – ArtsEquator described it as “A thoughtful, humorous, and self-reflective examination of the role and struggle of Malaysian theatremakers. Colourful, surreal, and deeply introspective.”
Photos by Bryan Chang