The Official Website of Laremy Lee (李庭辉)
If you’ve seen me looking tense and tired, it’s because we’ve been working on this since last November, alongside our other commitments.
I’m proud of this – what started out as a module five years ago turned into a reading (which led to bigger and better things), culminating in a published book of plays.
Details of the launch here in case you’d like to go.
HENRY: You want to tell me about black folks? I’ll help you: O.J. Was guilty. Rodney King was in the wrong place, but the police have the right to use force. Malcolm X. Was noble when he renounced violence. Prior to that he was misguided. Dr King was, of course, a saint. He was killed by a jealous husband, and you had a maid when you were young who was better to you than your mother. She raised you. You’ve never fucked a black girl, but one sat near you in science class, and she was actually rather shy.
(Pause.)
CHARLES: …I would never say any of…
HENRY: You’re fucking A right you wouldn’t. Which is the purpose of the lesson. Do you know what you can say? To a black man. On the subject of race.
CHARLES: “Nothing.”
HENRY: That is correct.— David Mamet, Race, Theatre Communications Group: New York, pp. 5 – 6.
Related links of interest:
My review of Tan Tarn How’s Six Plays – the text which I was busy devouring in June while recuperating from my short stint in the Weapon X Project – is now up on the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS).
Six of the Best
Compilation revives veteran playwright’s greatest hits
This collection brings together six of Tan Tarn How’s best works thus far, written and produced over a period of 11 years (1992 – 2003). Prior to this, The Lady of Soul and Her Ultimate ‘S’ Machine (“Soul“) was published individually in 1993, and Undercover and Home were published in play collections that featured various local playwrights. The publication of these plays in one volume are, hence, important in providing readers and scholars of Singapore literature with a holistic overview of Tan’s concerns as well as showcasing the diversity of topics he writes on, while demonstrating Tan’s dexterity as a playwright when tackling a range of subjects.
Thematically, most of Tan’s concerns, as with the majority of P65 Singaporean writers, are with the socio-political environment and machinations of the Singapore state – an ostensibly natural reflection of and response towards the environment that P65 Singaporean writers have been bred in.
(continued…)