Censorship and Singapore

Tue, 11 Mar 2008
2 min read
Add Comment

From: K**
Sent: Wednesday, March 5, 2008 2:37:15 PM
Subject: MDA update

Hi C** and E**

As sms-ed to you, MDA is not giving the go-ahead for The Last Political Animal. It is politically sensitive and should not be staged as it is (sic) as the connections are obvious.

…

Swear words like “Jesus fucking Christ” uttered by one character in The Last Political Animal are definitely offensive and for plays licensed by MDA, they do not allow this.

Please revert by today what you intend to do about The Last Political Animal. Meanwhile, the entire event will carry a R18 rating…

I think what a lot of people don’t realise is that in Singapore, the more you try and prevent something from happening, the reverse usually happens.

I don’t mean to say that the organisers are going to ignore the restrictions and proceed with staging the play; the Ideological State Apparatuses, among other ISAs, have been too far ingrained in most people for them to know when not to throw caution to the wind.

What I mean to say is that the irony in the situation now is that because of the censorship, more people are interested in actually finding out what the play’s about!

So it simply goes to show that human nature is as such – the more authority tries to impose its will upon the liberties of the masses, the more resistance there is to it.

At the end of the day…

Tue, 8 May 2007
2 min read
Add Comment

…I think I have learnt the following from the play readings:

1. Art, or the arts, is not as easy as many people think it is.

Just watching these people really work the lines during rehearsals and mould the voices of the characters from the texts so that they could get into them was really amazing, impressed me beyond compare.

But most importantly, it only reiterated to me how far I have to go with any art of mine.
2. Life, and friendship, is very transient.

It was a good four months hanging out, laughing and learning along with these people, but in another four months, I wonder how many of us will still be in contact, for reasons other than professional ones.

Call me cynical (for those of you who stalk my blog) but I think I am being realistic.
3. You can’t polish shit.

Adrian Pang said this at the end of the night when we were all at some Vietnamese restaurant at The Arts House, in reference to the quality of our scripts.

Not that our scripts were shite – they weren’t Broadway material, definitely, but he and the other practitioners agreed that the voices for each character (in all our scripts) were quite distinct, so the practitioners had an easier time doing what they did.

As compared to other crappier scripts from plays past, of course, where even the best practitioner cannot do anything about it, hence the quote.

I hope he wasn’t being polite (lol), and he really meant it, but I think what matters most is that it applies to many situations in life as well – if you’re in a pile of shit, sometimes it doesn’t matter if you try and polish it up, cos it’s still gonna be shit, anyways.

Whatever the case, a very big thank you to the people who came down to watch/listen/support. I hope you had fun 🙂

VOICES CLEAR AND TRUE: New Works by Young Playwrights.

Wed, 2 May 2007
1 min read
Add Comment

From: NUS Playwriting
Date: 01 May 2007 AM 01:06:33
Subject: VOICES CLEAR AND TRUE: New Works by Young Playwrights.

The Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, presents VOICES CLEAR AND TRUE: New Works by Young Playwrights.

At The Living Room, The Arts House, Old Parliament Lane, on 4th and 5th May 2007, at 7pm.

Join us as the students of Huzir Sulaiman’s playwriting class at NUS have their one-act plays read by some of Singapore’s most acclaimed actors and actresses.

Readers: Gerald Chew, Claire Devine, Esen Diaz, Brendon Fernandez, Koey Foo, Ivan Heng, Huzir Sulaiman, Lim Yu Beng, Noorlinah Mohamed, Pam Oei, Adrian Pang, Remesh Panicker, James Shubert, Karen Tan, Claire Wong, and Yeo Yann Yann.

Friday 4th May
A NEW BEGINNING by Yeung Xintian
WHAT WOULD I DO WITHOUT YOU by Melissa Zhuo
AWAY FROM HOME by Christine Chong
CIRCA by Lucas Ho

Saturday 5th May
RADIO SILENCE by Laremy Lee
LIGHTS OFF by Valerie Yeo
EXISTENTIAL MATTERS by Tessie Tan
S.W.C. by Joyce Lin
FRAMED by Cheryl Lee

This is a free event. Seats are very limited. To reserve a place, please email nus.playwriting@gmail.com.