25 Years of The Substation: Reflections on Singapore's First Independent Art Centre
The Substation
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789810967987

INDEPENDENCE. OPPORTUNITY. RAW. EXPERIMENTAL. FRINGE. PROGRESS. RESPONSIVE. EMPATHY. FEARLESS. IMAGINATION. PERSEVERANCE. CHALLENGE. INCUBATOR. SUPPORTIVE. CONTEMPORARY. MULTIDISCIPLINARY. SOCIOPOLITICAL. CRITICALITY. OPENNESS. DIVERSITY. COMMUNITY. POSSIBILITIES. PASSIONATE. PROCESS. HOME.

25 Years of The Substation features the accounts of 25 artists and people who have been associated with The Substation since its founding in 1990. The book is organised around 25 words, which serve as entry points for an extended conversation about The Substation, its stakeholders, and Singaporean society and the arts.

A White Rose at Midnight: A Play
Lim Chor Pee
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2015
ISBN: 9789814615488

On the cusp of independence, cultures collide in a bedroom in Singapore. As the Vietnam War rages on, the English-educated scholar Lee Hua Min -- "the finest product of the University" -- finds himself hopelessly disillusioned. Enter Wong Ching Mei, a Chinese-educated former nightclub singer seeking to enrol in Nanyang University. Mirroring the intense tussles between the English- and Chinese-speaking during Singapore's formative years, Hua Min and Ching Mei trade ferocious barbs even as they are inexplicably drawn to each other. When Su-Ling, Hua Min's ex-classmate, returns from London, Hua Min is torn between their advances and the extremely different worlds they inhabit. Humorous, witty and prescient, A White Rose At Midnight is a pithy portrait of a soul -- and nation -- divided.

A White Rose At Midnight was first staged to critical acclaim by the Experimental Theatre Club in 1964. It was pioneer playwright Lim Chor Pee's second and final play after the landmark Mimi Fan (1962). In 2014, Centre 42 mounted a partial dramatised reading of the play.

Arts Hats in Renaissance City: Reflections & Aspirations of Arts Personalities
Renee Lee (ed.)
Singapore: World Scientific, 2015
ISBN: 9789814630771

Arts Hats in Renaissance City is an anthology of the personal reflections and aspirations of four generations in the new creative ecostructure in Singapore -- from those who help formulate policies to that of the individual artists, who have helped develop and build an exciting arts and culture scene from scratch and into a viable economic model. As evidenced by the professions in this anthology, the scope of work within the arts and culture sector is diverse, from backgrounds such as history, communications, management, economics, law, science, arts, psychology and entertainment.

Beyond theory, the anthology offers an authentic voice of real and lived experiences of the go-to people, their personal role in heritage development, and their thoughts and insights on our, albeit developing, arts scene since independence.

Play Things: The Complete Works: 1984-2014
Michael Chiang
Singapore: Really Good Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810920357

The publication of this anthology of Michael Chiang's complete works is a timely clarification that invites the public to 'read' his works as an oeuvre -- in totality and as units to a larger artistic score. For the first time, all his plays, shorts and full-lengths, are collected in one volume that includes updates and additional scenes previously unpublished.

From Identity to Mondialisation: TheatreWorks 25
TheatreWorks
Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2013
ISBN: 9789814260909

TheatreWorks is renowned for its daring, and sometimes controversial, productions. Since its inception the company has explored important social issues such as sexuality, censorship and oppression. The company also pioneered different types of productions; it introduced the black box theatre to Singapore and staged epic outdoor festivals in Fort Canning Park.

This book, celebrating TheatreWorks 25th anniversary, charts the company's evolution from a small theatre cooperative working from a terrace house to the well-respected innovator in the Singapore theatre community.

TheatreWorks 25 is a stunning visual history of the company, featuring photography from many of TheatreWorks’ groundbreaking performances and quotes and anecdotes from members of the company, past and present.

Student Plays
Desmond Sim
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2013
ISBN: 9789810756918

In veteran playwright Desmond Sim's first collection for students, food and family ground seven heartwarming plays as sons and daughters, fathers and grandmothers fight, heal and find love in the kitchen and around the dining table. This collection includes Drunken Prawns, winner of the first Hewlett Packard/Action Theatre Ten-Minute Play Contest, and other critically acclaimed plays such as Teochew Porridge and The Durian Man and His Daughters, with a foreword by Dr. K.K. Seet.

Six Plays
Desmond Sim
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2013
ISBN: 9789810756895

From one of Singapore's most garlanded playwrights comes his first collection of published plays, including Autumn Tomyam, winner of Best Original Script and Play of the Year in the 2002 DBS Life! Theatre Awards. Guaranteed to challenge readers' prejudices, Desmond Sim's Six Plays is a bold and often hilarious exploration of sexuality, polygamy and love in all its guises.

Voices Clear and True: New Singapore Plays Volume I
Huzir Sulaiman, Lucas Ho, & Laremy Lee (eds.)
Singapore: Checkpoint Theatre, 2012
ISBN: 9789810724139

This is the first volume in a series of play collections published by Checkpoint Theatre that showcase the exciting work of a new generation of Singapore playwrights. Published as part of Checkpoint Theatre’s 10th anniversary celebrations, these plays are evidence of the burgeoning renaissance in Singapore playwriting.

This collection of eight critically-acclaimed plays features the work of up-and-coming playwrights Christine Chong, Kenneth Chong, Lucas Ho, Dan Koh, Cheryl Lee, Laremy Lee, Faith Ng and Shiv Tandan. All the plays were written under the mentorship of Huzir Sulaiman and have been produced by Singapore theatre companies. The collection includes wo(men) by Faith Ng and The Good, the Bad, and the Sholay by Shiv Tandan, which were both nominated for Best Original Script in the Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

The plays are by turns lyrical and hilarious, and are marked by their intellectual rigour, emotional honesty, and refined technique. Checkpoint Theatre is committed to nurturing the next generation of Singapore theatre practitioners, and these plays serve both as a record of powerful new work and as a valuable resource for students and makers of theatre everywhere.

Mimi Fan
Lim Chor Pee
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810714598

The swinging 1960s. A nightclub in Singapore. A one night stand that turns into true love. Or not? In Mimi Fan, Singapore playwright Lim Chor Pee weaves together a haunting tale about love, escapism and broken hearts searching for healing. Through the story of a teenage bar girl, Mimi Fan, whose destiny clashes with Chan Fei-Loong, an English-educated overseas Singaporean who has returned home to work, Lim brings to the fore some undeniable and searing truths: true love requires courage, it can be painful, and it can haunt you, despite your best efforts to ignore it.

Written by Singapore's pioneer playwright Lim Chor Pee in 1962, Mimi Fan is considered Singapore's first English-language play written by a local. It was first staged by the Experimental Theatre Club in 1962 and then restaged by Theatreworks in 1990.

Model Citizens
Haresh Sharma
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810714611

A man stabs an MP at a Meet the People Session. But this is not their story. It is the story of the man's girlfriend, an Indonesian maid who wants to get married and become a Singapore citizen. It is the story of the MP's wife, who tries to cope with her husband's injury and the media spotlight. It is the story of the maid's employer, who is also struggling with her own tragedy. These three women may mean nothing to each other, but they need one another to survive. The maid, the employer, and the MP's wife. Are they model citizens?

Written by veteran Singaporean playwright Haresh Sharma, Model Citizens won Best Director (Alvin Tan) and Best Actress (Siti Khalijah Zainal) at the 2011 The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards.

Fear of Writing
Tan Tarn How
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810714529

The maestro of political plays is back and his latest offering in a decade, Fear of Writing, is a groundbreaking commentary on the political pulse of Singapore today.

In Fear of Writing, a playwright struggles with writer's block, a director and producer bemoan their failure to get a government licence to stage their play, and a father writes to his daughter overseas. Seemingly disparate elements are woven together, while the line between art, performance and reality begin to blur dramatically as the play reaches its chilling conclusion.

Fear of Writing is a play that will haunt you while compelling you to decide where you stand on the issues of control and censorship.

Cooling-Off Day
Alfian Sa'at
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2012
ISBN: 9789810714062

In the electrifying months leading up to the watershed 2011 General Elections and in the tumultuous months after, playwright Alfian Sa'at interviewed Singaporeans to discover their responses to the elections.

Covering a wide social and political spectrum, the candid interviews capture the GE experience through the voices of individual Singaporeans - from election candidates to pro-establishment civil servants; from taxi-drivers to teachers; from diehard opposition supporters to young people casting their virgin votes.

These interviews - some hopeful, some fearful, some hilariously frank, some achingly honest - form a portrait of Singaporeans confronting the real meaning of democracy and rediscovering their role in shaping the country's future.

Eight Plays [The Woman in a Tree on the Hill / Three Fat Virgins / Playing Mothers / Love Calls / Breastissues / Life Choices / The Silence of the Kittens / Hitting (On) Women]
Ovidia Yu
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2011
ISBN: 9789810884680

Celebrated playwright Yu dissects all things female - from breasts, to virginity, to lesbian love. This collection of her finest works includes The Woman in a Tree on the Hill, which won the Edinburgh Fringe First Award.

Routes: A Singaporean Memoir 1940-75
Robert Yeo
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2011
ISBN: 9789810875367

Routes: A Singapore Memoir 1940-75 is both a personal and public memoir; it is personal as it records part of Robert Yeo's life for the first thirty-five years, and it is public as it follows his response to some of the tumultuous events of the period at the local, regional and international levels. Personally, what happened to his family of five living in Hougang when his father passed away at a relatively young age? Publicly, where was he on the day Singapore separated from Malaysia on August 9, 1965? What was he doing in swinging London in the sixties? And on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok in the seventies?

In revealing skeletons in the cupboard through letters, diaries, extracts from his poems, plays and fiction, Yeo presents an unvarnished account of one person’s story of his country’s emergence from third to first world. The inclusion of more than a hundred illustrations enhances the intriguing prose.

Singapore Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the Early 21st Century
William S.W. Lim, Sharon Siddique & Tan Dan Feng (eds.)
Singapore: Asian Urban Lab, 2011
ISBN: 9789814022743

This book aims to depict the richly textured and nuanced fabric of social life in Singapore in the early 21st century, as Singaporeans live in a blur of shifting boundaries where past, present and future co-exist.

36 commentators, artists and activists of different ages and backgrounds share their views in stimulating and compact pieces that come in a variety of literary forms, including essays, commentaries, reflections, poems, dialogues, novel and script excerpts, blog entries and presentations.

These colourful pieces touch on identity, language, culture, ethnicity, sexuality, politics, memory, religion, geography, arts and activism, painting a picture of the complex and vibrant society that is Singapore today.

Shorts 1
Haresh Sharma
Singapore: The Necessary Stage, 2010
ISBN: 9789810876746

This collection of short plays represents some of Haresh Sharma's best and popular early works. The collection also contains an introduction by Alvin Tan as well as notes to each play by the writer.

The Theatre and the State in Singapore: Orthodoxy and Resistance
Terence Chong
London: Routledge, 2010
ISBN: 9780415584487

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the contemporary English-language theatre field in Singapore. It describes Singapore theatre as a politically dynamic field that is often a site for struggle and resistance against state orthodoxy, and how the cultural policies of the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) have shaped Singapore theatre. The book traces such cultural policies and their impact from the early 1960s, and shows how the PAP used theatre – and arts and culture more widely – as a key part of its nation building programme.

Terence Chong argues that this diverse theatre community not only comes into regular conflict with the state, but often collaborates with it - depending on the rewards at stake, not to mention the assortment of intra-communal conflicts as different practitioners and groups vie for the same resources. It goes on to explore how new forms of theatre, especially English-language avant garde theatre, represented resistance to such government cultural control; how the government often exerts its power ‘behind-the-scenes’ to preserve its moral legitimacy; and conversely how middle class theatre practitioners’ resistance to state power is strongly influenced by class and cultural capital.

Based on extensive original research including interviews with theatre directors and other theatre professionals, the book provides a wealth of information on theatre in Singapore overall, and not just on theatre-state relations.

Collected Plays Two: The Asian Boys Trilogy: Dreamplay / Landmarks / Happy Endings
Alfian Sa'at
Singapore: Ethos Books & W!LD RICE Ltd, 2010
ISBN: 9789810870416

Alfian Sa'at's The Asian Boys Trilogy is a fascinating, insightful tour through the lives and loves of the gay community in Singapore. In the campy and carnivalesque Dreamplay, history is turned upside-down as a goddess travels through time to 'save gay men from themselves'. In Landmarks, geography takes centrestage, as eight short plays explore the spaces that have been claimed, colonised, and trespassed by those at the margins of the mainstream. In Happy Endings, the playwright's adaptation of the novel Peculiar Chris evolves into a meditation on the relationship between life and literature. With clear-eyed compassion and eloquent outrage, this collection of plays charts the coming-of-age of a community finding its voice.

Collected Plays One: The Optic Trilogy / Fugitives / Homesick / sex.violence.blood.gore
Alfian Sa'at
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2010
ISBN: 9789810860653

This collection of four plays by Alfian Sa'at explores the themes that have become a hallmark of the playwright's work: national identity, racial relations, and the resistance of individuals against authoritarian systems. In The Optic Trilogy, the surfacing of buried secrets and repressed memories profoundly alters the way a man and woman see each other. In Fugitives, the members of a family discover that their self-definition relies on their interactions with 'outsiders' who exist beyond their comfort zones. In Homesick, a diasporic Singaporean family, quarantined during the SARS crisis, evaluate the meanings of home. And in sex.violence.blood.gore, the facade of a rigid, orderly society is peeled away to reveal chaotic passions.

Those Who Can't, Teach
Haresh Sharma
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2010
ISBN: 9789810855109

Those Who Can't, Teach turns the spotlight on the mapcap lives of teachers and students in a typical secondary school in Singapore. As the teachers struggle daily to nurture and groom, the students prefer to hang out and "chillax". With upskirting and facebooking, griping and politicking, school takes on a whole new meaning as the colourful characters struggle to prove that those who can, teach.