by Edgar Liao

Finding History in a Theatre Studies class remains one of the pleasant surprises of my undergraduate career. Taught by Dr K. K. Seet, TS 3235 (Singapore English-Language Theatre) primarily surveys the history of English-language theatre in Singapore through the examination of the canonical works of nine significant local playwrights over three decades of modern Singapore history, and their corresponding contexts. Two semesters ago, I had taken A/P Timothy Barnard’s class on Culture and Literature in Southeast Asia, which essentially examines the history of the Southeast Asian countries through both native and foreign literature, but studies only two selections from Singapore’s literature.

Without slighting the fine work thus far produced by the scholars of Singapore literature, I wish the History Department would be able to offer a module titled Culture and Literature in Singapore one day. Certainly, the study of Singapore’s cultural products – of which theatre is one oft-neglected avenue, and the circumstances and contexts of their production, offers much room for historicalinquiry.

The early plays written by local playwrights such as Lim Chor Pee could serve as historical traces of the early years of decolonization in Malaya. Their dramas were arguably informed and influenced by the mood and issues of their age and environment, thus providing a lens into the perspectives and concerns of the playwrights, and the minority English-educated group they represent. What does it mean to be ‘English-educated’, a concept perhaps alien to the present-day Singaporean? How different were they from us, we who embrace English as a first language but still place emphasis on our mother tongue and cultural roots?

As the few scholars of Singapore English-language theatre have shown, the identity and place of the English-educated in a Singapore undergoing decolonization was one major issue that preoccupied these early playwrights; their protagonists often spend their time reconciling their identity and place within a postcolonial world. It is ironic yet significant that Hua Min, the university graduate in English Literature, should be the character in Lim’s White Rose at Midnight (1964), to speak this line:

Hua Min: … Why should the West keep on churning out pictures to show that the Asians still live in the mysterious orient? …

[Lim Chor Pee, White Rose at Midnight, Act II, p. 12]

This theme of conflict also features in Lim’s Mimi Fan (1961) where his English-educated protagonist Chan Fei Loong, who having returned from studies abroad, attempts to reconcile himself with the new circumstances in Malaya. Such characters and themes also appear in other local plays in the next few decades, most famously in Robert Yeo’s Singapore Trilogy.[i]

Another recurrent motif is the clash between the colonial-inherited values and worldviews of the English educated with a society calling ‘for a return to one’s Chinese, Indian or Malay roots’.[ii]

Hua Min: The gap between the pre-war and post-war generations is so wide that it is impossible to bridge it.

[White Rose at Midnight, Act I, p.9]

Lines like this convey the strong sense of the tumultuous impact of the Second World War, which left English-educated types like Hua Min seeking a direction in a new world. The play ends intentionally with a radio announcement:

Radio Announcer: …. In Washington, President Kennedy told newsmen that the future of Asia were in the hands of its young people. He said that it was for them alone to decide what kind of Asia they wanted. He added that their future lay in the sorting out of their values and inner conflicts.

[White Rose at Midnight, Act III, p. 15]

Furthermore, it is interesting how White Rose at Midnight replicates the essentialized dichotomization between the Chinese-educated and the English-educated akin to that found in the Singapore Story, discernible in the interaction between the English-educated characters, and the pro-Chinese Ching Mei:

Ching Mei: That’s the trouble with you English-educated. You don’t take the trouble. Life has been too easy for you. You float in an artificial world of your own – your existence, your language, your parties and your comfort.

[White Rose at Midnight, Act II, p. 7]

I had briefly studied the literary activities of the students of the University of Malaya (in Singapore) as an expression of their activism, and the cultural and identity issues they contended with. Most extant studies however focused on those who wrote poetry, who were more numerous and more prominent and also began their efforts and experiments to find a ‘Malayan’ literature earlier than the theatre people.

Nonetheless, students of the University were involved in the genesis of Singapore English-language theatre, when its drama society momentously staged extracts from Lloyd Fernando’s Strangers at the Gates in October 1958 together with a Malay play.[iii] Strangers is a good indication of how theatre was used as a form of activism, as it portrays university students who wished to express political views, ‘marked by fiery exchanges among the English-educated youths trying to define their own identity in the wake of the British departure’.[iv] Drama groups formed by Malayans/Singaporeans appeared in the University, like the Experimental Theatre Club, formed with ‘hopes of founding a Malayan theatre for social plays’.[v]

However, early Singapore English-language theatre remained a poorer cousin of local poetry and prose historically, at least in terms of volume and receivership, although early playwrights clearly shared the university poets’ concerns with negotiating their colonial-inherited identity and language, and interest in promoting a local literature.

The reasons why are historically significant. Lim reveals firstly that ‘drama is only superficially known, let alone appreciated’ among only a small proportion of the population educated in English. Secondly, it was also due to the overwhelming predominance of Western drawing-room dramas hitherto, which ‘just do not concern us’.[vi] For commentator David Birch, the answer centers on the lack of support for local theatre, where even by 1980, government officials and influential figures were still ‘quite convinced that Singaporeans, poor dears, will never do anything really significant in the theatre, and we’d better leave it all in the hands of the expats.’[vii]

The comparative historical study of the development of local theatre and other literary genres and cultural forms permits one to delve not only into the full depth and complexities of the cultural dimensions of Singapore’s history, but also where they become intertwined with other domains like politics, for instance the state’s management of cultural production. Theatre especially seems particularly prone to the state’s surveillance and has generated much tension with the government in recent decades, from the trouble with Forum theatre to the difficult process of staging Tan Tarn How’s political satires, to the Talaq controversy etc.

Yet, theatre’s run-ins with authority occurred not only in contemporary times. Robert Yeo bears the distinction of having his One Year Back Home the first local play to be banned for its political overtones. Even before him, the above-mentioned Strangers at the Gates took nearly a month to get clearance from the Criminal Investigation Department because of its subject matter ‘was deemed objectionable in light of the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance and Emergency Regulations’. Clarissa Oon reminds us too that since the 1950s, plays had to be vetted by the police before they could be staged, one of the legacies of the past that remains with us today as Public Entertainment Licensing Unit licensing.[viii]

To conclude, I wonder if theatre has been neglected as a medium for propagating local history. Birch wrote in 1987 that the memory of the hardship and chaos of decolonization, including the fight against communism ‘is not a part of the active identity of being a Singaporean for the younger generation.’[ix] Two decades later in 2007, the themes he spoke of are not even part of my generation’s memory; hence the dramatic representation of the past represents a possible channel of bringing the echoes of a historical experience to the public, if properly done.

History presented on a stage may be one alternative to solve the problem of its unpopularity with the public in its ‘alienating’ forms – humourless turgid academic treatises heavy with multi-multi-syllabic pontifications and monotonous unexciting documentaries. Certainly, a theatrical medium lends methodological problems for History’s epistemological bases but if it succeeds in stimulating an audience’s interest in the historical issues involved and presenting an engaging enactment of the zeitgeist of the past, then the option is not without merit.

The author has recently graduated with honours from the Department of History in NUS, and dabbles in occasional playwriting.

[ii] Ibid., p. 32.

[iii] Ibid., p. 29.

[iv] Clarissa Oon, Theatre life! : a history of English-language theatre in Singapore through the Straits times (1958-2000) (Singapore : Singapore Press Holdings, 2001), p. 23.

[v] Ibid., p. 30.

[vi] Lim Chor Pee, “Is Drama Non-existent in Singapore?”, Tumasek No. 1 Jan 1964, pp. 42-43.

[vii] David Birch, “The life and times of Singapore English drama: searching for a voice, 1965-1969”, Performing Arts, 4(1987), p. 48.

[viii] Oon, Theatre life!, p. 22.

[ix] Birch, “The life and times of Singapore English drama: searching for a voice, 1965-1969”, p. 50.

Tags: singapore English-language theatre, singapore history

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