Haresh Sharma’s Off Centre Directed by Oliver Chong

PUBLISHED April 6th, 2015 05:31 am | UPDATED June 16th, 2020 07:29 pm

“It’s in our blood… fighting to be the best, materialism… it’s genetic… we all have a chemical imbalance.”

Written by Haresh Sharma, Off Centre focuses on the relationship between two young people with mental illnesses, both of whom face stigma from people in their lives while trying to reintegrate into society.

Featuring a strong ensemble including Neo Swee Lin and Siti Khalijah, Oliver Chong helms this production to tell a resonating and personal story of friendship, societal and familial pressures in a Singaporean context.

Off Centre is The Necessary Stage’s landmark play. First staged to critical acclaim in 1993, it is best remembered for bringing mental illness and the plight of these patients to public and media attention. It has since been adapted into an experimental feature film, a television movie, given a full reading in the UK, studied as an academic text-at tertiary level and as part of the Ministry of Education’s GCE ‘O’ and ‘N’ level literature syllabus-as well as translated and staged as Otak Tak Centre in Kuala Lumpur.

Written by Haresh Sharma

Directed by Oliver Chong

Performed by Joshua Lim, Myra Loke, Neo Hai Bin, Neo Swee Lin, Erwin Shah Ismail, Ebi Shankara, Ellison Tan & Siti Khalijah Zainal

Haresh Sharma’s Off Centre is taking place from Thursday, 23 April to Sunday, 26 April at the Esplanade Theatre Studio.

To purchase tickets, please click [here](http://www.sistic.com.sg/events/off0415).