SRT’s Stage Two: Boosting homegrown talent & Dick Lee’s ‘Rising Son’
PUBLISHED March 12th, 2014 12:54 am | UPDATED January 20th, 2016 03:10 pm
Two years ago, Singapore Repertory Theatre created a playwright incubator programme to help writers with their scripts. They flew in Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) to spend some time mentoring eight playwrights whose work had been shortlisted. The SRT then worked with them for eight months to help shepherd their re-writes in a safe and conducive environment, which resulted in a staged reading attended by 200 members of the public for two of the plays.
The services of a dramaturge from the National Theatre in the UK, Jack Bradley, was engaged, to work with these two playwrights, Dora Tan and Michelle Tan, over the past year. The result was Dora Tan’s ‘A Wedding, A Funeral & Lucky, The Fish’ a comedy piece about a wedding between a Singaporean and her angmoh boyfriend and young playwright Michelle Tan’s ‘Stand Behind The Yellow Line — Garisan Kuning’, which was about a homeless lady who befriends a young girl as the former waits for her son’s release from jail.
Presented under the SRT’s Singapore-focused Stage Two wing, the double bill, which was held over 7th – 9th March, is what SRT’s artistic director Gaurav Kripalani deemed an ‘experiment’ by the company. ‘Normally in Singapore — and the SRT has been guilty of this too — theatre companies slate new work into their seasons and there’s an obligation to stage it. We commission playwrights, they write a play, we go into workshops, go into rehearsals, and then stage it. There’s no development time at all,’ admitted Kripalani. ‘For us, it has produced work that’s not reached its full potential. So to me, it was very important that we try to fix this. We won’t put something into our season until we’ve spent enough time developing it.’
There is a general consensus in the local arts scene that there is a need to develop local playwrights and more homegrown content. The SRT’s Stage Two has long been developing homegrown content, but only on an ad hoc basis. This new series hopefully makes things more stringent; thanks to the playwright incubator programme it introduced a couple of years ago. Gaurav Kripalani, SRT’s Artistic Director, is keeping the ‘fate’ of the six remaining plays from the workshop open-ended. ‘We’re exploring what to do next and we’re happy to carry on with them and provide resources to continue to develop them. We’re also in the process of looking for another group of playwrightsl.’
If you missed the Made In Singapore Double Bill, do not despair, you can catch the next play in the series – Dick Lee’s ‘Rising Son’, which was inspired by his father’s stories about growing up during World War II, in particular, one about a Japanese soldier who lived next door. Dick Lee, SRT’s Associate Artistic Director, has been working on three new plays for SRT, which will be staged over the next three years. It is his first attempt at playwriting. The SRT engaged the help of a dramaturge and director to workshop and develop the script with Dick. ‘Rising Son’ is the first play in his family trilogy, which was inspired by his family’s stories.
‘Rising Son’ is set against the backdrop of the Japanese Occupation. It aims to offer the younger generation an insight into everyday life as well as provide the older generation a different perspective of that period between 1941 and 1945. ‘Rising Son is the first part of my Family Trilogy which is about three coming-of-age episodes inspired by the lives of my father, mother and my own teenage experiences,’ says Lee. ‘Besides featuring periods of Singapore’s history, they are personal journeys I’m excited to share.’
Catch Rising Son, the third play in the Made In Singapore Series from 27 March to 12 April 2014. For more information, please visit www.sistic.com.sg and www.srt.com.sg
