‘Undercover’ is a farce about ambition and ego. It highlights one very basic human flaw – the inability to trust other people, and the need to exert one’s power over another.

‘Incarnation of the Beast’ is a visceral confrontation of one’s most intimate demons, exploring the themes of obsession, ritual and tragedy, emoting sympathy with pleasure, discomfort with inexplicable excitement.

‘Half Lives’ is a series of vivid snapshots of a Singaporean woman, an Asian-American man, and their son.

The Lab Report series introduces plays in progress written by participants in the Writers’ Laboratory workshops.

At these readings, the works are read by experienced actors, and through these readings, the playwrights receive feedback from the audience, actors, and director.

Lab Report 5 – free nightly readings at the Black Box.

The individual voices of writers splinter into conflicting characters in new plays-in-progress by the Writers’ Lab.

The writers in TheatreWorks’ Writers’ Lab will be presenting two programmes comprising monologues and other works-in-progress.

Come on a River Odyssey and peg out a play in 24 short hours!

Come camp out at Fort Canning Centre and peg out a new play in 24 short hours!

‘Undercover’ is a farce about ambition and ego. It highlights one very basic human flaw – the inability to trust other people, and the need to exert one’s power over another.

Virgins. Cherished when they’re 16, discarded when they’re 40. Society plays up our worst fantasies and prejudice. How do women handle this outrage, salvage their self-image, or wallop their oppressors?

‘The Gift’ is developed out of the writer’s question – ‘how do we find new ways of engaging with our age-group target when we are making theatre for them; ways which invite the children’s own voices into the early creative process of developing a story?’

Theatre of the people
Hanuman, monkey, leaps into flight

Established in 1994 by Ong Keng Sen, Artistic Director of TheatreWorks, the Flying Circus Project (FCP) is a major programme exploring Asian expression in the 21st century.

Four spirits in a ruined fort on an island spend fifty years in forgetfulness.

A ‘picture-theatre-project’ based on the poems and the biography of Max Jacob, a French poet and painter, friend of Picasso, Jew, homosexual, astronomer, and victim of the National Socialism.

Molissa Fenley is a startlingly original choreographer and performer whose works combine an eclectic background with astonishing physical energies to create a uniquely personal dance style.

Mild-mannered schoolteacher Miss Vanda meets Chinese-educated engineer Victor at a Friendship Development Unit (FDU) party. Before their romance can blossom, she is cruelly struck by a TV set hurled out of a HDB flat in Toa Payoh.

From SPH Young Playwrights Series 2.

A picture of life in prison with the woman who enslaved China in order to liberate herself. Through the medium of a one-woman show, it is a portrait of a human being, of facts combined with imagination.

Based on Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, ‘Lear’ is about a young woman who plots to steal the throne and the kingdom from her father.

Lao Jiu, the ninth child and only son of the family, is of outstanding intelligence and carries the hopes of his parents and siblings. Alas, to his family’s disappointment, he abandons his scholastic pursuits for his love of the traditional art form of hand puppetry.

Singaporean girl Shu Yi meets Englishman Jason in Thailand.

All fetuses begin as female. Children are intuitive moralists.

‘Desdemona’ is a dreamscape of discovering the She within the He, of discovering the other within the self, of discovering another culture within one’s culture.

A laboratory, exhibition, performance, presentation and launch of ideas on new approaches to performance research and development.

Set in Singapore in the mid-sixties, ‘Beauty World’ is a musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city.

The film is based on Michael Chiang’s book and stage play ‘Army Daze’ about the misadventures of five young men going through their Basic Military Training.

A heave, a tumble, a fond goodbye, and our assorted heroes are off on their first three-tonner ride down the bumpy pat of recruit life.

A new programme of residences for individual Singaporean artists who are initiating international processes.

If you have a passion to write plays, create dramatic scripts and characters, here is a chance to unleash your talents!

Virgins. Cherished when they’re 16, discarded when they’re 40. Society plays up our worst fantasies and prejudice. How do women handle this outrage, salvage their self-image, or wallop their oppressors?

TheatreWorks Writers’ Lab presents N.O.W., a three-week public project. From 2019-2021, Noorlinah Mohd, established actress and arts educator, is appointed N.O.W.’s Artistic Director. 

A hundred days after her husband’s death, things come to a head, with the devout woman’s two sons at each other’s throats over what it means to honour their father’s memory.

Jacob Teo and Joseph Teo, identical twins but born minutes apart. What happens when one child goes missing?

The play is a patchwork of twenty short scenes revolving around an unuttered question – what are human relationships made of?

‘Fever Room’ presents a theatrical experience that takes us far beyond the frontiers of cinema, and plunges us deep into the filmmaker’s dream-like universe.

Life is almost perfect for William and Samantha as they live together in unmarried bliss until things unsaid and things agreed unravel their agreement.

‘Mixed’ scrutinises a racial divide that is supposedly cracked, bringing to light the fragments that still have the power to cut.

Is the absence of a leader possible in making a performance? Will you join us in this journey of discovery with Kai, Faye and Felicia as they venture into the undiscovered and the unchartered?

‘Off Kilter’ is a darkly comedic visual theatre production that explores mental wellbeing, identity, and feeling a little bit different from everyone else – not quite being yourself.

Tackling perceptions that ‘young people do not go through stress’ and misconceptions that ‘people who go for counseling are crazy’, ‘Grey Matters’ aims to better prepare and equip students with the ability to cope through periods of increased stress.

A father struggles with his autistic child and people’s ignorance.

Based on one of nature’s deadlist disasters that killed over 30,000 people, this piece explores the lives of the people most affected – those who lived at the heart of the disaster.

Come witness Faye and Kai becoming premier self-referential dancer-discussers as they reveal their creative process and blur the line between studio and stage, rehearsal and performance, and process and result.

‘She Ain’t Heavy’ follows Faye and Kai as they act on their combined curiosities, unfulfilled desires and discontent arising from their practice of Contact Improvisation (CI).

In a colourful display of their distinct personas, each performer takes the stage to express themselves individually. ‘GALA’ creates a space where ability is dictated not by one’s limitations, but by being the best that one can be. It is a testament to the beauty of the individual.

Born to an English father and a Malay mother, Leila ‘Anjung’ Keats is an unprecedented figure in local history and considered to be one of the pioneers of Malaya.

Using the architecture of Space 3 at 72-13 as a playground, the piece fits itself into a sequence that has its own internal logic and rhythm, revolving around the assembly and disassembly of images across space and time.

This new format comprises a series of three dance classes that ‘audiences’ must participate in. Curious? For $30, you can register for three dance classes which will teach you basic Lindy Hop steps while exposing you to the background of Lindy Hop and topics such as the performance of gender, race and sexuality in social dance and everyday life.

‘Marco Polo’ is about two blind friends who are reacquainted after death. They quickly discover that they are both still blind and proceed to attempt to figure out if they ended up in Heaven or Hell.

Through classical and contemporary dance styled in the format of a high-energy competition and reality TV show, ‘Nay Nai’ sets out to investigate how people today strive to reach the apex of power and influence.

100 ensemble members of LIFT invite you to an evening of fun, laughter, games, music, and storytelling, where happiness is the centre of our conversations.

An interactive experience about the community, by the community, for the community. A board game in which breaking the rules might be the best way to play.

‘Love Love Remote Control’ is a multidisciplinary work which speaks about human evolution with regards to society’s eating habits.

What would you find by looking through a prism of life? Would there be answers to the perennial questions of love, hope, and ultimately, happiness?

Aside from the alphabetical coincidence, all the stories reflect the impossibility of human relationships and the impossibility of dialogue. This performance will take the form of a narration.

For ‘Irregular Hexagon’, Arjona has chosen to present four works, three of which were done in 2008 when in residency at the Watermill Centre in New York, Robert Wilson’s laboratory for performance.

In the tradition of Duchamp’s ‘Bolte-en-valise’, ’Nowhere Man’ appears to be a small office tucked behind a room divider with a desk with its drawers open, a chair, a bed, a box, and a bag – most of the elements that Mateo created for installation travel, inside the suitcase which is shown alongside them.

‘National Broadway Company’ reflects on the search for Singapore identity that was prevalent in the first musicals and gives us a glimpse into the future.

In a present time where giants fall and lines of power are redrawn, ‘Lear Dreaming’ reimagines this tragedy on patriarchy and succession through the pristine philosophy of Japanese Noh theatre.

Inspired by John Cage’s ‘Lecture On Nothing’, this performance is a recitation and physical improvisation of Cage’s text, guided by his principles of composition and writing.

‘The Diary Of Alice’ is a playful artistic exploration of ‘Alice’ and the fascinating universe of identities – fact, fiction, or otherwise – that the name holds. ‘Alice’ becomes an open canvas for each guest to scribble their wildest imaginations, desires, memories, and aspirations of who ‘Alice’ can be.

Fusing dioramas, dramaturgy, and installation art, the performance unfolds over decades within a flat.

The Writers’ Lab aims to provide a hotbed for new Singapore plays and cultivate both emerging and established writers.

This one-woman play stirs the voice of Safiah to life like a perfect dish of serunding.

Conceived and curated by TheatreWorks’ Ong Keng Sen, the worlds of entertainment will be evoked though a revue of circus, dance, drama and art! A setting of shining colours, unique patterns and enchanting music is set to delight Night Festival goers. The heart of the night life, ‘Putho!’, a novel circus show created by Cambodian artists, will

An ‘exhibition’ project with no photographs, no sculptures, no installations, no videos – zero things, not one stable object, but artists and areas occupied by gestures, projects, bodies, stories, and dances, which everyone will choose to imagine.

‘RPM’ is a dramatic musing on collision – what happens when lives, bodies, and memories plow into one another?

Welcome to an academic lecture about goldfish, with total disregard to the narrow-minded formalities that hinder today’s intellectuals in bringing the fruits of their truly expanding and illuminating work to the wider public.

Four writers – a dissident, a poet, a journalist and a government hack – are under house arrest, ordered to write the living biography of the First Emperor of China.

Perhaps most provoking is the love-hate relationship between Singapore and the shrine.

Combining dance, movements, images, and the human body for a full sensory experience, ‘Dance Dance Dance’ promises to excite you with its provocative charm.

An interdisciplinary collaboration that crosses time and space, reappraising the Bard and Ming Dynasty’s Tang Xian Zu, two masterful playwrights who lived in two different cultures at the same time, who died in the same year (1616), but who were unaware of each other’s existence.

INTERFERENCE explores the concept of listening to the noise of history – moments that are insignificant in our collective memory.

IMPETUS explores how insignificant events in our history are being recorded, forgotten and fabricated.

‘Drift Net’ taps into a man’s journey as he ventures into his second life on the internet, drifting between desires and dreams.

A weekend of video, electronic music, and performances by French and Vietnamese artists, specially curated by Wonderful District of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).

What are our relations to the rest of the world? Are we strangers or are we family?

This collaboration between Benoit LaChambre and Ong Keng Sen challenges the parameters of contemporary dance by working with narrative, the grand epic, a personal response to parallel dream universes, the identities of a revered Asian text, and the outsider.

Karen Kandel will weave together stories from geishas, maikos, clients, their wives, okamisans, offspring of geishas, and anthropologists. Joining her onstage will be female impersonator and kabuki dancer Gojo Masanosuke who will dance the female onnagata role, drawing from the age-old repertory of kabuki and nihon buyoh, for the geisha is the tragic heroine of many a kabuki play.

A sweeping, panoramic docu-performance that explores the diasporic phenomenon of the human spirit in time and space, celebrating humanity and human tenacity.



This first-time collaboration between Benoit LaChambre and Ong Keng Sen challenges the parameters of contemporary dance by working with narrative, the grand epic, a personal response to parallel dream universes, the identities of a revered Asian text, and the outsider.

The focus for the fifth FCP includes literary arts, philosophy and visual art. Over 50 participants, mostly artists, thinkers and cultural workers, will gather in Singapore for two weeks to meet and dialogue.

60’s Talentime meets Pop Idol! Catch the new TheatreWorks production that celebrates the dreams, naivety, passion, and youthful energy of four dreamers from different backgrounds in their quest for fame and stardom!

A powerful cross-cultural multimedia collaboration involving artists from Australia, Japan and Singapore, ‘Sandakan Threnody’ takes its inspiration from the tragic events surrounding the death marches from Sandakan POW camp in Northeast Borneo in 1945.

Ma: Moment is presented in an architectural pavilion of reimagined old shophouses and cinema screens, built on the site of Chinatown’s infamous Death Houses.

A non-stop 48-hour event of performance, clubbing, music, happenings, videos, installations, ateliers, workshops and social interactions.

Combine the excitement of writing a new script in 24 hours with the thrill of watching thoroughbreds race and horse owners cheer at the Singapore Racecourse.

The CAP is a one-year project of TheatreWorks that focuses on people-to-people collaboration.

‘Pulse’ is an eight-minute joyride of light, sound and video that will get your pulse racing. Set in a black box with a visual island, get ready to trip it out with us.

‘Lim Tzay Chuen’ is the graduation project of the pioneer class of the Theatre Training and Research programme, a 3-year, full-time, professional actor training programme which immerses students in four Asian classic theatre systems while also using modern actor training techniques from the West.

‘Bima Labuh’ focuses on the dignity of the Pendawas, and provides an opportunity for the puppet master (dalang) to present a discussion on philosophical and moral concepts through the varied and rich voices of the characters.

Alongside the conservative concepts of national, ethnic, or religious identity, new stories are emerging – the counter-myths, which are based on the lives of people, their specific experiences, with respect for their individual truths.

Hypnotically moody and sexy. A relationship between a man and a woman. One scene, one space, one story, and five different outcomes. ‘Balance’ is a treat to rebalance your senses.

A strange tale of two men, Rex and Heng, who turn up at the home of listless friends Lina and Kim one day.

A modern political fairy tale, Comrade Mayor is a humorous, tongue-in-cheek political satire. Once upon a time in an Asian city where people call each other comrades, there lives a powerful maverick Mayor who is hungry for foreign investments. To make that city comes an ambitious Singaporean ambassador, determined to make her government’s stalled industrial

‘The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields’ is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

30 plays will be performed over 30 nights at Theatreworks’ Black Box and around Fort Canning Park. The plays will be approached in various ways by a pool of Singaporean directors and actors, including much new blood.

A reinvention of an ancient Chinese myth that tells of the mortals and the gods who originally lived in eternal sunlight., ‘The Silver River’ is a juxtaposition of Chinese opera traditions with Western sensibilities through its score and libretto.

A racy, sexy drama where office politics and the virtual world collide.

The play: A woman dances and waits for her man. The movie: Born the daughter of a Parsee actor, Meena Kumari arrived on the Indian film scene just as the glamorous style of the 40’s was being supplanted by the histrionic style of the 50’s.

A familiar tale about a half-remembered touch, a kiss, a look, a love which has spanned generations amidst family feuds, lies, betrayal and murder.

Set in Singapore in the mid-sixties, Beauty World is a musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city. A mysterious jade pendant brings an innocent young girl to a colourful cabaret in Singapore, where she hopes to locate her long-lost father. Along the way, she meets up with her

A light-hearted play about the sometimes sticky relationship between love, trust, and bodily fluids.

‘Half Lives’ is a series of vivid snapshots of a Singaporean woman, an Asian-American man, and their son.

Two women. One discovering her womanhood, the other losing hers. Be witness to an often zany, sometimes fearful, and always surprising journey of self-discovery.

Watch his class of cross-generation, cross-cultural students as they prepare for a competition, all hoping that it will somehow change their lives.

This saga of family, traditions and change will unfold through the struggles of an immigrant Chinese family – a widow, her six sons, her daughter, and their families.

The evening will comprise seven segments – ‘Batokin’, ‘Jomon’, ‘Whisper’, ‘Psychic Wind’, ‘Wind Rolling’, ‘Time Traveller’, and ‘Over The Rainbow’.

The Writers’ Lab programme is a unique self-help programme developed and organised by TheatreWorks in order to provide aspiring playwrights with the opportunity to hone their skills.

What do you see yourself doing in the year 2000? Running a theatre in a cyberclub, collaborating with Malcolm McLaren, having a personal revolution of retiring?

Parallels are drawn between the power struggles of court eunuchs in 15th-century China and modern-day office workers, with the metaphor of castration used to show how much they have sacrificed in order to climb up the corporate ladder.

The bonds of family reel us in, wrap us up in knots, and sometimes repel us. They push us in directions that we cannot always control – a story that exists within all families.

This classic crime of passion examines the thoughts and feelings of a woman taken over the edge by her own physical and emotional desires.

Parallels are drawn between the power struggles of court eunuchs in 15th-century China and modern-day office workers, with the metaphor of castration used to show how much they have sacrificed in order to climb up the corporate ladder.

A long time ago, a group of women embarked on a journey to a new land on a selfless quest for a better life, for themselves and their families.

An intimate and endearing one-woman play that will make you laugh, cry, and wonder!

For the first time, the racial chaos that shook Singapore in the 1950’s will be put directly and dramatically on stage.

longing is like opium, living on the verge
longing is much more beautiful than reality

Imagine a poor village in the east that has no electricity and no clean water.

Humour stripped of cheap circus tricks, a set reduced to its bare essentials, subtlety and excess all at once, this is clown acting of a new kind… delicious and stunningly fresh.

A Triple Bill of performances written by Michael Chiang.

Audience participation is a feature of the Directors’ Laboratory – the audience is encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions on the staging of the play.

Five Singaporeans tell stories about themselves and their families.

ROMANCE. A word that conjures words of meaning. A word of sublime significance, indicating ideas of release and capture.

Violence – in order to understand and to overcome violence in our lives… we must first be aware of it.

Four people build a SCARECROW to protect themselves from DANGER. But the SCARECROW becomes very powerful and turns against the very people who created it.

Sammy won’t go to school. Jimmy, his doting father, tells him that school’s a wonderful place to be.

Lao Jiu, the ninth child and only son of the family, is of outstanding intelligence and carries the hopes of his parents and siblings. Alas, to his family’s disappointment, he abandons his scholastic pursuits for his love of the traditional art form of hand puppetry.

‘Private Parts’ centres on a successful yuppie talk-show host, Warren Lee, and the private lives of two transsexuals.

Ten family members hit the long road to Manila in high spirits. They’re heading south for their father’s funeral.

Welcome to our compendium of theatre games – your evening of entertainment, fun and laughter set in the Black Box.

The play opens at dawn after the sacking of Troy by the Greeks in the famous Wooden Horse episode. The Trojan women are gathered together in grief and fear. 

A picture of life in prison with the woman who enslaved China in order to liberate herself. Through the medium of a one-woman show, it is a portrait of a human being, of facts combined with imagination.

New beginnings are thwarted, fear and weakness prevail, and the real truths of the December revolution are discovered.

The owner of a famous fried rice chain hopes to retire, but her two daughters are sworn enemies and refuse to run the business together. A contest is set up to determine the successor of Fried Rice Paradise.

A play based on the relationship between French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a Peking opera singer.

Three women in an old folks’ home cope with their bleak reality in their own ways. This equilibrium is maintained until the illusion begins to overtake truth.

Mild-mannered schoolteacher Miss Vanda meets Chinese-educated engineer Victor at a Friendship Development Unit (FDU) party. Before their romance can blossom, she is cruelly struck by a TV set hurled out of a HDB flat in Toa Payoh.

The Swedish classic by August Strindberg written a hundred years ago is about the midsummer’s night seduction of a young noblewoman by her suave valet.

Adapted from the famous novella by Franz Kafka, where salesman Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect.

‘Three Children’ is about three grown-up siblings – two sisters and a brother – returning to their childhood home on Kappan Road in Malacca.

Edith Piaf’s funeral was as crazy and theatrical as her life. This is her unique story.

In ‘Kantan’, Jiro, a spoiled young man, returns to his hometown in search of his old nanny and the pleasures of a magic pillow she is reputed to own. In ‘Hanjo’, Hanako, a young geisha, waits in exquisite sorrow and longing for Yoshio, her lover.

Recognised as a classic, ‘The Maids’, on the surface, is a tale of how two maids plot to kill their beautiful but insensitive mistress. ‘Diary Of A Madman’ tells of how a downtrodden minor civil servant, Poprishchin, is trapped by his position on the social scale.

Pressure mounts as the sales force in a small property firm realises that deals are hard to close during an economic recession. The salesman’s maxim, always be closing, becomes more urgent than ever.

A woman has been raped, but the story of the crime when retold again and again is different each time.

GTG… PTD will be here for you throughout the entire night, and all you have to do is come play with us.

This theatre carnival is a ‘people festival’ based on the carnival concept, designed for a fresh audience, who will be introduced to youthful, exuberant theatre and new ways of enjoying themselves.

A wicked piece of science fiction set in an uneventful Lion City where nothing extraordinary is ever said to happen.

A musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city of Singapore in the mid-sixties.

Diverse Malaysian artists – choreographers, dancers, actors, singers, video artists, visual artists, installation artists, performance artists – from Five Arts Centre collaborate with Theatreworks in this explosion of established definitions of dance and visual arts.

A historical piece of two railroad workers in the Sierra Nevada mountains, based on the Chinese Railroad Workers’ Strike of 1867.

‘Avenue Of Dream’ is a one-act play on the squalid lives of a pregnant prostitute and her apathetic daughter in New York City. ‘Second Chance’ is a play which addresses the sensitive issue of maintaining self-worth in old age.

An accurate historical record of what once happened to a village about 200 km southwest of Beijing, ‘Fanshen’ is the story of how the peasants of Long Bow built a new world.

Working half way between concert and play, music and theatre, sound and meaning, Manuela Infante, Diego Noguera and Marcela Salinas explore electronic live processing and layering of voices to produce theatrical soundscapes and dispersed narratives about voices.

A 17-metre long ship traverses the hall, suspended. As if emerging from the ocean floor, it unloads hundreds of books sealed in beeswax. This is the imagined vessel steered by Dapunta Hyang Sri Jayanasa, the first Malay king of the 7th century Srivijayan Empire.

‘Because, The Night’ is a non-profit, second-hand bookshop that inhabits 72-13 for six nights, open between 10pm – 4pm; a space built for people who can’t sleep at night, a temporary home for insomniacs.

‘RE/PLAY Dance Edit’ explores the intent and meaning of re-production through bodily repetition of physical movements. The very foundation and meaning of dance is examined, performance as a format is subverted, and a fresh perspective on dance and performance emerges.

‘Incarnation of the Beast’ is a visceral confrontation of one’s most intimate demons, exploring the themes of obsession, ritual and tragedy, emoting sympathy with pleasure, discomfort with inexplicable excitement.

‘Retrospective’ is conceived as an exhibition – a choreography of intimate movements and conversations, where visitors and performers experience how we use, consume and produce time.

The 8th edition of ‘The Flying Circus Project’ focuses on Myanmar artists and contemporary expressions including performance and films, reflecting on the themes of memory, trauma and transition.

Excavated from over 40 hours of oral history interviews from the National Archives juxtaposed with seminal texts and plays of Kuo, ‘Goh Lay Kuan & Kuo Pao Kun’ presents an intimate portrait of this pioneering arts couple of Singapore.

‘Fear Of Writing’ portrays a playwright’s creative handicap – the writer’s block – under intense anxiety and scrutiny, uncovering the existentialism of self-censorship and freedoms in Singapore.

Evolution is at the heart of TheatreWorks, one of Singapore’s longest running theatre companies. For its landmark 25th year, it celebrates the ties that have shaped its journey so far in the ‘Friends’ Season – Tenderness For The Future’.

‘Diaspora’ is a sweeping, panoramic performance exploring memory, migration, assimilation and the triumph of the human spirit, an intricate layering of music, video, and live story-telling.

Inspired by the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire”, ‘Vivien & The Shadows’ is a soul-stimulating post-modern spectacle that melds film/performance, race, gender and sexuality.

In a museum, time is confused. What looks old may be a reproduction, what looks new is actually a stained glass window from 1887. ‘120’ will attempt to recast the National Museum of Singapore as a host of luminescent voices.

New York-based performer Karen Kandel weaves together stories from geishas, maikos (apprentice geishas), clients, their wives, okamisans (mama-sans), offspring of geishas and anthropologists, giving life to the secret world of the geisha.

‘like the cat…’ challenges the parameters of contemporary dance by working with narrative, the grand epic and a personal response of parallel dream universes, the identities of a revered Asian text and the outsider.

For the 2005 Singapore Season, acclaimed artist Ong Keng Sen presents an up-to-the-minute survey of South East Asian contemporary arts at the ICA London.

‘Sandakan Threnody’ tackles one of the most complex and difficult issues of our time: how to think about war and the crimes committed in its name. It uncovers the very different but nonetheless shared wartime experiences of Australia, Japan and Singapore.

Inspired by Gautama Buddha and the musings of travel writer Pico Iyer, ‘The Global Soul’ is a poignant tale of contemporary travellers in urban landscapes pursuing connection and contact.

In ‘Search: Hamlet,’ Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen gathers twenty European and Asian artists in his search for a new Hamlet character belonging to a modern Asian-European culture.

‘The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields’ is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

‘The Continuum: Beyond The Killing Fields’ is based on the real life story of seventy-five year old Em Theay, master dancer of royal classical dance in Cambodia, who survived the scourge of the Khmer Rouge.

Contemporary Asia is the focus of the 2000 edition of the ‘Flying Circus Project’, with the proposition that religious rituals and traditional arts are contemporaneous within their contexts. This contextualisation balances the continued exoticisation of Asia.

‘Desdemona’ is a dreamscape of discovering the She within the He, of discovering the other within the self, of discovering another culture within one’s culture.

A major accident, involving actors from a play entitled “PIE”, occurs on the PIE on National Day. Coincidence or conspiracy?

‘Descendants Of The Eunuch Admiral’ weaves a powerful tale of castration and politics as it tells of ancient Chinese court practices and the legendary eunuch, Admiral Cheng Ho, who was responsible for China’s most extensive maritime expeditions in the 15th century.

Based on Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy, ‘Lear’ is about a young woman who plots to steal the throne and the kingdom from her father.

The lives of yesterday’s Chinese rickshaw coolies and today’s construction workers from India is the central theme of TheatreWorks’ ‘Workhorse Afloat’.

Set in the Suntec City Fountain, ‘Destinies Of Flowers In The Mirror’ is inspired by the Ming Dynasty classic, “Jing Hua Yuan”, and the Holocaust.

‘Six Of The Best’ uncovers the explosive shifts in a group of expatriates and locals on the day of the Michael Fay sentencing in 1994.

In ‘Mortal Sins’, a strange twist of fate brings Jacqueline Atria, newly appointed president of the Singapore Censorship Council and the nation’s moral guardian, and Rosy, striptease queen and star attraction of the seedy Eden nightclub, together.

Using a multitude of art forms including traditional Hokkien glove puppetry, shadow puppetry, Chinese Opera and martial arts, ‘Lao Jiu’ brings to life the clash of East and West cultures, the merging of the old and the new and the breakdown of the family unit.

‘The Lady Of Soul And Her Ultimate ’S’ Machine’ is a political satire about a government which decides that a nation needs more ‘soul’ to make it a more vibrant place.

Three young people – two sisters and a brother – are troubled by fear and guilt, harking back to their past. They decide to return to their childhood home in Kappan Road to encounter the fount of their troubles.

An earthy, comic, vaudevillean play, ‘Ozone’ fuses the traditional street theatre of wayang clowns with modern, vogue designs and futuristic new-age music.

A festival of Singapore plays from the years 1960 to 1990, ‘Retrospective’ is held in recognition of the playwright’s role in the national dramatic fabric.

A double bill directed by Ong Keng Sen, featuring the plays ‘Jackson On A Jaunt’ by Eleanor Wong and ‘As If He Hears’ by Chay Yew.

Set in Singapore in the mid-60s, ‘Beauty World’ is a musical melodrama about the adventures of a small town girl in the big city.

A heave, a tumble, a fond goodbye and our assorted heroes in ‘Army Daze’ are off on their first three-tonner ride down the bumpy path of recruit life.

‘Not Afraid To Remember’ focuses on the internment of Singapore teacher Elizabeth Choy by the Japanese during the Occupation in the 1940s.

‘Be My Sushi Tonight’ is an adaptation of “Goose Pimples”, the English black comedy by Mike Leigh about the steamier side of human nature.