Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singapore

Drama Box and the Social Theatre of Singapore
Author: How Wee Ng
Publisher: Pagesetters
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2024-03-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9811888108

This pioneering study provides an essential guide to the formative years of Drama Box, a leading Chinese-language theatre company in Singapore. How Wee Ng presents a compelling narrative of how Drama Box has emerged as a prominent force in the field of theatre for social intervention, effectively amplifying the voices of marginalised communities and establishing itself as a foremost advocate of cutting-edge, socially oriented artistic practice. Ng’s in-depth analysis of Drama Box’s most influential works during this pivotal period, and his meticulous examination of the social, political, and economic contexts of their productions, illuminate the remarkable balance the company has achieved in its engagement with government policy, censorship, and financial imperatives, while fiercely defending its artistic autonomy. As well as unveiling the remarkable history of Drama Box, the book offers readers a unique lens through which to understand the complex relationship between the arts and state authority, and the broader socio-cultural and political landscape of contemporary Singapore.

Drama Box

Drama Box
Author: Sy Ren Quah
Publisher:
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2021
Genre: Performing arts
ISBN: 9789811819179

Drama Box 30 Keywords

Drama Box 30 Keywords
Author: Quah Sy Ren
Publisher: Drama Box & Pagesetters
Total Pages: 697
Release: 2022
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9811819181

A comprehensive, multi-layered examination and discussion of Drama Box’s 30-year history, based on 30 key words. These allow you to connect and refer to the characteristics and social thought of the times on a broader level. The book offers exclusive insight into Drama Box as an independent theatre company, and incisive appreciation of Singapore’s theatre and social landscape.

From Identity to Mondialisation

From Identity to Mondialisation
Author: Boon Pin Koh
Publisher: Editions Didier Millet
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2013
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9814260908

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. From Identity to Mondialisation: 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.

Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore

Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore
Author: William Peterson
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2001-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780819564726

Explores the vibrant relationships between theatre, cultural politics and social attitudes in a country whose history has many lessons for Western scholars.

The Theatre and the State in Singapore

The Theatre and the State in Singapore
Author: Terence Chong
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2012-07-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136869476

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.

Asian City Crossings

Asian City Crossings
Author: Rossella Ferrari
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-05-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 100038120X

Asian City Crossings is the first volume to examine the relationship between the city and performance from an Asian perspective. This collection introduces "city as method" as a new conceptual framework for the investigation of practices of city-based performing arts collaboration and city-to-city performance networks across East- and Southeast Asia and beyond. The shared and yet divergent histories of the global cities of Hong Kong and Singapore as postcolonial, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual sites, are taken as points of departure to demonstrate how "city as method" facilitates a comparative analytical space that foregrounds in-betweenness and fluid positionalities. It situates inter-Asian relationality and inter-city referencing as centrally significant dynamics in the exploration of the material and ideological conditions of contemporary performance and performance exchange in Asia. This study captures creative dialogue that travels city-based pathways along the Hong Kong-Singapore route, as well as between Hong Kong and Singapore and other cities, through scholarly analyses and practitioner reflections drawn from the fields of theatre, performance, and music. This book combines essays by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, ethnomusicology, and human geography with reflective accounts by Hong Kong and Singapore-based performing arts practitioners to highlight the diversity, vibrancy, and complexity of creative projects that destabilise notions of identity, belonging, and nationhood through strategies of collaborative conviviality and transnational mobility across multi-sited networks of cities in Asia. In doing so, this volume fills a considerable gap in global scholarly discourse on performance and the city and on the production and circulation of the performing arts in Asia.

Ask Not

Ask Not
Author: Chong Kee Tan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 390
Release: 2004
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9789812328045

This volume of commentaries and critical essays, contributed by renowned theatre practitioners and critics, tracks the achievements of social theatre in Singapore through a detailed study of The Necessary Stage, a non-profit theatre company. Dealing with topics like censorship, cultural bureaucracy, and evolving arts policies, the contributors propose alternatives to the prevailing official discourse, and call for a re-thinking of art and culture as an enterprise that encompasses both social conscience and profitability.

Student Plays

Student Plays
Author: Desmond Sim
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: Peranakan (Asian people)
ISBN: 9789810756918

Hokkien Theatre Across The Seas

Hokkien Theatre Across The Seas
Author: Caroline Chia
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2018-11-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811318344

This book adopts a refreshing approach by examining Hokkien theatre in a region connected by maritime networks, notably southern Fujian, Taiwan, Kinmen and Singapore. It considers how regional theatre is shaped by broader socio-cultural and political contexts and the motivation to stay relevant in an era of modernisation and secularisation. Political domains are often marked out by land boundaries, but the sea concept denotes fluidity, allowing theatrical forms to spread across these ‘land-bounded’ societies and share a common language and culture. "This is an insightful theatrical study on the web of Chinese cultural networks in southern China and Singapore, and by extension, between China and Southeast Asia in the twentieth century and beyond. Using diverse sources in multiple languages and extensive field ethnography, this is a ground-breaking study which is both didactic and inspiring." - Lee Tong Soon, author of Chinese Street Opera in Singapore (University of Illinois, 2009). "Focusing on Hokkien theatre, this book offers new insights into how Chinese performing art responds to geographical, temporal, and social changes. Historical sources in different languages are widely used to give access to the cultural characteristics of Hokkien theatre, offering valuable ethnographic reports on the contemporary practices of Hokkien theatre in Taiwan, Kinmen, and Singapore. The book comments on the changing ritualistic significance of Hokkien theatre, and help us understand how societies remember the past of a performing tradition, and shape its present." - Luo Ai Mei, Co-Editor of A Preliminary Survey of the Cantonese Eight Song Cycles in South China: History and Sources (2016)