Singapore Theatre A Historical Perspective

Singapore Theatre

If you visit a certain pre-war clubhouse at No 41 Malcolm Road in Singapore , the many photos, plaques and posters will be testimony to the fact that plays like Pygmalion or Blithe Spirit were performed locally as early as 1945. Those were the beginnings of English language Theatre in Singapore today.

From those colonial connections, through the independence era and into the 1970s, English Language Theatre began to be spearheaded by Singaporeans with raw passion. During those years, a Drama Festival was an annual event in September or October - where companies like The Experimental Theatre Club would stage for example, Paul Zindel's "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds"

In the late 1970s or early 1980s, one might have been able to catch a production of "She Stoops to Conquer" by the Stage Club or "Susan's Party" (an adaptation of Abigail's Party) also by the Experimental Theatre Club.
In the 70s, 3 friends, Jasmin, Chandran and Ruby - who, from a love for children's theatre and story telling got together to call themselves Act 3, and became familiar faces on stage and television.

In 1985, local theatre director, teacher and visionary - Kuo Pao Kun who had established himself within Chinese Theatre scene twenty years earlier, burst upon the English Language theatre scene with "The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole" originally written in Mandarin. Subsequent productions in other languages like Cantonese and Malay took place and established Coffin as a classic. Together with "Emily of Emerald Hill" by Stella Kon, which was first performed, also in 1985, with Margaret Chan as Emily and Max le Blond as director, it secured the reputation of the monologue as a singularly rich performance vehicle; more monologues were to follow in the Singapore theatre. "Emily of Emerald Hill"was recently performed by Ivan Heng at the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne in November 2002. Sadly, Mr Kuo's passing in September 2002 was a big blow to many arts practioners whose lives he had impacted in the last 30 years.