My Journey as an Artist

This is the first time I am doing such an account. I feel I should be writing this from my impulse and share most of my life as a person till this age of 34 years old which I hope will relate well to my artistic journey. Please pardon me if any content is deemed unnecessary. I will be writing in English as it is a faster language to type on computer. Thanks for reading.

The school of hard knocks - those odd jobs that could have shaped me to becoming a very curious artist:
10 years old - selling Dynamo washing machine detergent door to door in the neighbourhood. I observed how families differs one from another . 11 years old wrapping sweets into tourist souvenirs packets for Sentosa. I felt like a cheap child labour. 12 years old tending in an electronic shop in the back street of Desker Road, Singapores red light district for foreign workers. I know very well how prostitutes bargain for their service provided. Imagine seeing an 80yr old trying desperately to offer a higher price for an 18 year old Indian girl. 13 years old worked in Mac Donalds, managing the Big Mac hamburger station. I understood the money-making efficiency of Americans. 14 years old worked in Jurong fish factory, packing fish in ice for export sales. I will never forget the disgusting stench of rotten fish. 15 years old gave home tuition to primary school kids. Saw how a mother abused a Sri Lankan maid by shaving her hair bald because there were fleas. I tried to call the police and was fired from my job. But I was very happy. 16 years old worked for a market survey research company. I was paid commission per successful interviewee. I had to hunt down and interview consumers of different brands of cigarettes, diapers and baby cereals, what they like/dislike about the brand etc. Once, I must find someone who smokes a rare brand, 555 cigarettes, the oldest brand smoked by old people). I sat in a local neighbourhood coffee shop for a full week, 8 hours each day. I observed many grassroots men and women coming and going. This intense observation made me love watching people ever since. 17 years old institutionalized education bored me, I worked in a restaurant as waiter in the evening each day after school. I realize that I was quite rebellious and only like to be outside of my safety zone (school

and family) and to be in the real world. I am a young person wanting to be a grown-up adult as soon as possible, in order to shake myself out of the dependence on my mother, the sole breadwinner of the family. Although my interest in studies reduced greatly, I was very actively involved in all the drama performances, competitions and talent-time singing competitions. I skipped school frequently but would always show up for all drama rehearsals and win all performing competitions in school. The teachers were all very angry with me and I lied so many thousand times to stay safe in school, to make my mother happy. 18 years old finally quitted school 3 months before A Levels. The school principal wished me good luck and said, Among all beings, some would become doctors, some would become nurses, some must become road sweepers. My mother cried her heart out. I swore I would become good in something one day. 19 years old became a trainee bartender in Singapores hottest disco club. The nightlife turned my life topsy-turvy. Saw a confusion of sexuality - straight men and women, gay men and women, transsexuals and transvestites. Saw the spiritual hollowness of all too many. Imagine seeing a Singaporean Airline air stewardess change out of her uniform in the club into some slutty vamp and then drink and vomit her lungs out, so filthy drunk and making an embarrassing mess in public. A national icon is but a fake put-up image. 20 years old compulsory army enlistment. The end of freedom. The unwilling immersion in state authority and rigid discipline.

Amateur performing experience:

6 year old in kindergarten, played a bad pirate in a childrens play. Although I did not speak a word in my character, till today I still take pride in performing in the National Theatre of Singapore before it was forever torn down. 7,8,9 years old consecutive champion in primary schools Chinese storytelling competition 13,14,15,16 years old secondary schools Chinese Drama Club. Involved in acting and all areas of backstage work. Took part and won in many national crosstalk and drama competitions. 17,18 years old acted in school public performances, sang in talent-time contests, wrote my 1st play for school performance.

Trying a life as an artist

After army, I had only O Levels qualification, I cant do much highly-paid work. Since I will end up poor anyway, I wanted to do something which I am really good at. Enough of seeing life in those weird odd jobs, I told myself. I volunteered as backstage crew for one local theatre company. After a year, I was given a small role to perform on professional stage. After that, things snowballed. I was offered more chances to perform in many other plays. To sustain a living, I did school assembly shows: having to wake up early 6am to perform in front of 500 students was a good training in performance discipline and attitude. I was even offered to act for TV serials. Although tv work was good money, I hated the process of waiting passively and fame-bitching, just not me. I enjoyed more in all the public performances which I acted in. Since I had no formal acting training, I employed my GUT FEEL and raw energy. After 2 years, I realized I was mentally tired by re-using the same bag of tricks. I know I had better properly train myself to lengthen my lifespan as an artist.

Formal training as an artist

Enrolling in the Theatre Training And Research Programme (TTRP) spearheaded by Practice Performing Arts School, Singapore, under the direct tutelage of the late Mr Kuo Pao Kun was a big turning point in my artistic life. I began to harness to a great scale, my acute observation and openness to in-depth cultural exchange. Besides the formal training as an actor in the Western systems of Stanislavky and Brecht, the rare training and exposure in Asian traditional art forms (Japanese Noh, Beijing Opera, Indian Bharata Natyam and Javanese Wayang Wong) also equipped me with stronger performance techniques and analytical viewpoints which enhance my ability to work cross-culturally with local and international artists. All the master teachers of these classical art forms influenced me tremendously; not only in the artistic side, but most importantly they taught me how to live life as a person - being in touch with my own life and society. Not just doing art, but living a life as a way of art. During school breaks, I travelled to the source countries/cities of these living traditions China, Japan, Indonesia and India and experienced firsthand how the people, culture, food, architecture, politics and religion shaped these classical art forms. It extensively increased my curiosity towards the notion of performance. It also made me see clearly how performance back in Singapore is being funded, presented and received.

I realize that most of the theatre performance in Singapore is main-stream, is a business and that the governmental systems that promotes it is also highly bureaucratic. We are a land of no roots and no in-depth culture. A culture of transience, blind development and constant change. What do I as an artist wish to say? What can I say? Is what I am going to say valuable? Is there going to be an audience for the type of work which I wish to do? After all this training, I felt difficult to blend into the art work that was existing in Singapore.

Working as an artist from 2003 2006

I shall speak about some work which affected me and made me grow as an artist. In 2003, in the midst of the SARS epidemic, I joined Drama Box in their forum theatre work SARS under the direction of Kok Heng Leun. It toured numerous residential housing estates, educated many about SARS, and challenged many more in their common misconceptions about SARS patients in quarantine. This was the first time I experienced the power of theatre, stripped of its pretence and showmanship, in strong concern for human issues. A direct contribution to those uneducated community who would never step into a professional theatre to watch artistic works. In 2004, I performed in godeatgod (in English and Japanese) by The Necessary Stage. It was a play demanding performers truth, honesty and informed perspectives. In the middle of each of the 12 performances, myself as well as 3 other performers was placed into an unscripted interactive segment hotspot to discuss about censorship, the meaning of art and terrorism. With performers from Singapore, Philippines and Japan, the performances produced compelling resonance in a globalized world of differing cultures and political malfunctions, both for the audience and the artists themselves. In 2004, I initiated an overseas collaboration with my master teacher of Wayang Wong together with his group of Indonesian artists from Surakarta, a city known for its political activism during the 1998 racial riots in Indonesia. With funds from Arts Network Asia, I spent 3 months researching in Jakarta and Surakarta, and has interviewed many academics, artists and real victims of the racial riot. By fate, I came across an aged Indonesian Chinese traditional finger puppeteer, whose craft has been banned by the Suharto regime for 20 years. I found lots of inspiration from this old man of Chinese culture who never gave up his craft despite the hard politically sensitive times. With my teacher as the chief

choreographer, the old man as puppeteer, 8 Javanese court dancers, 12 gamelan musicians and 2 traditional Javanese singers, I wrote the performance text, assist-directed and also performed in the puppetry dance theatre work Bedhaya Layar Cheng Ho (in Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese and Hokkien) which dealt with the abuse of political power, suppression of traditional roots and the distortion of identities in those troubled times of governance. In 2005, I represented The Necessary Stage in its overseas mission to conduct Let Me Go! forum theatre workshop in New Delhi, India for Kirori Mal Colleges semi-professional theatre group The Players. In the one week of workshop exchange, I was overwhelmed by the young undergraduates daringness to speak about their social problems within the India society. Work models pertaining to issues of domestic violence, caste discrimination, HIV and homosexuality sprung up. This exposure with students from a foreign land opened me up to my own work with my Singaporean students from secondary schools and tertiary institutions, in the direction of devised and shared-experience theatre. For Singapore Arts Festival 2005, I was the only Chinese artist who devised and performed with a 8 member Malay cast in "Imprisonment" (in Malay, English and Mandarin) . Staged by local Malay theatre company Teater Ekamatra, the play dealt with imprisonment in Singapore. Through private means, real-life prison wardens and punishment-caners came into our rehearsals and shared confidential details of the state of punishment and harsh sentence given to foreign workers who exceeded their stay in Singapore. It was opening a can of worms and truly eye-opening to the dark side of Singaporean authority. Interviews with prison wardens and exconvicts offered a rare insight into criminal psyche.

Maturing as an artist from 2007 2010

In these 3 years, I realize that I have become a thinking-creator more so than before. I also start to develop a strong inclination towards history and politics, locally and regionally. I shall highlight some works which affected me. In 2007, I was invited by T. Sasitharan, Director of TTRP, to contribute in a notable theatre event that he was presenting The Unique Culture Of Singapore: A View From The Stage, commissioned by the International Bar Association 2007 Conference, as part of its Cultural Issues Program. It was a lecture presentation bringing together artists from the

English, Mandarin and Malay theatre, and presented for international conference delegates comprising of lawyers, solicitors, attorneys, barristers, counsellors and academics. For this task, I read extensively and adapted numerous significant plays from the Singapore theatre repertoire including Mergers & Accusations, Teochew Porridge, Coffin Too Big For The Hole, 3 Fat Virgins Unassembled and A Language Of Their Own, and showcased scene excerpts. It was like a wake-up call to the rich wealth of Singaporean classics and to understand how local laws and censorship has prevented some performances of these outstanding works. The Q & A with the international delegates of law practitioners triggered meaningful discussion of issues such as state censorship markers, governmental funding, sexual identity and cultural complexities. In 2007, I was invited by Toy Factory Productions to direct my first Mandarin play, Big Fool Lee. The play was about Mr Lee Da Sha (Lei Dai Soh in Cantonese), a once-renowned Cantonese radio storyteller (also a cultural icon) whose voice educated and influenced 2 older generations in Singapore. His career came to an abrupt stop when Singapore declared a ban on all mother tongues and all dialects on radio and tv disappeared overnight. I was a victim of this speak mandarin system and now could not speak properly my mother tongue, Teochew because my mother followed the new rule of the government faithfully when I was young and did not speak a word of Teochew to me. Till now, I still ashamed of not being able to speak my mother tongue. Before the rehearsal period in an attempt to bridge the generation gap, I led my team of actors to conduct extensive field research in places ranging from the National Archives Board, Rediffusion Radio Station to Mr Lee Da Shas home. We spoke to the 2 aged wives of the deceased Mr Lee and uncovered Lees real personality behind his jovial public persona. Imbued with deep insights, I then re-wrote the original script for the full staging. To quote one reviewer This play not only rues the loss of an important cultural medium, but also exposes how swiftly it was lost. It is continuing evidence for sustaining a vital dialogue between an ancient art form and contemporary culture. The production is an ode to the allure and art of traditional Cantonese storytelling. In 2009, I wrote and directed a play, A Madwomans Diary staged in Esplanade Theatre Studio. The play comprised of 2 parallel stories of a Singaporean housewife and Myanmese politician under house arrest, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. It is inspired by the true local story of a low-income supermarket female employee who kept her stillborn baby in her locker in 2006, and was brought behind bars for her seemingly illogical actions. Regrettably, the sensationalized mass media coverage on her conduct seemed to have demonized her instead of providing an objective perspective of her plight to the public. What was really going through her mind in those three days while her stillborn was decomposing in the locker?

What kind of legal, moral, and social pressure was exerted on her? On the other hand, I travelled to Myanmar to experience the countrys military oppression first-hand. Then I collected important materials about Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a highly deified Nobel Prize laureate, who was recently placed into a political hotspot due to the Myanmese military brutal crackdown in 2007. Why has she chosen to stay on in Myanmar, her homeland instead of returning to her family in UK? Her husband has since died of prostate cancer in 1999 and her 2 children are still hoping for her return till this day, yet she continues to pursue her political ideology (and choose to stay in her home country Myanmar) despite growing authoritative threats. In my approach of extensive research before performance, I wrote this work in an inter-cultural approach to forge a bridge between 2 females from different cultural, linguistic and social backgrounds. Their obsession and intense love for their baby (country and child) is commanding of my respect.

Current phase as an artist

In this current phase, perhaps I can say that my creative works in directing, scripting and performing, finds its foundation on the realization of history as always in collision with modern anxieties, as important means to grasp ourselves and the others in this highly globalized community. My work could be described as being socially up-front, down-to-earth, historically informative, culturally reflective and imbued with empathy and compassion. I use to worry and cannot sleep well when I am not doing enough work each year. But now, I am able to select my work carefully and only perform or direct when I see a great learning value or share a similar ideology with the creators. Books remain as my best companion, travelling offers me an escape from tiny Singapore once in a while to maintain a broad open creative mind. Currently, I am chairman of Traditions & Editions Theatre Circus (TETC), a theatre collective of 29 TTRP graduate artists over 4 cohorts, newly formed in 2009. We have put up our maiden production The Spirits Play last year (guest directed by Kok Heng Leun) and have toured to India early this year. As the chairperson, I lead the artists in shaping our artistic identity and continuous exchange. Managing the communication among 29 of us over 11 countries is demanding but enriching. We constantly update our own works and unselfishly share our new insights meaningfully. It is a collective not interested in putting up productions every year but to organically

exchange and come together to do something together (in different host country) whenever time is ripe. To support my bread and butter, I am an adjunct drama teacher at the School of the Arts (SOTA), NUS Centre for the Arts Chinese Drama and various secondary schools. Frankly, I feel the drama education system in Singapore is problematic and I hate sending my students to national drama competitions - it kills creativity and gears youngsters towards winning not learning. But before I could support myself fully through professional directing and performing, I will have to learn to play along with rules and earn my keeps to support my professional work as an artist. In each class, I aspire to inspire the younger generation of theatre practitioners, to see themselves and their environment with clarity and depth.