Author: Richard Chua

Action Theatre’s latest theatrical offering Streetwalkers made me realised that no matter how important dramatic structure is in a play, it is still after all just the building block of an art-work.

Late Singapore theatre doyen Kuo Pao Kun’s famous line, “better a worthy failure, than a mediocre success.” could be aptly applied to The Theatre Practice actor Kuo Jing Hong’s attempt to present late British playwright Sarah Kane’s infamous play 4.48 Psychosis.

The title Bumiputra Cina is highly political; first, “Bumiputra” in Malay means The Prince (Son) of the Soil, while “Cina” : The Chinese. From the outset the title suggests that Verena Tay’s play – directed by Singaporean cross-disciplinary theatre artist Noor Effendy Ibrahim – might be a highly charged political play about Chinese being the child of the soil in Malaysia (Bumiputra is widely known as a politically charged term used by then Prime Minister of Malaysia Tenku Abdul Rahman in the fifties.) If it were a play about Chinese being the son of Singapore soil, it would be of a different ball game altogether; the national language and culture of Singapore has always been a source of confusion for many, both locals and foreigners, for the Chinese-majority has hegemony over Singapore language culture for a long time, burying Singapore’s Malay roots. These two premises both give rise to interesting cultural and history theatre.