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.
