Singapore's Discomfort Zone

Wong: That's our job, right? Hopefully to evoke the gasp. I believe it behooves us to be calibrated not by coercion but by love for our country and to be careful, too. It's easy to say we can push. But we have to push so that the audience is ready or not quite ready. We have to find that space to push them enough so they go "Oh, OK, I need to think about this." Or "This saddens me. This offends me and I need to think." But it cannot be "this saddens or offends me to the point that we have to fight." It's a strange space to find.

Heng: Theater provides a safe discomfort zone. As our writers become more sophisticated, they are not doing plays that whack you over the head but rather present a plurality of views. In the best plays people in the audience say: "I think this character was right, or that character was right" and actually choose a point of view. Through this interaction, this exchange of ideas, we move forward. In Singapore, where we have had a one-party government for a long time, it's up to us as artists and citizens to engage in formulating what kind of society we want in the future. If we shut up about it, we only have ourselves to blame.

© 2008