Came from the press conference announcing TheatreWorks artistic director Ong Keng Sen as this year’s Arts and Culture laureate for the Fukuoka Prize. Everyone knew it a while back but news embargo mah. Anyway, he gave a mini-speech, which I’m posting some of the pertinent bits here.   ***   “This recognition comes at a time of great irony as my work was recently penalized with a budget cut from the National Arts Council for being too international.  I was told that I needed to produce more local presence. This local vs international divide perhaps tells us a tale of two cities, Singapore and Fukuoka; a narrative of two beliefs in art, an insight into the relationships between arts, politics and humanity in these two countries. I am absolutely struck by the belief that Japan has in the healing nature of art, post war; its unconditional trust in art as a path towards education, enlightenment and human dignity. Even last night as I talked with the representatives of Fukuoka, I am impressed by their deep conviction that art goes beyond politics, beyond historical conflict. Perhaps only with art and culture can the world continue into the future.  What are the stories in Asian art, lodged in ancient mythologies and distilled in contemporary media, which will guide humanity through dark times? 13 years ago, I directed the production of Lear for the Japan Foundation Asia Center. As an aside, I must say that I am extremely happy that I didn't get the Fukuoka Award then but only now, more than a decade later, after my work has deepened and matured.  I would have been very suspicious if this award had been given to me in the Nineties.  At that time, Asia was not fashionable in contemporary art and cultural circles.  I coined the catchphrase New Asia (before the Singapore Tourism Board took the phrase and ran a marketing campaign with it). Lear told the universal story of a young generation needing to kill the father in Asia.  My collaborators and I were young and naïve but we still ended the performance with the central character alone on stage, muttering who is behind me?  Can the future go forward without the past?  Much time has developed but we still see the relevance of Lear today in Bangkok. With every front story, there is a back story.  Behind every artistic product is a process of travel, discovery, reflection.  Lear began in 1994.  I was a graduate student in New York University.  There I was struck by how little Asian artists knew about each other’s cultures.  We were all on scholarships in New York.  Our faces were turned away from our own countries, we were focused on the artists of America, of Europe.  We knew very little of each other’s countries, even less about our arts.  In fact, I was in New York to study Asian theatre, I had to leave Asia to learn about Peter Brook, an eminent theatre director from Europe, who had brought an Indian classic Mahabharata to the audiences of the world.  The audiences of the world were defined by the audiences of Europe, America and Australia.  Indian mythology was recast as a Shakespearean tale, Indian classical performers had to speak only English or French onstage, otherwise they had to be mute.  The analysis of Brook’s Mahabharata and my interaction with other Asian artists in New York City convinced me that there was much to be done. Upon returning to Singapore, I began the Flying Circus, an interdisciplinary laboratory of artists who came together to understand their individualities in relation to Asian arts and cultures.  I am happy to say that since 1996, this laboratory has continued to exist.  Its story of cultural negotiation through art has been the story of my relationship with Asia, transforming from a need to assert the importance of Asia to now embracing many different artists from the world in the site of Asia. For Asia is not isolated, Asia is porous with different peoples working, living and loving here. For Asia has a global soul.  The Flying Circus Project has brought artists from around the world to Singapore; to Luang Prabang, Laos; to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.  In these cities, the artists of the Flying Circus are introduced to memories, everyday narratives of its people, the aspirations for a near future.  We are now planning the next Flying Circus in 2012 to take place in Yangon, Burma. Since 1995, we have brought Asian artists together on the same stage, asian Artforms and numerous languages co-existing.  We have excavated the diverse memories of Asia such as the karayuki-san, examined the complexity of Asia today with the global movements of foreign workers between Asian countries, revealed the secret histories of migration in Asia, reflected on the ambivalent relationship between tradition and the urban contemporary. The nature of art has always been that it is a mirror held up to society and to politics.  My collaborators and I have attempted not to shy away from difficult subjects, from traumatic wars, from difference of opinion.  I remember the New York Times writing a review commenting that my work was a thesis onstage. I remember a Japanese audience member remarking on the alleged brutality of World War 2 in Sandakan, Borneo portrayed in one of our productions.  I remember the dance of our nihon buyoh master in the war cemetery of Sandakan amidst the gravestones of the British and Australian soldiers who had died.  I remember how the skies opened and poured down on him as he danced and danced.  Since the 90s I began to look at myself actively as an Asian and not just a Singaporean.  However it is also exactly because I am Singaporean, that I embrace mutiple cultures coexisting and engaging. The hybrid Asian character of Singapore permeates completely into me – speaking English as first language and being ethnically Chinese.  I am the product of a new country with a lack of history and the schizophrenia of being at the crossroads of many different influences."