Must be awesome having a festival that’s named after you. I can imagine it now, The RAT Festival 2013.

Anyways, back to reality. Our new contributor Lim Jialiang caught up with Wild Rice’s resident playwright, who talked about the festival-named-after-him and the three plays they’ll be showing. We’re posting their wonderful conversation here.

***

WHAT’S YOUR REACTION TO HAVING AN ENTIRE FESTIVAL BEING DEDICATED TO YOU?

I have friends who say that it would be good to have a whole retrospective, (but) I’m a little overwhelmed, of course, a little uncomfortable about just promoting or pushing this thing. When they ask me to write copies — for publicity, you know — and all these adjectives coming out of the air to describe my work, it can be a bit “cringing”. It would be different if I were to write copies for another playwright.

To deflect the attention, I sometimes say that this is not the Alfian Sa’at festival but it’s actually the budget Singapore Theatre Festival. This year, we just got our budget (from the National Arts Council) restored, so yah. But this doesn’t mean that it’s low quality, you still get your good production values, everything.

HOW DO YOU FEEL WHEN PEOPLE CALL YOU A POLITICAL PLAYWRIGHT?

I don’t reject that label at all. I suppose only when it pigeonholes me, I think it might be a bit problematic. I think that’s a pretty accurate, pretty fair description of my works. Even if I write something about The Optic Trilogy, it’s about a romantic duet between two actors. People might say it’s less political and more personal, but to me, all writing is political. In a way, it’s really something that’s very obvious.

DO YOU FIND IT DIFFICULT TO EXPLORE THE TABOO IN SINGAPORE? WHAT IS THE PROCESS LIKE?

One has to be artful when you are tackling certain issues that are kind of new to public consciousness, and what helps for me is to be able to employ certain kinds of tricks, for example satire. For example, saying something that’s funny, or humourous, and dancing or running circles around the censors. You don’t adopt this immediate binary between the artist and the State, you’re a lot more nimble and that happens because your work can be read on multiple levels.

Asian Boys Vol 1 is a good example. I have a character, who’s this goddess, and she comes on stage “to save gay men”. So when you read the synopsis with that, you know, ostensibly, this is a conservative play, talking about gay people getting reformed. Our censors don’t really read the fine print, so they might think that this is something that supports the conservative agenda, but there are, of course, certain things like the goddess is also a gay icon. And there are gay people who are into diva worship and all, and their imaginings of what the goddess is. It occupies this interesting space where she’s a disciplining deity, and also on an elevated platform that gay men love.

There’s a “doubleness”, and that’s also the way that I’ve been writing, and the way I’ve been able to get away with certain things, it’s always double-coded. I do that with my pantomimes as well. You can get something very entertaining, and also smuggle in little things here and there.

FOR ASIAN BOYS VOL 1 AND THE OPTIC TRILOGY, THESE TWO PLAYS ARE BEING RESTAGED AFTER A DECADE. DO YOU THINK THEY’VE AGED WELL?

I think retrospectives can be a bit scary, because they do test whether your work is able to endure, sometimes as you mentioned over a decade. I do think that they stand up to the test of time, and there might be a few things that might be kind of a topical reference, but we’ve worked these things (out) in rehearsals, and there’s always these questions like should we retain them and it will have a certain element of being a period piece, or should we update our references. These are fruitful discussions I have with Ivan (Heng), lah. So sometimes you want to update, and it’s not really about whether the play is dated, but more of the topical references. But I do think that certain broader things like the theme, relationship, those things are still around.

SO, IT’S MORE ABOUT OF KEEPING THE SPIRIT OF THE PLAY ALIVE, BUT TWEAKING THE FACTS THAT WERE MORE PREVALENT IN THE DISCOURSE THEN AS COMPARED TO NOW?

Or sometimes, just providing some kind of explanation or little glossary bits here and there, for example in Asian Boys, there is the mention of the IRC, you know, and during 2000 it was all the rage, it was the virtual platform where people meet each other. Of course, there are technological advances, and now it’s mobile apps.

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO EXPLORE IN YOUR NEW WORK, COOK A POT OF CURRY?

There’s a whole range of voices, both Singaporean and non-Singaporean, and also people like the mediators, the Integration and Naturalisation Champions from the National Integration Council. So, how do I sort of squeeze everything, because there are so many angles to look at it, the economic angle, the whole angle of identity and keeping a core…

I guess what we’re trying to do is, with the curation of the pieces, sometimes you see a certain thread, because you’re putting certain pieces alongside each another, or one after another. It is a sort of a ragbag of different types of opinions, but I do think there is some thread that runs through it at the same time.

At the end of the day also, for me, I don’t have a problem if it seems like there’s a lot of viewpoints and they’re jostling for space on stage, because I think this is something that should have the audience themselves decide.

It’ll be a bit of a rollercoaster because you will hear one person’s viewpoint, and you’ll hear something that also contradicts that, but you’ll see the validity of that viewpoint as well. I think what’s most important for me in doing this is that you have real people who are sharing their life experiences, and that this kind of context is what humanizes the discourse. Otherwise, if you’re going to look at things on like a comments thread, where the idea of the foreigner is as an Other, as a scapegoat, where a lot of things are projected on them, and you need to hear what they have to say, too.

HAS THE PROCESS OF THE DOCUMENTARY-STYLE THEATRE YOU EMPLOYED CHANGED FROM COOLING-OFF DAY?

The approach was still to interview a few people, sit down, and have coffee with them, and just listen to their stories. At the same time, for Cooling-Off Day I would say that it was about Singaporeans and their political opinions. It was something I had some ground knowledge about. However, for this one it was like, “Wow”, because, I was meeting people who I would not have otherwise met, and hearing stories I don’t think I have been exposed to enough, because, I don’t really have that many foreigner friends. And I think in terms of performance, also, it’s really challenging for the actors because they now have to attempt accent work that they don’t normally do in other Singaporean plays, and I think just that fact is reflective of how heterogeneous Singapore society is becoming.

(I’ve had to consider) what’s the Tagalog accent like, are there different kinds of Tagalog accent. I’m doing a mainland Chinese accent, I’ve never had to do that before, a Hokkien accent, (Singaporean) Chinese accent, yes, but mainland Chinese, how is that different? So we are all negotiating and exploring all these accent work, for me, one of the more challenging aspects of doing this production as compared to Cooling-Off Day.

Alfian Sa’at – In the Spotlight is from July 3 to 20 at Lasalle College of the Arts. Tickets for the three plays are from S$40 at Sistic.