Rating: Advisory 16 (Coarse Language and Some Mature Content)

A Performance-Lecture, written by Alfian Sa’at, presented with SeptFest 2022: uproot | rootless.

Directed by Irfan Kasban and performed by Farah Ong.

In Singapore, there can be no public performances without a script first being sent to the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA). The script is then read by an IMDA officer who approves it for a performance license and gives it a rating. This means that before addressing a public audience, the playwright first addresses the IMDA officer. But what if this implicit dialogue is made explicit and turned into a performance?

The Death of Singapore Theatre … is a performance lecture that traces the history of how theatre has been regulated in Singapore, from the colonial period to post-Independence. It is a chronicle of how moral panics, culture wars, bureaucratic language and political elites have shaped the Singaporean censorship landscape.

Written as a direct address to an IMDA officer, the work reconfigures the moment of encounter between the artist and the censor as a moment of unbearable intimacy.

“You. I know you’re reading this. Who else can it be but you?”