Drama Box is a non-profit, professional theatre company located along Trengganu Street in Singapore’s Chinatown. Founded by a group of members of the National University of Singapore (NUS) Alumni in 1990, it is helmed by artistic director Kok Heng Leun. The history of Drama Box is a microcosm of Singapore’s contemporary theatrical history. Along with other local theatre companies such as The Necessary Stage and Theatreworks, Drama Box is part of the emerging wave of contemporary theatre companies that have been influenced by Kuo Pao Kun, a prominent dramatist who played a leading role in shaping Singapore’s theatrical landscape after 1965.
Hitherto, the origin of Drama Box’s name remains unknown. Interestingly, one common myth shared amongst Drama Box’s staff is that the name was conjured up because the founders intended to present the company’s productions as a gift to its audience.
Since its establishment, Drama Box has been noted for being a hotbed of creative young talent, evident in its repertoire of plays that explore a eclectic range of themes across a variety of genres, such as the plight of women, homosexuals, the racial minorities and the elderly in Singapore, and the impact of a rapidly changing physical landscape on Singaporeans. Hitherto, Drama Box has produced more than 30 plays, including the award-winning VaginaLogue and Stranger At Home.
Owing to a lack of funding, Drama Box has ceased operation as a full-time theatre company since May 2003.
Artistic Director
Drama Box is currently directed by Kok Heng Leun, a prominent figure in both the English and Chinese-language theatres in Singapore who is experienced in the directing and designing of plays. Thus far, he has directed over 60 plays, with his latest work being the critically acclaimed Stranger At Home that was performed during the Singapore Arts Festival in 2006.
Theatre reviewers have highlighted Kok as a promising director who will “power Singapore Theatre in the years to come” and “convince ordinary folks that theatre is not intimidating”. He received the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council (NAC) in 2000 and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Singapore (JCCI) Culture Award in 2003. In 2006, he was presented the Outstanding Young Person (Culture) award in recognition of his contributions to the local arts scene.
Kok is a part-time tutor and lecturer at the National Institute of Education and Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where he is involved in instructing Chinese language teachers in the skill of using drama in Chinese language teaching. He has also conducted Drama-In-Education, Theatre-In-Education and directing workshops in schools and Junior Colleges.
Mission
The company’s quest for continued excellence in its productions is succinctly captured in its mission: “To be Singapore's best contemporary Mandarin theatre company that liberates life!”
Objectives
The objectives of Drama Box are:
• To be the leading professional contemporary Mandarin theatre company in Singapore To produce original works, and to adapt classical Asian works to make them representative of modern society • To cultivate a theatrical aesthetic and performance methodology distinctive of Singapore’s cultural diversity • To engage and develop audiences by making theatre an entertaining and thought-provoking experience, and ultimately a way of life • To contribute to Singapore's presence as an artistic force both in the region and internationally
NeNeMas
NeNeMas (Never Neglect Mankind), the educational arm of Drama Box, was established in 2004. Its vision is to make education a humanistic experience by using theatre as a medium. NeNeMas uses Drama Box’s participant-centered methodology to empower students, so that they can make a difference in their own lives and also have a positive impact on others.
Creative TEXT-Style One of NeNeMas’ flagship programmes is Creative TEXT-Style, which consists of workshops held in either English or Mandarin. It aims to employ Drama-In-Education techniques to eliminate the mundane rote-learning of school textbooks. Students also learn to draw parallels from real-life experiences to enhance their understanding of the text. Besides, by adopting an innovative pedagogy that uses activities and games to get students to experience the texts physically, they are also given the opportunity to refine their language skills, both spoken and written.
Theatre Workshops In Schools
In addition, Drama Box’s PLAY Creation and education IN theatre programmes intend to provide students with an introduction to directing, playwriting, and acting. Besides being informed of basic acting and directing skills, students also learn how to formulate an original theatre piece. At the end of these workshops, students will put their skills into practice in a short forum theatre piece that they can perform during the school’s weekly assembly period, with the assistance of professional facilitators from Drama Box.
Building Five-Foot Ways
Building Five- Foot Ways is NeNeMas’s teacher training programme that encourages teachers to employ drama techniques in teaching National Education. This programme seeks to subvert the common myth amongst students that National Education is an unexciting and irrelevant topic. Teachers who participate in the workshops learn the application of techniques such as forum theatre and theatre games to promote greater student participation in the discussion of National Education Issues.
VaginaLogue
VaginaLogue is one of Drama Box’s most noted productions to date. Written by performer and playwright Li Xie, it is an episodic monologue which explores the social construct of gender from an Asian perspective. The original idea and impetus for the play came from the Obie award-winning production The Vagina Monologues written by Eve Ensler. To make the play more pertinent to the Singaporean audience, Li Xie infused the production with local idioms and a compilation of stories taken from her interviews with a group of women in Singapore.
The play first opened in Singapore in April 2000. Li Xie stars in all the episodes, playing all the women who share their views about their sexuality with the audience.
Plot Summary
Like the play from which it drew its inspiration, VaginaLogue comprises a number of monologues. The 9 monologues in the production relate to nearly all aspects of the female reproductive organ, ranging from menstruation, fertility, birth, and the atrocities committed against it, including rape and genital mutilation. In its focus on women’s identity and the diverse ways in which the vagina is perceived, the play highlights the complex and dynamic interplay between gender and social forces, and how the organ has been used as a tool for the subjugation of women in a patriarchal society. A recurring theme throughout the piece is how the vagina, despite the label traditionally imposed upon it by society as sordid, is the fundamental embodiment of a woman’s identity.
The monologues include: 1. Opening Monologue. In this monologue, Li Xie questions why the part of the female anatomy, in spite of its life-giving characteristics, came to be associated with the notion of filth. 2. Menstruation. This chapter begins with a narration of the common myths that people had about the menstrual cycle, and how these led to a stigmatization of women by their husbands and society at large. A recorded skit featuring Mulan (a heroine in a traditional Chinese fable who disguised herself as a man to replace her father in the army) is then played in the background to illuminate the process of the menstrual cycle. 3. Their Stories, in which interviews with Singaporean women from all walks of life about their experiences with menstruation are played. This is then followed by a brief narration of how women in the past had to dispose of their used sanitary towels in a discreet fashion for fear that disaster will ensue for their husbands if they did not do so. 4. Mulan Rides the Horse, which depicts a frenzied Mulan riding a horse and singing a parody of a popular Chinese song, 3 Days and 3 Nights, about the tight spot she is in for not having found a place to dispose of her sanitary towel inconspicuously. When she realizes the presence of a man nearby, she hides immediately. This chapter concludes with a parody of a television commercial promoting a brand of 21st century sanitary pads that have been cleverly disguised as high-tech gadgets to avoid identification. 5. Poison, this chapter explores the varied ways in which the vagina is perceived in a range of contexts, including wars, ethnic cleansings, and the media. It begins with vivid image of mutilated bodies of women in war. In the first part of the chapter, Li Xie uses instances of rape camps and the Nanking Massacre to illustrate how conquering male soldiers often felt justified in humiliating the vanquished through the raping of womenfolk. The examples of the Bosnian rape camps, how women were treated in world wars and ethnic cleansings showed how the part of the female anatomy came to be used as a battlefield for opposing ideologies. The following section mentions how, in societies such as Saudi Arabia, unless two male witnesses were present at the time of rape, the woman could not bring the offender to court. Thus, according to Li Xie, the organ is used indirectly as a tool to sustain male dominance in society. Next, an image of an article published in the local Chinese newspaper Lianhe Zaobao about a rape that occurred in Bukit Batok is shown on the screen. The screen then focuses on the subtopics which reveal the details of the victim’s physical appearance, working place, residential estate, and the traumatic experiences she went through. Li Xie, in concluding the monologue, accrues the unwillingness of some rape victims to report the crime to the various levels of trauma that they will be subjected to both during and after the crime: first by the rape itself, then by the court and the media. 6. Closing Monologue, in which the social processes underlying the practice of female genital mutilation were presented as a cooking show. In this chapter, the compere slices a tomato (symbolizing the vagina), tears it apart and then sews it together in a frivolous and indifferent manner. In closing this monologue, the host mentions in passing that genital mutilation is carried out in certain societies under the widespread belief that women are indecent as long as their clitoris remained intact.
Critical reception
This play sparked widespread controversies and public uproar in Singapore due to its contentious content. Critical reactions were wide-ranging and often negative, including charges leveled at whether the inclusion of the word “vagina” in the title was necessary and appropriate. Another element of the play that critics find intentionally subversive was the inclusion of a picture of a vagina in the production. Notably, the inclusion of the picture caused the National Arts Council (NAC) to pull out its funding of $8,000 for the production. This in turn ignited public discussion of whether such an move was appropriate, in view of the fact that the NAC had been promoting the display of creativity in art productions.
By layering the plot in such a manner, some critics argue, the play reveals how the societal perception of the female body is a telling indication of the encroachment of patriarchy into the very private spheres of people’s lives. In addition, critics, such as Tan Chong Kee5, have argued that the interweaving of the traditional Chinese story of Mulan with the more recent stories serves to highlight that there has been little change in the societal perception of the female body, and thus the social status of women, over the years.
Despite the criticisms leveled at it, the production was a sold-out success in 2000. In fact, a re-run with new elements such as the use of masks was staged in August 2003.
The Blanc Space
Drama Box strongly believes in the need to provide a platform for budding performers to explore and identify their fortes. In line with this, the Blanc Space was initiated in 2000 as a means to help performers use their body, emotions, voices and their intellect to inject deeper thought and creativity in their performance. This emerging performance technique is often featured in Drama Box’s productions.
In 2007, the Blanc Space was extended to include training programmes for budding directors and aspiring playwrights.
The Blanc Space- director series is a programme where promising directors learn the skills required for directing a play successfully- from the initial conception of an idea to the creation and the staging of a theatre production- under the guidance of a dramaturgist. At the end of the programme, the young director will then have the opportunity to stage his play publicly.
The Blanc Space- playwright series is another new initiative of the Blanc Space. Lasting 18 months, this new programme seeks to develop the potentials of aspiring playwrights through frequent mentoring by experienced playwrights. By allowing for budding playwrights to interact with dramaturgists on a regular basis, Drama Box hopes to cultivate a new wave of authentic and innovative Chinese theatre scripts that truly reflect and capture the pulse of this age of rapid change.
YOUTH INCUBATOR
In 2007, Drama Box launched YOUTH INCUBATOR, in collaboration with *scape, an iconic youth space in the heart of Singapore. It is a long-term theatre training programme targeted at youths. The idea was conceived with the aim of engaging youths in using theatre as the main mouthpiece of their concerns and as links with the country they live in. It endeavors to provide a supportive framework for the nurturing of a new group of theatre practitioners into socially aware, insightful, and responsible youths of Singapore.
Community Outreach Efforts
Drama Box is also focused on working within the local community. It strongly advocates the use of theatre in reaching out to people. Each year, community tours are conducted in different housing estates in Singapore where its audience can watch its performances for free. Most of these performances come in the form of forum theatre, which is a form of theatre that typically deals with issues of great concern to the public. During the performance, audiences can halt the performance, go on stage, replace the characters and enact their suggested solutions to the problems raised in the play. By allowing members of the public to create their own theatre, Drama Box hopes to provide a voice for ordinary members of society.
Since 2001, Drama Box has conducted 8 community tours in housing estates, shopping malls, factories, and a drug rehabilitation centre, reaching out to more than 15, 000 people in Singapore.
== Trick Or Threat! ==
“Trick or Threat!” was intended as a part of Drama Box’s community performance Tour’07. A forum theatre, it depicts an MRT train traveling towards the north. Without warning, the train stops and 5 passengers of different races are trapped inside a cabin. One of them receives an SMS stating that someone had placed a bomb in the station. Everyone gets flustered and suspicions are aroused.
According to Artistic Director Kok Heng Leun, the impetus for the play stemmed from a concern about the capacity of Singaporeans to cope effectively in the event of a terrorism attack. Staged in English, Malay, Chinese and dialects, the forum play aims to help Singaporeans learn to manage their fears in a suspected terrorism attack and not overstep lines of inter-religious sensitivities. The reason for wanting to stage it publicly was to bring the issue closer to more members of the public, not only theatre-goers.
However, owing to the Glasgow and London car bomb attacks in July 2007, the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) announced that it would not give Drama Box the license to stage the play in outdoor areas.
Viewing the terrorism attacks as providing a further justification for the need to raise public awareness of the issue of inter-racial sensitivity, Drama Box, under the permission of the MDA, staged the play in a Woodlands housing estate in a tent later that year. The play was also staged at the Substation Theatre from 12 to 16 December 2007.
IgnorLand of its name “IgnorLand of its name” is another project under Drama Box’s community tour’07. Conceptualized and directed by Kok Heng Leun, the community tour took its audience on a journey through time in Singapore by revisiting lost memories of places and structures such as the Dragon Teeth Gate and the Old Nanyang University Arch. The purpose of the tour was to educate Singaporeans about the origins of the names of structures that have been forgotten with the passing of time, by packaging historical information less known to the public as a form of theatre.
The first station was Labrador Park, where the guide asks the audience if Sang Nila Utama, a legendary prince of Sumatra who purportedly founded ancient Singapore, really saw a lion, because according to historical evidence, lions did not exist in the region. So how did the name Singapura (meaning “lion city” in Malay) come about?
The Dragon Teeth Gate, also known as Batu Berlayer and Lot’s Wife, was also discussed. This rock formation was a major signpost for incoming boats in the past but it was also a perfect place for pirates to ambush themselves. Eventually, the gate was blown up to ensure the safety of sea-farers. According to the facilitator, the ideas for the names stemmed from varying perspectives. The name, “Lot’s Wife”, was apparently named after the character in the Bible who looked back to Sodom and was turned into stone. In the Singaporean context, the parallel of Sodom is therefore Pulau Belakang Mati, where the inhabitants were rumored to have been wiped out by malaria in the 1840s. The island was later renamed Sentosa, in order not to remind people of poignant memories.
The second stop was the original Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Gate. The history of this structure dates back to the period when Singapore was under British colonial rule. Harboring the hope of providing a better education for the next generation, Chinese immigrants to Singapore set up Nan Tah, devoting whatever they could contribute to the building funds. However, students were often disrespected and little credit was given to their certificates. Nan Tah was later renamed NTU. While NTU is well-recognized today, some members of the alumni are still fighting for the original name of the university to be restored.