The Singapore Trilogy
11 – 21 March 2021
Integrating story and text from Are You There, Singapore? (1974), One Year Back Home (1980) and Changi (1997), the three plays of Yeo’s Trilogy provoked much reflection about the staging of politics in a new nation forging its own identity and development.
Set across the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, The Singapore Trilogy follows the intertwining stories of two siblings and a close friend – Chye, Hua and Fernandez – first as international students in London before returning home to participate in Singapore politics with opposing ideologies. Between political detention and personal entanglements, wills and friendships are put to the test: what are we prepared to compromise for the sake of our ideals and loved ones?
This will be the first time all three plays of the Trilogy will be performed together in a single adaptation, including deleted scenes from original manuscripts, new writing and a revised ending in consultation with Robert Yeo.
Playwright: Robert Yeo
Director: Adeeb Fazah
Dramaturg: Nah Dominic
Set Designer: Beiyi Teo
Lighting Designer: Jim Chan
Sound Designer: Mark Benedict Cheong
Costume Designer: Denise Dolendo
Starring
Shrey Bhargava
Casidhe Ng
Ong Yi Xuan
Lim Shien Hian
Yuri D Hoffmann
Aricia Ng
Aiswarya Nair
Neina Goldberg
One of the strengths of the trilogy, courtesy of its third play, Changi, lies in its straight-up, sometimes harrowing dramatisation of the costs of detention without trial as a weapon against political activists, including the interrogation methods used to extract televised confessions of guilt. It is an experience that few other Singapore plays have delved into, among them Tan Tarn How’s more satirical Undercover (1996) and The Necessary Stage’s intergenerational drama on minority Malay political participation, Gemuk Girls (2006).
– Artsequator
The Second Breakfast Company 