How did you get this past the censors? Was anything cut? Is censorship stricter today than it used to be?
Theatre-makers in Singapore get asked these questions all the time, since a play cannot be publicly performed here without a script first being sent to the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA).
This means that, before addressing a public audience, the playwright first addresses an IMDA officer. It is this IMDA officer who can approve the performance license for a play, give it a rating, and ultimately decide if it can be staged.
What if this implicit dialogue between playwright and IMDA officer is made explicit, and turned into a performance?
Written with gut-wrenching insight by Alfian Sa’at, The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore is a performance-lecture that traces the history of how theatre has been regulated in Singapore from colonial times to today. It is a chronicle of how moral panic, culture wars, bureaucratic language and political elites have shaped the Singaporean censorship landscape.
Performed as a direct address to an unknown IMDA officer, this darkly hilarious new work reconfigures the faceless 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?”
The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore was first performed as part of the Substation’s SeptFest arts festival in 2022.
Duration: approximately 1 hour 15 minutes (with no intermission)
IMDA Advisory 16 (Some Mature Content and Coarse Language)
Recommended for patrons aged 16 and above
For visitor safety information, click here.
TAKE THE SCRIPT HOME WITH YOU
We will be selling the full script of this show for just $20 – pick up a limited-edition copy from our foyer!