志异 Draft by Drama box July 2014 (english) | Page 14

support at international platforms, I would include the
Arts Housing scheme and praise NAC to the heavens,
because I honestly think that the scheme together with
their other grant schemes have been responsible for the
exponential development of arts in Singapore in the past
25 years. We give them credit when it’s due, we shouldn’t
be oppositional just for the sake of it. 
I’m not saying that that to be oppositional is useless, but
the oppositional card must be used in a very discriminatory way, or else it becomes one’s default identity. 
I’m Peranakan and a cultural hybrid. We have different racial groups in Singapore and each has their own
sensibilities. That’s why I do intercultural plays. We
don’t privilege one position or the other in the play, they
coexist and the contestation, if any, stays unresolved
challenging the audience to deal with the differences and
to imagine ways in which to bridge them. The spotlight
is no longer on the creators but turned onto the audience. It’s a more complex world right now; everything
overlaps, contradicts and is interconnected.  Therefore,
art has to be reflexive and not just reflective.
How then do we find mutual respect in such a diverse world? Yes, there
are problems that come with it. But we’ll have to understand and respect that history and time is different for
everyone. There is no more macro-narrative, it is always
going to be micro-narrative from now on. It’s like when
feminism breaks down into bourgeois feminism, socialist
feminism and radical feminism, the question is: when it
comes to fighting patriarchy, can all feminists join hands

*plurality & postmodern sensibilities—