“Cultural Desert” of Singapore

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mirez. Reply Afﬁrmation in Further Support of Motion to Dismiss for Facial In- sufﬁciency. Ramirez, Garrett 2002 “Legal Statement.” Email to lawyer, forwarded to author, 31 July. Reclaim the Streets 2001 “MAYDAY WRESTLING MADNESS!! SUPERBARRIO MAN!!” Email to author, 19 April. R2Kphilly.org 2000 “Remaining RNC Puppet Warehouse Defendants Cleared of All Charges.” Ͻhttp://www.r2kphilly.org/r2klegal/press/pr-121300.htmlϾ (23 June 2003). Scott, James C. 1985 The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia.New Haven: Yale University Press. Shepard, Benjamin 2003 Email to author. 13 April. Vitale, Alex 2003 “Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg.” Email to author, 13 April. Wilson, David L. 2001 “Superbarrio Eludes NYC Police on May Day.” Indypendent, May: 5.

L.M. Bogad is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birming- ham in the UK. His book, Electoral Guerrilla Theatre: Speaking Mirth to Power, an international study of satirical election campaigns, will be published by Routledge Press in 2004. His writings have also appeared in Radical Society and TDR (45:2, T170). Bogad is a veteran of the Lincoln Center Theatre Director’s Lab and a member of LaLutta New Media Collective.

Creating High Culture in the Globalized “Cultural Desert” of Singapore

C.J.W.-L. Wee

This essay is dedicated to the memory of Kuo Pao Kun (1939–2002)

Singapore, with a population of 3.2 million (4 million, including foreigners) is distinct from other postcolonial societies in its desire to emulate the ad- vancements of the West while forsaking not only many of the political dimensions of democratic life but also its cultural dimensions. The result is an industrial and commercial understanding of culture; manufacturing and pro- ductive institutions have become the collective basis of social life. And yet, de-

The Drama Review 47, 4 (T180), Winter 2003. Copyright ᭧ 2003 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

I The city-state Singapore, under the leadership of the People’s Action Party (PAP) since 1959, represents a capitalist modernity that deliberately forsook autochthony in cultural development for economic success (see Wee forthcoming). The PAP’s reputation for forging an uncreative society composed mainly of shopping centers by and large stemmed from a pragmatic, petit- bourgeois vision of a hard-working modern society. Nonetheless, since the late 1980s it has been open to creating a cultural superstructure that would match its status as a major regional financial and industrial hub. In the 20-odd years prior, “culture” had referred more to multiethnic cultures and values, though by the early 1980s to the mid-1990s, “culture” also signified the myth- icized “Asian/Confucian” values that were the alleged foundation of Singa- pore’s “East-Asian Miracle” status. Cultural policy—policy that fostered the arts and high culture—was not a real concern. By 1989, the government began to articulate a recognizable cultural policy with the government-authorized Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts (Ong et al. 1989). By this time, there was already a burgeoning theatre scene principally led by The Theatre Practice (TTP), The Necessary Stage (TNS), and TheatreWorks (Singapore), among the first contemporary profes- sional theatre companies. There was also a nascent experimental visual arts development, led by Tang Da Wu. TTP’s Kuo Pao Kun (1939–2002) was the major enabling personality in the new theatre scene. He had been detained without trial by the PAP government between 1976 and 1980 for alleged communist activities. Kuo bounced back into prominence in the 1980s with plays that examined the possibility of trans-ethnic understanding and the destruction of culture and cultural memory in the wake of a statist modernity with totalizing impulses. He also broke the mold of single-language theatre and created plays, such as Mama Looking for Her Cat (1988), which utilized a range of the languages spoken in Singa- pore.1 Significantly, Kuo was a natural institution builder able to recognize and generously support younger talent; he was able to harness the energy of visual artists involved with newer genres such as performance art—introduced to Singapore by visual artist and Fukuoka Cultural Prize winner Tang Da Wu— thereby helping to pioneer an emerging multidisciplinary contemporary art scene. The three theatre companies created adventurous productions, often for- mally bold (many of the plays were “devised,” with the scripts created in a workshop setting) and dealing with issues of memory, ethnicity, and other identity issues. These were artistic reactions against the singular and sometimes

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403322764043 by guest on 01 October 2021 86 critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical strident top-down disciplinary modernization of Singapore since the mid- 1960s, which had allowed little space for reflection on cultural or historical issues. What was notable about the theatre of the 1980s to mid-1990s was that “difficult” theatre—even if text based—formed the mainstream of the more important theatre groups; devised theatre even coexisted within companies with fledgling, indigenized Broadway-style musicals. Gender issues were no- ticeable by the early 1990s. All in all, these were invigorating years. Theatre is now the most prominent and, not surprisingly, visible art form in the city- state. The formulation of cultural policy and the increased financial resources that were poured into the arts, along with the creation of other theatre companies—2002 well represents these changes—has dramatically altered the overall cultural and certainly theatrical landscape since the mid-1990s. The visual arts scene has also changed. Tang Da Wu returned from London in 1988 (after the best part of 20 years in England, with occasional return trips), and founded a group called the Artists’ Village in 1989. The group was established in an abandoned village in a then-rural area called Sembawang as a critical response to the petit-bourgeois urban society that Singapore was be- coming.2 The art that arrived helter-skelter with Tang was contemporary, anticom- mercial, and eclectic. Suddenly, there were dynamic experiments in conceptual art, performance, installation sculpture that used Duchampian “found” objects, figurative painting that had German expressionist antecedents (but was executed with personal rather than historical references), pop art, and Happenings. There had been earlier intimations of such artistic possibilities, but they were just that—intimations. Not surprisingly, the experiments that sprang up around Tang did not definitively reference their origins. If, by the mid-1970s, conceptual art in the West was either popular or beginning to grow stale, to be followed by a very plural visual culture that had an unpre- dictable and innovative diversity, the corporate “arrival” of contemporary art in its various forms in Singapore in the ’90s was confusing but energizing. The predominantly young artists Tang mentored, who were of various ethnicities, experimented with themes that implicitly or explicitly critiqued the state’s wished-for bland identity and urban modernity. The environment, sex, violence, identity, and rebellion became valid areas for enquiry. The world of ab- stract modern art that dominated the local arts in the 1970s exploded. What was also notable was that many artists were from the less-privileged and often non-English speaking social strata, which distinguished them from the more bourgeois backgrounds of English-language theatre practitioners, providing a distinctive edge to the visual arts. Ironically, the arts flourished during the 1980s up to the early 1990s precisely because of the pragmatic, philistine modernity promoted by the government. Singapore society—in its mercantile/industrial-oriented indifference to the artsy-craftsy—allowed space for artistic growth,3 as such growth gen- erally was not considered important enough to warrant attention. For theatre, however, the late ’80s was a very difficult time, 1987 in partic- ular. A group called the Third Stage, which had produced plays critical of politics and social issues in the city-state, was affected by a general government crackdown on a so-called “Marxist conspiracy.” The home affairs ministry alleged that the conspiracy planned to “subvert the existing social and political system [...] through communist united front tactics to establish a communist state” (Straits Times 1987). The Third Stage was a “front organization” of the conspirators, and various Roman Catholic societies and one ecumenical stu-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403322764043 by guest on 01 October 2021 acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts 87 dent fellowship formed another front. Five of the 16 people detained on 21 May 1987 were members of the Third Stage. Though four were released, another six people were detained on 20 June; one of this latter group was the president of the Third Stage.4 The situation calmed down thereafter, until another government crackdown in late 1993—this time specifically on the arts. A 21-year-old performance and visual artist, Josef Ng, who did a performance protesting the police entrapment of working-class homosexual men, and TNS, which practiced Augusto Boal–style Forum Theatre, were accused, respectively, of obscenity and having a “Marxist” orientation. The latter charge, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, could only sound absurd.5 Performance art remains officially in a position of limbo, and cannot receive National Arts Council funding (NAC). Despite these obstacles, the state’s desire for a commodified theatre and visual arts scene has persisted. What is curious in the city-state is a sort of “backward” arts development. First, there was an experimental, cutting-edge arts scene, which was followed by attempts to create the necessary infrastructure: proper arts education in the schools, major art spaces or museums (the Singapore Art Museum [SAM], for example, built to showcase modern and contemporary Southeast Art, was opened only in 1996), and major theatre venues. “Black box” venues began opening in the early 1990s; the other options previously had been the inappro- priately large Kallang Theatre and the colonial-era Victoria Theatre). In 1992, the government began to promote a policy to make the city-state not just a Global City, but, indeed, a Global City for the Arts. Unfortunately, if predictably, an overall instrumentalist attitude predominated. Some leading politicos had discovered that to become a “serious” Global City capable of at- tracting and retaining the “foreign talent” of senior business executives who could further “globalize” the city-state, we needed Western metropolitan- style cultural infra- and superstructures that would enable Singapore to become a sort of “London of the East.” As is often the case in Singapore, an it-needs-to-happen-tomorrow social- engineering imperative and paradigm were adopted for the new cultural policy. The entrenched position of this paradigm gave rise to the central tension between the professed wish for a dynamic creativity and the existing instru- mentalizing and rationalist mental set. Arts funding increased and theatre, as the most visible art form of the 1980s, was a major beneficiary. The preten- tiously entitled Renaissance City Report: Culture and the Arts in Renaissance Sin- gapore (2000) advocated for even more funding to be made available (some S$50 million—nearly U.S.$30 million—over five years), and these funds have started to have an impact on the cultural scene. The crowning infrastructural achievement was the October 2002 opening of the S$600 million (U.S.$345 million) “Esplanade—Theatres on the Bay” arts complex, built specifically for “world-class” foreign acts—a statist attempt to create a commercial Cult of the Beautiful. It remains to be seen how this will affect theatre development, given that the Esplanade has no medium-size theatre space: its major theatre auditorium seats some 1,800 persons—a number that both the older and newer theatre companies would find daunting to fill.

II Before proceeding to reﬂect further on the Esplanade’s potential impact on Singapore’s cultural life it is important to assess the arts from 1980 to the mid-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403322764043 by guest on 01 October 2021 88 critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical 1990s, and then to consider how diversity in the arts may be compromised by sailing too closely to the reified production of what may be called a “globalized high culture.” The visual arts scene since perhaps the mid- or late 1990s has seen a normalization of arts practices that had countercultural edges. This normalization in itself is not surprising; it is the pattern in the metropolitan West. What is surprising is the speed of the process, having taken place less than a decade after such newer practices arrived in the city-state. Relatively speaking, there are a pronounced number of newer, energetic 20-something artists—many of whom are articulate in “pomo” talk—with privileged overseas fine arts educations from metropolitan institutions such as Goldsmiths College or the Slade School, London. (Their counterparts from the 1980s also received fine arts educations but, in many cases, they studied locally at institutions that were only then start- ing up, such as what today is the LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts.) These artists began participating in the global art world of biennales (Documenta at Kassel, Germany; Venice Biennale) earlier in their careers than their immediate pre- decessors had managed. In some ways, it is this increased firsthand exposure to the metropolitan West combined with the state’s desire to occupy the cultural space it had previously evacuated that has led to both the increased visual arts activity and the decline of artistic criticality, diversity, and radicalism. In this respect, on a re- lated note, the establishment of SAM in 1996 served both to promote the idea of “contemporary Southeast Asian art”6 —the city-state is the only local place within Southeast Asia with the finances and “Western” expertise to create such a museum—and to contain the counter- or subcultural aesthetic impulses, with public awareness in mind. With SAM, the state was moving rap- idly and self-consciously into the emerging new art world. As for the theatre, and indeed the contemporary arts scene in general, a major impetus for change was Kuo Pao Kun, who died of cancer in September 2002—a loss that we have yet to come to terms with. Kuo forged significant theatre links with Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, and was a mentor to many directors, including TheatreWorks’ Ong Keng Sen, TNS’s Alvin Tan, and Ac- tion Theatre’s Ekachai Uekrongtham. He was also the founding artistic director of The Substation, Singapore’s only independent arts center, and he raised a strong public voice that questioned matters not only of the arts but other key social concerns such as education and ethnic-management policies. Kuo hailed from a period in Singapore’s cultural-political life when it was possible to hear more than just the state’s voice—before the state had learned how to dominate the space of public speech. His 1976 to 1980 detention without a trial under the Internal Security Act gave Kuo a moral stature that enhanced his natural charisma. With Kuo’s illness during recent years, TTP’s programming (perhaps inevi- tably) has seemed thinner when compared to their past output. In 2002, TTP staged a Mandarin-Chinese version of David Mamet’s Oleanna and Athol Fu- gard’s The Island. The latter was highly anticipated as it had been staged first in 1985 by Kuo himself (neither of the 2002 productions was directed by Kuo) and was seen by some as Kuo’s own oblique comment on Singapore’s detention-without-trial laws. However, neither of the productions reflected the same progressive aesthetic that TTP had under Kuo’s influence. Singapore’s other notable international theatre figure is TheatreWorks’ artistic director Ong Keng Sen. With Ong spending much of his time on artistic work overseas,7 the company appointed a part-time artistic director for Sin-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403322764043 by guest on 01 October 2021 acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts 89 gapore productions, journalist-playwright Tan Tarn How (whose plays Ong had directed in the 1990s), along with two full-time associates. Two new plays were staged in 2002: Tan’s own Machine and Russell Heng’s Comrade Mayor. Despite TheatreWorks’ attempt to maintain their local presence, Ong’s ex- tended stay in Europe during 2002 has led, along with Kuo’s demise, to a no- ticeable disruption in Singapore theatre. Malaysian director Krishen Jit— himself a key theatre figure in Southeast Asia—as early as 1993 had already commented in a conference address on “the absence of a strong critical tradition in Singapore theatre.” According to Jit, this lack is also the reason why “according to the local media, apparently Singapore theatre achieves an artistic breakthrough or a reinvention of its history almost every six months” (1995:22). While Ong does bring his overseas productions back to the island, the absence of Ong and the death of Kuo have weakened local theatre’s sense of itself. Of the three major companies, TNS has been the most consistent. Artistic director Alvin Tan and resident playwright Haresh Sharma continued, in 2002, the production of experimental and sometimes completely devised plays that address community and social issues. The Beginning of the End (BOTE), conceived and directed by TNS associate Jeff Chen, evoked the absurd and the hysterical in the analysis of everyday life. Sharma’s new play, goteatgod, staged in July, was a response to the September 11 terrorist attack. It was an uneven mix of song, drama, and comedy that dealt with the ramifications of 9/11. Close—In My Face was a company-devised play that humorously examined the claustro- phobia of living in Singapore’s ubiquitous high-rise public housing estates, a veritable symbol of its modernity. TNS’s ongoing commitment to the island-state’s cultural life is significant, but the theatre company also seems fatigued and overextended. In 2001, the group retrenched, cutting many forms of cultural outreach. Most unfortunately, 2001 saw the end of [Names Changed to Protect the Innocent], a regular platform the company had provided for exploratory work, well managed by Jeff Chen. This program fostered installation and performance art, variously combined with dance and visual art, as well as more “standard” theatre pieces—that is to say, it ran the gamut of the contemporary arts in the city-state. Workshopsand forums were held in conjunction with productions. The end of this program has meant the end of gem-like, small-scale experimentation. As in the visual arts, the theatre scene has transcended the 1980s to mid- 1990s phase, with a wide and diverse range of both companies and productions. Adventurous programming is attempted but with both uneven aesthetic results and ill-defined cultural politics. The bilingual (Mandarin-Chinese and English-language) Toy Factory The- atre Ensemble, for example, has made a reputation for staging provocative plays—and also for their sexually provocative advertising. In January and Feb- ruary 2002, they featured English and Mandarin versions of Jonathan Harvey’s London fairytale of gay youth coming of age, Beautiful Thing. In September 2002, they put up Marius von Mayenburg’s Fireface, which deals with identity as an accident of birth and as constructed by the opinions of others, as well as with controversial elements of sexual deviance and pyromania. Artistic director Goh Boon Teck’s most ambitious production for 2002 was his Singapore Arts Festival contribution, an adaptation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard entitled The Morning People. Goh seems to be ambitiously reproducing the English tradition of staging classics in “updated” or “localized” contexts. The setting was transposed to 1934 Shaanxi, China, to evoke China’s crumbling order. It was

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1. Publicity photo for Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble’s Fireface (2002), directed by beautifully staged, but some felt it failed to convey the urgency of Chekhov’s Beatrice Scia, staged at the play for a contemporary audience and “ﬁlled” the meaningful silences of the Toy Factory Theatrette, Chekhovian text (see Seet 2002). Singapore. (Photo ᭧ Toy The Harvey and von Mayenburg plays are part of what Ong Keng Sen calls Factory Theatre Ensemble) the “global playwright” phenomenon; the plays of such authors get staged in Western European cultural centers such as Berlin and London—and now in Singapore. Despite the provocative content of the two plays, the management of Toy Factory presents their productions as “events” that are part of the glitzy, globalized theatre world. However, at this stage, Toy Factory’s aesthetic am- bitions exceed their capacity to deliver. In February 2003, Toy Factory produced a version of Hong Kong playwright Raymond To Kwok-Wai’s Mad Phoenix at the Esplanade’s studio theatre. The play, which was made into a ﬁlm in 1997, tells the story of Cantonese opera playwright Kong Yu-Kau (1909–1984). Goh’s staging attempted to use

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III One might think that the PAP government has realized the “postmodern” as that stage in capitalism when, as Fredric Jameson has famously pronounced, culture has to a greater or lesser degree become coextensive with the economy. The actuality, though, is a more superficial grasp of the situation, as the state still remains true to its older modernist and, indeed, vulgar Marxist com- prehension of the economy as the base of all reality. However, some politicos and senior civil servants have either read or heard enough of cultural policy papers with titles such as “From the Information Economy to the Creative Economy: Moving Culture to the Center of International Public Policy” (Ven- turelli n.d.) to know that the government must now create a cultural sphere to match the city-state’s existing “hub” status within the global economy. There is a certain refreshing directness in statements by government officials about their investments in the culture industry: economic forces reign su- preme. In a 2002 statement made in Manchester, England, justifying the building of the costly complex built during a time of recession in the city, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Information, Communications, and the Arts, Tan Chin Nam, points out the financial benefits of the complex:

$600 million is a worthy investment for Singapore to attract world-class musicians and performers. When they come, not only the local, but foreign businessmen also, are elated by the buzzing arts scene. Add to that the whole hotel industry, F&B [Food and Beverage industry], airline, transport and local designers gain from the dollars these foreign performers as well as [their audiences from the region] spend in Singapore. (in The Graduate 2003:4)9

Not surprisingly, Tan makes no mention of local artistic development— which, after all, might in time become suitable cultural “content” for “ex- port.” The dynamism of “alternative theatre”—in actuality, as already noted, the mainstream, until more conventional theatre such as Action Theatre became visible10 —has waned in recent years, possibly fatigued by the pursuit of “results” demanded by state funding. This situation may be exacerbated by the Esplanade’s opening. The Substation, for instance, has had 12 years of a multidisciplinary contemporary arts festival called Septfest, during which some good younger talent has been supported. Septfest’s direction might need to be re- considered, given the new circumstances, in which the state’s interest in the visual and performing arts is stronger. The 2002 festival still manifested a strong commitment to theatre programming, featuring two small, innovative, young experimental groups: the idiosyncratic Spell#7, and a newer group, KYTV (“Kill Your TV”), which mixes music, the visual arts, kitsch costumes, and movement.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420403322764043 by guest on 01 October 2021 92 critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical acts critical The Esplanade’s opening festival in October 2002 featured Batsheva Dance Company’s Anaphaza and, as its mainstage theatre offering, a new musical on the life of the Chinese Dowager Empress by popular Singaporean songwriter- singer Dick Lee, entitled Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress11 —a suitably monumental offering for the opening of the state’s cultural monument. The question that arises out of Singapore’s new circumstances is this: What sort of art will we now have, versus the sort of art we may now need? Political and cultural commentator Janadas Devan noted a decade ago, when it was ap- parent that the government would build a monumental arts center, “[Y]ou cannot do without an Arts centre—or something that answers to that name: a centre. [...] The centre exists whether you like it or not.” The more important thing is:

to keep in tension the relationship between one kind of art and another—[...] a tension which, if it doesn’t already exist, one must create and sustain. Only that art which keeps in tension the relationship between singularity and plurality will save us. [...O]nly that art which re- fuses to simplify what it promises, [...o]nly such art is absolutely necessary. (1995:55)

The “tension” that Devan speaks of is very different from the tension that exists between the professed statist desire for a creative society and the actual im- plementation of instrumentalized cultural policy. The Esplanade’s opening festival did have its moment of “plurality.” Part of the festival was an Asian Contemporary Theatre (ACT) festival, coordinated by the late Kuo Pao Kun and his codirector of the Practice Performing Arts School, T. Sasitharan. The festival featured India’s Kalakshetra Manipur (Nupi [Woman]), Japan’s Gekidan Kaitaisha (Bye-Bye: The New Primitive), Indone- sia’s Sardono Dance Theatre (Nobody’s Body), and Taiwan’s Shakespeare’s Wild Sisters (Six Memos for the Next Millennium). An accompanying conference examined the “meaning” of “contemporary Asian art,” and had speakers such as the intercultural theatre practitioner and theorist Rustom Bharucha and Tokyo University’s Uchino Tadashi. Unfortunately (and possibly tell- ingly), the Esplanade’s publicity for both the ACT and conference was relatively poor, and the admission charge for the conference was prohibitive, excluding most ordinary people. Two points emerge from the 2002 theatre season: first, the amount of money invested in the theatre scene may raise official expectations that far exceed the realistic possibilities for aesthetic development in the short term; and second, while the presence of the Esplanade “center” will not thwart ambitious local theatre—indeed it may expose us to aesthetic possibilities—there is still a need to be aware of the challenge of having this center. Beauty was once a subversive protest against the markets’ instrumentalism; at present, the attempted commodification of the arts—both in the theatre and the visual arts—means that beauty can be made to be the gloss of the established order, even in a pragmatist society where the arts have not had a significant historical place. We must be careful of the suppression of everything outside of commercial culture, especially given the aspiration to have the arts be the decora- tive capstone of an aspiring Global City. The start of 2003 brought new problems for the arts: the Iraq war and the appearance of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the region led to the further weakening of the Singapore economy, following in the wake of the 1997 Asian economic crisis and the 2001 crash of high-tech equity. While government arts and cultural funding will increase in 2003 by 24 percent to

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2. From the Theatre Prac- tice’s Mandarin-language production of Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (1995) at the Victoria Thea- tre, Singapore, directed by Kuo Pao Kun. (Photo ᭧ The Theatre Practice)

S$529 million (U.S.$302 million), much of this amount goes to “hardware” or infrastructural projects such as a new National Library building and the redevel- opment of the Singapore History Museum. Actual arts funding—as channeled through the NAC—has shrunk by 10 percent to S$35.5 million (U.S.$20 million). There is also talk of cuts in the funding for the Singapore Arts Festival (see Tan 2003). The issue here is not that there should be no cuts to arts funding during hard times, but more the depth of the government’s commitment to the arts in the ﬁrst place. Given that, it is hard not to think that, in 2003, the PAP government pulled the rug from underneath the arts. The funding situation highlights the contradiction between the older economic instrumentalism and the hope for a “creative economy” in which the arts have a pivotal role. It is appropriate to conclude this essay with Kuo Pao Kun. An astute ob- server of the city-state’s cultural life, his allegorical Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (1995) offers an incisive analysis of Singapore’s liminal arts space— and it potentially becomes an analysis that offers a more universal picture of culture and the arts. Descendants offers a post-romantic vision of mankind that retains a commitment to human aspiration and imagination. It draws explicit parallels between the history of the famous Muslim-Chinese admiral and explorer Zheng He (aka Cheng Ho [1371–1435]), who during the expansive Ming Dynasty sailed with his Chinese armada to the shores of East Africa, and contemporary man, and between the cost to be paid for service to the state—in this case, an anach- ronistic and allegorized Chinese nation-state before that modern idea really existed—and to capitalism—allegorized in the play as “markets.” If, because of poverty, some men voluntarily submitted to the literal and symbolic castration necessary for state service, Zheng He, Descendants asserts, was violently set upon by the state and cut off from a Muslim identity and future for the state’s gloriﬁcation. The Zheng He character must therefore seek help from any possible source:

Allah knows my bitterness Buddha has mercy on my soul Sea Goddess protects my ﬂeet Voyages to the West fulﬁll my life. (Kuo 2003, scene 10)

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At the end of this great market-festival, Zheng He and the king ex- changed gifts of gold and silver, silk and ivory, jewels and porcelain. As the setting sun displayed the most brilliant of its colours, they parted in passionate sorrow. The king and his attendants hold on to their treasured silk, porcelain, and jewels while Grand Eunuch leads away the rare ani- mals and birds given to his mission as reciprocal gifts. Even when they were sailing down the river back to the [Zheng He–led Chinese] armada, the music from the instruments made of shells and reeds could still be heard from land. [...] Grand Eunuch Zheng He, faithful servant of the Ming Emperor, was sent to the Western Ocean as an imperial emissary to blaze a trail of glory for the Middle Kingdom. Never did he expect to leave a path of amazing splendour that would seep into the lives of so many people in so many places, through so many ways over so long a time [...]. (2003, scene 13)

The markets—representing a sort of prelapsarian capitalism—thus can become the cosmopolitan contact zones for an expansive Asian globalism, zones offering the genuinely marvellous, that which exceeds the conﬁnes of alien- ated life in the modern nation, with the potential for intercultural exchange still alive. The circumscribed reality of castration, deracination, and entrapment through service to the state remains; but we must search for meaning and for the possibility of an identity that—if need be—may be different from one’s origin, precisely because of the reality of a seemingly universal capitalism that continues to fragment local spheres. Zheng He’s fractured Muslim-Chinese origins and life itself—as shattered as Singapore’s cultural life, but also representing more than the Singapore condition—suitably only comes through as disjointed narrative fragments in the play; when we try to add them up, we see how the one missing male “fragment” has animated this life. In the end, Descendants says, cultural identity and history are hard to protect from the politico-economic realm. The challenge is to transcend the literal and symbolic violence done to the realm of culture, and even to transcend the nation-state that practices such violence. Any person who serves the state and the global markets must face this challenge—multiple cultural attachments and identities are offered as a goal to aspire to rather than a problem resolved in Descendants:

But the eunuch admiral seemed never to have given up the hope of ﬁnding an alternate life. On board his drifting vessels, in the loneliness of the vast ocean, in the limbo between departing and arriving, between being a man and a non-man, he kept on dreaming, hoping, searching, struggling. (Kuo 2003, scene 16)

Singapore artists—as the paradoxical “descendants” of the eunuch admiral—must maintain the suitable tension between plurality and the singularity that may now threaten cultural production in the city-state.

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4. In the city-state, the term “Marxist” is taken by the state to be coterminous with “communist.” The 1987 crackdown was codenamed “Operation Spectrum.” Straits Times correspondent Chua Lee Hoong—a former Internal Security Department officer—re- cently offered the most extraordinary comparison between the 1987 security sweep and the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident as a justification for Operation Spectrum: “Every country has its own iconic movement in dealing with potentially destabilising dissent. Tiananmen was one of China’s, and I dare say it brought relative political stability for at least 20 years” (2003:18). According to Chua, Operation Spectrum was one of Singa- pore’s such “iconic movements,” along with the infamous February 1963 Operation Cold Store, when the security forces detained over 100 leading opposition political fig- ures. Singapore was then trying to join the Federation of Malaysia, and internal security on the island was shared between Malaya (now West Malaysia), Britain, and Singapore. It is too easy to say that Chua represents the state’s position on such matters; it is most unlikely the PAP government would wish any of its activities—historically or other- wise—to be compared with the very violent Chinese clampdown. 5. For more information regarding this crackdown on the arts, see the essays by Sanjay Krishnan, Sharaad Kuttan, Lee Weng Choy, Leon Perera, and Jimmy Yap in Looking at Culture (Krishnan et al. 1996). This anthology was initially intended to be an issue of the National University of Singapore Society’s journal, Commentary. The Society panicked in the wake of the 1993 arts controversy, and stopped the publication process; the editors resigned and subsequently had the issue privately published. 6. The opening show and the published catalogue were entitled “Modernity and Beyond” (see Sabapathy 1996). The exhibition showcased SAM’s potential for defining the ter- rain of modern “Southeast Asian art.” 7. In 2002, Ong was in Berlin for the In Transit intercultural festival at the Haus der Kul- turen der Welt; in Kornborg Castle, Copenhagen, for his Search: Hamlet, which ends the intercultural Shakespeare trilogy that began in 1996 with his Lear; and at Lincoln Cen- ter, New York,for Silver River, with music by Bright Sheng and libretto by David Henry Hwang. 8. The main jewel of the Festival was the Asian debut of the Kun opera, The Peony Pavilion, directed by Chen Shi-Zheng, which had premiered at the Lincoln Center Festival of 1999. Unfortunately, attendance of the event was poor: the country’s limited arts education has not developed a significant audience for an opera that stretches out over five evenings. 9. The editorial goes on to note a truth the entire population should be familiar with: “By now, the people should see that whatever the government invests in, be it education, the arts, conservation projects or biotechnology, the bottom line is how one derives an economic benefit from each venture.” 10. Action Theatre is one of the more artistically ambitious companies of the commercial theatre. In 2002 it adapted for the stage Singaporean Hwee Hwee Tan’s novel Mammon Inc. (2001), which deals with a 20-something Singapore woman’s capitulation to global consumerism in the guise of a transnational firm that “manages” cross-cultural identities for the “betterment” of global business. Action has also involved prominent Malaysian

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director Krishen Jit with their work. He was involved with another 2002 project called Squeeze and Squeezability, a smorgasbord of six short plays. The quality of the scripts was uneven, though the direction and acting were of high standards. 11. For more on Lee’s work, see Wee (1996).

References

Chia Ming Chien 1989 “The Artists’ Village.” Man, April-May:33. Chua Lee Hoong 2003 “Me? I’d Rather Save Money on the Candles...” Straits Times (Singapore), Op. Ed. section, 2 April:18. Devan, Janadas 1995 “Is Art Necessary?” In Art vs. Art: Conflict and Convergence (The Substation Conference 1993), edited by Lee Weng Choy, 51–56. Singapore: The Sub- station. The Graduate 2003 “The Esplanade an Impetus? Only Time will Tell.” Editoral. The Graduate (Singapore), February-March:4. Jit, Krishen 1995 “The Larger Context of Arts Development in Singapore.” In Art vs. Art: Con- flict and Convergence (The Substation Conference 1993), edited by Lee Weng Choy, 21–25. Singapore: The Substation. Krishnan, Sanjay, et al., eds. 1996 Looking at Culture. Singapore: Artres Design & Communications. Kuo Pao Kun 1990 The Coffin Is Too Big for the Hole—And Other Plays. Singapore: Times Books. 2000 Images at the Margins: A Collection of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays. Singapore: Times Books. 2003 Two Plays by Kuo Pao Kun: Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and The Spir- its Play, edited by C.J.W.-L.Wee and Lee Chee Keng. Singapore: SNP Inter- national. Lee Siew Hwa 1989 “Village Artists.” Sunday Times (Singapore), “Sunday Plus” section, 28 May. Ministry of Information and the Arts 2000 Renaissance City Report: Culture and the Arts in Renaissance Singapore. Singa- pore: Ministry of Information and the Arts. Ong Teng Cheong, et al. 1989 Report of the Advisory Council on Culture and the Arts. Singapore: Singapore National Printers. Seet, K.K. 2002 “Review of The Morning People.” Arts Magazine (Singapore), September- October:128–29. Straits Times 1987 “Two Main Fronts in Conspiracy: Full Text of Ministry of Home Affairs Statement on the Marxist Conspiracy.” Straits Times (Singapore), 27 May. Tan Shzr Ee 2003 “The Art of Spending.” Straits Times (Singapore), 16 April, Life section:L4. Venturelli, Shalini n.d. From the Information Economy to the Creative Economy: Moving Culture to the Center of International Public Policy. Cultural Comment Series. Washington, DC: Center for Arts and Culture. Ͻhttp://www.culturalpolicy.orgϾ.

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Wee, C.J.W.-L. 1996 “Staging the New Asia: Singapore’s Dick Lee, Pop Music and a Counter- modernity.” Public Culture 8, 3 (Spring):489–510. forthcoming “Singapore.” In A Dictionary for the Twenty-First Century: The Ambivalent Fu- ture of Knowledge and Culture, edited by Ashis Nandy and Vinay Lal.

C.J.W.-L.Wee teaches literature and cultural theory at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was formerly a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, and is the author of Culture, Empire, and the Question of Be- ing Modern (Lexington Books, 2003), and the editor of Local Cultures and the “New Asia”: The State, Culture, and Capitalism in Southeast Asia (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002).

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