Fiction

translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak This play by renowned poet and political activist Aimé Césaire recounts the tragic death of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo Republic and an African nationalist hero. A Season in the Congo follows Lumumba's efforts to free the Congolese from Belgian rule and the political struggles that led to his assassination in 1961. Césaire powerfully depicts Lumumba as a sympathetic, Christ-like figure whose conscious martyrdom reflects his s...

Fading southern belle Blanche DuBois is adrift in the modern world. When she arrives to stay with her sister Stella in a crowded, boisterous corner of New Orleans, her delusions of grandeur bring her into conflict with Stella's crude, brutish husband Stanley Kowalski. Eventually their violent collision course causes Blanche's fragile sense of identity to crumble, threatening to destroy her sanity and her one chance of happiness. Tennessee Williams's steamy and shocking landmark drama, recreat...

On the cusp of independence, cultures collide in a bedroom in Singapore. As the Vietnam War rages on, the English-educated scholar Lee Hua Min—“the finest product of the University”—finds himself hopelessly disillusioned. Enter Wong Ching Mei, a Chinese-educated former nightclub singer seeking to enrol in Nanyang University. Mirroring the intense tussles between the English- and Chinese-speaking during Singapore’s formative years, Hua Min and Ching Mei trade ferocious barbs even as they are i...

Welcome to the surreal world of Boom, where civil servants wake the dead, corpses are terrified of cremation, old women are besieged in their homes, and Ah Bengs still dream of being Superman. Boom tells the story of an elderly woman and her property agent son in Singapore, who are struggling over the potential en bloc sale of their home. Their destinies become interwoven with that of an idealistic civil servant, Jeremiah, who is facing the greatest challenge of his career—persuading a reluct...

Five people, staff and customers, are stuck in one of an infinite number of hip Singapore cafés while, outside, an unexplained horror wrecks the world. Over five short acts, a madness sets in. The cafe and all reality are eaten away by a nightmare of banality and tedium, leaving only a well of deep ennui, paralysing apathy, and horrifying cruelty familiar to anyone living in the city-state. “Over the course of an hour and forty-five minutes, I was gripping the edge of my seat, watching the ac...

'Big Daddy' Pollitt, the richest cotton planter in the Mississippi Delta, is about to celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday. His two sons have returned home for the occasion: Gooper, his wife and children, Brick, an ageing football hero who has turned to drink, and his feisty wife Maggie. As the hot summer evening unfolds, the veneer of happy family life and Southern gentility gradually slips away as unpleasant truths emerge and greed, lies, jealousy and suppressed sexuality threaten to reach bo...

Singapore’s most promising playwright presents his sophomore collection of plays, including Charged, winner of the 2011 The Straits Times’ Life! Theatre Award for Best Script. Through his signature use of experimental and innovative puppetry and stage devices, Chong’s Charged is Singapore’s most controversial and nuanced political play to date—addressing the issue of racial tensions in the most explosive of scenarios—that of a Chinese corporal shooting his Malay counterpart while on military ...

From one of Singapore’s most garlanded playwrights comes his first collection of published plays, including Autumn Tomyam, winner of Best Original Script and Play of the Year in the 2002 DBS Life! Theatre Awards. Guaranteed to challenge readers’ prejudices, Desmond Sim’s Six Plays is a bold and often hilarious exploration of sexuality, polygamy and love in all its guises.Paperback: 308 PagesProduct Dimensions: 145 x 210 mmISBN: 9789810756895Published by Epigram Books

In veteran playwright Desmond Sim’s first collection for students, food and family ground seven heartwarming plays as sons and daughters, fathers and grandmothers fight, heal and find love in the kitchen and around the dining table. This collection includes Drunken Prawns, winner of the first Hewlett Packard/Action Theatre Ten-Minute Play Contest, and other critically acclaimed plays such as Teochew Porridge and The Durian Man and His Daughters, with a foreword by Dr. K. K. Seet. Paperback: 2...

The Necessary Stage is at the forefront of social and community theatre in Singapore. Its plays, created through research and collaboration, engage different communities and empower audiences across all ages. In recent years, The Necessary Stage has been creating and performing plays on specific medical issues such as dementia, suicide, biomedical ethics and palliative care. Don't Forget to Remember Me is a collection featuring six of these plays by award-winning playwright Haresh Sharma. Dra...

Dragonflies is the story of a family fighting for survival in a hostile world, looking for somewhere to call home, and something that might look like hope. The year is 2021 and climate change is wreaking havoc across the globe. Donald Trump has been re-elected US President for a second term. Brexit is in full effect and causing chaos all over Europe. In the wake of escalating wars in the Middle East, famine in West Africa, and relentless terrorist attacks by radical extremists, the UK—and man...

Eclipse takes an intimate glimpse into the historical partition of India and Pakistan through the eyes of three generations of men, as they embark upon journeys and grapple with their dreams and responsibilities. A young Singaporean man carries his father’s ashes and makes a trip to the latter’s birthplace in Hyderabad, Pakistan. In doing so, he retraces the original journey made by millions of people—including his parents and grandparents—in 1947, during the India-Pakistan partition. This pu...

What do Physics, three bears and a stroke have in common? Take a journey with Elaine, a middle-aged Physics teacher, as she explains the theory of relativity using the metaphor of three bears and a train, and devises a plan to turn back time and save her ailing father from physical determination. Written by gifted playwright Jean Tay, Everything but the Brain was first developed at the Playwrights’ Cove at The Necessary Stage in 2001 and staged by Action Theatre in 2005. It won Best Original ...

Edited by Lucas Ho and featuring an introduction by Dr Philip Holden, Faith Ng: Plays Volume One gathers together eight plays from one of Singapore’s most celebrated playwrights.Honest and compelling, the plays of Faith Ng unerringly capture slices of Singapore life in all of its emotional complexity. Her plays constantly wrestle with the politics and poetics of the languages and relationships in Singapore: from WO(MEN), where the ties, secrets and silences within women from different generat...

The maestro of political plays is back and his latest offering in a decade, Fear of Writing, is a groundbreaking commentary with its finger on the political pulse of Singapore today. In Fear of Writing, a playwright struggles with writer’s block, a director and producer bemoan their failure to get a government license to stage their play, and a father writes to his daughter overseas. Seemingly disparate elements are woven together, while the line between art, performance and reality begin to ...

Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer played a crucial role in bringing opera back to life as a contemporary art form, and they have been popular—and, in the case of Klinghoffer, highly controversial—ever since they were first staged by the director Peter Sellars in the eighties and nineties. Both operas were conceived from the start as collaborations between composer and writer, and their power is due as much to the dazzlingly constructed and deeply felt libretti of the poet Alice Good...

This anthology consists of twelve plays by Huzir Sulaiman, Checkpoint Theatre’s Joint Artistic Director. Based in Singapore, Huzir is one of Southeast Asia’s preeminent playwrights. The twelve plays in this collection bear testimony to his gift of imagining characters and deploying language to offer unexpected insights into the personal, the social and the political. Huzir Sulaiman: Collected Plays 1998 – 2012 offers readers an opportunity to acquaint themselves with an impressive body of wor...

Originally conceived as a novel but then transformed into a play by Ayn Rand, Ideal is the story of beautiful but tormented actress Kay Gonda. Accused of murder, she is on the run, and she turns for help to six fans who have written letters to her, each telling her that she represents their ideal--a respectable family man, a far-left activist, a cynical artist, an evangelist, a playboy, and a lost soul. Each reacts to her plight in his own way, their reactions a glimpse into their secret selv...

Edited by Lucas Ho and featuring an interview with the playwright by Huzir Sulaiman, Joel Tan: Plays Volume 1 is a compilation of seven remarkable plays from a playwright establishing his place in the Singapore theatre industry.  From the humorously thought-provoking 'Mosaic' to the delicately poignant 'The Way We Go', Joel effortlessly captures the intricacies of the modern world with evocative stillness and unapologetic intelligence, marrying unconventional narrative structure with a strong...

The swinging 1960s. A nightclub in Singapore. A one night stand that turns into true love. Or not? In Mimi Fan, Singapore playwright Lim Chor Pee weaves together a haunting tale about love, escapism and broken hearts searching for healing. Through the story of a teenage bar girl, Mimi Fan, whose destiny clashes with Chan Fei-Loong, an English-educated overseas Singaporean who has returned home to work, Lim brings to the fore some undeniable and searing truths: true love requires courage, it c...

A man stabs an MP at a Meet-the-People Session. But this is not their story. It is the story of the man’s girlfriend, an Indonesian maid who wants to get married and become a Singaporean citizen. It is the story of the MP’s wife, who tries to cope with her husband’s injury and the media spotlight. It is the story of the maid’s employer, who is also struggling with her own tragedy. These three women may mean nothing to each other, but they need one another to survive. The maid, the employer an...

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy is a meditation on the destabilizing and destructive power of beauty, drawing together Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe, twin avatars of female fascination separated by millennia but united in mythopoeic force. Norma Jeane Baker was staged in the spring of 2019 at The Shed's Griffin Theater in New York, starring actor Ben Whishaw and soprano Renée Fleming and directed by Katie Mitchell. Paperback: 64 PagesProduct Dimensions: 115 x 185 mmISBN: 9780811229364 Published ...

Off Centre is The Necessary Stage’s landmark play in the history of Singapore theatre. First staged to great acclaim in 1993 under the direction of Alvin Tan, it is best remembered for bringing mental illness and its patients’ plight to the attention of the media and the general public. Over the past 13 years, Off Centre has been made into an experimental feature film, adapted into a television movie, given a full reading in the UK, taught at a University in Kuala Lumpur and translated and st...

Fall in love with Singapore’s most prominent feminist playwright. Ovidia Yu dissects all things female—from breasts to virginity, motherhood to lesbian love—and lays them bare in this omnibus collection of her finest works, including The Woman in a Tree on the Hill, the only Singapore play to win the Edinburgh Fringe First award. Ovidia Yu has written over thirty plays including The Woman in a Tree on the Hill, the only Singapore play to win an Edinburgh Fringe First. In her writing, she uses...

In November 2012, local theatre company The Necessary Stage launched Plays for Schools, the fourth collection of plays by the award-winning local playwright. The plays featured in this anthology include contemporary adaptations such as Hamlet, Such Sweet Sorrow (based on Romeo and Juliet), What Big Bombs You Have (referencing Little Red Riding Hood) and Ah Boy & the Beanstalk (based on Jack and the Beanstalk). The collection also includes the hugely entertaining History, Whose Story? and ...

A young man and woman meet by chance and fall instantly in love. But their families are bitter enemies, and in order to be together the two lovers must be prepared to risk everything. Set in a city torn apart by feuds and gang warfare, Romeo and Juliet is a dazzling combination of passion and hatred, bawdy comedy and high tragedy.Paperback: 320 Pages Product Dimensions: 111 x 181 mmISBN: 9780141012261Published by Penguin Books

Tom Stoppard's reputation as a playwright was made when his dazzling debut, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, opened at the National Theatre. Fifty years later, the play's wit, stagecraft and verbal verve remain as exhilarating as they were in 1967 as the two ill-fated attendant lords from Shakespeare's Hamlet take centre stage, musing on the purpose of existence and its end. This new edition publishes to coincide with a fiftieth anniversary production at The Old Vic, London, and contain...

This collection of 6 plays contains some of Sharma’s best and most popular early works. 3 of them, Lanterns Never Go Out, Still Building and More have been published in a previous collection, but which is no longer available. The other 3 plays, Hope, Talk I and Talk II have never been published before. The collection also contains an introduction by Alvin Tan as well as notes to each play by Sharma.Paperback: 270 PagesProduct Dimensions: 130 x 210 mmISBN: 9789810876746Published by The Necessa...

Following in the footsteps of the earlier Shorts 1, this second instalment represents some of Sharma’s best and most popular early works. The plays featured in this anthology include Land, Sea, Koan, Lizard, Rosnah, untitled women number one and untitled cow number one, as well as godeatgod, which has received multiple rave reviews both locally and internationally. Untitled women number one, untitled cow number one and Koan have also been staged at various international festivals. Out of the ...

The Sisters Islands and Pulau Senang: two satellite islands off the coast of Singapore, small but rich in story. This volume brings together two remarkable plays by Jean Tay, Sisters and Senang, which explore these two islands through turbulent events in the 1960s. Sisters: The Untold Stories of the Sisters Islands blends a real-life murder with creation myth. The play alternates between two stories: one of Mina and Lina, the two sisters upon which the myth of the Sisters Islands is supposedl...

Let Tan Tarn How, one of Singapore’s most controversial playwrights, take you on a journey that confronts the social and political issues facing Singaporeans today. With his signature wit and unflinching candour, he puts the spotlight on issues of life and death, sex and love, government, national identity and racism. This collection contains six award-winning plays and an introduction by Dr. K. K. Seet.Paperback: 384 PagesProduct Dimensions: 145 x 210 mmISBN: 9789810879778Published by Epigra...

Three specially selected school plays by seasoned theatre practitioner Verena Tay, including the award-winning The Car. These three plays tap into the realm of myth and fantasy, while still being firmly rooted in the reality of living day-to-day in modern Singapore. Understanding both the teaching and learning needs of the teacher and student, these plays are the keys towards nurturing a passion for theatre, and at the same time, fitting the curriculum. Paperback: 160 PagesProduct Dimensions:...

The Complete Works of Kuo Pao Kun Volume 4 - Plays in English had collected and edited both published and previously unpublished texts written in English by Late Kuo Pao Kun. This is the most complete anthology of Kuo's plays written in English, including all multi-lingual plays. Plays published for the first time include: Geylang People in the Net, Sunset Rise, and One Hundred Years in Waiting.Paperback: 472 PagesProduct Dimensions: 178 x 229 mmISBN: 9789814139465Published by World Scientific

On 5 July 1981, Sir Stamford Raffles leaves his pedestal by the Singapore River and pays a visit to Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew at the Istana. What follows is a wide-ranging discussion, both heated and humorous, that illustrates just how very human Singapore’s two most towering figures were. This conversation, along with the introduction of Munshi Abdullah (author of the Hikayat Abdullah), provides a fascinating backdrop for the investigation of historical authority and grand narratives. Pap...

Abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield comforts herself with recollections of her earlier, more gracious life in Blue Mountain when she was pursued by 'gentleman callers'. Her son Tom, a poet with a job in a warehouse, longs for adventure and escape from his mother's suffocating embrace, while Laura, her shy crippled daughter, has her glass menagerie and her memories. Amanda is desperate to find her daughter a husband, but when the long-awaited gentleman caller does arrive, Laura's romant...

TALAQ (First self-published in 1999)Talaq came under the media spotlight in 2000, when the Public Entertainment Licensing Unit (PELU) in Singapore denied it a performance license for its English and Malay performances on grounds that they would offend religious sensibilities. The play had originally been staged in Tamil, once in 1988 and twice in 1999. Concerns were raised over the portrayal of the Islamic faith and Indian Muslim community group South Indian Jamiathul Ulama (SIJU) protested t...

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's classic play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose. The History Boys premiered at the National in May 2004.Paperba...

Fourteen stimulating literary works that shine a new light on Singapore’s first foreign minister and one of its most eloquent and farsighted leaders—the late S. Rajaratnam. Celebrated as one of Singapore’s founding fathers, very little has been said of his literary prowess. The seven short stories, which he wrote in London in the 1940s, were previously published in various collections alongside some of the most distinguished writers in the world. Impressed by his talent, George Orwell, who at...

This anthology of acclaimed plays includes Faith Ng’s For Better or for Worse (nominated for Best Original Script in The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards); Joel Tan’s Family Outing; and Recalling Mother by Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed. It examines with care, intelligence, and honesty the joys and pains of family: the papered-over cracks of a twenty-year marriage; the enduring ties between a parent and a child; the forging of bonds between those not bound by blood.Paperback: 282 PagesPr...

Those Who Can’t, Teach turns the spotlight on the madcap lives of teachers and students in a typical secondary school in Singapore. As the teachers struggle daily to nurture and groom, the students prefer to hang out and “chillax”. With upskirting and Facebooking, griping and politicking, school takes on a whole new meaning as the colourful characters struggle to prove that those who can, teach. Written by Singapore’s most prolific playwright Haresh Sharma, Those Who Can’t, Teach was first st...

The hospital air conditioner is in need of service again. 4 bodies awaiting identification and autopsy, wake up at the morgue, in anticipation of the afterlife, if there is one. They have as much human consciousness as they have warmth. They are carried away by glossolalia. In and out of awareness, the audience amble and hasten with them through their dreams, memories, fears and revelations. Tongues shifts abruptly between confessional rants, poignant recollections and manic hallucinations. T...

Trilogy is a collection of three plays by Haresh Sharma that explore the fundamentals of text and realism by scrutinising pressing issues that affect contemporary society. Written between 2006 and 2008, the plays—Fundamentally Happy, Good People and Gemuk Girls—feature simple but powerful narratives that question personal, social, cultural and political convictions. These award-winning plays represent some of The Necessary Stage's most critically-acclaimed works in recent years and are set to...

This is the first volume in a series of play collections published by Checkpoint Theatre that showcase the exciting work of a new generation of Singapore playwrights. Published as part of Checkpoint Theatre’s 10th anniversary celebrations, these plays are evidence of the burgeoning renaissance in Singapore playwriting. This collection of eight critically-acclaimed plays features the work of up-and-coming playwrights Christine Chong, Kenneth Chong, Lucas Ho, Dan Koh, Cheryl Lee, Laremy Lee, Fa...

Translated by Marian Schwartz Walpurgis Night, by acclaimed Russian writer Venedikt Erofeev, is considered a classic in the playwright's homeland. Erofeev's dark and funny five-act satire of Soviet repression has been called the comic high-water mark of the Brezhnev era. Walpurgis Night dramatizes the outrageous trials of Lev Isakovich Gurevich, an alcoholic half-Jewish dissident poet confined by the state to a hospital for the insane. In "Ward 3"--a microcosm of repressive Soviet society--Gu...