Fiction

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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 ...

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...