SINGAPORE – Two home-grown plays inspired by political developments take the stage in March – one asking questions of the ease with which Singaporeans cocoon themselves in normality despite the atrocities around them, and the other a provocative rundown of the history of theatre censorship in Singapore.

Hi, Can You Hear Me? is playwright-director A Yagnya’s absurd, multiverse take on the traumatic events that happen outside of people’s control and their reverberating effects.

Staged in English, Mandarin and Japanese with surtitles, it boasts a cosmic mix of characters such as a tiger that runs a bar, Chinese goddess Guan Yin and an artificial intelligence caregiver.

In this fragmented reality, characters have their routines shattered by unexpected happenings, from Groundhog Day deaths to experiencing an earthquake over a video call.

The production, staged by The Necessary Stage (TNS), runs from March 21 to 31 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio.

For this work, Yagnya, who also penned 2022’s Between 5 Cows And The Deep Blue Sea, was inspired by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.

The Japanophile was then a student about to go on an exchange programme to Japan, and later visited the devastated city in 2016, recalling “a ghost town” filled with photos of former residents, Geiger counters and markings on walls to show how high the waves had reached that fateful day.

That freak accident showed her the fragility of normality. Post-pandemic, she says, the phrase “new normal” is also bandied about without being given much critical definition.

The 33-year-old adds: “We have our own normal and abnormal happenings in our personal lives. You could get a health scare or have your money stolen or social media accounts hacked. But the outer world can also intrude on you. To be normal is to be privileged.”

Recent developments in Gaza have borne this out. Yagnya speaks with anger about the bizarreness of finding cat videos next to images of children dying in their mothers’ arms on social media platforms.

To be alive today is to live with cognitive dissonance, a fracturing that is reflected in Hi, Can You Hear Me?’s non-linear form.

“There is a sense of taking the whole picture, as if it were made of glass, and then you take it and just violently throw it on the floor,” she says. “We play a good diplomatic role. Singaporeans are very good at treading the line for fear of fracturing their normality. But my question is always: At what cost?”

TNS artistic director Alvin Tan, 61, who co-directs, says Yagnya is one of the few playwrights who write fractal scenes and manage to connect them through intuitive and associative means.

He finds joy in the chaos of the interrelated episodes, which do not hand meanings to audiences on a silver platter. “We want to preserve that fragmentation and yet scaffold it so audiences can engage,” he says.

The “old-fashioned” linear narrative is an illusion of how life is lived. “Who makes sense of all the fragments I see? I do. There is no one else I can depend upon.”

The second political play, put on by Wild Rice, is a restaging of Alfian Sa’at’s one-sided conversation about theatre censorship with a government official, with the unwieldy title of The Death Of Singapore Theatre As Scripted By The Infocomm Media Development Authority Of Singapore.

First staged in 2022, it is a one-woman performance-lecture acted by Farah Ong, chronicling moral panic, culture wars and how bureaucratic language and political elites have shaped Singapore’s theatre landscape from colonial times to the present.

It has been described by some as the revenge of a playwright, the long title itself an assertion. Alfian, 47, says he crafted it after he came across American playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play about the genocide in Namibia between 1904 and 1908. Its title begins with We Are Proud To Present A Presentation and comes up to 26 words.

Alfian says: “I wanted to introduce something potentially bureaucratically messy. If officials have to archive it, they have to list the whole title and I wonder if there might be a word limit. It’s something that will intervene in the otherwise smooth running of bureaucratic systems.”

The script is sprinkled with provocative directions, such as one that indicated a rude gesture without specifying what it would look like.

The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) asked the company to send it a video recording for screening. Alfian says his idea was initially to assimilate each round of IMDA feedback into the script so that the authority becomes a co-author of the work, though it “didn’t play ball” and held back from implicating itself.

His experiment also addresses the audiences directly to put them into the shoes of the censors. “Maybe it’s too far to say that audiences are complicit, but in terms of allyship with artists, it’s important that it’s not a battle that artists fight alone. The audience has a role to play as well.”

Irfan Kasban, 37, directs, and says that for him, The Death Of Singapore Theatre is a love letter to the IMDA, with each scene a different stage of grief during a protracted break-up.

He confesses a tiredness over dealing with censorship in the allegorical mode, with theatremakers very conscious about avoiding “landmines” that they cannot step on. This morphed into a determination to speak directly after he read Alfian’s play.

“I’m not going to do poetry any more,” he says with a laugh.

On the choice of having Ong reprise her role, he adds: “She’s not one of your mainstream performers, and therefore, the words ring a bit more true sometimes.”

Both Alfian and Irfan say censorship is a paternalistic practice that takes away agency from the public. The theatremaker cannot be held responsible for how people choose to interpret plays based on their own life experiences and baggage, especially those who do so in bad faith.

Alfian says: “I always say that censorship wants to leave its mark without leaving a mark. It’s up to us to show where the scars are.”

Book It/Hi, Can You Hear Me?

Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: March 21 to 23, 27 to 30, 8pm; March 23, 24, 30 and 31, 3pm
Admission: $38
Info: str.sg/Ad6S

Book It/The Death Of Singapore Theatre As Scripted By The Infocomm Media Development Authority Of Singapore

Where: Wild Rice @ Funan, 107 North Bridge Road
When: March 14 to 30, Tuesdays to Fridays, 7.30pm; Saturdays, 2.30 and 7.30pm, Sundays, 2.30pm
Admission: From $40
Info: str.sg/pjZG