Singapore, its idiosyncracies, and its people take centre stage at the 2016 Singapore Theatre Festival happening from Jun 30-Jul 24 at LASALLE College of the Arts. Presented by Singaporean theater company W!LD RICE, the festival celebrates contemporary Singaporean theater and hopes to develop and encourage local playwrights, old and new.

Ivan Heng, the artistic director of W!LD RICE, gives us his take on the local arts scene and what you should expect at the upcoming festival.

Please share the one thing you love about Singapore’s theater scene.

Visitors to Singapore are always surprised by how much we get away with in theater, because we have the unfortunate reputation of being very regulated and strait-laced. Over the years, theater has created a space for artists and audiences to reflect on today’s most challenging and difficult issues. Politics, sex, race and religion are hot-button topics and taboos that otherwise go undiscussed in the mainstream media.

How has the local arts industry evolved over the past five years?

There are many new, up-and-coming talents and companies. These young artists represent a new generation of voices in Singapore. At the Singapore Theatre Festival, playwrights like Nessa Anwar, Thomas Lim and Helmi Yusof are writing their first plays. Look out, too, for companies like Red Pill Productions and Hatch Theatrics, which will respectively be staging Let’s Get Back Together and Hawa.

HOTEL by W!LD RICE

If you had to choose, what are some exciting productions to look out for in 2016?

I would highly recommend the shows in W!LD RICE’s upcoming Singapore Theatre Festival. HOTEL is a truly unmissable theatrical experience, if I do say so myself! The festival will also feature some of the most exciting, provocative, challenging plays you’ll see on stage this year.

Lastly, what do you enjoy about living in Singapore?

Its diversity. There are more than a hundred nationalities who have made Singapore their home in the last century. At a dinner party, you can find people from all walks of life. If you’re curious, Singapore is full of surprises!

What are some of your fondest memories growing up on a farm?

I never ran out of games to play, places to explore and cousins to do all of those with. I remember huddling onto a van driven by one of my grand uncles every morning. He would drop us off and pick us up after school. In the afternoon, a mini-van selling bread and snacks would stop by our house, everyday without fail. That would be our tea treat while we watched our favorite SBC drama on TV. It was also a lot about community living then, an aspect that I miss greatly now.

What do you think is the future for farming?
I feel that there should always be room for local produce, especially in a land-constrained country like Singapore. We can’t stick to the traditional way of farming but have to constantly innovate and find solutions that can overcome our limitations. I think urban farming is a great idea. It brings life back to the city and helps reconnect with Mother Nature.

What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about farming?
Probably the biggest misconception here is that it no longer exists in Singapore. Also maybe people think of farmers as simple folks who engage mainly in manual labor. The truth is, a lot of farmers I met in Singapore, including my own family, are very enterprising and inventive.

Are you a firm believer of eating organic?

I’m actually not a believer of eating organic. The hydroponics vegetables that my family grow are pesticide and insecticide-free but not organic due to the nutrient solution that the vegetables are grown in. I believe in eating healthy which means less eating out and more homecooked food.

What’s your most memorable project?
Currently I’m working for a project that’s part of the irememberSG grant program. The project looks at the development of farming in Singapore through the stories of three local farms: my family farm, Lian Wah Hang Quail Farm and Khai Seng Fish Farm. All 3 of them have a long history, and they’ve gone through a lot to be still surviving today. It’s a project that I am very personally involved in, and spending time in the other two farms feels like home to me! 

Who are some of your photography heroes?
At the moment I love looking at works from some Chinese photographers like Luo Dan, Yan Ming and Zhang Xiao. They spent years working on their projects and because of that, their works are compelling and pretty epic. I admire their dedication.

Catch We Are Farmers from Dec 10 - Jan 12 at Objectifs, find more info here.

Local playwright Joel Tan’s star has been on the rise since Family Outing, his play dealing with gay-themes debuted at the Singapore Theatre Festival in 2011. Fresh from being part of an all-poet performance at the Singapore Writers Festival his new play The Way We Go is currently showing at SOTA (through Nov 29). We chat with him about school life and the state of local theater.

How did you get started?
I stumbled upon theatre at university when I enrolled in a playwriting class taught by Huzir Sulaiman (Huzir is the Joint Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre where I'm an Associate Artist). Prior to that, I had never even set foot in the theatre. It's one of those accidental loves, which I think are the best. 

What's the inspiration for your latest play?
The way people speak has always been interesting to me and that was one of the main impulses behind this play. I was inspired by my teachers at Montfort School. They were these real English-educated Catholic types with a wonderful way with words that was almost self-caricaturing. When contrasted with the sound of my generation, which is snappier, slang-ier, easier, I thought it'd be interesting to have all these sounds in one play. Then a story of late-life romance crept in. It was so mad and delirious that it kept writing itself.  

The Way We Go focuses on the life of a former principal, what were your own school days like?
Montfort has a pretty bad rep. Either you know that it exists—in which case you think of pai kias and cigarettes—or you don't know that it exists—in which case you think it's a run-of-the-mill neighbourhood school with a fancy name. I was this prissy boy in the midst of these macho rocker types. We got along okay but I never really fitted in. The result was I ended up hating a lot of it. However, it is also where I met these amazing, loving, generous teachers and learned to play the trombone, which is a great love of mine. 

Who do you admire in the Singapore theater scene?
I really admire a whole bunch of Chinese language practitioners. They’re putting on such powerful work with so much humility and intelligence. I don't know if I'll ever get to work with them, though, because my Mandarin is so half-past-six. 

If you could meet any character from any play you’ve read or written, who would it be and why?
For coffee and cake, I’d want to meet Violet from The Way We Go because she makes the best cakes. 

How do you think the local theatre scene has changed over the years?
I don't know, I haven't been part of it that long! Well, I suppose we do see a lot more locally-produced musicals now than we used to, which is interesting. 

Lastly, what would you do on your days off?
My job as a freelance magazine writer.

What makes Singapore’s culture, arts and heritage so unique?

It really is the myriad performance spaces like the newly-reopened Victoria Theatre, museums, galleries and exciting festivities for our ethnically diverse population. In fact, one can simply spend a day in the Bras Basah/Bugis precinct and experience how eclectic Singapore can be.

What is your fondest memory of growing up Singapore? 

Watching my grandmother and grandaunts make kueh kueh for Chinese New Year every year, and me stealing freshly made kueh bulohs and “love letters”. Going to the old MPH Building at Stamford Road was also a treat when I was young. Although it’s no longer a bookstore, the building has been beautifully conserved.                                                      

Where do you like to eat out and hang out? 

I enjoy eating and hanging out in the east, where I grew up in and still live in today. There is delicious food in Joo Chiat along East Coast Beach, from the East Coast Lagoon Food Village to Big Splash, which brings back fond memories of Sunday swimming dates with friends and family.

Which is your favourite landmark in Singapore?

I don't think I'm being biased when I say the National Museum building. It’s one of the oldest buildings in Singapore (dating back to 1887), and is architecturally beautiful, inside and out. It reminds us of our colonial past but is today a great place to spend time with your family and friends. It's also magical to stand under the dome to just look up and see the sunlight streaming through the stained glass. 

Angelita recommends...

Attractions Visiting the Night Safari is one of the best things to do in Singapore at night—I always try to find the time to bring overseas visitors there. Another gem is the Malay Heritage Centre in Kampong Glam. In fact, Kampong Glam is such a great place to hang out, have a meal and people-watch!

Parks Gardens by the Bay is most beautiful in the late evening, but do venture to the less popular Bay East Garden near Tanjong Rhu to get a spectacular view of Singapore’s skyline.

Arts Some of my favourite art venues include Artspace @ 222, Singapore Art Museum, Asian Civilisations Museum and The Substation.

Restaurants Flutes at the National Museum of Singapore for a great Sunday Roast, Shirokane Tori-Tama at Robertson Walk for something exotic, such as the cockscomb of a chicken (highly recommended). Jaan at the Swissotel for great food and a great view to match, and for really special occasions, Kaiseki Yoshiyuki at Forum Galleria is just magical. 

Angelita's perfect day...

9am: Head to the market. I like going to the nearby wet market at the Bedok Bus Interchange and buying every possible local breakfast dish (fried carrot cake, chwee kueh, vegetarian bee hoon etc) home to share with the family, so that everyone gets a bit of everything!

12pm: Chill out. It’s probably too hot to be out of the house at this time, and I’d definitely be too full for activities after the breakfast smorgasbord! 

3pm: Catch a movie at one of the larger cineplexes. I always choose to watch a movie on the largest screen available, so I usually l head down to Golden Village at VivoCity.

7pm: Have dinner. One of my favourite restaurants in Singapore is Wild Rocket @ Mount Emily. Willin Low is such a talented chef and he’s so passionate about Singaporean cuisine. The menu at Wild Rocket is reminiscent of familiar tastes, yet so innovatively put together that it is always surprising and exciting to eat there.

I’m a fortunate Singaporean. I’m 65 years old. Look at me, I’m still beautiful, I’m strong, I’m intelligent. I’m still rich. If it wasn’t for the bloody government, I’d be the queen of this country.

I’m very spoiled. I’ve never turned on a computer in my life; I’ve never cooked in my life. But that doesn’t mean that I’m useless. I wasn’t trained to be a servant or a maid; I was trained to be a warrior. I was trained to be a boss.

The greatest thing for landowners is to live and die on the land. That means you get up every morning and you want to go to the land, you want to walk on grass, you want to dig in the mud, you want to pluck your own fruit.

[When I was young, my family] received a bullet in the mail. It said “you better watch out” and things like that. But we never got kidnapped.

People put too much emphasis on the sizzle and not the sausage. In the old days, when we used to do a charity for the Red Cross, we would actually cook things ourselves and make the flower arrangements ourselves. Now, you go to a ball and the flower arrangement is five hundred dollars. So why are you raising money to buy five hundred dollars worth of flowers?

I call myself the gentle warrior. People see [a warrior] as a fierce person but we’re not; we’re protectors. I’m gentle until provoked. But I could kill you. And it’s something that’s inherent in my DNA because my father was from the warrior caste, and my mother was born in the year of the dragon.

You remember that guy who was spitting on the woman on the train platform, and nobody did anything? If I were there, I would have put my hand on his shoulder and said, “My friend, can you please stop doing that?” If he didn’t, I was going to press his neck, pull his tongue out and cut it off.

Possessions don’t make people happy. People make people happy. Life makes people happy.  

Who wants a useless sterile garden? Every HDB estate can be converted into a kampong garden. And I can’t stand them doing their community garden which starts with them building a fence around it. What’s community about it? To me, everybody should just be allowed to grow pandan lah, this lah, that lah. So it looks a bit untidy. So what? But it looks real.

[Bollywood Veggies] isn’t about farming. It’s about creating a circle of life. The very rich must help to carry the poor. Everything that has a heartbeat has a place in the kingdom of the gentle warrior.

I’m a rocket train to bring down evil, unthinking drones so that we can change the system.

I’ve been called obnoxious, notorious, even a super b****. Why should I give a s***? I want to die a legend. I want people to remember me forever. It’s good to have a reputation.

The reason for my patriotism is simple: basic gratitude. Just imagine, my father came to this country as a young, uneducated teenager and by the time I was born, he had built a great business which entitled me to live a fortunate life. I love my country. I’m half-Indian and half-Chinese but I see myself as Singaporean. My aim is to die in this country.

My husband thinks I’m a pain in the ass and that I’m fearless. He doesn’t try to change my mind and I don’t try to change his.

Dishonesty is the world’s worst evil. People don’t understand. They always say compromise is good but I’m not a compromiser. If you’re a dishonest liar, I don’t have time for you.

There’s a god incarnate in all of us. I believe that we can all create, destroy or nurture, depending on our situations and what we want to do, and that makes me unafraid.

I think I’m the most interviewed person in this country. A lot of people don’t like to be interviewed because they don’t like to give an opinion.

Teach a child about nature, teach a child to be a warrior, and he will be a natural protector. And that I think is a great element that is missing from our community.  

The biggest misconception [about storytelling] is that you read from a book, that you don’t need an audience or funding, because you do this in a library, a school and at home.

We tell stories to adults, we tell stories with sex, love, unrequited love, broken hearts, incest, stories with no endings, stories that are raw and have not been manipulated by society over time. They’ve not been Disneyfied.

I will tell the story as it is. I’ll also talk about the versions that are wrong.

Foreign storytellers come and tell Indians sanitized stories of [14th century Indian courtier] Birbal and [16th century emperor] Tenaliraman. Akbhar and Birbal and Tenaliraman also have a lot of violence because they were teaching tales. But if you take the violence out, then how is it a teaching tale?

I don’t supply the images in storytelling. The free reign of the imagination is very liberating in today’s world. Most of the time, you press this, and the image is given. You go to the cinema, see Transformers, the image is given. You cannot imagine. Branding, labeling, advertising, everything has been given to you.

When you listen, your heartbeat slows down, the way your blood is circulating is controlled, your breathing is modulated. You may fall asleep. It can be very healing.

My grandfather gave me the Panchatantra, the Jataka, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, out of which the Ramayana is what I have retold numerous times. The Mahabharata, not so much.

I am Malaysian. I grew up in all the ulu kampung places. I had all the Malay cikgus to tell me these stories. I built upon them by researching. So, yes, I know the story of the mouse deer and the crocodile, but are there variations? Is it a colonial variation? Is it the peninsula variation? Is it the Borneo variation? Oh dear, there’s one from Java. How interesting!

The old journals, anthologies, books in universities that nobody really looks at, I go and dig through all that. I do a lot of going and sitting with people and talking with them. I sit with the community, the elders.

I went to live with the Orang Asli in the Peninsula for 10 days. We had to cross a huge lake by a small boat. The sun above you, water beneath you; you cannot see right, left, front, back. The only sound is the motor. And then you feel this ah-hah moment. Beneath the water could be a serpent princess, a naga king, an entire kingdom that I’ve heard myths and legends about. What about all the things above us that are looking down on this boat? There’s something else there. That was the ah-hah moment, about why we told stories. To make sense of this universe we are in.

Because I have children, the daily magic creation or suspension of disbelief happens in my parenting with them. Even when they are 35 or 45, I will still speak to them in story code, and they will understand the nuances.

In any other place in ASEAN, they know their roots. They know why they eat with their hands. They’re very comfortable about their Thainess, their Indianness or Cambodianness. Here, people have grown up not speaking the dialects, watching very Western things on TV, dressing without the sari and the bindi. They don’t have enough examples on the street. When you talk about identity and roots, my students have no reference point.

This was Temasek, whether we like it or not. And before Sang Nila Utama arrived, he fought with the naga king who tested him to the point where he threw everything from his ship and he threw his gold crown—his ego—and then the seas calmed down. You can’t ignore that this land has its very Malay story.

The best [artist] is the one who turns up on time, who will stay late, read their emails. They know how to write an invoice, they know how to send a quotation and a proposal. They may not be the best talent.

In a small country like this, I have to be very real with [students]. I direct them towards things like video, backstage work. It pays a lot, by the hour, and we need people like that. But they come in thinking, “I want to be the one winning the Idol.”

Moss Audio specializes in wireless speakers that are handmade from unusual materials like natural acrylic. Launched in May, the (super-stylish) speakers retail for 99USD each online. They will also be available at The Redundant Shop and The Assembly Store from the start of August. We chat with founder Nik Lee, to find out more. 

Producing a product like this must be hard—what’s the biggest challenge so far?

It took us over a year to develop the first range of speakers.  The manufacturing technique and material we use are quite unique, so there was a lot of testing and development involved.  It was also imperative that the sound quality was as good as possible, so spent weeks tuning and testing until it was right. We wanted to launch a product that was absolutely the best that we could offer.

Any expansion plans in the horizon? What are you planning to make next?

We are currently experimenting with materials to use for some new products launching towards the end of the year.  In the meantime, we’ll also be collaborating with local and international artists and designers to work on special edition ranges.  We aim to build a platform where we can work with other creatives, bridging the gap between music, art, fashion and design.

What fascinates you most about sound?

I come from a creative family—my sister is a talented artist and my younger brother is a singer-songwriter.  Art, design and music were a big factor when growing up.  I love music and have been designing and making speakers for years, even before I did it professionally.

Thanks to the Internet and streaming music sites like Spotify, people’s listening habits have changed.  We are moving into a new era of music listening and there is scope for developing cool products to meet changing needs.

Any tips for people looking to purchase a speaker system?

Go for quality.  There are a lot of speaker products out there, but they tend to use cheap components and materials.  Cheap speakers don’t sound very good and don’t last very long.  Spend slightly more and get a speaker system that is nice to listen to and that should also last for years.

What’s your experience of starting up in Singapore?

It’s perfect for me because most of my friends are here.  When you start a business, you need to pull favors from everyone you know.  I’ve been really lucky in that respect—practically everyone I know has helped me out in one way or another. In Singapore, everything you need is very close at hand, so you can always find the things you need.  It’s also very easy to network—it’s as if everyone knows everyone else in Singapore!

Singapore is also a very good place for young entrepreneurs who are starting a business straight from school.  There are several incubation centers attached to the polytechnics and universities—these centers can help you to secure office space and government grants.

Do you have any advice for budding entrepreneurs?

Have the confidence to jump into things that you’ve never done before.  I trained as a designer, but when I started this business, I found myself doing financial spreadsheets and all sorts of paperwork that was needed to run a business.  I had to learn every aspect of running a company and become a Jack-of-all-trades.  It’s really good fun, but you have to learn things very quickly and have the confidence to give anything a go.