The Vault 1.1 – Nineteen Sixty-Four
Nineteen Sixty-Four, a Centre 42 Vault project that revisits When Smiles Are Done and A White Rose at Midnight.
Nineteen Sixty-Four, a Centre 42 Vault project that revisits When Smiles Are Done and A White Rose at Midnight.
Admission is FREE
Synopsis
1964 – Singapore was part of Malaysia.
1964 – The year of racial riots between ethnic Chinese and Malays.
1964 – The year when two pioneering Singaporean dramatists wrote English-language plays in response to the lack of local plays that reflected recognisable themes, characters and speech. Prior to 1964, Lim Chor Pee’s Mimi Fan (1962) stood alone in the scene. In 1964, Goh Poh Seng wrote his first play and then, there were two.
2014 – We respond to these two writers’ sophomore creations respectively and collectively. We remember the plays while we refresh our perspectives on them – and retell the stories we see in them. Nora Samosir, Serene Chen, Casey Lim and Robin Loon investigates the texts of When Smiles are Done (Goh Poh Seng) and A White Rose at Midnight (Lim Chor Pee). They will suggest critical relationships between the present and the past while ruminating on their own connections with the texts, Singapore and Singapore theatre.
For one evening only, we invite you to share in these artists’ personal responses in an intimate lecture-performance.
Video Documentation
Robin, Casey, Nora and Serene introduce The Vault programme and its tenets, and explain what iteration 1.1 will cover. Robin then talks about the year 1964, specifically the significant events within the year, both in and outside of Singapore, as well as touches upon writing for the English-language stage in 1960s Singapore.
The Play
When Smiles Are Done
When Smiles Are Done was written by Goh Poh Seng and was first presented by Centre 65 in 1965. This play, set in contemporary Singapore in the 1960s, analyses the tensions in the life of a working-class Chinese family. The eldest son is disillusioned with their way of life while the only daughter wishes to marry a non-Chinese against her parents’ wishes.
A digital copy of the manuscript is available on NLB’s National Online Repository of the Arts (NORA). View it here.
Read more about the playwright here.
A White Rose at Midnight
A White Rose at Midnight was written by Lim Chor Pee and was first staged in 1964 by The Experimental Theatre Club. This play, set in contemporary Singapore in the 1960s, revolves around an attempt to bring together Chinese pragmatism and Western scepticism in the characters of a night club singer and an assistant lecturer at the university. It raised the issue of the status of the English educated in Singapore during the 60s and their search for identity in a society steeped in multi- traditions and languages.
The manuscript is currently not available in public domain.
Read more about the playwright here.