Download Work Completed to Date Preliminary Research

Work Completed to Date
Preliminary Research
•
We have conducted extensive preliminary research for the project, both in
Malaysia and Singapore. At this stage, this has mainly taken the form of library
and archival research, as well as some consultations with experts in the field.
o This kind of research is important at this stage, because we are currently
working on the earlier historical aspect of language and literature in
Malaysia and Singapore, and therefore need to go back to past records.
o We have made use of materials available at the libraries in the University
of Malaya and the National University of Singapore.
o Some archival research has also been conducted at the premises of
Singaporean Theatre group The Necessary Stage.
o Discussions about the project have been initiated with experts such as
Leow Puay Tin (Malaysian playwright, actress, and director, currently cohead of the Sunway University College Performance and Media
Department).
•
A questionnaire has been formulated, which will attempt to elicit detailed
information about the use of English in Malaysia and Singapore.
o This questionnaire is necessary, as this project is attempting to break fairly
new ground.
o While there is some agreement that ‘Malaysian’ and ‘Singaporean’
Englishes do exist, there have been no attempts to study how they have
developed, or how they can be defined.
o This questionnaire will therefore attempt to get a segment of Malaysian
and Singaporean English speakers to define their own use of the English
language.
•
All three researchers attended the SEAP colloquium, held in Kuala Lumpur in
September 2006.
o SEAP is an acronym for the Southeast Asian Postcoloniality Project, a
research project undertaken by Professor Lim Chee Seng of the English
Department, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya.
o The project aims to find a form of postcoloniality which is relevant to
Southeast Asia, rather than (as is currently the case) rooted in the South
Asian/Indian experience.
o The SEAP project indicates that the search for an identity within the
Southeast Asian context is of paramount concern. Our project fits in with
this general concern.
o Attending the SEAP colloquium, which included speakers such as Prof.
Wang Gungwu, Prof. Ray Ileto, and Prof. Shirley Lim, allowed us access
to current ideas and work in fields such as history, film, creative writing,
and language use.
Website
•
We have set up a website for this project. The URL address is
http://identityproject.um.edu.my/.
•
The aim of the website is to allow as many interested researchers/scholars as
possible access to our work.
o It currently contains basic information about the project and the three coresearchers.
o Completed work will be uploaded to the website whenever possible.
o The website will be advertised in various relevant areas.
o The website allows interested parties to add comments, or to contact us.
Draft Chapters and Book Structure
The proposed structure of the book is as follows:
•
General Introduction
o This will cover ideas about identity in general, and in the MalaysiaSingapore context specifically.
o There will be a section on cultural and social history, to explain why
identity has evolved in a particular way in this region.
o This will be followed by a general discussion of how Malaysians and
Singaporeans react to and deal with these identities. This will serve as a
lead-in, to the more specific discussions contained in the following
sections.
•
The English Language in Malaysia and Singapore
o Literature review: what work has been done in this area, and how does the
current research fill gaps and address issues raised?
o Historical overview, discussing:
Malaysia and Singapore’s shared historical background: this
accounts for similarities in the two strands of English
Post-colonial language planning and development: this accounts
for growing differences not only in terms of grammar, syntax, and
usage, but also the relative positions of English within the two
societies.
o Discussion of emergence of localised varieties of Malaysian and
Singaporean English
These were initially considered as one entity known as SME
(Singaporean and Malaysian English)
Increasingly, they are recognised as separate entities: here, there
will be an analysis of comparative research showing emerging
differences between the two varieties, for example in terms of
vocabulary, intonation and stress.
It should be recognised that there is no uniform variety of either
Malaysian or Singaporean English; both comprise a continuum of
overlapping sub-lects ranging from more acrolectal to basilectal
sub-varieties. There are also bound to be ‘seepages’ from sociolinguistic factors and context of use.
o The Use of Malaysian and Singaporean Englishes and the question of
identity.
Use of English in these two countries is ruled by a paradox. While
there are calls to make English our own, to use our ‘own’ English
to construct a sense of belonging and identity, there is still a
general sense (especially among those who use English as a first
language) that Malaysian and Singapore Englishes are ‘wrong’.
Why does this dilemma exist? What does it suggest about the
identity that is being constructed through the use of Malaysian
English and Singaporean English?
•
Prose and Poetry in Malaysia and Singapore
o Literature review: what work has been done in this area, and how does the
current research fill gaps and address issues raised?
o Historical overview
This is necessary, in order to contextualise the emergence of
English-language writing in Malaysia and Singapore: we need to
recognise colonial influence on this writing.
The focus will be on writers of the 50s and 60s – Edwin Thumboo,
Shirley Lim, etc. What trends emerged under their influence. Were
they influential? This section will look at the idea of grappling with
identities using official languages. Could specific languages be
used to describe widely differing, uncertain identities?
In the section on Malaysia, there will be a focus on later writers
(post 1969) – what was the effect of different ethnic perceptions on
these writers? What about changing cultural and linguistic policies?
o Later writers
Is there a continued search for a language/means of expression that
is specifically Malaysian/Singaporean?
To some extent, this has been taken for granted but remains
unanalysed.
o Today’s writing
Writers appear to have reached a kind of cultural impasse, writing
from their own space rather than a national space.
Again, there is a need to look at whether that national space is there
already, or if the dilemmas and uncertainties of that space remain
unexplored and undiscussed.
•
Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore
o Literature review: what work has been done in this area, and how does the
current research fill gaps and address issues raised?
o Theatre as a forum for identity production
What is identity production? This section will include a brief
discussion of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, and its
relevance in the context of Malaysia and Singapore.
Why is theatre particularly suited to the construction of identity?
There will be an analysis of the theatre as a physical, embodied,
public forum for the discussion of ideas of identity.
o Historical overview
A summary of colonial theatrical activity immediately prior to and
after independence, to contextualise the emergence of local
English-language theatre.
An exploration of the need to look for an authentic local voice and
themes, in terms of verbal and performance languages. This section
will address the awkwardness felt in using Malaysian and
Singaporean Englishes.
Focus on the post-independence search for national identity –
constructing a national identity through theatre. This will cover the
1960s and 1970s.
o ‘Post-national’ theatre
Covers the 1980s and 1990s, as well as current works.
The 1980s were generally a time of theatrical stagnation both in
Malaysia and Singapore. However, Five Arts Centre and
Theatreworks (two highly influential theatre companies) both
emerged and began working with a ‘local’ performance vocabulary
during this period.
The 1990s saw a sudden surge of activity, in writing, acting,
directing, designing, formation of new companies, expansion and
consolidation of old companies.
In this time, there was a less conscious consideration of national
identity.
Emergence of an increasingly easy use of local varieties of English
– the language had been internalised, suggesting a level of
acceptance of national identity.
There will be a focus on the use of gestural as well as verbal
language to create local performance identity.
•
Conclusion
o The connecting strand, or through-line, in all three discussions is the use of
English.
o What all three discussions look at is how English is being used in both
Malaysia and Singapore to construct identities.
o The section on English language focuses on the use of English by the
general populace.
o The section on prose and poetry looks at textual metaphors, and strategies
for using the English language in a literary space.
o The section on performance to some extent combines the above two
discussions. How does the English language, although used in a ‘literary’
context (playwriting), still reflect and explore the way in which English is
used in an everyday context? This section also goes beyond verbal
language, to look at how gestural language enters the frame of discussion.
o All in all, this project begins with a discussion of ‘real’ English, as used in
everyday life, and then discusses how this ‘real’ English is expressed
through art. Such a discussion should allow us to examine ideas of how
national and individual identities are expressed through language, via the
medium of cultural expression.
All three researchers have done extensive work on the introductory chapters for each
section, and are continuing with their research and writing for subsequent chapters.
The English Language in Malaysia and Singapore
Historical Perspective: The growth of Malaysian and Singapore English
The English transported and transplanted (Moag, 1992) in Malaysia and
Singapore from colonial times has taken a linguistic shape of its own. As it began to
be used by a wider range of users and in expanding contexts, distinct linguistic and
socio-pragmatic features began to emerge as users in these countries began to adapt
English to suit local tongues, norms and nuances. The increasingly wider use of
English also resulted in the birth of overlapping sub-varieties of Englishes in these
countries, ranging from pidginised forms to a more acrolectal or standard form of
English. The types of English used in typically ex-British (and American) colonies,
such as Malaysia and Singapore, are referred to, among others, as New Englishes.
Each New English developed differently in relation to particular geographical
locations and socio-cultural settings. However, because of proximity and shared
cultural and historical background, Malaysian and Singapore English share many
linguistic features. Thus, initial studies tended to treat these two varieties of English
as one entity (Platt and Weber, 1980; Tongue, 1974).
However, the different post-colonial routes taken by Malaysia and Singapore
in relation to language policies and language planning have changed the status and
use of English in these two countries. English remains as an official language in
Singapore and since the 1980s, English has been the medium of instruction in schools.
Conversely, in Malaysia, Malay is the national and official language, while Malay
was introduced as the medium of instruction in schools in the 1970s. These different
language policies are bound to affect the linguistic development of English in
Malaysia and Singapore. In fact, more than thirty years ago, Tongue (1974: 17)
predicted that the varieties of English in Malaysia and Singapore “will begin to
diverge from each other”. By the 1980s, Platt, Weber and Ho (1983: 12) observed that
“whereas in Singapore there are more and more speakers for whom English is
something between a first and second language, because it is used daily in natural
communication…, in Malaysia, English is becoming more a foreign language as it is
being used less and less ….”. To a certain extent, this appears to be happening. In
Singapore, there is a rise in the use of English as the most dominant home language
among the Chinese, Indians and Malays (General Household Survey 2005), whereas
in Malaysia it is estimated that only 2% of Malaysians use English as a first language
(Crystal, 1997:58).
Cognizant of the fact that Malaysian and Singapore English are developing
different linguistic features, current research tends to treat both these varieties of
English as separate entities. There is, however, a dearth of published research on
comparative studies between Malaysian and Singapore English. Nevertheless, such
research suggests that differences exist between these two Englishes, particularly
where lexical items are concerned. Lim’s (2001) study of two major newspapers in
each country, for example, found evidence of lexical items that were unique to either
Singapore or Malaysian English, reflecting particular socio-cultural features and
practices. Similarly, Tan’s (2006) study of sitcoms from Malaysia and Singapore
predictably showed there were more borrowings from Malay in Malaysian English
and more from Chinese in Singapore English. We can also expect more lexical
differences between the less acrolectal sub-varieties of these Englishes, although
seepages from the more colloquial sub-varieties are to be expected. One such example
is the more frequent use of the term handphone in acrolectal Malaysian English
compared to Singapore English (Su, 2006). Apart from lexical differences, there is
scarcely any comparative research on other linguistic aspects although research on the
pronunciation of these two varieties of English has been initiated (Pillai, Knowles &
Mohd. Don, 2005).
The use of Malaysian and Singapore English and the expression of identity
Although the linguistic differences between Malaysian and Singapore English
are not obvious compared to, for example other varieties of English, the fact that
differences are emerging can be attributed to a certain extent to the diverging sociopolitical paths of Malaysia and Singapore. This in turn, will surely impinge on one’s
identity as a Malaysian or Singaporean, and since the expression of identity is
inextricably linked to language (Thornborrow, 2004), the use of Malaysian and
Singapore English will provide insights into how these varieties are used to establish
the complex and multifaceted entity that is identity.
Almost fifty years after independence, there is less fervour in equating English
with colonialism and western culture. Instead, there are more attempts to establish
English as one’s own. In Malaysia, for example there have been calls to “shed [our]
colonial baggage” (Hishammuddin Hussein, cited in Ibrahim, 2005) and “speak
English our way” (Lee, 1995) since Malaysian English provides “a sense of belonging
and identity” (Tan, 1999). Similarly, in Singapore, Singapore English, is seen to give
users ”a sense of identity as Singaporeans” (Lee-Wong, 2001). There is also a sense
of Singapore and Malaysian English, particularly the more colloquial sub-varieties,
providing a tool for the construction of a shared national identity cutting across ethnic
boundaries, as well as being a means to express solidarity and intimacy (BoekhorstHeng, 2005).
Since there is a lack of comparative research examining the relationship
between the use of Malaysian and Singapore English and the concept of identity, this
part of the research will focus on this relationship as well as people’s attitude towards
their own variety of English. Further, the question of how different sub-varieties of
both Malaysian and Singapore English allow users to weave in and out of different
identities will also be examined. The findings will contribute to the body of
knowledge in the field of language and identity as well as pool together linguistic
research from both Malaysia and Singapore.
References
Boekhorst-Heng, W. 2005. Debating Singlish. Multilingua 24: 185-209
Crystal, D. 1997. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
General Household Survey 2005, Statistical Release 1: Socio-Demographic and
Economic Characteristics. Department of Statistics, Ministry of Trade and
Industry,
Republic
of
Singapore.
From
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/pdtsvc/pubn/cop2000r2.html. Accessed 31 October
2006.
Ibrahim, A, 2005. Embrace English as ‘Our’ Language. New Straits Times, 16
August, 2005.
Lee, S. K. 1995. Speaking English Our Way. The Star, Section Two, Tuesday,
October 3, 1995, pg. 13.
Lee-Wong, S. M. 2001. The Polemics of Singlish. English Today 65, Vol. 17, No. 1:
39-45.
Lim, G. 2001. Till Divorce Do Us Part: The Case of Singaporean and Malaysian
English. In Ooi, V. B. Y. (Ed.), Evolving Identities: The English in Singapore and
Malaysia. Singapore: Times Academic Press. 125-139.
Moag, R. F. 1992. The Life Cycle of Non-native Englishes: A Case Study. In
Kachru, B. B. (Ed.), The Other Tongues: English Across Cultures (2nd edition).
Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press: 233-252.
Pillai, S. Knowles, G. & Mohd. Don, Z. 2005. Speaking English the L2 Way:
Implications for the Teaching of Pronunciation in L2 Contexts. Proceedings of
ELTCOG-2006. Chennai, India: Department of English, Velammal Engineering
College. 105-108.
Platt, J. And Weber, H. 1980. English In Singapore And Malaysia: Status, Features
And Functions. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.
Platt, J., Weber, H. and Ho, M. L. 1983. Varieties of English Around the World:
Singapore and Malaysia. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
Su, H. L. 2006. The Use Of Non-Standard Lexical Items in Malaysian English.
Unpublished Masters Dissertation, University of Malaya.
Tan, S. 1999. The Case for Manglish. Letter to the Editor, The Star, February 2, 1999,
pg. 12
Tan, C. C. 2006. The Linguistic Features Of Malaysian And Singapore English in
`Kopitiam' and `Phua Chu Kang Private Limited'. Unpublished Masters
Dissertation, University of Malaya.
Thornborrow, J. 2004. Language and Identity. In Thomas, L., Wareing, S., Singh, I,
Peccei, J, Thornborrow, J. and Jones, J. (Eds.), Language, Society and Power (2nd
Edition). London: Routledge. 157-172.
Tongue, R. 1974. The Englishes of Singapore and Malaysia. Singapore: Eastern
University Press.
Prose and Poetry in Malayisa and Singapore
This chapter will first survey all the important writers who wrote using
English either prior to or just after the formation of the newly-independent nationstate of Malaya in 1957. I will discuss some of their work to highlight the complexity
of their coming to terms with a new national space and identity in their imaginative
output. For such writers as Edwin Thumboo, Ee Tiang Hong and Wong Phui Nam,
the notion of a post-colonial homeland was something altogether new, especially
when the imaginative language at their disposal was still considered a colonised
language. This language often did not help in their portrayal of the nation, or notion of
a nation-state, which Benedict Anderson points out is a way of re-presenting the
country as an imagined community (25). In many ways all the important
Malayan/Malaysian and Singaporean writers in English in the late 1950s and 1960s
sensed that the departure of the British colonisers gave them a new freedom and a
new space within which to write imaginatively.
However, with such a freedom came also a new consciousness: that the new
history of the land would have to begin with the processes of and the preoccupation
with a sense of loss. The British identity which the colonisers gave to the land,
engendered through the use of the English language in governmental and educational
institutions, could no longer be relied upon. And what made it even more difficult for
a local writer at that time was the fact that the ethnic composition of the land was not
homogeneous, and could not easily be united by a single language. Their histories and
traditions were so different that they could never engender a sense of belonging and
home. That feeling of the simultaneity of time and space, people and place, that
creates the notion of a single and unified nation, would always remain out of reach in
the first few decades of their countries’ history.
The consciousness of their new nation, the Federation of Malaya (later
Malaysia and Singapore) needed urgent re-imagining. However, the problem these
early writers faced was not so much the colonial language with which they were left,
but that the language itself lacked, at the time, a real flexibility. Such flexibility was
deemed necessary to re-write an emerging nation comprising not only an original
settler folk but a few major ethnic groups whose respective cultural histories go back
many thousand of years to their respective motherlands.
Malaya’s early important writers were faced with the unenviable task of using
older, colonial metaphors to unite its various ethnic identities, histories and cultures.
They could not rely on any one uniting metaphor or strategy, as with Aimé Césaire’s
discovery of unity in the black suffering of his people, or the employment of the
Negritude of L. S. Senghor. The local writer had little choice but to either employ a
version of the standard English they learnt at school or simply turn their backs on that
language altogether and use their mother tongues spoken at home as the purveyor of
their creative imaginations. This resulted in what are today the many varieties of
written literature which characterise Malaysia and Singapore’s truly hybrid approach
to literature: in Malaysia, there is the state-sponsored, Malay-language literature as
well as the more sectarian writings of the Chinese (often known as Mahua writing)
and local South Indian languages. Writings in English are often seen as hovering
somewhere between these two groups, depending on the state’s love-hate view of the
English language: on the one hand, it is the indispensable language of commerce and
industry but, on the other, should not be used to unite the different cultures of the
country. The Malay language is often accorded that role though in recent times there
has been a call to view the language as a language of the land and not one of the
colonisers.
The local writer who employed the English language as his sole creative
language had to confront two very difficult language realities. One was that he had to
relearn his English tongue to be able to write about the rich hybridity of his local
surroundings, something that had not previously been achieved because of the need to
maintain the “King’s English”. The second problem the new Malayan writer faced
was that even after relearning the language he still had to confront the reality of the
new-nation state which had no real history to look back on and only a highly
undetermined future onto which to hold. The writer needed to discover a way of
belonging and in that way gain a new identity from the land, uncovering the many
facets of the meaning of a postcolonial homeland.
This search for an identity from within the local landscape has been in
evidence since the beginning of the formation of the new Malaya, and is still the
reality of all writing of the past decade or so. Many of today’s local literary traditions
in English find their roots in the cultural and intellectual life of a number of young
writers who studied at the then University of Malaya in Singapore in the 1950s.
Among them are all the major writers of the new Malaya such as Wong Phui Nam, Ee
Tiang Hong, Lloyd Fernando and Muhammad Haji Salleh; but the important writer
from amongst that group is Singaporean Edwin Thumboo whose lyric enterprise
spans the entire postcolonial histories of both Singapore and Malaysia.
Even those writing after the 1970s and 1980s such as Shirley Lim, KS
Maniam and Muhammad Haji Salleh continued this earlier notion of the land in their
writing by adopting primarily the idea of the disjunction of the land and its migrant
history in the imaginative vision of their native, though diasporic landscape. The
rootlessness of psychological and geographical existence would always be a part of
their internal experience of the land. For those who did not feel physically de-rooted,
a universalised condition of the exile of the mind was often summoned as major trope.
The Malaysian and Singaporean literary imaginations, thus, will always be seen as
arising from the aspect of such disjunctive notions. Some writers imaginatively
reconstructed the land using their respective cultural myths, consciousness and
history. For others, especially the writing talents emerging today, a hybrid
postcolonial nation could finally be re-made to include its colonial and recent
postcolonial past so that a quest for identity from within history could be situated
somewhere between the unfinished past and an uncertain present, so as to chart a
course for a discernible, more equitable future.
Any kind of conclusions to this chapter/s would have to remain speculative for
now because it would seem that most of the newer literary talents in this region are
still young and many of them do not have more than two volumes of published poetry
or fiction each. Yet it seems to me that the use of myth, history and precedent with
associations to themes like exilic identity, rootedness and the building of a national
consciousness by the slightly older generation of major Malaysian and Singaporean
poets seems to have been all but forgotten by many of the younger poets writing in
English in the region today. The only significant exceptions are found in the three
slender volumes of poetry of Boey Kim Cheng, Alvin Pang and Alfian Saat, all
Singaporean. Other new voices seem to have replaced the public voices and
sensibilities of their more senior counterparts with a more private, personal stage
where aspects and pointers of the ethos of the society they live in have become selfreferential. Gifted younger Singaporean poets like Paul Tan, Felix Cheong, Aaron Lee
and the Malaysian Charlene Rajendran tend to internalise political and social
contentions of their land, so much so that their poetic landscapes look more like
aspects of their personalities and little else.
Could it be that in post-1980s and -1990s Singapore (and to a lesser extent
Malaysia) a poet has had to take control of a very different space that the sixties and
seventies poets could not have dreamed about? Is it true that today in postcolonial and
postmodern Malaysia and Singapore poets and writers create within a space of an
“advanced” modern state which is essentially looking to the future? This
postcolonial/postmodern space with its bewildering experiences of hybridity and the
instability of not having achieved any kind of real rootedness in terms of identity
reveals perhaps an unfinished component to their experience of the past. In this
narrative, myths of provenance, nation-building exercises in writing and exilic
metaphor become deferred moments or simply contradictions that drive these writers
forward into an interminable futural space that is without any perceived authority or
control. According to this narrative also, could it also be said that the
postcolonial/postmodern Southeast Asian writer in English views his public and
historical realms as something essentially personal, without being uninterested in or
dispassionate about the latter? Answers to these questions remain for now tentative,
uncertain
at
best.
But
I
could
safely
conclude
that
contemporary
postcolonial/postmodern Southeast Asian poetry in English does not seem to be
writing from any kind of enclosed sense of space. In fact, the reverse is usually more
true in that the issue of its forgetting societal myth, history and precedent could be
seen as part of an emerging palimpsest — where history’s antecedents are being
rewritten, re-placed, by a new writing that is finally bold enough both to look back
and then to speculate on its future.
Reference
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verson, 1991
Theatre and Performance in Malaysia and Singapore
The focus in this section of the book will be on performance – specifically, on
the English-language theatres of Malaysia and Singapore. Generally, I will continue
with the theme already raised in other sections of this book, namely that of identity: is
there such a thing as a ‘Malaysian’ or ‘Singaporean’ identity? Is that identity national,
cultural, linguistic? Can it be divided into such discrete categories? However, all these
questions will be approached through an analysis of post-independence Englishlanguage theatre. How has the theatre specifically helped to shape identity, as well as
to question that shaping? What is unique about what the theatre, as an art form which
must be performed and spoken, bring to the process of identity construction? How has
the theatre itself, in the process of constructing identity, been reshaped and
reimagined?
In this introductory chapter, I will discuss the English-language theatre as an
effective and exciting forum for the production of identities, whether national or
cultural. I will consider in broad terms, the notion of construction or production of
identities (following the work of J. L. Austin and Judith Butler on performativity), as
well as tying the broad arguments to the specifics of the situations in Malaysia and
Singapore. Here, there will be some focus on the clash between essentialisation, as
fostered by the authorities in both countries, and the inescapable hybridity which is
the lived experience of the people. This will lead into a discussion of the position of
English as a suitable vehicle for that hybridity, given its flexibility and its openness to
influences and accretions from other languages. The discussion will then move into a
more specific consideration of the theatre as a site for the construction or production
of identities which have the capacity to challenge authoritative constructions. Finally,
by briefly discussing various critical articles and books on the theatre in Malaysia and
Singapore, I hope to both evaluate the development of the theatre, and to identify gaps
in theatre scholarship which need to be filled.
The next chapter will look at colonial theatre activity in Malaya immediately
prior to Independence, before going on to a more detailed examination of the kind of
local performance which developed from these colonial roots. Such a study, while
providing a historical background and context for the development of Englishlanguage theatre in Malaysia and Singapore, will also trace the development of a
cultural identity reflecting the multilingual and multiracial character of the two
nations. We will also be able to follow the development of Malaya into Malaysia and
Singapore, two nations with common roots but, increasingly, divergent identities. The
focus here, then, will be on:
•
Expatriate theatre clubs: the plays produced, and the position of locals within
these structures.
•
Escaping from British cultural hegemony: works produced in the immediate postindependence period – the concern with finding an authentic ‘local’ voice and
themes.
•
Nationalism and theatre in the 1960s and 1970s: constructing a national identity
which might support or challenge the authority-defined national identity.
The final chapter will look at developments in what I will call (following
Margaret Yong) the ‘post-national’ period. This will cover the period of the 1980s and
1990s, as well as referring to the newest developments in the theatres of Malaysia and
Singapore in the 21st century. Although the 1980s represent a time of stagnation for
both Malaysia and Singapore in terms of active theatre writing and production, they
did see the formation of two seminal theatre companies – Malaysia’s Five Arts
Centre, and Singapore’s Theatreworks. Both these companies worked consciously
towards the development of a consciously ‘local’ performance idiom, as well as
actively encouraging local playwriting. From their efforts, came the vitality and
creativity which have characterised the 1990s in both countries, with efforts being
made not only to highlight the local, but also to be aware of and reach out towards a
globalised world.
Bibliography
Lo, Jacqueline. 2004. Staging Nation: Postcolonial English Language Theatre in
Malaysia and Singapore. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP.
Oon, Clarissa. 2001. Theatre Life!: A History of English-language Theatre in
Singapore Through the Straits Times (1958 – 2000). Singapore: Singapore Press
Holdings.
Peterson, William. 2001. Theater and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary
Singapore. Connecticut: Wesleyan UP.
Rowland, Kathy, ed. 2003. Krishen Jit: An Uncommon Position. Singapore:
Contemporary Asian Arts Centre.
Singh, Kirpal, ed. 2000. Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature Volume 3:
Drama. Signapore: Ethos.
Watt, George. 2005. Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature Volume 5: Robert
Yeo. Singapore: Ethos.