Alfian Sa’at on IMDA ratings in theatre | The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the IMDA

Playwright Alfian Sa’at talks about the IMDA ratings that he’s received for two of his plays, Merdeka and Pulau Ujong in this video 👀
🤐 The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore runs till 30 March 2024. Limited tickets left!
More info at www.wildrice.c...
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The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore 🤐
14 - 30 March 2024
Written by Alfian Sa’at
Directed by Irfan Kasban
Starring Farah Ong
How did you get this past the censors? Was anything cut? Is censorship stricter today than it used to be?
Theatre-makers in Singapore get asked these questions all the time, since a play cannot be publicly performed here without a script first being sent to the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA).
This means that, before addressing a public audience, the playwright first addresses an IMDA officer. It is this IMDA officer who can approve the performance license for a play, give it a rating, and ultimately decide if it can be staged.
What if this implicit dialogue between playwright and IMDA officer is made explicit, and turned into a performance?
Written with gut-wrenching insight by Alfian Sa’at, The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore is a performance-lecture that traces the history of how theatre has been regulated in Singapore from colonial times to today. It is a chronicle of how moral panic, culture wars, bureaucratic language and political elites have shaped the Singaporean censorship landscape.
Performed as a direct address to an unknown IMDA officer, this darkly hilarious new work reconfigures the faceless encounter between the artist and the censor as a moment of unbearable intimacy.
“You. I know you’re reading this. Who else can it be but you?”
The Death of Singapore Theatre as Scripted By the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore was first performed as part of the Substation's SeptFest arts festival in 2022.
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[@scsim60]

Love your plays❤