Dramaturgs &: In conversation with Directors

The third of this year’s series is DRAMATURGS & DIRECTORS, where we explore the working relationships between these two roles. What might directors want from dramaturgs as collaborators? How is the dramaturgical thinking a dramaturg offers different from that of a director? Can a dramaturg’s contribution reveal blindspots in the director’s vision and what happens then? Join us for this thought-provoking conversation facilitated by Cherilyn Woo, and bring your questions for our exciting panel of directors including Kok Heng Leun, Huzir Sulaiman and Sim Yan Ying.

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DRAMATURGS & is a new capsule series of roundtable conversations centering the work of and relationship between dramaturgs and their artistic collaborators. Dramaturgical thinking and application is integral in the work of all artists, yet a dramaturg’s role affords a dedicated lens that can expand and challenge artistic decisions. In cosy and candid sessions, we aim to unpack the relational, intricate and often invisible work of dramaturgs in creative processes and within artistic teams.

[NOTE: A recommended donation amount of $10 is encouraged to support the conduct of this roundtable conversation. However, if you are unable to make a donation, please write to [email protected] to register for this event. Please note that donations are non-refundable. ]

BIOGRAPHIES

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CHERILYN WOO is a Freelance Theatre Director and Writer in Singapore with a keen interest in multi-disciplinary collaboration. From 2014 – 2016, she was in the Directing Residency at Singapore Repertory Theatre. Currently, she is one half of Issy x Cher and Associate at Nine Years Theatre.

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HUZIR SULAIMAN is a co-founder and Joint Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre. His practice spans writing, dramaturgy, directing, and performing for the stage and screen. He oversees the company’s development of new work, including plays, audio experiences, video, play anthologies, and comics. Recent stage directing credits include Secondary: The Musical (2024), Session Zero (2023, 2021), Tender Submission (2023), and Brown Boys Don’t Tell Jokes (2023).

He created the playwriting modules and taught playwriting at the National University of Singapore from 2007 to 2021, first in the English Department, then as Adjunct Associate Professor with the University Scholars Programme. He has also taught playwriting at SOTA, NTU, and NYU Tisch Asia.

A critically acclaimed and award-winning playwright, his Collected Plays 1998-2012 was published in 2013. His play Displaced Persons’ Welcome Dinner was a commission of the 2019 Singapore International Festival of Arts, his fifth commission by the national platform. His plays have been presented in theatres in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, London, Berlin, Tokyo, and New York. As a screenwriter, he won Best Screenplay at the 2018 Malaysian Screen Awards for Dukun.

Huzir was educated at Princeton University, where he won the Bain-Swiggett Poetry Prize, and is a Yale World Fellow.

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KOK HENG LEUN is a prominent theatre director, playwright, dramaturg, and educator, known for engaging the community on various issues through the arts, championing civic discourse across different societal segments.

As Artist, Founder of Drama Box (Singapore), notable directorial works over his three-decade career include Drift, Trick or Threat, and Underclass; site-specific theatre ubin and Project Mending Sky, Both Sides, Now, which explores end-of-life conversations, and the recent Air, about the dispossession of the indigenous Malays and Orang Seletar of Singapore. National awards received include the Young Artist Award, Cultural Fellowship, and Cultural Medallion. He also served as a Nominated Member of Parliament (2016– 2018), representing the arts sector.

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SIM YAN YING is a theatre artist based in Singapore and New York. She creates as a director, performer, writer, and deviser, and strives to make works that are experimental and accessible, physical in nature, and reflective of a diversity of lived experiences. YY believes in the power of live performance to bridge perspectives within and across communities in an increasingly polarized world.

Her original works include: Who Are You? (Esplanade), a devised performance about migrant-local relationships in Singapore; Bloodlines 血脉 (Fault Line Theatre), a collaboration with artists across the Sinosphere examining the volatility and promise of Chinese-ness; Where Are You? (Wild Rice/Mabou Mines), a series of productions on how we experience grief and confront death; (un)becoming (T:>Works N.O.W. 2021), about the complex dynamics of mother-daughter relationships in Singapore today; Who’s There? (New Ohio Theatre), an international collaboration about the socio-political upheaval and racial unrests in 2020; I LOVE WHITE MEN (Caveat NYC/Ars Nova/Dixon Place), a one-woman show excavating white worship and postcolonial baggage from an immigrant’s perspective in New York; and Without Reason (ArtsWok Collaborative/Esplanade) about the struggles of an interracial relationship in Singapore.

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