Five Arts Centre’s philosophy of experimentation and commitment to promoting new work has led to a rich staging history of plays that have challenged the conventions of form, language and theme on the Malaysian stage.
Devised theatre, multilingual performance, improvisation, inter- and intracultural experimentation and cross-genre collaborations are but some of the innovations Five Arts Centre has become known for since it was established in 1984 by Chin San Sooi, Krishen Jit and Marion D’Cruz with K.S. Maniam and Redza Piyadasa.
The 15 plays in Staging History: Selected Plays from Five Arts Centre Malaysia 1984 – 2014 are amongst the most iconic, innovative and memorable of the over 100 productions staged by the company over the past 30 years.The playwrights and director-devisers in this collection include Kee Thuan Chye, Leow Puay Tin, Chin San Sooi, Krishen Jit, Huzir Sulaiman, Nam Ron, Charlene Rajendran, Jo Kukathas and Mark Teh.
Their words tell poignant personal stories: a young girl’s pursuit of the unattainable in (A Modern Woman Called) Ang Tau Mui by Leow Puay Tin; the wordless humanity of the migrant worker in David Wong’s chilling Toilet; the story of a life lived through and for art in Marion D’Cruz’s Gostan Forward; youthful dispossession in My Grandmother’s Chicken Curry & .. by Charlene Rajendran.
There are also bigger tales, of privilege and power, in Kee Thuan Chye’s seminal 1984 Here and Now; of the nation’s destiny sealed in a nondescript classroom in Mark Teh’s Baling (membaling); of police brutality and public complicity in Jo Kukathas’ Operating Theatre and cultural conflict rendered large through household minutiae in Nam Ron’s Lina dan Lijah.
Staging History: Selected Plays from Five Arts Centre Malaysia 1984 – 2014 is one company’s artistic vision, distilled through its staging history. Every voice we encounter in these 15 plays, shows us something bigger – a way to stage our history as a nation, anew.
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