'Arts must have the space to explore uncomfortable realities': Wild Rice responds to ban on play by IMDA and MHA , Singapore News
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), in a joint statement on Friday (June 20), said that the dramatised reading of Homepar has been disallowed in its current form.
This comes just a day before its staging.
The revised script submitted on June 5 had substantially changed from the version submitted on April 21, they noted, pointing out that the new material glamorises drug abuse and portrays an undercover Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) officer shielding abusers from detection.
"It undermines Singapore's anti-drug policy, our drug rehabilitation regime, and public confidence in the CNB," said the joint statement.
"Performances that undermine Singapore's national interest are not permitted under the AECC (Arts Entertainment Classification Code)." Wild Rice responds
Wild Rice, in their statement posted on IG and Facebook on Friday (June 20), pointed out that the play is a "reductive reading of a nuanced and empathetic work that is, at its core, about healing and recovery".
"The central character's journey is one of struggle, resilience, and the power of community in overcoming addiction and stigma," said the company, adding that Homepar does not condone or glorify substance use.
"It seeks to ask why people — real people, in our society — turn to drugs, often as a response to trauma, discrimination, and marginalisation," said Wild Rice.
"The characters portrayed express a spectrum of attitudes, including rejection and ambivalence, and the play ends with a celebration of community that is explicitly and intentionally drug-free."
The theatre company added that the play, written by Mitchell Fang, was a "work in development" and that it was "never intended as a full production" but a process to collect "feedback and revision".
"We also believe that the arts must have the space to explore complex, often uncomfortable realities," Wild Rice said.
They also said that they "remain committed to responsible storytelling" and "working constructively with regulators" to ensure that Homepar "can be seen, understood, and appreciated for what it truly is."
According to a synopsis on Wild Rice's website, Homepar — a reference to house parties in the gay party scene — is about a man who hosts one such party to "power through a tough break-up and celebrate their evolving gender identity".
However, the host and his guests subsequently received a knock on the door at 4am. April 21 script could be staged: IMDA
IMDA said it had previously informed Wild Rice that their prior April 21 script could be staged as it met the requirements. The theatre company, however, has chosen not to revert their script to their initial version.
IMDA added that Singapore's firm stance against drugs remains unchanged, and that they will continue to uphold the AECC to protect national interest.
[[nid:719172]]
liv.roberts@asiaone.com
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
7 days ago
- Straits Times
Arts Picks: Ding Yi's The River Remembers, Hotel by Wild Rice, gamelan music at Kampong Gelam
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox (From left) Director Goh Boon Teck, composer Law Wai Lun, choreographer Cai Shiji and conductor Dedric Wong De Li are collaborating on The River Remembers. The River Remembers This ambitious multidisciplinary production by Ding Yi Music Company brings together well-known names in Singapore's performing arts scene in an SG60 celebration. This is a fuller restaging of 2019's River Of Life, a chamber symphony composed by Cultural Medallion recipient Law Wai Lun and inspired by journalist Han Shan Yuan's 2006 book, Endless Stories Of Singapore River. The work will have a new arrangement and there will be choreography by Dance Ensemble Singapore's creative director Cai Shiji. Toy Factory's Goh Boon Teck directs the show and actress Sharon Au will narrate the stories in the role of Mother River. Where: Drama Centre Theatre, 03-01 National Library, 100 Victoria Street MRT: Bugis When: Aug 16, 3.30 and 7.30pm Admission: $38 to $68 from Sistic (go to or call 6348-5555) Info: Hotel Hotel by Wild Rice explores the notions of empire, nationhood, migration and identity. PHOTO: WILD RICE Public service announcement for those new to Wild Rice's classic production Hotel. This show is spread over two evenings if you are watching on weekdays and comprises both a matinee and an evening show when you watch on the weekend. This five-hour marathon, however, is well worth your investment of time. The fact that this has been restaged twice since its premiere at the 2015 Singapore Arts Festival – this is the third rerun – is proof positive of its evergreen appeal. The script by Alfian Sa'at and Marcia Vanderstraaten is built on a clever conceit: a hotel room that sees various stories unfolding over 100 years. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Some ageing condos in Singapore struggle with failing infrastructure, inadequate sinking funds Singapore PUB investigating wastewater discharge in Eunos: Pritam Singapore Water gel guns among newer tools NParks uses to manage monkeys in estates World Trump eyes 100% chips tariff, but 0% for US investors like Apple World Trump's 100% semiconductor tariffs may hit chipmakers in Singapore, other SEA nations Singapore Afraid of small talk? Scared to make a phone call? How social skills workshops are helping young people Singapore ST and Uniqlo launch design contest for Singapore stories T-shirt collection Business DBS shares hit record-high after Q2 profit beats forecast on strong wealth fees, trading income The audience revisits the room every 10 years, beginning with its opening during the colonial period. An ensemble of 13 actors will bring to life a cavalcade of 66 characters speaking nine languages. More than mere numbers and blockbuster staging, Hotel captures the Singapore story in all its multicultural, multilingual glory. Each vignette functions as a standalone story, ranging in genre from serious drama to comic relief, yet they also fit into a larger whole that reflects Singapore's varied historical tapestry. If you want to celebrate SG60, there is no better experience than this epic production. Where: Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre, Wild Rice @ Funan, Level 4, 107 North Bridge Road MRT: City Hall When: Aug 14 to Sept 21, 7.30pm (Tuesdays to Fridays), 2.30 and 7.30pm (Saturdays and Sundays) Admission: $60 to $160 Info: Beats On Baghdad Street: SG60 With Djoko Mangkrengg Performing Arts Djoko Mangkrengg Performing Arts will perform National Day songs in Baghdad Street. PHOTO: MALAY HERITAGE CENTRE Join home-grown gamelan ensemble Djoko Mangkrengg Performing Arts for a celebratory sing-along session at Kampong Gelam on Aug 9. It will be playing all the familiar National Day favourites such as Count On Me Singapore and We Are Singapore. Adding to the vibes will be the live telecast of the National Day Parade. You can also try your hand at playing gamelan instruments. This outdoor performance is the latest of the Beats On Baghdad Street programme organised by the Malay Heritage Centre. The series celebrates Malay arts and culture by showcasing various performing groups.
Straits Times
19-07-2025
- Straits Times
Theatre review: Dido & The Belindas a safe party for the abandoned
Dido & The Belindas T:>Works 72-13 Mohamed Sultan Road July 18, 9pm Part of the fun of this is in the late-night, underground ambience, the audience dragging their chairs round little cocktail tables, bottles of drinks already flowing. In a theatre scene more familiar with the cushy theatres of the Esplanade or Wild Rice, here is immediately a sense of possibility. Then Singapore drag queen Becca D'Bus strides onto the runway stage, plumped up with heaps of garment and wearing as her crown a tin foil-lined helmet of antenna, belting aria: 'Ah! Belinda, I am press'd... Peace and I are strangers grown.' The lament from Henry Purcell's 1689 opera Dido And Aeneas is mournfully sung by American lyric tenor Thomas Michael Allen, equally heavily made-up and sat amid the audience in a high chair. D'Bus mouths the words in sync, gesticulating mockingly, sometimes impatient. The clash of aesthetics is at once brazen but also familiar to drag culture, where model poses in the photo shoots of vogue and the boldest fashion pieces have always been appropriated to glamorise and empower. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Mindef, SAF units among those dealing with attack on S'pore's critical information infrastructure Asia How China's growing cyber-hacking capabilities have raised alarm around the world Singapore Vessels from Navy, SCDF and MPA to debut at Marina Bay in NDP maritime display Singapore 1 dead, 1 injured after dispute between neighbours in Yishun HDB block Asia Autogate glitch at Malaysia's major checkpoints causes chaos for S'porean and foreign travellers Asia SIA, Scoot, Cathay Pacific cancel flights as typhoon nears Hong Kong Singapore A deadly cocktail: Easy access, lax attitudes driving Kpod scourge in S'pore Singapore 'I thought it was an April Fool's joke': Teen addicted to Kpods on news that friend died Here it is, attracting a theatre crowd, set to the twangs of the harpsichord played by Japanese musician Toru Yamanaka. Dido & The Belindas is the theatre part of theatre company T:>Works' celebration of its 40th anniversary. Under the DnA Fest umbrella, it is a third of a trilogy that also includes a film and an afterparty, which people can experience together or in parts. Each is an inflection on the classic story of spurned love and duty, originally told in Virgil's Aeneid, but wrenched in radical directions by artistic director Ong Keng Sen. So Dido & The Belindas becomes set to the key of abandonment and societal ostracisation, in a kind of whiplash roulette that both truncates the opera and expands its relevance. Greek hero Aeneas is an afterthought, cast as an easily turned-on chandelier. Dido's closest companion Belinda becomes a tribe of misfits – including a confessional intersex character – though the show really tries to centre itself on the real-life story of wheelchair-bound Singaporean Valerie Eng, also known as V4LCY, paralysed from the waist down after a suicide attempt. The heft of the show brings the fantastical fun of the opera back down to earth. Carthage queen Dido D'Bus signposts: 'This is here. This is now.' She becomes facilitator to a live video call with V4LCY, during which the now para-athlete reads her poems and rehashes an interview she did with local media channel Our Grandfather Story. Of course, like Dido, she once chose to die rather than suffer a lack of love, an act rehabilitated to become a brave one here, reaffirming the fundamental right to hugs and care. This reviewer is reminded of British author Zadie Smith's White Teeth (2020), in which the novelist writes: 'Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.' This can be seen as a painful rejoinder. T:>Works' Dido & The Belindas. PHOTO: DEBBIE Y And of course, more meta-textually, there is a reordering of priorities from the original, which centres on Aeneas' higher duty of founding the city of Lavinium, his descendants later founding Rome – that city of riches, violence, slavery and eventual imperialism. In Dido And Aeneas is also an alternative path for the modern world: What if Aeneas, instead of leaving, had stayed to nurse his tendresse? The ceding of this space to V4LCY is telling of director Ong's priorities, given that it inevitably takes the spirited momentum of the show down a notch. The attempt to kick-start it again after this is a difficult transition for audiences, which is a shame, with the next florid, durian-filled funeral offering some of the best tableaus and cathartic weeping. But the point of Dido & The Belindas is really not in acting or conventional theatre. Through the rough sketches of a known story, it builds solidarities, between theatre and drag culture, between queerness and other axes of exclusion. In the Arcimboldo-esque fruit and gimp mask showpiece costumes designed by D'Bus and Khairullah Rahim, the final hurrah of 1998 gay anthem Believe by American singer Cher, and the pushing of the singular Belinda to the plural, it manages to create the safest of spaces. And is that not the point of theatre, which has allowed generations of those who have felt a tiny bit left out of the mainstream to discover confidence in who they are? Book It/Dido & The Belindas
Straits Times
15-07-2025
- Straits Times
The Violinist: Singapore's First Animated Historical Epic Set for 2026 Release
A film billed as Singapore's first animated historical epic is set to open in cinemas here in August 2026. The Violinist is set against the backdrop of colonial Singapore, the Japanese Occupation and the turbulent decades that follow. The story begins before the war and follows Fei, a violinist from a Peranakan family, and her close friend Kai, also a violinist. After the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1941, Kai joins the resistance, but he disappears after the war. Fei spends decades performing around the region while searching for her missing friend. Her journey is marked by grief, and also hope. Singapore actors voicing the characters include Tan Kheng Hua, Adrian Pang, Ayden Sng and Fang Rong. Japanese actor Kazuya Tanabe voices a character who appears during the Occupation. Golden Horse Award-winning local musician Ricky Ho will compose music for the project. In a press statement, the film's co-director Ervin Han called The Violinist a tribute to 'a generation shaped by history'. 'I wanted to tell a story that lives in the space between history and imagination, one that honours the people who endured and the quiet courage that history often overlooks,' says Han, who also co-wrote the screenplay. He shares the writing and directing credits with veteran Spanish animator Raul Garcia, whose animation credits include Disney classics like Beauty And The Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). The Violinist is a co-production between Singapore's Robot Playground Media, co-founded by Han, Spain's TV ON Producciones and Italy's Altri Occhi. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Business MAS records net profit of $19.7 billion, fuelled by investment gains Business Singapore financial sector growth doubles in 2024, assets managed cross $6 trillion in a first: MAS Singapore $3b money laundering case: MinLaw acts against 4 law firms and 1 lawyer over seized properties Singapore Man charged with attempted murder of woman at Kallang Wave Mall Singapore Ex-cleaner jailed over safety lapses linked to guard's death near 1-Altitude rooftop bar Singapore Real estate firm PropNex donates $6 million to Community Chest for 25th anniversary Singapore Sengkang-Punggol LRT gets 15.8 per cent capacity boost with new trains Singapore 'Nobody deserves to be alone': Why Mummy and Acha have fostered over 20 children in the past 22 years Don Chen, director of the Singapore Film Commission and senior principal consultant with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), calls the film 'a breakthrough for Singapore storytelling'. 'It is the first time our history has been brought to life through animation in a way that has captured global interest. This achievement does more than showcase our creative talent; it opens the door for future generations of local talents to share stories of our home and our dreams,' he said. At a press event held on July 15 at IMDA's innovation space Pixel in one-north, Han, 50, says the film is about 'music and memory' - 'the things we hold on to, the things we search for, and the things we have to let go of to find something new'. The feature, adapted from Han's 2016 short film The Violin, has taken eight years to develop. 'We wanted the The Violinist to be rooted not just in character but in a place, specifically in Singapore and Malaya. We spent years establishing a high level of authenticity in the historical locations seen in the film,' he says. Fei's Peranakan family home, for example, is based on the NUS Baba House in conservation district Blair Plain. Fei's Peranakan family home is inspired by the NUS Baba House, a heritage site that was once the home of a Straits Chinese family. PHOTO: ROBOT PLAYGROUND MEDIA The track record for Singapore animated features has been marked by ups and downs. The 3D animated fantasies Legend Of The Sea (2007) and Zodiac: The Race Begins (2006) were acknowledged to be critical and commercial failures, while the animated drama Tatsumi (2011) from celebrated Singapore film-maker Eric Khoo was more positively received on the festival circuit and was selected to be Singapore's entry to the Best Foreign Language category at the 2012 Academy Awards, but did not make the final shortlist. Han says he is aware of the risk he is taking but says that making a film in Singapore, be it live-action or animation, involves taking a bet on one's instincts. 'Who in their right mind would make an animated film? Maybe there's a good reason why no one has made one in so long. Tatsumi was released 14 years ago. But I can't help it. It's what I love,' he says. Producer Justin Deimen calls The Violinist a 'very Singaporean film that crosses cultures'. It is not aimed at the arthouse or prestige end of the market, but will be a film for 'children in higher primary, their parents and their grandparents', he says.
