The Theatre Practice confronts headwinds

Singapore's oldest bilingual theatre company celebrates 60 years with a Mandopop jukebox musical and a multidisciplinary Pickle Party

- Shawn Hoo

One imagines that The Theatre Practice (TTP), Singapore's oldest bilingual theatre company, would have transitioned out of survival mode by now.

But artistic director Kuo Jian Hong is detecting headwinds on the horizon even as she marks 60 improbable years of the company.

Over a Zoom call from London, Kuo, 58, rattles off a list of challenges. Top of mind is how to grow the salaries of her 22 employees sustainably, especially for mid-career arts workers.

Her sense that ratings for shows have become more conservative in recent years, referencing the banning of local theatre group Wild Rice's dramatised reading of Homepar in June and her own shows, is another. "Why is the arts about education or demonstrating a model life?" she asks.

Then, there is the most fundamental and existential threat to the very premise of theatremaking. "Language is challenging right now - our relationship with literature, text and words is shifting."

To a different degree, these are the same kinds of challenges as when her parents - cultural doyens Kuo Pao Kun and Goh Lay Kuan - set up the Singapore Performing Arts School (now TTP) in 1965, when there was no professional theatre scene to speak of and when they were advocating for the artistry of language. The married couple, too, were going three years at a time, unsure of whether the theatre company could make each lap.

In 1969, the late Kuo's play The Struggle - featuring a group of factory workers fighting for better work conditions - was banned by the Government. Then, as part of a wave of arrests in 1976, Kuo and Goh, now 86, were detained without trial under the Internal Security Act - with the former spending close to five years in detention.