Wild Rice's Girls Girls Girls is a loving homage to queer women's stories

Girls Girls Girls begins with Crocs, carabiners, undercuts and convent schools, but quickly discards its starter pack of well-worn lesbian cliches for flesh and bones.

- Shawn Hoo

Its panorama of verbatim stories is compelling proof that rich queer lives can be forged on the margins of a heteronormative culture, even if out of necessity.

Interviews with 20 queer women from Singapore, curated and assembled into shape by co-playwrights Deonn Yang and Alfian Sa’at, form the backbone of the play. Mainly, they are role models of queer excellence - acclaimed film-maker Kirsten Tan, and Marylyn Tan, the first woman poet to win the Singapore Literature Prize for English poetry, for example. Otherwise, they are women with inspiring stories, like couple Noor Soeb and Susie Chua who travel the world in a camper van.

Director Yang casts her meticulous eye on these varied stories and marshals the superb ensemble - consisting of Mehr Dudeja, Farah Ong, Tan Rui Shan, Eve Voigtlander and Yap Yi Kai — in a nimble, loving homage to her interviewees’ physicality.