ENDURING LOVE FOR THEIR ART

Goh Boon Teck, founder of Toy Factory Productions

- Clement Yong Correspondent

Artistic director Goh Boon Teck has put on showpieces such as Titoudao (1994), The Crab Flower Club (2009) and Moonlit City (2025).

(BRIAN TEO)

Theatre company Toy Factory Productions was founded by Goh Boon Teck and 13 others in 1990. As the 3½ decades elapsed, people switched careers or started their own artistic initiatives, but Goh has kept stolidly on.

"I am the silly one," the 54-year-old immediately counters when this reporter remarks on his persistence. “When I do something, I want to do it consistently and religiously. I'm still learning how to do theatre.”

The powers that be have evidently decided that he has earned his laurels. At the Istana on Nov 27, the veteran creator of showpieces like Titoudao (1994), inspired by his opera actress mother Oon Ah Chiam, and The Crab Flower Club (2009) was conferred the highest cultural honour in the land, the Cultural Medallion. He is one of two honourees in 2025.

Speaking to The Straits Times a few weeks before the ceremony, he has already digested the results and is looking to the next thing. The welcome testimony to his hard work now also signals “a huge responsibility”.

“Are you going to have extra artistic burden in doing the next thing?” and that Singaporean concern: “Is there any change to your creative freedom?”

“It’s a very complicated kind of feeling beyond happiness and gratification.”

Performing arts was an unexpected path which also seemed a birthright for Goh. Though he wanted to be a painter when studying fine arts at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, one of his earliest memories was touring Malaysia and Singapore with his mother’s Chinese street opera troupe.

He was on stage even in his mother’s womb. She once lost her footing — “I didn’t die” — and he later volunteered to play minor roles, as a little helper or a eunuch.