The control freak playwright and fearless director

Michael Chiang and Beatrice Chia-Richmond have become the engine behind some of Singapore's most unforgettable national projects

- Wong Kim Hoh Features Editor

In 2017, actress and theatre director Beatrice Chia-Richmond hit rock bottom.

Her concert company Running Into The Sun had collapsed. Liquidating assets and clearing debts, she found herself exposed in a brutally public way. With no office, no team and, briefly, no sense of future, she was adrift.

Then her phone rang. It was Michael Chiang.

The publisher and playwright did not offer cliches. Instead, he handed her a physical key to a small office in Guillemard he had rented for The A List, a fortnightly arts magazine he helmed.

"Use this," he told her.

No rent, no conditions just a room to store her files, her stationery and, as she puts it, her dignity while she rebuilt her life.

"I will never, never forget this act of absolute kindness," says Chia-Richmond, 51, her voice catching as she recalls the moment. "He gave me a place to land at the stinkiest, lowest point of my professional life."

Chiang, 71, waves off the gratitude with the ease of someone who prefers his drama onstage. "I told her: 'It will pass. Your reputation is strong. It won't change anything."

He was right. It did not.

The gesture deepened a friendship and creative partnership that began when they met in 2006.

Individually, they are powerhouses. Chiang - a former journalist and magazine maestro who launched several titles, including entertainment and lifestyle weekly 8days - is the literary father of Singaporean pop-culture comedy, spinning national service, beauty pageants and gender politics into beloved hits such as Army Daze, Beauty World and Private Parts.