Southeast Asian Plays

Eight Plays from Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia

Selected and Edited by Cheryl Robson and Aubrey Mellor

Playwrights: Jean Tay, Floy Quintos, Tew Bunnag, Ann Lee, Nguyễn Đăng Chương, Joned Suryatmoko, Alfian Sa'at, Chhon Sina

Jean Tay graduated in 1997 with a double-degree in creative writing and economics from Brown University, USA. Plays produced include Senang (2014), Sisters (2013), Boom (2008, 2009, 2012), Everything but the Brain (2005, 2007, 2013), Plunge (2001, 2009), Hopper's Women (co-written with Cindy Koh, 2000), The Knot (1999) and Water from the Well (1998). She has also written the books for musicals The Admiral's Odyssey (2005), Man of Letters (2006) and Pinocchio (2010). Her plays have been performed in Singapore, the US, the UK, and Italy. She attended the prestigious monthlong International Playwriting Residency in 2007, organised by the Royal Court Theatre in London and has also participated in LaMama's International Playwrights' Retreat in Umbria, Italy in 2010. In 2000, her play The Knot was awarded first prize for Action Theatre's 10-minute Play Competition and selected as a finalist for the Actors Theatre of Louisville's 10-minute Play Contest. She has been nominated four times for Best Original Script for the Life! Theatre Awards, and won for Everything But the Brain in 2006. For her fiction, she was awarded the Weston Prize for Fiction from Brown University, as well as the first and third prizes for the National Arts Council's Golden Point Short Story competition in 1995 and 2001 respectively. Tay's most recent projects include being scriptwriter for the 2015 National Day Parade Golden Jubilee celebration and collaborating with Drama Box on the verbatim theatre piece It Won't Be Too Long: The Cemetery for the Singapore International Arts Festival 2015. She presented her latest play, The Shape of a Bird at the M1 Fringe Festival 2016. She was attached to the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) as resident playwright from 2006- 2009, and has been helming SRT's Young Company Writing Programme since 2012. She was also writer-in-residence at the Nanyang Technological University in 2013 and is currently an adjunct lecturer in playwriting there. Her plays Everything but the Brain and Boom have been published by Epigram Books, and Everything but the Brain is currently used as an 'O' and 'N' Level literature text for secondary school students. Tay is the founding Artistic Director of Saga Seed Theatre, set up in 2015 to bring Singaporean stories to the stage, and provide a platform to showcase and nurture local talent.

Tew Bunnag was born in Bangkok in 1947, and educated in the UK where he studied Chinese and Economics at Cambridge University. He has been a teacher of t'ai chi and a lay teacher of Buddhist meditation since 1975, and has given courses in England, Spain, France, Switzerland, Greece and the US. In Spain, where he lives most of the year, he also contributes to the Palliative Care Movement, running workshops on issues concerning Death and Dying, and he is the current president of the Asociación Vinyana.
In Bangkok he works in Klongtoey, the biggest slum situated in the port area of Bangkok where he is one of the directors of an NGO that helps street children, and adults and children who are HIV positive (The Human Development Foundation, Mercy Centre). The funds that he helps to raise in Europe go to these projects.
His fiction works in English include Fragile Days, After the Wave, The Naga's Journey, Curtain of Rain, and three published short stories (A Most Generous Uncle for the Asia Literary Review, The Mistress Wants her Freedom, for the Bangkok Noir collection, and Eyes of Karma for the Asia Literary Review). All deal with the contradictions and anomalies thrown up by the confrontation of traditional values and the modern aggressive materialism that has become a feature of Asian society. He writes both as an insider and an observer using his ability to slip in and out of the different strata of Thai society that are usually inaccessible to both Thai and foreign outsiders.
His work has been serialized in Thai magazines and translated into Spanish and Greek. The Naga's Journey and Curtain of Rain have been translated into Italian.
He is married to a British artist, has three children and five grandchildren. His eldest daughter lives in Italy with her family. His son is a filmmaker based in Paris and Bangkok and his youngest daughter is a musician. Because of these family commitments he divides his time between Europe and Thailand.

Cheryl Robson Writer, editor and filmmaker. Cheryl was born in Australia and spent 5 years working on literary projects in Singapore. On leaving University of Bristol, Cheryl worked at the BBC in London for several years before setting up a theatre company producing and developing women's plays. She also created a publishing company where she has published over 300 international writers and won numerous awards. As a writer, she has won the Croydon Warehouse International Playwriting Competition, been longlisted for the Bruntwood Prize and has had several stage plays produced. Her film Rock n' Roll Island, was broadcast on BBC 4, won several awards including a Gold Remi at Houston Worldfest and was nominated Best short film at Raindance London. www.cherylrobson.net.

Aubrey Mellor Theatre Director, Dramaturge and Teacher, expertise in new work and classics, especially Chekhov, Shakespeare and Brecht. Formerly Dean of Performing Arts at Lasalle and Director of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), associated with arts training colleges across Australasia. Has directed a range of genres from opera, dance and film. Well-known as an acting teacher to a generation of acclaimed Australian actors, and renowned for translations and productions of the classics, and for the development of new work. Brought up in Variety and Circus, Mellor trained as a dancer, visual artist and musician and graduated from NIDA Production Course. In 1972 was awarded a Churchill Fellowship, the first Australian to study Asian theatre, from Japan to India. Artistic Director of the Jane Street Theatre (Sydney). Co-Artistic Director of Nimrod Theatre Company (Sydney). Deputy Director of NIDA, Artistic Director of the (Royal) Queensland Theatre Company, Artistic Director of Playbox-Malthouse in Melbourne. Awarded Order of Australia Medal in 1992 for services to the arts, Australian Writers' Guild's Dorothy Crawford Award for services to Playwriting and the International Theatre Institute's Uchimura Prize for best production, Tokyo International Festival. Visiting professor to theatre schools in Japan, China. Mongolia, India, Indonesia and Vietnam.